A Sewing Table

When we moved into our house I was so excited to use our extra room as a craft room (along with a variety of other uses.)  We found this table on Craigslist in the spring.  It was nothing great- lots of scratches, stains, and dings, but it was only $20.  

A few weeks later Ace Hardware was having a free paint day so I picked up a can of coral paint (named fruity orange.)  Then my can of paint and my table sat around waiting for months and months and months for me to get my act together.  I dreaded having to sand the whole table, and it was constantly covered with projects.  But now that it's finally done I'm kicking myself for not getting to it earlier because it makes my room so happy!

 I also got an unfinished wooden chair from Ikea and painted it white, and made this placemat from extra curtain fabric so my sewing machine can slide around easily without messing up the table.  Jilly is modeling a cute little porcelain bowl one of my students got for me in China.  It's the perfect place for spare pins.

Merry and Bright

My parents gave Jilly this little nativity.  She loves playing with it and I love the sweet reminder of the reason for the season.  Every night I set it up perfectly like this and inevitably every morning wise men, animals, and baby Jesus get scattered around our family room.

Last year I had great intentions of making stockings but then I had a baby.  This year the stockings are a reality.  I loosely used this tutorial (and by loosely I mean that is the tutorial I was going to use last year  and didn't look at again this year, just did what I could remember and figured it out along the way) but I made a cuff because bias tape and I are not friends.   I'm very pleased with how they turned out.

Some Christmas decor on our shelves

 This is what a Christmas tree looks like in the home of a one year old.  The only ornaments on the bottom half are the gold balls I got at the Dollar Store and a couple other Jilly-proof ornaments.  

We have one very excited little girl!

You know that obnoxious Target commercial where everyone screams DONE! as they finish all their shopping?  Well, my friends, I am about to add my cheer to the chorus.  I have a few projects I still want to do in the next week but I am DONE! with all the necessities.  Ho ho ho!

November

I love November.

I love the colorful leaves, I love the crispness in the air, I love the perfect temperatures, I love the excitement about the upcoming holidays, I love that I can finally listen to Christmas music, I love being thankful, I love eating pumpkin desserts.
I love all the November birthday celebrations (my mom, Bryan, my father-in-law, Jilly!)
I love that this year November brings a couldn't come soon enough trip to Virginia.

Welcome welcome November, please stay as long as you'd like!

Stripes!

One of the very best things about owning our own place is being able to paint.  Bryan and his dad painted our whole downstairs a couple weekends ago and consequently are now my heroes.  But we had a big blank wall in our eating area that was begging for some excitement.  And so I added stripes.

I had never painted before so I pretty much had no clue what I was doing.  I tried to tape straight lines and they turned out not straight at all.  But, Bryan saved me and taped the most beautiful lines I've ever seen.  I then used the technique for painting perfect stripes in this blog post.  Bless the internet.  My stripes turned out perfectly and I am giddy about them.

I was so excited about my stripes that I neglected to clean up my painting supplies or iron my Halloween table runner.  You win some, you lose some.

She thinks they're pretty great too

Failed attempt at a picture of her teeth, but you gotta love that face and her Asian happy eyes

Crash!

 Yesterday afternoon things were pretty calm around here.  Jilly was taking a nap and I was reading on the couch when all of a sudden there was a huge commotion from my bedroom.  I raced back there to confirm my suspicion that our closet rack had collapsed.  This is the disaster I found:

 

This has happened before (in September) and we were worried it would happen again since the "fix" was to put the exact same rack back up in the same way.  It's so frustrating because we really do not have very much on that closet rack, and when it broke last time they told us that it happens all the time.  If it happens all the time, wouldn't it be logical to purchase new racks that are stronger?  It will be fascinating to see how our apartment complex "fixes" the problem this time.  On the bright side, I have a great excuse to not get dressed today!

Luckily I just got out my Spring decorations so at least there's something in my home that makes me happy!

I love the April bunny and the button egg printable from here.  

The sweet little girl in that frame and my vase full of eggs make my heart flutter.

Happy Spring!

It's Beginning to look a lot like Christmas

It's been very fun to Deck the Halls this year knowing that this may be our last year that the decorations actually stay where we put them.  I'm thinking next year Jillian will be far less content to just sit and enjoy the beauty and more keen on touching (breaking) everything.  We'll deal with that then, but for now I can enjoy my Christmas decorations exactly the way I want them.

I got the free printable art here.

Icicle lights and we finally have curtains!

A student gave me these plates and we've never had a wall to hang them on until now!

Festivity on the bookshelf- the nativity plate is my absolute favorite decoration

This year we got a real tree for the first time and our house smells divine.

Bryan asked if we could hang Jilly from our tree.  Though she would look adorable up there I don't think we'd get high marks for parenting.