Before I get to the BIG EXCITING post about the girls’ Summer Stock Theater experience & performance…I have some assorted photos of daily life to post in order to document our lives for posterity.
Strawberry Season 2014 has come & gone. They were small, but delicious.
Elise received the game “Ticket to Ride” for her birthday and we enjoyed playing it while Sarah was in Texas (a whole ‘nother blog post from her that is still forthcoming) on a mission trip. Becca won, I think and we had fun figuring it out and learning strategies!
We didn’t tell Sarah about the car until she got home from Texas…we bought it the day she left, so it was an entire week that we kept it a secret. If you know the Ball girls at all (myself included) you know that this was NOT EASY. It was fun to surprise her on Sunday morning when she got up. We parked it in front of the neighbor’s house when she was dropped off late Saturday night and then Sunday morning moved it back to the driveway before sending her out to see what was in the driveway. She was pretty excited!
A walk around Lake Padden was just what this mama needed once all her girlies were home together again.
I’ve been looking for a chair to refinish to use at my desk so I don’t have to always slide the dining room chair over. I didn’t want to pay much for it and I didn’t want it to have arms. I finally found one I thought would work and I have been wanting to try the new chalk paint craze and I thought this would be the perfect project.
You can buy chalk paint (Annie Sloan is the popular, well-known brand) or you can make it yourself. The reason people like chalk paint is that it sticks to everything and you don’t have to sand or prime. You DO, however, have to wax the furniture afterwards. This was the part that made me skeptical. I thought, “How could that be easier than sanding and/or priming?” I decided to make the chalk paint myself with some non-sanded tile grout and paint I already had on hand. I read lots of tutorials online and thought I knew what I was doing. After the first coat I thought, “This is pretty great stuff! It doesn’t drip at all!” The not-dripping thing was a major plus when painting the detailed scrollwork on the back of the chair!
This is what it looked like after one coat. At this point I began to have problems. On the bottom of the chair there was a spot in the wood where it was kind of “oozing,” for lack of a better word. Suddenly I had brown liquid mixed with my white paint. This was not good. I washed the brush. I dried the brush…but apparently not very well. That small bit of water caused my DIY chalk paint to become runny. Yuck. So I added some more tile grout, but it ended up taking 3 coats of chalk paint to cover. And HOW is that better than priming?? I then ventured to add wax…which, by the way, was not easy to find in stock…unless I wanted to buy Annie Sloan brand, which I did not.
I decided I do not like the finish that chalk paint and wax gives…at least not on furniture. I like furniture smoother. And shinier. Even when it’s “distressed” I like it to be smooth.
I also used the chalk paint on an old wood window. My dad & I are re-purposing some old windows to try to sell and I wanted to give the chalk paint a try. I haven’t waxed it yet, but I *definitely* like the finish of chalk paint on the old wood window. It just fits. Hopefully after I wax it I will still agree. If not, no biggie, I will paint the other windows with regular paint.
Anyhow, now I had to decide what to do with this chair. I loved it, but I had spent about $13 on grout and wax that didn’t pan out in my chair project. I ended up sanding the wax off the chair (just a little – only spent about 5 minutes on that) and spray painting the chair with some good spray paint. Aaaahhhhh. SO much better.
Happy momma. I had looked at one fabric store for fabric to cover the seat, but just didn’t find anything that struck my fancy. But then when I was organizing my craft cupboard (see later in the post for a picture about this!) in the midst of this project I came across the extra fabric from my Ball jar pillow project and there was enough there to cover the seat!
THIS makes me very happy. It’s pretty and since I already had the fabric, the chair project ended up costing less than $30. I was hoping for less, honestly, but sometimes we have to learn lessons and those cost as well.
My OTHER chair project was refinishing my porch chairs. I had a black rocking chair and a wood deck chair. Both were garage sale finds…the rocking chair was from my first year of teaching! I bought it for $10 and it was pastel pink & green. I bought it and painted it white and stenciled cute apples and letters on it and used it when I was teaching. When Sarah was born I painted over the apples and letters and stenciled on some bears. When Becca was born I painted over the bears and stenciled on some moons and stars and my friend Beth (who was with me when I bought the chair) did a blue & yellow plaid paint pattern on the back slats. Then once I was done having babies and the chair moved into my master bedroom and all my master bedroom furniture was black, I painted it black. Guess what? Now it’s red!
It is not this bright, though. It is a darker, colonial red. And this too, was not without drama. I first spray painted both chairs. All I did was clean them. Didn’t sand, didn’t prime. Just spray painted. I figured with all the paint on that rocking chair, who needed primer? The wood chair, yes, I should have known better. (That was also from a garage sale, but doesn’t have the history of the rocking chair). Anyway, in some parts of both chairs, once the paint was dry, it wiped off on my hands like dust! It was so weird!! After much research and talking to people who know a thing or two about spray paint, I decided that perhaps it was bad paint or it was wiping off on the spots of the chairs where it was still glossy…so the paint wouldn’t stick. I sanded down a little bit and repainted that part and that was better. I decided I should sand the whole thing and then repaint. Ugh. In the meantime, my neighbor told me that Rustoleum spray paint was awesome. Sticks to everything. So, I bought some of that and then I sanded. But not a lot. I just did every surface lightly and then a little more in the spots where the paint was wiping off like dust. Then I sprayed with Rustoleum Colonial Red and viola!
The beautiful HOME sign was handmade, start to finish, by my friend Tam in AZ. She’s amazing and totally gets my style! And now my red, white, & blue porch is basically complete!
In keeping with the painting project theme, I painted our master bedroom a couple weeks ago!
I love it! The dark brown and dark teal are gone and this light blue gray has made the room bigger and much more peaceful. We also switched our bed & the desk around and I like the arrangment MUCH better as well.
The girls and their neighbor friends had a lemonade stand last week when it was warm. They’re adorable! They made about $1.50 each, mostly on tips from their dads.
Sarah has been working at Logos for 3 weeks now, so she finally consented to let me come and see her space and take her picture. I giggled. She rolled her eyes. Several times. It’s fun to embarrass your teenage daughter. Lucky for her, most of the other co-workers that work near her were at some Greek education thing.
I have also reorganized several areas in the house and the most exciting part is that this is now the craft cupboard and it is all organized and labeled! Woo-hoo! I was able to move one piece of furniture out of our bedroom (now being used for storage in the garage) and moved some of the craft stuff out of our master closet and into the craft cupboard. A load went to the thrift store and the consignment stores and a bunch went in the garbage, too. Feels so good to have this stuff sorted and purged.
The littles plus some neighbor girls waiting expectantly for the Sugar Shack Ice Cream Truck. We love it! They could hear it from the next neighborhood over and waited and waited until it came in sight. So fun!
Next up: Summer Stock Theater!
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