What I've Been Up To Lately:

I've had a lot of projects going the last few days here. First, I forced asked Tim to re-upholster the dining chairs. After a couple of months, I realized that it's all well and good to cover stains from other people's kids... but.. uh... I have my OWN kids and they don't really give a hoot about stains. I got tired of watching the chairs revert back to the state they were in when we bought them, so I got some vinyl cloth instead. Total cost to re-upholster 8 chairs and two bar stools? $4.00 + 1 headache. That staple gun is brutal! Anyway, now my chair cushions are completely wipe-able. Not to mention, they look pretty snazzy. They have this same fabric in cotton in this orange/red, yellow, and a green, so I see matching napkins and coasters in the very near future. Yay!

The other thing I've been working on is the babies' room. Even though New Baby is a girl, we decided to keep the two little ones together for at least the first few years. They will only be a year apart, so they will be good company for one another. Plus, since we are planning on starting kindergarten with the B this fall, I don't want to risk waking up the baby to get her dressed and ready for school in the mornings. Or the baby keeping her up all night. SO, we'll just wait a few years before putting the girls together in the big room and for now it will be the baby room.

I didn't want to do the whole pink vs. blue thing. Ugh. So I went with green instead. I bought three different fabrics with the same shade of green in. One with stripes, one with a fairly neutral scroll pattern, and one with a splash of pink for little Lena. Now I can just buy green and white sheets and it doesn't matter whose crib they go in.

Then I made curtains and crib skirts. I didn't use patterns. I just kinda winged it on both projects and I'm really liking the outcome. I only did half curtains because, so far, our kids adore looking out the windows at the world outside. Plus, this room is located in the back corner of the house and gets a good balance of light and shade. I didn't do crib bumpers. I have a horrible fear of suffocation and they are considered a hazard anyway. We tried doing a bumper with Calvin, but I kept waking him up trying to move his face away from the bumper and check his breathing. So NO BUMPERS.

I also did little wall hangings with their names. I drew the letters onto freezer paper, ironed them onto the fabric and cut them out. Then I modge podged them onto a canvas that B had painted "vanilla" for me. Their cribs don't match. It kinda bothers me in the OCD area, but not bad enough to cause me to buy another crib. However, Momma had mentioned wanting to buy one to keep at "Sunshine and Papa's" house for when they have the kids. I'm trying to convince her to buy one that matches Calvin's so I can switch with them. It might just be working. It remains to be seen.

Never mind Calvin's Pooh sheet in this photo. He kindly spit up all over the green one I had in for the pictures as soon as I walked in there this morning. Baby's are kinda like that. I'm still not 100% finished with their room. I have some of those foam puzzle mats in front of each crib and I'm thinking of getting little throw rugs to go over them, or making some slip covers for them in matching fabrics. I also just got a new changing table/closet combo thing today that I need to set up and all. But this is what is done so far!