feathering my nest and other nonsense

May was a whirlwind of a month for me.
I wrapped up a very busy Preschool year with a Water Day party, 15 sweet little scrapbooks, an end of the year music program and parent/teacher conferences.
And as if that wasn't quite enough, I agreed to host David's grandparent's 65th wedding anniversary party at our house.
I'm a glutton for punishment.
For reals.

Honestly though, we were totally honored to host the party here. And the it gave us the perfect excuse to get all the little projects completed that we had on our gigantic check-list.

So - in an attempt to ready my house for the big partay, I re-arranged things millions of times, eye-balled blank walls, hung things up and took them down again, stared at magazines, sewed a few things, cleaned a LOT of things, and painted some others...

With each picture I hung, each piece of furniture I found the perfect place for, each nasty cabinet I cleaned, I watched what was once somebody else's house slowly transform into our home.

It's kind of magical how that happens...

Anyway - One of the things that I've really been super excited about was being re-united with my porch swing. The porch swing that David bought for me when we were dating.

It got a new, darker coat of stain on it and I'm happy to say, has not collapsed.
Yet.
Nice work, David.
He's a whiz with the power drill, that one.

Another check-list item for me was to make some pillows for our Living Room couch.

And while some gals get jewelry or chocolates for Mother's day, my sweet husband knows that beautiful fabric will make me just plain giddy. So - that's what I got. Some really awesome, really beautiful fabric.

Originally, I discovered the awesome, beautiful fabric at a really snooty place here in town.

After what could only be described as a horrible, no good, very bad shopping experience, I decided that giving my hard earned Mother's Day cash to a snooty place wasn't really what I wanted to do.

And since Shopping Necessity is the Mother of Creativity ... and Snootiness is the Mother of Desire-to-Stick-it-to-the-Man-ness, I opted to try my luck with the world wide web. 

Lady Internet was kind to me. 

I found both fabrics I loved for waaaay less money.

So there, mean 'ol snooty fabric store.

I used some of the fabric to make these little lovely ladies:

I was hoping that they would turn our pumpkin of a couch into a beautiful coach.
Or at least make the toddler stainage less noticeable.
They didn't.
But I love them anyway.

I used some of the extra fabric to recover a lamp shade. And I painted my formerly red lamp robin's egg blue. 

Next up, I recovered the seat cushions in my kitchen.

They used to look like this:

And now they look like this:

And this...

The fabric is called Hip Dove by P Kaufman. I want to stare at it all the time.
I want to decorate every room in my house with it. I just loooove it.

This was the chandelier in my dining room when we first moved in.

David said it reminded him of the chandelier in Beauty and the Beast.

I'm thinking he meant this one.

...not this one.

She's creepy.

Anyway, now it looks like neither.

Just a regular, Oil Rubbed bronzish one. 

After a can or two of spray paint.

When we first saw the house, the kitchen looked like this:

Pretty range hood, eh?

Now it looks like this.

I know, I know, it's a subtle difference, but I painted the cabinets white (they were dark cream before) and changed the knobs.

Thankfully, the bank who owned the property put a microwave in place of the range hood before we moved in.
Hooray for that.

Cause y'all know I'm not even trying to living in a house sans microwave.

May is over.
I made lots of little checks all over my huge list.
And I feel totally happy.
And inspired to rest.
A lot.
But not until I finish just a few more things...
Specifically, Avery's bedroom. 

She requested a purple room, but I talked her into a subtle lilac-y color instead.

Does that make me a control freak?

Don't answer that.

house love

 I'm enjoying our house so much.

Look what bloomed in our yard during the month of April...

I only wish the blooms would have stayed longer...
It's been so fun to discover the things we have growing in our yard.

These little guys like our yard too.

I bought them at Hobby Lobby one day after Avery and Charlie completely freaked out over them. The boy gnome was quickly claimed by Charlie while the girl was scooped up by Avery. Charlie was totally confused and nooooot pleased about the "putting them in the garden" part. It was a real battle to get him to leave them outside.

So now, whenever Charlie walks out the door and sees the gnomes, he pulls the "Juliet" gnome out of the ground and throws her down on our driveway. Her head has been broken off and glued back at least 4 times now. I'm pretty sure he does it just to tick Avery off.
And it works.

He's a tender, gentle lamb, my Charlie Boy.

Should you be tempted to feel the slightest bit of jealousy over my lovely front yard, allow me to take you on a tour of the back.

This is our super awesome pool.
That's filled with super awesome frogs.
And surrounded by our super awesome dilapidated fence...
Which a gigantic, super awesome tree branch is lying across.
That's still there after our last crazy bought of super awesome storms.

Like that broken diving board? It's still hanging out in my backyard if you'd like to have it.

We've affectionately named our pretty little swimming hole the "Frankenstein Pool". Since, after several diagnosis from various pool experts, it'd been discovered to be a total and complete enigma. One man who has been in the pool business for over 20 years told us that he'd never seen anything like it before.
Awesome.

Bottom line: It's a hodge podge, crazy nightmare of a pool.
A breeding ground for Botulism and the Black Plague.
And it must go.
Next year. When we have more money.
But for now, we've decided that we'll just clean it, cover it, and pretend it doesn't exist.
So that my kids don't get Malaria this summer.

Gross.

We've been working like crazy around this place to get things in order and livable. Look for pictures soon.