Dining Room Dreaming

When we moved to Wester, we lost a dining area.  The table from our casual dining set was not a good fit for the space in the new house, so we have been using our formal dining table.  For lack of a better place, my office ended up in the dining area - I can keep an eye on the kids while I am on the computer.  This seemed like a good solution, but the truth is my desk is ALWAYS a disaster area and it has contaminated the entire kitchen.

Once we started on the attic renovation, it became clear that both the kids play area and my office would be moving upstairs. (Yay!)  This is going to leave my dining are really bare.  Also?  Since it is the only dining room in the house, I would like for it to be a little nicer than our former kitchen dining area, but still comfy and inviting. 

I knew I needed to include more storage, even though my kitchen has a lot of cabinet space.  I have a lot of special occasion dishes (that it would be nice not to have to go spelunking to get to) and I would like to display at least some of my china and crystal.  Also, I need more/more flexible seating.  I need to be able to accommodate large groups for holidays and still have seating for the ways we use the kitchen.  T doesn't like to eat at the table because he says the chairs are uncomfortable, so I need to work that in somehow, too.

Here is what I came up with:

 Here are the design high points:

• Two 'hutches' made from semi-custom cabinets.  Drawers on bottom, glass doors on top.  Black, but distressed to let the wood show through.
• Built in banquette with long willow baskets for storage underneath.  A great place for my place mat collection and also a good place to collect odds and ends from kids projects/homework.
• Wing chairs for the grown-ups.  I found a set of two for $100 on Craig's List.  I could so totally recover them.  I love me some leopard print, and I think it can function as a neutral, so I think I will go that direction for the upholstery.
• Bench seating for the side of the table closest to the kitchen.
• Large harlequin paint treatment on the walls.  Tone on tone, probably flat vs. gloss.
• A selection of art by Rodney White.

I spent WAY too much time messing around with this design on PhotoShop today, but I love the result?  What do you think?  Any suggestions?

Lazy Saturday

I had some girlfriends over this morning. They are the very best kind of girlfriends in that they don't expect my house to be clean when they arrive, but are complimentary if it is. They know what I'm like and like me anyway. Heaven!

Anyhoo, Bun has recently started working, so I am not seeing nearly enough of her lately. She and CJ have been getting together on Saturday mornings for a while so I asked them both over to my house this week. Moms and sons arrived around 10:00 this morning. As it was noisy inside (David the contractor working on my stairs. On a Saturday, no less!) and lovely outside, we adjourned to the screen porch and let the kids run wild.

There is usually some kind of breakfast involved on the Saturday get-togethers. Ever an over achiever, I decided to make my sister's recipe for Apple Puff Pancake (recipe to follow). It has easily been ten years since I made it last. I had forgotten how good it was! It was a hit with the moms, but not so much with the kids. Luckily, we are well stocked up on cereal, dried blueberries, granola bars and milk. No one starved!

We talked about decorating and frustrating husbands and funny children and everything else under the sun. All too soon, the little guys were tired and my friends had to go home. Why is it that the kids are always ready to leave before the moms are done visiting? I am already looking forward to the next time!

Apple Puff Pancake

6 eggs
1½ cups milk
1 cup flour
3 tablespoons sugar
1 teaspoon vanilla
½ teaspoon salt
¼ teaspoon cinnamon
1 stick butter
2 apples, peeled and thinly sliced
2 to 3 tablespoons brown sugar

Mix eggs, milk, flour, sugar, vanilla, salt and cinnamon in blender until well blended.  Mixture will be slightly lumpy.  Melt butter in 12-inch casserole dish in oven.  Add apples and return to oven until butter sizzles.  Remove from oven and pour batter over apples.  Sprinkle with brown sugar.  Bake for 20 to 25 minutes at 425° or until puffed and golden.  Yields 6 to 8 servings.

Photo Finish

At long last I have pictures! Ta dah!  Z's room:  now with more animal print!

Here is a comparison of how I had pictured them in my head next to a picture of the finished product.  Impressive, no?  I SO love it when things turn out just like I see them in my mind's eye!

Next I will be digging into the panel that I am going to add to the top of the bed-in-a-bag I got from Tar-zhay.  That sounds simple enough, but I have decided that I am going to make a border with ruching and piping.  Wouldn't want to make it easy on myself!

Luckily, my fab mom-in-law had a gathering foot for the sewing machine, so I am hoping that once I learn how to use it, it will do most of the work for me.  Of course, I am expecting a Lucy-and-Ethel-like adventure (misadventure?) before I have it mastered.  I watched a how-to video on YouTube.  She made it look easy enough.

Luckily, if it isn't easy?  I have lots of extra fabric!

Rats! Foiled Again.

With only a few false starts, I was able to complete the valence for Z's room.  It is so gorgeous I can hardly stand it!  It turned out exactly like my drawings.  I love when that happens!

I have been mulling over how I was going to hang this behemoth valence for weeks now.  My dad built and hung valences just using nails.  I knew this method would give T a stroke so I decided to be all structurally sound and put up a cleat (2x4s screwed into the studs) and expected it to hang like... something that hangs beautifully.  (My simile skills seem to have abandoned me.  Darn.) 

What I didn't expect was for my gargantuan valence to practically LEAP off the wall once I got it hoisted up onto the cleat.  Yikes!  Mah baby is going to be sleeping under the darn thing.  I really don't want it to fall off the wall and decapitate her in her sleep.

The force of instant gratification was pulling me to figure out another way to get the dang thing on the wall without killing my firstborn, so I called my dad.  Engineer Daddy had several excellent and non-grandchild crushing ideas.  Most of which involved a trip to Lowe's.  Now, I love me a trip to Lowe's, but I really wanted to get it up now.  As in before bed time.

We hit upon a plan that didn't involve the purchase of more hardware, but I decided it would be prudent to wait to hang the potentially dangerous window treatment tomorrow while Z is at school instead of right before she goes to bed.

Man, I wanted to finish this project today!  Pictures tomorrow after I successfully adhere that puppy to the wall!

Kid Speak

Q was playing with a bubble sword that he got at his school's end of the year party.  Suddenly, he look up, very concerned.  "Mama, this is not a Batman sword."

"That's okay," I tell him.  "Not everything needs to be Batman's."

"But it does, Mama!  It really does!"

.  ..   ...  ..  .

Driving home from school, we pass an open field that is home to tons of prairie dogs.  Lately, we have been playing a game to see who can spot one.  As we drove by today, Z said, "Look, Mama!  They are posing!"

Success!

Z's curtains came together like a dream.  They are gorgeous!  I guess the good part about doing something in your head over and over again is that when you finally do it for real, it is a piece of cake.  I am in LOVE!  I'd post a picture, but all I have are the before pictures.  My camera died before I could take the afters.  (Shut up, T!  I already have the battery recharged!)

For the remainder of the post-kiddo/pre-mama bedtime time, I am going to work on covering the valence.  The trick will be getting the batting on and covered before Holly can turn all destructo-dog and rip it all off.  Batting looks a lot like dog toy innards - Holly's favorite snack.

Z's room is finally starting to look like a real bed room!  And not like squatters live in it!  Yay!  Pictures soon!

The First Cut

I am a planner.  I plan and plan and gather and plan.  I love a well thought out plan and the process of collecting just the right pieces to make it happen. 

I have all the parts for a variety of projects... that I have never started.

One such plan is the decor for Z's room.  I have been talking about it for almost exactly  a year now.  (Huh.  I didn't realize it was the anniversary of my first Z's room post today.  Kinda ironic!)  I mapped out the embellishments to the bed-in-a-bag set I bought last spring with blueprint-like detail.  I started collecting fabric shortly after Christmas.  I found fabrics online, in sheet sets, at Hobby Lobby, and a curtain panel.  The last print arrived in the mail from Javis Davis yesterday. 

I am still on the hunt for the over-the-top trims I want to use.  I purchased some giant rick rack in a beautiful lime green only to discover that it clashed mightily with the lime in the Paris print I am using.  And giant rick rack is hard to come by.  Sharpie to the rescue!  I colored a small part of it with my yellow Sharpie an it was the perfect color!  Yay!  And also? Boo!  I hand colored 18 feet of giant rick rack.  Sucked two Sharpies dry.  Man.  I am so compulsive.  And that was just for the valence!  I'll have to do

Over the weekend, I constructed the wooden box that will become a valence over Z's window.  I'll pad it and upholster it with three of the prints from her bedding (and the Sharpie-d rick rack).  Finally, after putting it off for as long as possible, there was nothing left to do but start sewing. 

Making the first cut into a piece of fabric is always the hardest part of any project for me.  I guess it signals the end of the planning part and the beginning of the doing part.  In the doing part, there is the very real danger that my project won't turn out as I had envisioned.  I hate that.  But I did it.  I cut three fabrics and pieced them together. 

So far, so good.  I love it when a plan comes together!