Bridal Shower ~ Soft Spring With A Touch Of Vintage!

With my sister getting married this summer I jumped at the opportunity to host a bridal shower for her. I love throwing parties, coming up with themes and feeding my desire to source out thrifted items to use throughout the decor. I definitely upped my weekly quota of thrift store shopping on this one! I think I'm going to take a much needed break from the second hand stores for a while ;)

My sister lives in Prince George and only had a couple of weekends to chose from to come down for the shower. We decided on the Easter long weekend so that she could also get in some required wedding appointments as well. I had already decided to use a soft vintage pastel colour palette for the shower which turned out to happily coincide with Easter as well.

All of the material used was sourced from local thrift stores. The tablecloth on the buffet is a scrap of fabric that happened to fit perfectly and the fabric panels above happen to be our canvas prints that already live on the wall covered in a fitted bed sheet.

I wanted to play up our British heritage so I decided have an afternoon tea party. 

I had purchased the mismatched tea cups and saucers last summer from Craigslist and recently picked up the glass punch bowl set at a thrift store. The milk glass vases came from a local online mum's swap.

I sewed the cloth napkins out of  thrifted old bedsheets.

In keeping with our British heritage, I made the same afternoon tea goodies that we enjoyed at our grandparents house growing up. I had attempted to make a jello mould but it didn't work out so well, only half of it came out of the mould. Possibly because I was in a hurry and didn't let it sit in warm water long enough ;)

The tissue paper flowers seem to be starting to become a trademark around here :)

Using the frames we already had on our water ski shelves, I swapped out the originals for scraps of co-ordinating fabric along with tea cup prints.

Also placed through out the house were small silver frames with ten steps on "How to be a Good Wife" taken from Housekeeping Monthly 1955 edition.

A few of the steps were::

No. 2 ~Prepare Yourself: Take 15 minutes to rest so you will be refreshed when he arrives. Touch up your makeup, put a ribbon in your hair and be fresh looking. He has just been with a lot of work-weary people. Be a little gay and little more interesting. His boring day may need a lift.

No. 6 ~Some Don'ts: Don't greet him with problems or complaints. Don't complain if he's late for dinner. Count this as minor compared to what he may have gone threw that day.

No. 8 ~Listen To Him: You may have a dozen things to tell him, but the moment of his arrival is not the time. Let him talk first.
To read the rest, go to How To Be A Good Wife.

The pastel blue cushions I got at a thrift store for 0.75 cents each and the doilies were $1 each. I used iron on tape to affix the doilies to the cushions. It probably took 15 minutes in total to do 3 cushions. Talk about a quick, cheap and easy project ;) I think they are darling and am considering leaving them as part of our decor for a while.

Using the same thrifted bedsheets I cut scraps about 4" in length and tied them to a few pieces of ribbon to create fabric mobile of sorts to hang above the food table.

And finally a photo of the morning after. Bella was doing her best to distract me from cleaning up :)

Stripping Doors ~ Bringing Back The Wood

I am trying to ignore the blatant fact that I haven't written a blog post in over 3 months! I apologize greatly to all those that are actually interested in what goes on around 9808. It hasn't been for lack of nothing getting done though. Things have definitely been moving and shaking...so much so that I have failed to find time to blog about it. Oh well, enough excuses!

One project came to be a few weeks ago as I was sitting on the couch one evening pondering what I should tackle in the half an hour of spare time I had. I was facing the door down to the basement and thought, "maybe I will chuck a coat of white paint on that door quick"....

I already knew  the job was going to take longer than half an hour but I could definitely give it a once over with the sandpaper to prep it for paint. It shouldn't take that long right?...

Little did I know what I would find once I started the "quick sand" process! We already knew that the previous owners had literally slapped a coat of paint on every paintable surface when the house was up for sale. They even painted things that weren't meant to be painted such as all of the original hardware. Some people, I tell ya.

As I started my light sand, the first layer of paint began peeling away in chunks, so naturally it all had to come off. After sanding a little deeper I discovered that the door looked like it had been originally stained. This caused huge excitement on my part! After yelling at D to come look, he was pretty excited as well at the prospect of stripping the doors back to their original state.

  

So we went to work peeling off the top coat of white paint with razor blades and then taking the door downstairs to our basement turned project room to tackle the remaining layers.

Peeling the first layer of paint off was the easy part and quite fun I must say. The older original layers were not as easy and I wouldn't say I had that much fun either. We started out by using the sander and then, which seemed like hours later, resorted to using paint stripper. Much easier and definitely more rewarding.

I was worried that the aircraft paint stripper we had on hand was going to damage the wood but it worked out fine. No we don't own an aircraft or have ever stripped the paint off an aircraft! D uses it on vehicles and parts etc.

 

After finally getting the door back down to bare wood (I believe it took us about 2 evenings worth of work), we applied 3 coats of English Walnut wood stain and 2 coats of sealer. D did one coat of stain per evening, giving it 24 hours to dry between coats. The entire project took about a week to complete. I should also mention that was only one side of the door. We were in a hurry to get it back up and admire our handiwork ;)

We also stripped the paint off all the hardware and freshened them up with a couple of coats of spray paint.

D and I are super happy with the results. Though it does now emphasize how much the floors need to be redone. One day....

Bonus: A sneak peek at our newly "minted" front door! The hardware still needs a coat of paint over there also.

We still need to clean things up a bit more and um paint the screw heads as well. As I said, we were impatient to get the door rehung ;)

Of course if we do one door then naturally we need to redo all of the interior doors. Needless to say we are going on 2 weeks without a bedroom door! 

Holiday Recap

We hope everyone had a relaxing, enjoyable Christmas filled with love, laughter, friends and family.

The new house called for new traditions along with hosting family dinners. In fact we had both sides of the family over for a holiday dinner. We have had family over for dinner in the past but this time it was in our new home, cooking on our 1950's stove and accommodating 8-11 people in our dining room. Everything went well and we are happy to have our first holiday season of entertaining guests under our belts.

Christmas Table ~Take 1.

Our first gathering was on Christmas Eve eve with D's family. We were able to fit 11 people, with room to spare in our dining room, which I thought was quite an accomplishment. D prepared dinner with me nervously standing around pretending like I knew what was going on, every time he left the kitchen area to show a newly arrived guest around the house. I have to be honest and tell you I have only turned on our stove a handful of times since being in the house! Cooking is definitely D's department.

My parents came to stay the night on Christmas Eve. It was an enjoyable evening of taking a wintery stroll, preparing last minute presents and all sitting down to watch the movie 'Elf'. My Mum took over cooking Christmas dinner and I did my part by cleaning up and washing dishes through out the day.

Christmas Table ~Take 2.

All in all our holidays were filled with snow...

Cozy days at home.....

(we painted our dining grey a few days before Xmas)

Being spoiled with gifts.....

Watching our kitty mess up the tree skirt a few times a day.....

It's a good job she is so cute....

And taking the time to be a couch potato here and there.....

And we are already looking forward to doing it all again next year.

Happy 2013....May your year be filled with silliness, love and new adventures!

Window Seat ~ Reveal!

Yesterday was a beautiful winter's day. The unexpected sun was a lovely surprise and a perfect opportunity to finally take some photos of the finished window seat at the top of our stairs. There are still are few things I would like to tweak but for now I am happy with the outcome. It's cosy and relaxing and at the moment decorated for the winter season.

I picked up the red berries from my favourite garden store down the road a few days before Christmas. Their days are numbered but they still add a pretty winter colour to the neutral palette. The clay planter has been kicking around in storage for a while. I spray painted the bottom half gloss black and the top half white to achieve an ombre effect.

The cushions are all made from material collected from thrift stores. I should have ironed the fabric first but patience when working on a project isn't always my strong suit. Oh well. The black reading lamp is from Ikea and the little silver trees are from the Dollar Store. The curtain is an old Ikea sheer panel and the silver balls are left overs from a Christmas wedding I decorated last December. 

I am not overly excited about this art piece. My vision was definitely in a different direction. But true to my nature I tried to fix a mistake by adding more and this is what I ended up with. The owls are a wallpaper sample I had ordered online from a supplier in the UK (still trying to track down the company in my email). I was initially thinking of using the wallpaper to line the back of a shelving unit but you had to order a whole roll so the cost would have been too high in the end. The words are the title of one of my favourite children's books growing up. I do like how the effect on the matte resembles birch bark though. I may definitely revisit this project in the future.....we will see.

The black wooden letters are from Walmart. 

The faux sheepskin rug is from Ikea and the grey material covering the bench is also a thrift store find.

All the art on the left wall is DIY'ed. I have posted about the crayon art and the hockey tape art here and here. The other pieces will get their few minutes in the spotlight hopefully in time.

I have to say my pride and joy in this area is definitely the tree stump side table. I had snagged the stump from my Dad's wood pile last summer and left it in the basement to dry out for a few months. It was covered in thick bark and moss but I saw it's potential right away. It was love at first site. Actually I grabbed two stumps and am hoping to make another side table for the family room in the future. The second stump has a special characteristic so stay tuned.

After this stump had dried out I took a hammer and chisel to it and spent a couple of hours removing the bark as best I could. Then I spent a few more hours sanding it down. The wood was quite soft and sanded easier than I expected. Finally I sealed it with two coats of semi gloss wood sealer.

The two vintage books belonged to my Mum. The silver tea light holders are a Dollar Store find. The white ceramic bird is one of a pair I found at the thrift store a few years ago, along with the grey glass ashtray turned candy dish.

I love the colour variations and imperfections in the tree stump.

Apart from the accessories and decor, we also painted the old ugly wood panelling in this area white, caulked around the window and gave it a fresh coat of paint, repaired the ceiling tiles with dry wall filler and painted them a light grey, found the ceiling light cover in the shed, and finally added moulding around the ceiling. 

Eventually, along with the rest of the house, we will be tearing all of the wood panelling and crappy drywall out, starting from fresh with new drywall and redo this area properly. But for now with a little elbow grease and a few bucks, it's definitely a huge improvement!

Total Cost for this little update:

Reading Light - Ikea = $11.99

Faux Sheepskin Rug - Ikea = $12.99

Tree Stump - Dad's garden = Free

Cushion/Window Seat materials - Thrift stores = Less than $20 total

Cushion inserts - Reused from old cushions around the house = FREE

Window Seat Foam - The Foam Shop = $46

Clay Planter - Reused = FREE

Silver Xmas Trees - Dollar Store = $1 each ($3)

Silver Xmas Balls - Reused = FREE

White Ceramic Bird - Thrift Store = $4.99/pair

Grey Glass Ashtray - Thrift Store = $3.99

Silver Tealight Holders - Dollar Store = $1.50 each ($3)

Canvas' and Picture Frames - Dollar Store/Walmart = Less than $20 total

White Sheer Curtain - Reused = FREE

Black Wooden Letters - Walmart = $1.99 each ($10)

Paint for walls and ceiling - Had on hand from other projects around the house

Total Cost = Approx. $135.00! Not bad for a functional and attractive little nook.

And just as another reminder of what this space started out as....