Summer Dresses

Last week I decided to indulge myself a little bit. I had bought several women's dress patterns last summer that I never got around to doing anything with, mostly because I spent last summer making a wide variety of skirts for myself instead. By the end of summer I had pretty much run out of steam and the dresses never happened.

Now, since I have more than enough skirts, I decided to pull out the dress patterns and see what I could come up with.

I ended up with a ton of knit fabric at the end of the summer, so I was really happy to find a dress pattern for knits. I used Butterick Pattern # B5456 for this dress.

The fabric is a fairly lightweight jersey, but the pattern calls for lining the top, so I figured it would work.

I love the keyhole and tie detail in the back of the dress.

My husband, who usually doesn't have an opinion about my fabric choices, loved this fabric. I think he actually got excited when he saw it out on the ironing board.

So, I decided to wear it for our date night. My only regret with this one was that I didn't have enough fabric to make the long version, otherwise, it turned out great.

The second dress I made with Mother's Day in mind. I used Simplicity Pattern # 2886 to make this dress using a vintage bed sheet for the fabric.

  

This was an easy one to put together, only some minor adjusting needed under the arms. Otherwise the fit is great. I love the look of the fabric with the style of the dress, it turned out just the way I'd envisioned it. I love it when that happens!

It's nice and lightweight, excellent for Arizona summers and can easily be paired with a cardigan. The best part is that it has pockets! Pockets!!

I wore it on Mother's Day with my two favorite little people by my side. They look really thrilled, don't they?
Ah, well, I guess I'm lucky they stood still at all!

I hope everyone had a great Mother's Day!!


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Dress Up Storage 2

A few years ago, before I was brave enough to tackle wood projects on my own, my good friend Anthony and I built this Dress Up Storage shelf for my kids.

Little did I know that in just 2 short years, I'd be building a newer version of that one on my own for 2 very special little girls.

I used these plans, Dress Up Center, from Ana White, followed her instructions, and in a few hours (minus time to paint) I was done. Saa-weeet!!

One of the things that makes this project so quick to build is the fact that you can buy all the lumber in 4 foot lengths, no need to cut anything!

My pile of lumber waiting to be put together.

Okay, wait, I lied a little bit. This is the one spot where I used a saw. I used a jigsaw to cut out the detail on the side boards. 

I also put a base coat of paint on some of the boards before I started building. Then I ran out of white paint, so I just skipped the rest.

One giant lesson I've learned over and over while building these shelves is to pre-drill the holes for the screws. It makes putting things together SO much easier, and the wood is less likely to crack, especially near the corners and the edges, as I'm attaching the sides.

That top shelf was nice and tight, had to hit it with a mallet a few times to convince it to get into place.

I got the whole thing built in about 3 hours, spackled over all the screw holes and sanded the whole thing. Then, I went to the store to get some more white paint and finished the base coat.

The next day, I put on 2 coats of Disney Princess Pink (that's the actual name of the color), I guess my daughter's not the only one who lives in a pink world!

Once that was dry, I added the lettering. And I liked it, but I thought it needed a little something. That is a lot of pink, after all.

So, I added some little flowers across the top piece, which mirror the shape of the knobs on the sides.

I bought the flower knobs on clearance at JoAnn Fabrics just because I liked them and really wanted them, thank goodness I had this project to put them on! They will be great for hanging purses, necklaces, hairbands, wigs, or whatever else the girls can think of. 

And that was it, really easy and quick to build, two of my very favorite things. It's also nice and big, lots of room in there for princess dresses! I hope they love it as much as I loved building it for them!

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Finishing the Kitchen

Last week was a busy week at my house. Cross a long abandoned home project off our list!

We had started re-painting the kitchen 7 years ago (before our son was born). We got the walls done, found out I was pregnant, I was put on bed rest, had our son, 2 years later had our daughter, and finally got around to finishing the cabinets last week. My husband and I set aside 3 days to do the re-painting, so naturally, it took us 5 days to fully complete the project.

Oh, the things we learn when we do home improvement projects. Like how many flat head screws are actually holding our cabinets together. Or just how gross the floor under your washing machine gets when you don't move it for 7 years. Or how old your plumbing is when you find a copper water line leading to your refrigerator. And those are just the highlights.

Despite the fact that my husband had a really hard time taking the doors off the cabinets, due to years of paint, I somehow managed NOT to get a true "before" photo, sorry about that.

This was the color of our cabinets, sort of a dull faded yellow. Blech! 

Several of which had some lovely (and dated) contact paper in them. Now, I like retro as much as the next person, but this has got to go!

We decided to paint everything a gloss white. Our walls are a very pale green, the tile is two shades of yellow, and I just refinished a sideboard (seen here) in a bright green, and I wasn't willing to throw another color into such a small space, so white seemed like a pretty good choice. 

Once my husband pulled all the doors off the cabinets, I took them out back to paint. And I was lazy. And I paid for that laziness by having to paint the doors twice. If your doors, or walls or furniture or whatever you're painting has any kind of shine to it, you MUST do one of the following things:

1. Strip it using a chemical paint stripper.

2. De-gloss and sand it.

Or 3. Prime it with a primer like Kilz or Zinsser.

If you don't, you will end up with peeling paint, sore arms, a bad mood and have to do one of those things anyway, trust me.

So, that was my day one. Not a great day. But the next day things went better, my husband primed all the cabinets, and when it was dry, I followed behind with the paint.

Looking good. Moving along nicely, until I went back to the doors and suddenly decided that they needed molding on the fronts. My husband is such a patient man, he didn't even roll his eyes at me. So, back to the store for 1/2 round molding, which he cut by hand with the saw and miter box then handed to me to glue and nail to the door fronts.

The molding seriously improves the look of the doors. I started loving them again. Once they were a nice, glossy white, I loved them even more. 

We let everything dry for a day, then started to reassemble our kitchen. I put new contact paper in the shelves and drawers.

We put the doors on the shelves near the washing machine.

Put the hardware back on the drawers and cabinets. All I did there was spray paint the old hardware with shiny nickel spray paint.

And then I left my husband to put the cabinet doors back on by himself. Yes, I really did. I went to a birthday party with my son, and when we got home, the doors were back on.

I am amazed at how much bigger our kitchen looks.

And brighter. And cleaner.

We do still have some touch-up to do, and one door with a hardware issue, but overall the whole kitchen looks fantastic! And I am sooo glad that it's done!!

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