"Beverly Hills! What a Thrill!"

This title has absolutely nothing to do with what this blog is about but yet it does. This is the song from Troop Beverly Hills. I love this movie and have vivid memories of watching it with my friend Ashley when we were in 4th grade. Little did we know then how our friendship would grow and last. Ashley and I didn't go to the same school but we were in APAC (Academic and Performing Arts Complex -- our little nerdy magnet program). We both left our home school early each day and were bussed to the APAC campus for more advanced classes... we took two classes (Math, Science or English) at a grade level ahead. Nerds. I think Ashley was also in APAC Art as well. I had no performing arts and still don't! So Ashley and I met there at APAC and she invited me to her house to play one afternoon. We watched Troop Beverly Hills and I guess you could say the rest was history.

Both our elementary schools fed into the same Middle School and High School (though Ash had a brief stint at a different High School and quickly found her way back home!) so the friendship kept going. When college rolled around we both ended up picking Millsaps and decided to request to be on the same floor/wing of our dorm so that we could meet new people but still have someone we knew close by. The admissions/housing office complied and we were assigned two doors down from each other. By midterm, both of us were looking to switch roommates and ultimately we moved in together. I'll just say we had a blast that year... lots of late nights, lots of double stuff Oreo's and milk... We should have roomed together from day 1!

Ashley decided to change schools after the first year and off to Charleston she went. I stayed in Jackson.  Today she's in Colorado and I'm in Texas. Through it all, we are still great friends. She's one of the few people that still calls me "SAD" and I love it!

All of this backstory finally brings me to the project I just finished. Ashley has a shop on Etsy where she sells fun designer ("Beverly Hills" = Designer/High Fashion right???) fabrics. After my first burp cloth, I decided I wanted to make some more and thought I could make some bibs too (after reading this blog on Prudent Baby). I ordered some fabric from Ashley and got to work.

I made the bib first following Prudent Baby's instructions (minus pocket). I don't think I used the best bib as a guide and ended up with a too small neck. I made some adjustments and was able to salvage and learned a few lessons for the next one.

For the burp cloth I just sewed a rectangle of fabric on the center of the cloth diaper and added some grosgrain ribbon on the ends to hide the fact that my rectangle was about 1/4 inch too small!

Neither are quite sellable or giftable but with a little more practice I might be there. I wonder if I could get a "Wilderness Girl Patch" for my sewing! ;)  I have lots of fun fabrics to work with.

Being Domestic: Burp Cloth

In about 20 minutes, I went from this (cloth diaper and some grosgrain ribbon)

To this cute little burp cloth for the future basketball star.

 

I’m going to take it to have his name embroidered on as a final touch. 

This was one of the projects on my “to do before the baby comes” list… most of which did not get done before his early arrival!

"DIY" - Part 1

Ryan and I do not do too much major DIY work. Since Ryan is a builder, they have lots of sub-contractors that will come do things for us for really good prices. So, that is what we typically do. Yes, I am spoiled! :) We have done some things around the house but we always tend to run into problems and they seem to take way longer than expected. But, this weekend, we decided to tackle a few things ourselves.

First, I convinced Ryan that we needed to re-cover our dining room chairs and that I could do it myself.

Back story: When Ryan's grandparents moved out of their house into an assisted living facility, we inherited their dining room table, china cabinet and curio cabinet. This was definitely a plus since new dining room furniture was low on our "to buy" list. Our dining room has evolved into a Black, Silver and Gold themed room. This came about because Ryan's parents gave us their old chandelier, which was an upgraded version of the one that came with the house. It is brass. I am not a huge fan of brass, but it was a much bigger and nicer chandelier so it was hard to say no. We weren't too sure about trying to paint it, so instead, we got black shades to make it a little more modern. The rest of the items in our dining room (china, serving pieces, accessories) were silver or had silver accents. We even had some candlesticks that were silver with black accents. Perfect! I decided to make the most of it and incorporate the three colors. It has turned out nice.

The only thing that has been bothering me is the maroon chair cushions. They just didn't "go".

So, after many hours of watching Trading Spaces and HGTV, I was convinced that I could just re-do them myself. I had the idea of finding some gold and black striped fabric. I drug Ryan to Joanne's Fabrics (he felt very out of place) and we found several fabrics that we liked. Of course the ones we liked were outrageously priced. So we looked and looked and found a nice gold on gold striped fabric. It wasn't exactly what we wanted but it was only $10 per yard, then was on sale 50% off. $5 a yard sealed the deal.

The project turned out really well. The only problems I faced was that my staple gun was just not cutting it. So, off to Home Depot to pick up a new one. Ahh, much better. I got all four chairs done in about an hour or so.