Yay for Mondays.

My darling second daughter has long considered the trash can her own personal toy box, and after first discovering her walking around the house with dripping raw egg shells and then finding the contents of the vacuum strewn all over the carpet mere moments after I'd finished vacuuming, a trash can with a lid was deemed a necessity.

 Of course that didn't stop her from figuring out new ways to play with it.
Actually H has had quite the productive day (in addition to reclaiming the trash can as her play thing.) She has:

Emptied out the entire DVD drawer, as well as removed some of the DVDs from their cases.

"Helped" me empty the dishwasher and in the process re-broke its top drawer.

Got herself into the spare room and pulled all of Seth's current tinkering project materials onto the floor (and taste-tested them!)

And had a meltdown because she wanted my baked potato instead of hers, even though I had prepared them the exact same way.

Not pictured:
-Finding the one cabinet with the broken child lock and throwing my glass dishes onto the floor (which miraculously did not break.)
-Made the exciting discovery that if she dipped a wad of toilet paper into the toilet and then squeezed it, it dripped water everywhere!
-Taking all the shoes out of the girls closet.
-Dumping T's full bowl of soggy cereal all over the carpet.
-Throwing eleventy-billion tantrums because I kept taking away her "toys" (AKA everything she is not supposed to have.)

I'm so proud to have such an accomplished daughter.

The Chair.

(I'm sorry this is super long. Apparently I have a lot of opinions about reupholstering chairs.)
My sister Amanda moved last summer and got rid of a couple of her chairs, a wingback and this one:

I gladly took them off her hands because I had the crazy notion that I could reupholster it on my own and it'd be really easy and totally awesome! And cheap!
Looking back, I can see now that I had been perusing Pinterest too much.
Ah, Pinterest. It's a wonderful, terrible thing.
Wonderful, because it makes me think I can reupholster chairs on my own.
Terrible, because it makes me think I can reupholster chairs on my own.

Anyway. I DID IT and there may or may not have been hot glue involved, and lots of frustrating moments and maybe a swear word or two (or three) and maybe it's not as professional looking as I'd originally thought I could make it (see: Pinterest overconfidence) but as Seth always says, "It's better than perfect. It's done."

Ta-Da!
So when I first started this project, I picked this chair over the wingback because I thought it would be easier and simpler. Less fabric=less difficulty.
Wrong-o.
There are about a million and one tutorials on how to reupholster a wingback chair online so when I finally decide to recover that one (HAHAHA) I will have a little more guidance. There are exactly zero tutorials online about how to reupholster this kind of chair so I kind of had to make it up as I went along.

The first step is to carefully remove all the old fabric. I sent an email to my sister about this ordeal after I'd finished, which I am copying here:

So your chair is insane.

I started taking it apart, and underneath the pink chair I found...

...another chair. So I took all of that fabric off and underneath that I found...

...another chair.

Thankfully that was the last layer, but I wasn't expecting to have to remove all of the fabric and nails covering this chair three times in a row. I have been working on this every night for a week and a half.

Where on earth did Stuart get this chair? It looks like whoever recovered it in the pink had started to take the fabric off and then gave up, since I found a big wad of the ripped-off fabric with all the nails still in it (!) stuffed into the back with the rest of the padding. It's a wonder the nails didn't poke through and stab someone.

So anyway. I just finished taking everything off today so now I can start building it back up. I need to reinforce the back and get some new foam to replace the disintegrating stuff. 

Yes, three layers. THREE.
And yes, I did have to buy all new foam, which upped the budget and difficulty level significantly. But the old stuff was either as flat as a pancake (THREE LAYERS) or disintegrating. Needless to say, the chair is much more comfortable now.

This panel on the back is where I used hot glue. The original fabric back here used upholstery thread and sewing to hook the pieces together and cover the staples and I could NOT figure it out, sooooo: hot glue.
Let's all pretend this doesn't look too shoddy. It's on the back, right? No one will see it or know about it. Except for all of the people that read this blog...

The original nail head trim (besides being super ugly) was only placed over the staples to cover them so it looked terrible.

Muuuuuuuuch better. I will not tell you how many nails I ruined before I got the hang of this.

I could probably write several more paragraphs about this chair and what I went through to reupholster it, but I'll spare you. I'm actually pretty pleased with it, in spite of all the imperfections and difficulties.
Now if you could please find a way to get me off Pinterest, so I don't get any more crazy ideas in my head, I'd appreciate it.
(P.S. I don't see it happening any time soon, especially now that SETH HAS ONE. Which I love love love!)

Christmas Vacation: Pictures

I'm still allowed to be talking about our Christmas vacation even though it's February, right?
Right.
We tried several times to get all four granddaughters together for a nice picture while we were out in Arizona.

As you can see, it was a difficult endeavor.

Actually, it was a very difficult endeavor.

We managed to get a few, and the feat was so monumental I had to show them off.

Plus I think they are just the cutest!

I have no idea what B is doing but it makes me laugh every time.

T has been obsessed with taking pictures ever since we came home. A few times a week she'll set up her stuffed animals and then recite "Smile! Look over here! Ok, just one more! Great job, you get a cookie!"

And here is H poking her cousin in the eye. I think it was about now that we gave up on this particular day.

Better get used to it though girls. The call for pictures will never end.