A little present

I decided that since my maternity leave is coming to an end I have to finish a ton of jobs I've wanted to do over the last year. But let's face it who has time to do anything with a new baby!!
So since I'm now down to 10 days until I'm due back at school these projects are calling my name. Since its school holidays and the kids are able to entertain Hamish for a little while I thought I would start sanding our dining room table.
I got under the house and found the electric sander, some sanding paper and of course the extension cord and then needed to take the legs off the enormously heavy table so that we could get it outside. Josh was a wonderful help with that. It's so nice having another man in the house. Not quite as strong as Dave yet but stronger than me. Yay.
With the table top on top of a trestle table outside I started sanding. The stupid table kept moving as I sanded so I had to sand around the edges. I wonder if I'm the only one who gets a sore hand while sanding with the vibrating sander in their hand. AND it was taking forever.
I called Dave of course and asked him to bring some courser sand paper home. He is only around the corner from Bunnings at his new office. He dropped everything to get his crazy wife the sand paper she needed to get the job done. Tomorrow I'll be sanding and sanding and then laquering or staining the top and painting the legs. I might even do the coffee table. We'll see how keen I am after tomorrow though.
Poor hubby only got home from work at 8 pm. A very long day. But he came home with a present for little me. My own little sander. Thankyou honey. You're the best.
These are some inspiration photos I took from Freedom Furniture a little French furniture store. I'm not sure what the colour of the wood is yet under the old stain. When the stain has been sanded then I'll decide on what colour to go with.

First swim of the season

The temperature this weekend was supposed to hit 30. I'm not sure if it did, but the sky was blue, the breeze was warm and it felt almost like summer. The kids were so excited to be able to go for a swim. I asked Sammy if she had felt the water and she said no, she was just going to jump in. I was very impressed when she actually did just that. I even took some video. Josh and Bella chickened out after hearing Sammy tell them how cold it was and saw how quickly she got out of the pool and was asking for a hot bath. I think it will take a lot of warm weather before the pool is warm enough for me to feel like going in.

In East Ryde and ready for a swim in our pool.

Recovering Dining Room Chairs

I finally got to the store to buy some more of the material I needed to do the recover of my dining room chairs. My baby brain had meant that when I first brought the fabric I forgot that our chairs actually have backs to them! I didn't want to start the recover of them until I could buy the same material. Well that was accomplished on Tuesday after my physio class and lunch with my mum and sister.

So here goes. I've done a little tutorial with photos incase you happen to have the exact same dining room chairs in your house! I missed a few photos in the middle, but it was too hard to insert them after I had rearranged the photos for the umpteenth time. So when you use the backing as a pattern you need to cut out two for each chair back so that you can of course sew them together. When sewing the chair backs use the yellow chalk as a guide for the edge and sew inside this. You need to sew about 1.5cm inside this line. Before turning the right way round check that it fits by sliding onto your plastic wrapped back. If it doesn't fit properly then sew it smaller checking as you go until you happy. Then cut off the excess, and use this as a pattern for the rest of the backs. The plastic that is around the chair back is just glad wrap. It will make it much easier to slide the tightly sewed backing onto the foam covered back. The rest of the photos are self explanatory. It took about 4 hours to do three chairs while taking photos and entertaining a 3 month old baby. If you had a helper you could probably have done all six chairs in 4 hours!

Before

Take the chair apart.

Lift the staples up.

Use pliers to take the staples out.

Pick the seam to take off cover on the back of the chair.

This is what the chalk mark looks like before cutting out backs to chairs.

Trace this one onto all bits of fabric for backing.

Staple the one side down.

Unpick stitches where the metal prong needs to come through.

Fold other side over and staple.

The completed back.

Take out all staples.

Use the chair cover as a pattern.

Staple new cover on stretching taut as you go.

Staple gauze cover back onto chair to hide mistakes.

Screw it all back together.

The finished product!

Finally photos

I've finally taken photos of all the completed bunting. Here's Sammy's room: I also made matching tie backs for her curtains. As it's a rental they're not attached to the wall, but still look cute. And here's a photo of the bunting in Isabella's and Hamish's room. Isabella is not impressed with the colour scheme at all!! She says blue is for boys. I think I'm going to have to somehow incorporate pink to make her happy!!

Sammy's Room

I bought some more material for Sammy's room to match the bunting. I think I'll probably make some tie-backs for the curtains and a cushion cover. Today I covered three little wooden frames with the same material. I'll probably put something on top of them although I'm not sure what yet!
Heres what I did: I turned the pictures in all the frames inside out so you wouldn't see them through the thin fabric and then I used my staple gun to attach the fabric to the frames. I was too lazy to iron the fabric as you can see by all the creases. I just pulled it tight! Now I just need to decide how to finish them off...

After mothers group

Isabella had some lovely friends over to play today from my mothers group. A really nice bunch of women and really it's more about the adults than the kids I think. We all had a lovely play day and so did the kids.
I was lucky enough to have Sammy make some weetbix slice this morning before she went to school. What wonderful children I have! I couldn't have done everything I needed to do without her help. I managed to have breakfast and a shower AND feed Hamish. It's really like having a much needed extra pair of hands now that she's older.
The friends came and played monsters and also with the playdoh I made last week. There is now more grey brown playdoh after there visit, but isn't that the point of playing! Mixing all the colours together makes browny grey every single time funnily enough. I'll just make some new playdoh when we run out of the different colours.
Once her friends left we had a "face plate" lunch and then Isabella did some craft. In between her beautiful creations she decided to wash her bike. Who knew it was dirty!! Then back to craft again.
While she was washing I washed down the table top of our outdoor setting. It was so nice to be able to sit outside in the warmth today. It didn't feel like winter at all. It did remind me that we need to go and pick up the outside umbrella from my sister. It almost started getting too hot outside. Well never for me, the reptile that I am who never seems warm enough.