Kids Valentine Cards

Sometime early last week, I decided that I should try to be crafty and make Aliyah's valentine cards. Most likely she won't always want homemade cards to give out to her friends, so I might as well take the chance when she's young (and when there's only 10 kids in her class.)

It ended up being a really fun activity to do with her. I garnered inspiration from her horse obsession, sketched out a few ideas and then went to work creating two different versions of cards. I grabbed the horse and horse shoe graphics off of the web, and created everything else in Adobe Illustrator.

At first I thought I would have her color in the images for her classmates as sort of a personal touch, but when I thought about it, I imagined her getting tired of coloring the same image repeatedly. Instead, I added in her name in caps with a hand-written font so she could trace her name on each card. (At the time she didn't know how to write her name. On Friday--Valentine's Day--she came home with some papers she had completed at daycare and her name was written on them. I didn't notice them until Saturday since I had missed out on Valentine's Day with the family since I was up in California for work. I saw the papers on Sebastian's desk and asked her who wrote them and she said she did. I think I yelped with excitement. I had no idea I would be so excited and proud of her for learning to write her name, but I really was. Such a neat experience as a parent.)

We stuck two sheets of stickers in each envelope for each of her classmates, and a Starbucks giftcard for a couple of her teachers. Aliyah was very particular about the entire thing. She wanted to make sure that Daddy remembered everything on Friday, and as hard as I tried to not bring candy, she was set on bringing mini-cupcakes for her class as a treat. Sebastian, as I've said many times before, is an amazing dad, but since he doesn't drop the kids off on a regular basis (he usually does pick-up), he sometimes forgets what to bring. I wrote out a list for him just before I left, and I think it helped because everything that needed to go to daycare made it!

Afterwards, when I got back from California, I asked her about how it all went. It was pretty fun listening to her talk about the party they had, how they passed out cards and just the overall excitement of it. It's fun to get a new perspective on holidays--even the little ones. Makes those days all the more sweeter.

Have A Seat

Whoa. I did it. I finally managed to complete my first DIY home decor project. Move on over HGTV, a new girl is in town.

Okay, now that I've come to from my daydream, let me fill you in on my small accomplishment.

One of the things I'm most looking forward to in the new house is splurging on a farmhouse table. I rationalize this want by saying that I've had the same kitchen table set since I moved out to California--so for about six years. I got a real itch to get a new dining set about a year ago, but I knew that we were planning on buying a house in the near future and I didn't want to buy something and then not have it fit in the space we would buy.

Besides not liking the actual table, I also didn't like the chairs. While very durable, they seemed clunky and just overall blah. So a few months ago, I had a grand idea to re-uploster the chairs in the hopes to make them more lovable for the interim. I figured if I totally botched this project, at least I knew I wasn't going to keep them long term.

Here's what I started with:

See this material? It's worn and reminiscent of the typical outdated dining set that it is. Oh, and it's boring. I'm yawning just looking at it in this post.

To be honest, I put this project off for a bit. Mostly because I wasn't sure if I was in over my head and worried that we might be eating on the floor for a bit if I did something terribly wrong.

But to my surprise, re-uplostering a kitchen chair is pretty simple and straight-forward. The biggest trouble I had was figuring out which screws actually held down the chair seat. Once I figured that out, it was just a matter of taking the time to take out all the staples that kept the original fabric on.

These chairs are pretty durable and made very well, so when I took the old fabric off, I was left with a really good, solid wood base and some equally solid fabric cushion. Good thing, because I'm not sure I would have been very good at re-creating a whole new chair seat from scratch. I know it can be done, but I think it's best I keep my ambitions simple for now.

After I finished the first one, I was completely in awe of how much I loved the result!

It even makes me want to keep these chairs, but still get rid of the table. There's no hope for the table. And I really, really want that farmhouse table.

I used to dislike the color of the wood of the chairs, but with the new fabric, I'm even liking that better. Once I actually get my dream dining table, my thought is to paint the wood on these chairs white and then get two industrial looking chairs for the ends. Something similar to this inspiration photo I found on this blog, but nothing too pricey.

Photo found here.

But we shall see. My thoughts seems to change monthly, so only time will tell what I end up with. For now, I'm just happy with the fact that I not only succeeded in completing my first DIY project, but that they actually turned into something I like.

So much better don't you think?