How To Reupholster An Heirloom Bench

Hello there!!! I'm baaaaaaack! :) First off, it's April 15th and I'm not working crazy hours because it's tax season (can I get a HALLELUJAH!?). Second, this is my first blog post in almost a YEAR! I've been away for a while because life has been crazy the past year and half! But we survived! I'll do a big ol' blog post with a little personal update soon, but for now I'll leave you with a super easy DIY tutorial!

I'm definitely easing back into that DIY life! To be honest, I have a little bit of DIY A.D.D. lately. Since we moved into our house back in June, my brain has been on overload with everything I want to update/renovate/paint/fix/etc! I want to do ALL THE THINGS NOW! But you know, there's that whole part where things cost money or something... oh, and take time (#3Kids4AndUnder). And the number of my children that take naps is slowly diminishing (one out of three still take naps). I think I have at least five projects right now where I have most or all of the supplies, and I just need to carve out the time to get them done!

OK, on to the bench! A few years back when my parents downsized, my Mama passed down some of a furniture set from her grandmother. It's this rich wood with intricate design and I love it. I use the stand up dresser for craft storage and the desk/vanity is in Emerson's room. The bench has been hanging out in our Master Bedroom with this lovely original gold fabric. I had some of this black and white striped fabric (from IKEA) leftover from a pouf project (tutorial to come!), and I thought it would work well on the bench.

DIY Latch Board for Emerson

I'm back with a quick and fun little DIY project for all the little ones out there! I first saw this idea a couple years back on my favorite blog, Young House Love. At first when I saw it, I had no idea what it was - a bunch of hinges and latches on a board? Huh? Well, that was before I had a kid. And now that Emerson is here, I will do anything and everything to keep her occupied. New things are always welcome since she has the attention span of about 1.5 minutes (please share any other cool ideas you have for 11+ month olds)!

DIY: Instagram Collage Prints

Hey guys! Wow it has been a crazy month in the Kane household! We crammed all our travel for the year into the past four weeks before Zach starts residency TOMORROW!! We had such a great time on our travels - camping on Lake Cushman, medical school graduation in Arizona, family reunion in Bend - but let me just say that this Mama is exhausted. With a capital E.

I just wanted to share a little project that is one of my favorites and is so easy to make (and cheap too!) 

Scrapbook Paper Letters for the Nursery

I'm back with yet another nursery project! I couldn't share this one with the rest of the nursery reveal since we didn't reveal Emerson's name until she was born. But, I definitely had this project done ahead of time! I'm pretty sure I accidentally left the letters out when my mom stopped by one day so she found out the name ahead of time... oh well. :) 

Two Nursery IKEA Hacks - Pom Pom Curtains and Rocking Chair Cushion

My mom came over last weekend to help me out with my last nursery sewing projects. We ended up sewing almost all day long! It was a lot of work, but I am so in love with the end results!

DIY: Anthopologie Inspired Book Covers

We've all seen and loved the colorfully patterned Anthropologie Penguin Classic books like Pride and Prejudice, Little Women, Alice in Wonderland, etc. The style has changed recently to more bright and colorful patterned book covers and I always thought they would look great in a nursery. Instead of dropping $18 a pop on the whole collection, I figured I could recreate a similar look by wrapping some of my vintage books with some fun scrapbook paper. 

DIY: Coral Dresser Drawer Liner

Remember the coral dresser I redid for the nursery? Here's a little sneak peak of it set up in the nursery... or at least how it was the other day. :)

DIY: Chevron Pouf Ottoman

I'm back with another nursery DIY project! I feel like I haven't jumped too far onto the chevron bandwagon yet, until I realized the two main areas I've used it in the nursery - the rug and this chevron pouf! It's so bright and playful for a nursery, how could I not? 

DIY: Home is Wherever I'm With You Pillow

Sad news. My best friend, Kim, is moving across the country. :( For three years at least. It makes me sad. To be fair, I did move halfway across country to Arizona two years ago, so I guess we're even? 

No, seriously, I am so happy for Kim and her hubby, Jake, to embark on their next adventure. I can speak from experience when saying moving to a far away place can be scary, but also an amazing growing experience with fun new adventures to be had!

DIY Nursery Art - Hot Air Balloons

I whipped up this super easy hot air balloon art for the nursery. I already had the frame on hand courtesy of the clearance section of Target and used my favorite nursery as inspiration (from Craftiness is Not Optional). 

Supplies:

- Scrapbook paper in coordinating patterns

- Frame

- Double sided tape

- Craft glue (I used gorilla glue)

- Pen

Step 1: Cut out your balloons and baskets. I thought I had a circle punch, but couldn't find it so just traced a spool of thread and cut each little circle out by hand. I cut two circles of each pattern I wanted. I just free handed the basket and then used one as a template to cut out the rest in the brown paper.

Step 2: Figure out where you want the ballons to be (spacing, etc.) on your background paper (I just used a white piece of cardstock for the background). Then use the double sided tape to stick one of the balloons of each pattern on the background paper. Stick the baskets a little below the balloons.

Step 3: Grab your pen and draw on your balloon strings. I freehanded, but you could use a ruler too, to be extra straight.

Step 4: Glue on the top balloon piece. I first took the top circle for each balloon and bent it a little bit so it curved up. Just enough to give it a little dimension. Then I applied a thin strip of gorilla glue to the middle of the bottom circle and applied the slightly bent circle to give it the 3D effect. 

Step 5: Frame it up! After letting it dry for a good 24 hours, I put it back in the frame and hung that baby up.

Total time: about 15 min (plus drying time)

Total cost: scrapbook paper was probably a couple bucks

This was such an easy and fun project! I love how it turned out and think it will look great in the nursery, especially with the complementary hot air balloon mobile.  

I'm thinking of spray painting the frame white before I hang it in the nursery, but for now I'll leave as is. One more nursery project down!

DIY Nursery Art - Little But Fierce

I've been searching for some fun art for the nursery and found a few quotes I like (see some more from my nursery inspiration). This one is from Shakespeare's Midsummer Night's Dream and I love it. I know already that it will be just like our little BK. She's already a spicy little one, kicking me all the time!

Hot Air Balloon Mobile

One of the projects I lined up for the nursery was the Hot Air Balloon Mobile I found over on Jess's blog. She has a great tutorial, so I thought I'd give it a shot! It was so easy to make and I love how it turned out!

I used the same felt that Jess recommended from The Felt Pod (found here) in Salmon, Buttercream and Aquatic Blue. The quality of the felt was amazing (way better than the rectangle sheets that you can buy at Michaels or JoAnn's. But, I did use the rectangle sheets for the white, off-white, and brown pieces. 

Little BK - Telling Our Family the Good News!

We found out about Little BK (Baby Kane) on our Leavenworth trip, which made it a very special trip for us indeed! It was mid-December at that time and of course it was eating me alive that I couldn't tell anyone we were pregnant. It was SO hard not to tell, but at the same time, it was kind of fun having our own huge secret just between the two of us. 

We decided to tell our families when we were all together at our annual Boehme/Kane Christmas weekend (the weekend after Christmas this year) but since we were seeing both families on Christmas Eve anyways (at different times) we went for it. After the regular Christmas presents were done and we had stuffed our face with delicious food, I brought out the envelopes and gave one to each of Zach's family. I could barely hold it together and Zach's mom said she knew right away.

Then this is how it went down:

DIY: Tree Leftovers

We don't usually have this problem. Usually we buy a tree that is an appropriate size for our apartment or house. This season, we ended up buying a tree that was a little too big for our little house. I don't have a before picture, but we trimmed down the bottom portion so now it looks like this:

DIY: Reindeer Glitter Art

I know, I know, I owe you guys a post or two on our new re-upholstered curvy wing back, but it's taking a while to get all our pictures loaded, edited, etc. So it will be soon! Hopefully really soon! :) I promise, the wait will be worth it.

A couple weeks ago, I whipped up this quick and easy reindeer glitter art to get in the Christmas spirit. This was a little Pinterest project I found, originally by Kelsey of the blog Daisy Dreaming (see her original post here). Notice her Anthro Inspired snow globes like I made last year? Great minds think alike!

Craft Day - David, Mitts and El Rudolpho

A while back, my friends Kim, Shan and I had Craft Day! Craft Day is a tradition we started a few years back where we get together and do crafty things. We've done Christmas crafts and Halloween crafts in the past, but this time there was a theme of spray paint. Kim spray painted her $20 David head (see her blog post all about it here) and I worked on my $1 reindeer from Goodwill. Shan brought her mitts (she was knitting) and they turned out great! I actually used the pattern on a couple knitting projects lately...

Getting Crafty at Anthropologie

Last week, Kim and I went over to Anthropologie for a little craft event hosted by Cassandra LaValle of Coco + Kelley (she's a fellow Zag, too!). Here's Kim's post all about it. Kim found out about this event and I'm so glad we got to go together and get our craft on. 

Knit Pillow

Now that Fall is definitely here, I have the knitting bug again. It's funny how that works. I have no desire to really knit anything in the summer. But come fall, I'm all over it. My first project of the season - a knit pillow cover! I first saw this idea on my trip to West Elm a month or so ago. I loved it, but I didn't want to pay for it. I think it was around $34 for the pillow cover alone!

Custom Framing - The Easy (and Cheap!) Way

Way back in the day I bought this poster of all the Seattle neighborhoods. I love it, but it took me over a year to put it in a frame so I could enjoy it on the wall. Mostly, because of the price of custom framing! It's ridiculous! 

I finally got with it and decided to figure something else out. The picture was 32x16 so I got a standard poster frame that was 24x36 - the closest I could find. From there I just went to the framing section and asked for help. I wanted a green mat that matched the green on the poster and picked the closest color. Then the lady measured the picture and we ordered the mat. 

I love how it turned out! As for cost, we probably saved at the very least, half of what it would cost to get it custom framed. 

Frame - $20

Mat - $35

Total - $55 

Only $55 for a custom frame! That's pretty sweet in my book. It did take some time to order the mat, but all in all it was a super easy way to frame an awkward sized print. 

Have you ever gotten anything framed professionally? Expensive, right? 

PS Can you believe it's November already?!?!?!

DIY: Updating a Goodwill Tray

For a while now, I've wanted a cute and colorful tray. You know, one you put on a table or desk or something to style with pretty things. We had a leather tray once. It got the job done, but it wasn't very pretty. I saw this red Moroccan tray at Target a couple months back, but couldn't justify the $25 price tag. I was seriously close to buying it though! 

I'm proud of myself for refraining ((pats herself on the back)) and I'm so glad I did since I found this little gem for $2 at Goodwill. Throw in about $2 worth of fabric, some spray paint, and some Mod Podge I had on hand, and I have a totally new tray for under $10!