Summer Dress

This is a beautiful story.  I have a friend, her name is Amy.  She is a very kind and passionate person.  She speaks her mind, and has some very interesting parenting techniques.  Most of them either make me gasp in surprise or giggle with delight.  In any case, she seems to be raising 3 kind and caring children.  She has a huge belief in God, and in her faith.  I met her at our Mom's group at church, and one of my favorite things about her is the way she is willing to include anyone in anything.  Her husband, Paul, is graduating this weekend from the U.S. Army War College with a Masters of Strategic Studies and the family is planning a trip to Pennsylvania to proudly see him graduate.  Amy, who also works tirelessly at being a seamstress for all the musicals at the Middle and High School levels, decided to make a special dress for her oldest daughter for the graduation.  The fabric for this dress comes from 60+ year old vintage fabric which used to hang from her mother's dressing table when she was a girl. They found the fabric when they were packing up her mom's house to move her into a condo.  The top pink section is new fabric, since there wasn't enough fabric to make a whole dress.  This dress is so darn cute and I simply love the fabric.  Check out the details of the dress.  I may be crafty, but I am not a seamstress and I envy Amy for her talents!

Here is Amy's Mom and Daughter in front of the now refinished table

Pallet Bar

This one's for the boys

My husband has been dying to make something out of a pallet.  

So today I give you ~The Pallet Bar.  

Hung in the basement, it looks cool with all of our rustic barn wood.  

If you missed that post and would like to see our finished basement click here:

http://giraffe-legs.blogspot.com/2012/01/finishing-basement.html

So without further ado, here it is:

The copper bars give it a nice touch and help to keep the bottles from falling out.  

Fun and Functional!  

I think my hubby's pretty clever.

.♥/(,")\.(".)♥★
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.♥_| |__| |_ ♥

We make a good team.

            

      

                                  

Giraffe Legs: 1960's patio set refreshed

Giraffe Legs: 1960's patio set refreshed: Sometimes good comes from bad.  That's how I happened to luck into this charming little patio set.  My friend, Laura, is moving to Germany f...

1960's patio set refreshed

Sometimes good comes from bad.  That's how I happened to luck into this charming little patio set.  My friend, Laura, is moving to Germany for a couple of years while her husband is working there.  Laura is so sweet  and kind and also happens to be one of the craft coordinators for our MoMs Group at church.  I had the privilege of working with her last year when I signed on as the 3rd craft coordinator.  I wish I had more time to get to know her, but I will always treasure the time we spent together. 


We got together a couple of weeks ago and Laura  asked if I would be interested in a patio set.  Quite coincidentally, my patio umbrella had blown over in a wind storm, shattering my table to pieces only days before!  Of course I wanted it.  She said she had tried to give it to Salvation Army the day before and they refused it because one of the chairs had a small rip!  So I'm thinking, ugh!  If Salvation Army didn't want it, would I?  But, since it's a short term solution until we find another, I thought I could do something with.  Plus, Laura said it was cute, and I believed her!


So here is what it looked like when I picked it up.  Really charming in fact!

                                          Cute cut-outs in the metal give it lots of character.

The seat cushions were the original white vinyl.  A little dirty, but in good shape.

A quick trip to Jo-anns and I picked up some spray paint and some new Sunbrella  fabric.  I choose a fabric that would coordinate with my sitting area.  I decided to keep the metal a cream color, since it looked so nice which my new fabric.  The seat cushions easily detached and a few shots of the staple gun later and the cushions were finished!  I left the vinyl underneath since I thought it would repel water nicely.  

A nice refreshing clean coat of paint really cleaned and brighten the set up. It ended up costing about $40 to update the set.  And although it is small, it will hold us over until we can find a new set.  I love the way it looks, but more impressive is the fact that my teenage daughter suggested that once we do find a new set, we should build an entire gazebo to put the table in, because she thinks it's so cute?! So I know it must be so!

Thanks for listening and looking! ♥ Di   
     



                      

                                                      

Sweet Summer lamp

In the dusk of the day, when the sun starts to set you'll find me here, out on my deck.

I love my gazebo in the summer. And now, I'm loving it even more.  I found this stunning lampshade frame at a salvage store while shopping with my honey this weekend.  It's so graceful and curvy, I just had to have it.  It was just the frame when I brought it home, and in my excitement to start making it look prettier, I didn't get a before picture.  You will just have to imagine it - nakedヅ.  I wrapped on some muslin and tied on some old fabric, then I attached some little grapevine balls I had around from an old light fixture.  Using wire, I attached them at different lengths, and added a strand of lights. 

 I took down our old light fixture that came with the gazebo and hung this in it's place.  There used to be a canopy on the gazebo, but it ripped in the wind.  We had to take it off about a month ago since it was just flapping around.  Then in a tragic turn of events, Kohls decided to no longer sell replacement canopies.  I freaked out for a few weeks, stalking their website hoping they would get more in.  I really didn't want to have to buy a whole new unit just for the canopy! Finally, thanks to the wonder of the internet, I found a place that makes replacement canopies for all the store brands - genius!  I ordered a replacement and am expecting it this week.  Then I can once more close up the screenhouse and bask in my new light fixture.  ahhhh now where is my wine?

                                            


                                        

Burlap stars

Today I'm sharing one of my favorite crafts that I made last year for the 4TH of July.  I'm not big into  decorating for the 4TH, but saw something similar in a little specialty store and fell in love with the look, but couldn't bring myself to pay $45 for it.  

I started with a piece of burlap and cut a star stencil out of newspaper.  After I cut out 2 identical stars, I used acrylic and puffy paints and created my designs.  Once that dried, I glued the two stars together with a hot glue gun, leaving a side open to stuff with newspaper.  It's important to leave a large enough hole because it is difficult to stuff the star so that it lays nicely when you only have a little hole to work with.  Once I was happy with it, I glued the last side shut.  I then took a piece of wire, added some beads, buttons, and other flare to jazz up the metal wire a bit.  Both of these stars are still gracing my front porch right now, and I still love them!  The total cost of the project was $7, and I had enough burlap to make 4 stars. So that really was less than $2 a piece to make. Happy Fireworks to you!!

Linky Party@ All-things-burlap

It's Summertime!

This was a quick little project that literally took me all of 4 minutes.  In the spring I had made a cute little Springtime frame.  I decided with school almost out, it was officially time to say hello to summer.  I added a new layer of burlap, and tucked the Spring one behind the picture so next year I can pull it out and use it again.  This was so simple!  Writing this post took longer!  Enjoy the lazy days of summer!

saw - to - sign

A couple of weeks ago I was lucky enough to find out about a really cool barn party(Michele you rock!).  Located on the back roads of Milford, it's a really neat little place is called The Pink Promenade. It's two sisters collecting and creating fascinating things and then sharing them with us. I say "us" because I now consider myself one of the "in crowd". OK, I've been there once, and although I had the pleasure of meeting one of the sisters, she probably doesn't even remember me, even though I want to be her new best friend and come over, hang out and do cool things too.  But since I don't want her ordering up a restraining order on me before we even start hanging out I will move on.


Here's a link to their site:  http://pinkpromenade.blogspot.com/  And yes the barn WAS PINK!!


So much goodness was there that day.  I brought along my husband and 9 year old son because we were on our way to go canoeing.  Although they were the only men there, they actually both loved the place!  There were so many interesting things to look at.  We ended up buying a bird house made out of recycled tins, but my husband gets the credit for finding an old lumberjack saw (see honey I do give you some credit).  It's about 6 feet long and rusted. The handles are missing, which made it the perfect accessory for our basement.  It matches perfectly with our barn wood and rustic decor and was the perfect length to hang above the TV.

 long isn't it?

Once hung, we realized it needed a little something more.  So we decided to stencil on a saying, giving it some more character.  Out came the paint and 10 minutes later it was done, and back on the wall.

If you would like to see more of the basement click here: http://giraffe-legs.blogspot.com/2012/01/finishing-basement.html

A perfect edition!  Good eye honey! SWAK!