I entered another contest

Ugh, I promised I wasn't going to tell you until I was chosen (fingers crossed), but I can't help myself. 

I entered our sweet little buffet transformation

in a big fat blogger contest. Twelve crafty bloggers are chosen to work with twelve established crafty bloggers. This is a serious event that I desperately want to participate in. Did I mention I am #115 and if you pop over and click on my submission it might help me win the popular vote. 

I'll keep you posted, of course.

Oscar: Cute Club Member

If there was a club for cute toddlers I think Oscar would be an active member, maybe the President, objectively speaking, of course.

Oscar's very first movie night. The festivities lasted for approximately 8 minutes. 

The cute little dude loves books. Sometimes when I pick him up from daycare (which we call his job) he is sitting in the corner reading books. Melts my heart, especially when the other little employees are running around like zoo animals. It is probably safe to say he is the most mature 1.5 year old in his class.

I thought Oscar would like to help me make banana bread. Good idea, right? Seriously, I only took my eyes off of him for 30 seconds.

Member Alert: VP Tui is in the house and willing to share is mamma, so sweet!

Eichman's x 3

Cousins, Auntie and Grammy oh my!

That's it, just a hodge podge of cuteness.

Love from the Lovely's

We don't exchange fancy presents or go out for a fancy meal, but oh we celebrate Valentine's Day- we are the Lovely's, after all! We simply give extra hugs and smooches, eat pink and white sprinkle doughnuts and I pull out my special Valentine's Day red and pink shirt, 10 years strong!

All Puckered up to spread the love.

  
XOXO,
Mr. & Mrs., the Little Dude & the 4 Legged Lovely

Ikea Update: Nice Legs

We live on our Ikea Chaises. This nest gets lots of eating, tv, snuggling, climbing, wrestling and jumping. 

Functionally, they are exactly what we need.

Aesthetically, they were just okay. So, we made an 8.00 upgrade to each chaise. We bought these pretty legs for 2 bones each and I stained them the same color as the toy boxes in our family room.

Henry thought it was important that I show you how important it is to keep your Ikea allen wrenches. It was a total thrill for him to pull this out of his "we should save this just in case stash." As always I pretended to be annoyed, but was thinking "thank goodness for Henry's stash!"

We could put these in Oscar's wood block box and nobody would ever know the difference.

See. No joke.

8 bucks kinda classes these chaises up, huh?

I am starting to look at furniture in a whole new way. With just a small and inexpensive touch, these chaises no longer look like everyone else's Ikea Chaises.

Too bad I can't buy myself some new slim and sexy legs for a couple bucks a piece.

Easy Playful Curtains

You have probably seen a few sneaky peeks of the playroom curtains. What you probably can't tell is that there was not a single needle or thread involved. So easy you should all be shopping for curtain fabric right now. Seriously, so easy I am thinking about teaching Oscar to do it so I can say things like "Go get me some coffee and make your own curtains!"

First, we hung the hardware that I purchased from Ikea. I needed something super long and why fashion something homemade when Ikea already did the work and the price is right.

Get the point?

I set up my whole curtain making operation right inside the playroom.

I cut the 7 panels and ironed a clean edge with a roll of Stitch Witchery . You can find a how-to tutorial here. So easy, I think I might sell my sewing machine.

Did I mention how easy this project was? 

ALS Auction Cabinet

Team Lovely tackled another piece of furniture for the ALS Auction this weekend in Duluth. We found this beauty at the GW for 30.00.

Over the past two weeks we have been tag teaming this piece and this morning hauled it up from the basement so I could share the result...

 A sweet little buffet.

I am in charge of the design, painting, staining and the finishing work. Henry is in charge of the power tools and construction. 

Here are some images of the process.

Henry cut out all of the door inserts

 Sanded the entire piece

and because I wanted to use these fence post toppers as legs...

 he built a base in the bottom of the cabinet.

My turn. Of course, I don't have any pics of myself with a staining rag in one hand and the camera in the other.

And back to Henry for the finishing touch.

The Stats:

Cabinet: 30.00

Legs (Fence Post Toppers): 10.00 for 4

Knobs: 4.50 for 2

Chicken Wire: 14.00 (we got a huge roll so we have tons left for future projects:)

Total: 58.50

If I was the kind of person with really cute shoes I would stick this cabinet in my bedroom as a display case. Like the the one seen here.

 We already owned the paint, stain and finishing wax.

ALS Auction: Duluth

ALS Auction: Minneapolis

Linking the overhaul up to:

I love a contest!