My Blue Heaven

There's been a lot of home decorating talk going on in Sarahland recently. Between friends moving; looking for new apartments in far off lands :( , visiting the apartments of new friends for the first time and seeing the kick-ass way my sister's house has come together over the past few months, I have decorating on the brain. And when something is on my brain it also ends up on my blog reader.

I think my current favorite design blog is design*sponge. I especially like that they do DIY examples every Wednesday and Before and After's every Thursday. This taps into my crafty and thrifty sides with one of my favorite mantras "I can do that".

I recently stumbled across some "before" and "after" pictures I took of my kitchens chairs that I redid several years ago. Pre-digital camera, film pictures that I had planned to do something with to showcase my handiwork , but clearly never did. So I scanned those puppies and sent them off to design sponge and who knows maybe they'll be on the site some Thursday or maybe not. But it did remind me how proud of myself I was when I finished them and hopefully will inspire me to work on those other projects ruminating in my head or sitting half-done in my entryway. Whoops!

So here's the back story on the chairs. I was watching some tv sitcom and I saw blue kitchen chairs and decided that was what I wanted. But this was before everyone had embraced color in a big, bold way and I was clearly ahead of the curve. The only ones I saw were at the Crate & Barrel outlet up north and there were only 3 of them. Having only having 3 kitchen chairs was just wrong, uneven, unbalanced and just wouldn't do. So my quest continued.

Fortunately I am the child of antique dealers/pack rats/very weird people and my folks had these wooden chairs in the garage in Maine. So I picked up some paint at the local hardware store, some fabric at Fabric Place and voila - blue chairs! And to be even cuter a matching valance for the window. It wasn't really as easy it sounds as I recall a minor painting snafu (spray paint vs. brushes, brushes won - a graffiti artist I will never be) and there definite assistance from my mom since she is the one with the staple gun and the sewing machine (this was back in my pre-sewing machine owning days). Only thing that nags at me a little is that I wish I had bought more fabric to make a cafe curtain to go with the valence but we went back for more yardage but the fabric was gone. I keep an eye out for it every time I go with no luck.

Before & After

The Whole Set and the Valence