THE MOOMINS EAT - WHY WON'T YOU?

Co-pilot started solids shortly after 6 months (sort of) and when I pulled out Little Pilot's old high chair I knew it needed a makeover.  This mahogany stained Svan high chair stuck out like a sore thumb in our new light and bright dining room.

The high chair was a yard sale find that I got even before I had any kids.  I work with children in my day job and this chair was perfect for allowing little ones to sit at an adult-sized table with excellent support.  The Svan high chair is similar to the Stokke in that  it is one of those that converts all the way into an adult-sized chair (the foot rest becomes the seat).  I had thought about just buying the Stokke in a white colour and selling this one, but I really liked the option of having a tray (the Stokke doesn't have one).  So a makeover this little high chair got.

I have been getting a lot of Moomin/Muumi things for Co-pilot for some reason.  He has a Moomin sleep sack and even a Moomin mobile.  So, quite naturally, I added some Moomins to his high chair.  (P.S. can you spot Little Pilot in the photo below?)

The tray got a Moomintroll/Muumipeikko and Little My/Pikku Myy.

The footrest/seat got the Moomin Family:  Moomintroll/Muumipeikko, Snorkmaiden/Niiskuneiti, Moominmamma/Muumimamma and Moominpappa/Muumipappa.

To paint my high chair I sanded, primed (zinsser), applied three coats of Benjamin Moore Simply White,  1 coat acrylic sealer, 2 coats poly in gloss and 2 coats poly in satin.  I made my Moomin Drawings using a sharpie.  I printed off some images of Moomins and used carbon paper to transfer them onto the tray and foot rest pieces.  I then went over the carbon transfer with a black sharpie.  Super Easy!  I think painting the chair white was the most tedious since there were so many little pieces.

The acrylic sealer was a really important step as you can see below in my test spots: 

On the left I put poly straight over the sharpie heart and on the right I sprayed it first with an acrylic sealer (available at the craft store).  I am so thankful that I did the test first or otherwise my Moomin drawings would have ran all over the place!  Phew!  Disaster averted. :)  

Here are a couple of photos of the high chair in action.  Co-pilot is nearly 7 1/2 months and is still refusing solids.  At best, you can sneak a couple tiny bites into his mouth, but lately the thumb in the mouth has become his food avoidance strategy.  Look at those eyes - the only time when he's not happy.   It breaks my heart a little that he dislikes it so much. :(  At least he loves breast milk!  Hopefully we'll start succeeding with the solids soon.

Here's my favourite photo from our front yard high chair shoot.  Doesn't everyone take pictures of their high chair with the street in the background? :)  Little Pilot loves to play hide and seek in the front yard with all the big trees to hide behind.  Here he decided to hide behind the high chair.  I think Co-pilot found him. :)

That's Co-pilot's high chair!  Have you been painting anything lately or tried to get your baby gear to match your space better?  

P.S. this isn't my first high chair makeover - you can read about our Phil & Ted's Me Too here.

sharing this project here:  homestoriesatoz, savvysouthernstyle

I GOT MAIL

I got some mail today.  It was the latest issue of Cottages & Bungalows magazine and guess who's mini mudroom was featured?! 

Yep, my back door closet got featured in a magazine!  Tech Guy keeps making fun of me that it's our closet that gets to be in a magazine, but it's exciting nonetheless.  I'm not sure if the magazine is on the newsstands yet - it's the July/August issue.  I'll have to check our local bookstore soon.  I entered the space in a contest and the prize was the magazine feature (you can check out the contest and other winners here).   I also got another package a little less exciting from the good old GAP.  I ordered these pink jeans and Little Pilot got this airplane shirt which he wanted to wear right away.  He even let me take a few pictures of him wearing it. :)  I'm a little bit regretting not buying the same one for Co-pilot too.  You can see a glimpse of the pink jeans in the photo above - love them!  

So, all in all, today was a pretty exciting day!

DINING ROOM BEFORE & AFTER

I'm finally getting around to writing this post.  I know I had promised this some time ago and you can see from the Easter decorations in the picture above that I already took the photos before Easter.  Yikes!  Time is just flying by and I seem to always be playing catch-up!  I guess that's life with two little ones. :)  

You've already seen this room in a couple of posts (invisible speakers & floating sideboard), but I haven't shared the before and afters which, I think, are always fun to see.  I am also going to try and include a list of all the sources for the room since I seem to get a lot of comments/questions about where I got certain pieces.  So without further ado, here is what the dining room looked like when we first viewed the house (the furniture/things in the room belonged to the tenants).

So much better and fun to see!  No?  But wait, I have one more photo to show you.  It lets you see the only renovation we did to this space.  The previous layout had just a small single door opening to the dining room.  We decided to open it up.  I chose to leave some of the wall in place vs. taking out the whole wall because I wanted it to mimic the opening between the living room and dining room to create cohesion and a sense that the opening had always been there.  The remaining small amount of wall perfectly covers the kitchen cupboards and the bulkhead is the same size as the one between the dining room and living room.  Here is the view of our dining room from the kitchen before and after.  Sorry that the angles aren't quite the same (I had no idea that I would be blogging back then).  For the before photo, you can imagine a set of those stripy wood cupboards on the other side of the single door opening.

Opening up that wall was a relatively small reno, but it made a huge difference.  Don't mind the fridge that isn't properly built-in and opens the wrong way in our kitchen.  It's the one that came with our house and we're waiting to upgrade it to a larger, counter depth one.  I still haven't decided which one I want after nearly 2 years!  I'm probably the queen of indecision.  Do you want to know a secret?  I really liked the vintage feel of the original 1960s cupboards when we first bought the house, but they were really beat-up and  so built-in that there was no way to reuse them.

Now that you've seen the before and afters, here are some more of the details with all the sources:

Light Fixture:  George Nelson Bubble Lamp

Curtains:  Sewn by me out of Marimekko Lumimarja fabric in Sateen weight

Murano glass vases:  On loan from my sister (originally belonged to my grandmother's cousin)

Vase:  Alvar Aalto - by Iittala

Bowl:  Ultima Thule - by Iittala

2 year-old:  Little Pilot from Nalle's House :)

Table:  Eero Saarinen Tulip Table by Knoll - with light oak top - via Kijiji- originally purchased from Hollace Cluny

Fabric Chairs:  Eero Saarinen Executive Chairs by Knoll - via Kijiji - originally purchased from Hollace Cluny.  Fabric is dristi sky (a light blue grey)

White Chairs:  Knockoff Arne Jacobsen Series 7 chairs purchased at Chair Source

Sideboard:  DIY project from Ikea kitchen cabinets you can see all the details here

Painting:  "Wings Over Manhatten" available here

Invisible Speakers: (in the wall above the sideboard):  Nakymatone Echt

So that's it for my dining room.  Thanks for taking the before and after tour.  Maybe I will work on getting a tour of our kitchen redo next.  

P.S. You can see more of our dining room here, here and here.

sharing this here:  52 Mantels, livelaughrowe, houseofhepworths, the36thave, inspiration gallery, shabby nest, tatertots&jello, iheartnaptime, diyshowoff, it's overflowing, mondayfunday, sundayshowcase, betweennapsontheporch, homestoriesatoz, givemethegoods, savvysouthernstyle

7 MONTHS

Co-pilot is 7 months already and he has changed so much this month.  He cut his first tooth, started sitting for longer periods, rolled over both ways (gets across the room by rolling now), started babbling (da-da, ma-ma, na-na, ga-ga, ya-ya) and tried his first foods.  Co-pilot doesn't like eating yet (breastmilk must be so much tastier than baby purees and rice cereal!).  He has also started to enjoy jumping in the excer-saucer.  He continues to have the sweetest personality and rarely cries/fusses and sleeps well.  He has, however, learned to communicate what he wants which most of the time ends up being me.  I don't mind at all, but sometimes Mommy does need to shower. :)  

This month I forgo a backdrop except for the monthly onesie photo for which I used one of the boys' curtain panels (you can see the room here).  We are happy to live in a neighbourhood with lots of mature trees and our neighbour's yard is pretty much a forest!  Here are Co-pilot's 7 month photos for you to enjoy:

To see more of Co-pilot's monthly photos click here.

STOOLS IN SHADES OF MINT

After my "mint"spiration post yesterday, I am so excited to share with you one of my mint projects!  I have some new-old stools in shades of mint.

I absolutely love my Aalto high stools in our kitchen and have been oogling over the special anniversary edition stool 60 for quite some time now.  I really love the stool E60 in this space:

image via

Unfortunately, splurging on the stools wasn't in the budget at the moment. 

My parents did, however, have a few very beat up knockoff Aalto stools.  They were the stools that we used in our kitchen when I was growing up.  To satisfy my Aalto and mint obsession I decided to paint the tops mint.  Three different shades to be exact! :)  

Here's a little before and after:

To paint my stools I sanded, primed, added two coats of paint, two coats of clear polyurethane and one coat of satin polyurethane.  The legs I simply cleaned.  They're not perfect, but still much better.  For my mint ombre, I chose the colours based on my mint belt and jeans and picked a third colour to tie the two colours together.  The colours from light to dark are: Behr:  Breath of Spring(450C-2), Valspar: Mint Gala (6001-7B) and Valspar: Simply Seafoam (5008-7C).   I simply picked up tester pots which were more than plenty and I even got one for free (Valspar) using a coupon I got in the May Better Homes and Gardens magazine. Yay for free!

I'm sure you're wondering where/how I am going to use these stools (or maybe not, but I'm going to tell /show you anyway).  :)  The stools are going in the living room.  They are great stacked as a side table for our tall sofa. They can also be used for extra seating and as little tables for your drink that can be pulled up wherever you're sitting.  Truly a multifunctional little stool.  :)  Now that I have my new stools, I'm not loving the orangey tone of the wood base of our sofa.  I've started toying with the idea of changing it up to something a little lighter.  Another project added to the ever growing list!  Don't you also love that the Domino book is also a shade of mint?

Did I mention that these stools are also fabulous for toddler playtime?  They can be a train, caterpillar, worm, etc.  I remember throwing a blanket over them to make a fort when I was little. :)

I hope you liked my stools as much as I do.  Did you notice the clues to my project in my "mint"spiration board?

I completed this project as part of the Pinterest Challenge hosted here, here, here and here.

sharing this project also here:  52mantels, livelaughrowe, houseofhepworths, shabbycreekcottage, 36thave, inspirationgallery, tatertots&jello, it's overflowing, iheartnaptime. mondayfunday, sundayshowcase, betweennapsontheporch, savvysouthernstyle, shabbynest

"MINT"SPIRATION

I've been loving mint lately.  Like A LOT.  I even bought this belt and these jeans from Target the other day. :)  I think I'm fully on the mint band wagon.  I've also been working on bringing a little mint into my home via some minty projects.  I made this  little "mint"spiration board and thought I'd share it with y'all to give you some ideas on how you can bring mint into your space (just in case you may be a little mint obsessed like me :).

1.  mint light

2.  mint stool 

3.  Even the famous Domino Book of Decorating is mint

4.  mint Kitchenaid mixer for your kitchen

5.  mint triangle pillow

6.  Paint some furniture mint (love this vintage desk)

7.  Some art with a dash of mint. 

I have been collecting some pictures of mint things on pinterest to try and figure out what shade of mint I like best.  I seem to like them all and have incorporated a few minty shades in my latest project.  There's a couple of clues as to what my project is in the board above so stay tuned(no spoilers here)! :)  

sharing this here: savvysouthernstyle, 52mantels, houseofhepworths, 36thave, inspirationgallery, tatertots&jello, iheartnaptime, sundayshowcase, betweennapsontheporch

MUMMU'S BRAGGING

I have the best mom ever and the pilots have the best Mummu ever!  She is completely devoted to her grand babies.  There's rarely a day that goes by that she doesn't see them.  So for this Mother's Day I wanted to make her something extra special.  She has been asking for more pictures of the boys for awhile now and so I made her this:

It's a brag book with her favourite photos of my boys.  It turned out so nice that I am very tempted to keep it for myself!  I heart it so much! :)  You may recognize the polka dot fabric from the fabric baskets I made for Easter.  The ribbon I had in my stash.  I chose this combination since I knew that Mummu loves polka dots and her favourite colour is yellow.

This is a great project for using up some fabric scraps.  It is also has very minimal sewing.  The only sewing is for attaching the ribbon at the back and the zigzag stitch around the photos.  I used yellow thread to tie in the yellow ribbon.  You could leave out the sewing and just use glue for the photos and ribbon to make this a no sew project.

Some more photos to show you the details and because I like the bokeh in the background from the sun shining through the bare trees. :)  Oh, I'm so happy to finally be able to take some photos outside!

The overall size of the brag book is 5" square and the photos are 3" square.  This would be perfect for your instagram pictures.  I used a combination of iphone photos and regular photos (you may recognize many of them from my previous posts).

Do you want to see how I made this?  Continue reading for the tutorial....