Dining Room for an Old Soul

Here's the latest update on our dining room- a new (to us) farmhouse table, 6 chairs, 2 arm chairs, and a huge china cabinet. I found a great deal on Craigslist! The chairs actually came with straw seats, but the seller had a huge box of unopened leather seats for free! The straw was cute, but I envisioned yogurt being thrown into them by my son and they would never be the same. 

Our old table and cabinet was really nice too, but very limited on space. 

It could fit a max of 6 people with the leaf in. The new table can fit 8 normally and then has 2 leaves which make it 3 feet longer! 

Special thanks to my friend Sharon, my amazing dad, brother, and husband who helped lift everything and haul the table and cabinet, and to my mom for watching my toddler while we moved it all in place! Solid cherry wood is no joke to lift.

I titled this post "Dining Room for an Old Soul" because I feel like it's no longer trendy to have china cabinets or even a formal dining room. I actually didn't register for china when I got married, I got them from my grandparents when I graduated high school, I think they came from my great-great aunt. I loved them! Of course, back then I didn't have a place to put them! And for 10+ years I didn't have a place to display them, until now! 

The picture doesn't do it justice...this thing is really huge. I no longer have to keep my china in the protective bags!

My high school graduation china on display!

Carnival glass bowl from Nathan's mom's mom.

Bowl from Nathan's dad's mom.

More carnival glass from my mom. 

Birthday cake plate that my mom's family used and now we've used it for both of my son's birthdays! The plates were one of my great grandmother's, I think. We happened to find some that matched the set at the antique mall.

Wedding gifts!

I have to thank my college roommate, Cassie for my love of drinking out of goblets. It can make any occasion special! We used to buy cokes from the machine and pour them into goblets in the dorm! (Our college goblets weren't quite this fancy!)

Yes, I like sparkly things. I am so thankful for our wedding gifts!

The storage at the bottom of this cabinet has is incredible! I cleaned out an entire set of pink willow dishes that were in my kitchen cabinets. Now, I might be able to use them more since they aren't crammed in with other things.

Huge, deep drawers for linens! I also am a weirdo with my love of table coverings and cloth napkins. The tan set is one that I picked up in the market in Florence, Italy. The blue one is one I used for Easter when I was pregnant with Mack. The blue and red floral is from my mom/grandmother.

Moving on to more old soul things:

My mom found this china cabinet at an antique mall that also becomes a secretary desk. This was our only display piece until we recently got the other set.

The top houses all of my punch bowl glasses and snack trays from my mom:

And the bottom has all of our stationery, stamps, and such.

My favorite stationery is from Florence, Italy:

My "Happy Everything" plate found a new home in the kitchen instead of the dining room:

Thanks for stopping by! Let me know when you want to come eat with us on our table, using china and cloth napkins!

Happy Everything!

Recently, my mom and I were shopping at Genevieve Bond, a local gift shop. They had a huge display of the "Happy Everything" line from Coton Colors. You can see the whole line of gifts here:

Coton Colors- Happy Everything

I liked the idea of a display piece that you can switch out the attachments for different holidays and events (the attachments and platter have velcro). I did not like the idea of paying so much money for a plate! I think G.B. was selling it for around $115.00 for the large platter. The website is the same. Some of us who are married to very frugal men are thinking to ourselves, "There's no way my husband will pay $115.00 for a plate!" So, I set out to duplicate it for myself, for my own decorative purposes.

I checked Hobby Lobby for plates, and they actually did not have any plain ceramic platters. So I went to Home Goods. They happened to have an already tan colored ceramic platter on clearance for $10! The one I found was oval instead of round, which I think I actually like better.

Here is the original I saw in the store:

Here is the one I found at Home Goods after I started painting polka dots:

As you've probably figured out, I am not perfect. I went to Michael's craft store to ask for help in what kind of paint to get. They were NOT helpful. Due to a recent switch of phone services where I have to pay lots of money to get on the internet when I'm not connected to WiFi, I did not get online to check to see what kind of paint to get. I bought acrylic paint. It's fine, but it's not going to give you $115 results. It gives you good enough results for something cute to display. You should probably research what kind of paint could give you shiny, eat off the platter results. (I think I should have used acrylic enamel? I couldn't find this kind) I just wanted something fast and cute that we will never use for eating, so I used acrylic. The lady at Michael's was actually helpful in guiding me to a spongey stamp shaped like a polka dot. This worked great for me because I am very bad at drawing lots of circles that are all the same size. Here's what it looked like after all of the polka dots:

Now for the writing... There are certainly more ways you could do this than how I chose to do so. If you have a Cricut machine, you could cut out vinyl letters. I actually do have a Cricut which I used later on in the project. But I didn't have a font that matched exactly, so I decided to free hand it while looking at a picture of the platter I found online. I suggest using a non-permanent pen to lightly plot out where your letters will go. Then, if you mess up, you can wipe it off the plate. I messed up a couple of times, and I just wiped it off with a wet paper towel.

Ok, so maybe the Michael's lady was kind of helpful, she helped me find an OIL-BASED Sharpie brand PAINT PEN marker. It shook up like a paint pen, looked like a paint pen, was expensive like a paint pen, but it was Sharpie brand. Now this was probably the kind of product I should have found for the polka dots. It goes on glossy, and stays that way. It looks very nice. Just follow the instructions on the package for how to prime it. You could also try to just use your own handwriting if you like your hand writing better than copying the Happy Everything people. I have pretty basic handwriting, so I copied their style, not perfectly, but it's pretty close:

Back to the paint thing...depending on what kind of paint you use will determine what you do in this next step. I baked my plate. At this point, I was regretting my whole "fly by the seat of my pants" approach to this project. The sharpie was supposed to be cooked at 350 degrees and the acrylic paint was supposed to be at 325. I went with 325 for 30 minutes in the oven. The most important thing about this is to put the plate in a cool oven and don't preheat it. This lets the plate gradually come up in temperature with the oven so it hopefully won't shatter. This step is supposed to set everything in place. I have no idea if it worked or not. The polka dots did look smooth after it came out of the oven, but still not shiny like I wanted. Like I said, we won't use our plate for eating, so it doesn't really matter.

Now, you just find a plate stand, some velcro, and some attachments, and you're set!

I made my own attachment with a piece of ceramic I found at Hobby Lobby. I cut out vinyl on the cricut that said "Mom's Special Day" and threaded pink ribbon through it. 

You can really add velcro to almost any kind of flat decoration. Hobby Lobby has wooden ones for pretty cheap. You could also use large magnets or flat ornaments. The sky is the limit! You could also take this as an opportunity to put your foot down and say, "I already saved money on the plate, so I'm just going to buy the original attachments!" And then you can pay about $16 for mini attachments or $24 for the large ones. 

I really just like the idea of celebrating life, whether you have a plate or not!

2nd Birthday Party

I can't believe our baby boy is two! People always tell you that time flies, and you don't believe them until you have a kid! We had a great time celebrating our big boy with a construction-themed birthday party at our church gymnasium. I saw the theme last year and wanted to do it then, but decided to wait until he was a little older and could enjoy the activities more. We had kids there of all ages and they all seemed to enjoy the activities. I used Pinterest, Google, and Amazon for inspiration. Here are some of my favorite things about the party:

When the kids first walked in, they could pick up a pink or yellow hard hat (Amazon.com), a Home Depot tool belt (77 cents), and put stickers on them if they wanted. They could also pick out a plastic tool to put in their tool belt (Toys R Us). We made the tool bench from a $15 nightstand I saw on Craigslist. We took the feet off of it and attached peg board to the back.

Balloons from Party City. Our colors for the party were orange, yellow, and black.

The cupcake holders came from Hobby Lobby.

I picked up these buckets at the dollar store last year. Pretzel sticks and veggie sticks stuck with the construction theme. I used shovels to serve a few items.

Cocoa puffs looked like rocks, goldfish and clementines were perfect for our colors and healthy for toddlers!

There were several variations of this cake online. Some of them had the diggers actually digging the cake out, some had chocolate chips, others had oreo crumbs. I found these Nestle semi sweet chocolate chunks and thought they would be perfect. Each of the digging tools had some of them that they were pushing or digging and then I sprinkled them around the bottom of the cake stand.

 I know the cake stand seems a little fancy for this party, but it has been used for birthday parties in my mother's family for years!

I actually don't like reese's pieces, so I picked out the orange, yellow, and brown M&M's from a giant bag from Sam's. I think it fooled some people at first!





Kids eat lots of grapes. And bananas.

Lemonade and Capri Sun in the metal tub for the kiddos.

We were fortunate that our church building has preschool tables and chairs so we didn't have to bring them.










The gift table with pictures of my little construction worker!










As fun as it was to decorate and decide how to display the food, the activities were my favorite thing about the party! I think everyone found something fun to do.

This is my husband demonstrating the wrecking ball. The kids LOVED this! I wrapped all sizes of boxes in a roll of brown paper I got from the painting section at Walmart. It's designed to be a drop cloth for painting, so it's super heavy duty. At first I used masking tape, which did not pass the toddler test so I re-taped them with bright orange duct tape. We already had the rope and the giant purple exercise ball. We draped the rope over the basketball goal in the gym. If you don't have access to a gym, I think the kids would have fun just rolling the ball into the boxes too. If you have a 2 year old boy, you know how much they like to stack boxes (or anything) and knock them down!

The digging pit was also a much bigger hit than I expected. We ended up having to throw he pool away at the end, but it was worth it! We borrowed gravel from the playground at the church and we used my son's beach toys (and bought a few more from Walmart and the dollar store). Add a few diggers, and you have the perfect digging pit!



















It seemed like all ages of kids enjoyed the blocks. I borrowed the mega bloks from my mom's house. The foam blocks were one of my son's presents from us, and we already had the wooden blocks. The carpet belongs to our church.

Warning: very messy! This probably would have been better outside or at a swimsuit party, but the kids LOVED this! The water table was my son's present from my in-laws. We ordered little squirt tools and construction worker rubber ducks for them to play with. My son went through 3 different outfits during the party because of this thing, but he had fun!

He was in disbelief when he walked in! We had him spend the night with my parents so he would be surprised with the final set up of everything!

 Oh, and we had toddler basketball too! It was fun!

We really did have so much fun! Our big 2 year old had a great time! There are loads of ideas on Pinterest about this theme and so much more you could do if you really wanted to. We are very blessed by our family and church family.