Meeting Young House Love

The alternate title of this post could also be "Only Crazy People Take Children to a Book Signing," but I don't want to exaggerate the story. We had a great time meeting our favorite bloggers and fellow DIY enthusiasts, John and Sherry, at the Dallas West Elm for their book signing event.

We woke up early for a Saturday and hurried to get ourselves over to the store. My plan had been to leave by 8:30 to make the "30 minute" drive, because it always takes about 30 minutes to get to Dallas. Every time we go to Dallas it takes 30 MINUTES. Well, of course, that did not happen. We sat for 2.5 hours in traffic on a shut-down highway 635. Two kids don't do well sitting in a stopped car. There was lots of crying and screaming and that's just what was coming from the driver's seat. :)

Finally we made to West Elm to find a line wrapped around the building and lining the service road. The weather was nice though, and we took our spot at around 11:00 which was right when the signing was supposed to begin. Since we were standing right next to the road it was LOTS of fun wrangling kids away from the street. I pulled out every distraction possible. We sang, we danced... we cried a little bit more. Ha ha.

 In-line after about 45 minutes. Cookies being delivered! 

We had a good time though. The kids kept other people in line entertained. We talked to the people around us and met some people who just live down the street from us. Nice to get to know our neighbors! We exchanged information and agreed that we'd have to house crash each other for inspiration. 

Leah playing her role of "drunk baby."

  Don't they look sweet here? Another distraction. 

  Excuse the blurry photo. You can see someone's tiny hand grabbing for the adorable and absolutely delicious cookies that they handed out to everyone. 

Playing with new friends through the West Elm windows and only mildly annoying others. Win!

Finally, around 1:30 we got to the front of the line and it was our turn. I had this insane adorable idea to dress the kids in their Lowes and Home Depot kids aprons since we do everything as a family, including DIY and decorating projects. Our kids are always with us. I hope that they have many fond memories of growing up, including all of the awesome crazy adventures we have together like meeting John and Sherry, and painting furniture, or building shelves. We pride ourselves on raising future DIY junkies. 

John and Sherry were so sweet and nice, even to the cranky children and crazy parents who brought them. I brought along a little sign that I made to show our love and representation of Richmond since we share our hometown in common. I made a 3"x5" copy of it for them to sign so we could hang it on our gallery wall. It makes me smile every time to walk by it. 

It was a long but SUPER fun morning. Needless to say, the car ride home was a lot more enjoyable. 

Worth it.

Toy Cabinet

For weeks I have been trolling craigslist looking for an affordable buffet/sideboard/dresser option to put in my living room to stow away loose toys and puzzle pieces. I'm on a pretty limited budget, so when most everything in my area was coming in at around $400+ I started to work on coming to terms that maybe that dream was meant to die. A slow. painful. death.

One day I was trying to kill the last 15 minutes of work clicking through the antiques section and I saw this baby and instantly fell in love AND, it was only $100. I sent a quick reply to the seller gitty with excitment and anxious that it might not be available afterall and that the universe was just pulling a terrible joke on me... again.

But it WAS available. So I made plans with the seller to pick it up on the weekend and this baby was mine!

When I got it home and examined it my heart started to sink when I realized that it wasn't exactly in the best condition. The legs practically crumbled off and several pieces of the wood had chipped off. At first I was angry at myself for getting blinded and not inspecting it further, but I figured I'd give it a shot.

The first thing I had to do was basically rebuild the legs with wood filler and glue. It worked surprisingly well. After that I filled in the chipped and broken pieces with wood filler and sanded her down before painting. It took about two coats of paint that I had left over from my bathroom renovation. Then I used some bronze acrylic paint and filled in the carved accents.

I may eventually distress it a bit, but I kinda love the color. This picture really doesn't do the nice vintage green color justice. I know it's not perfect, but I don't think it's bad for my first try at fixing up furniture, do you?

I know it will get lots of love once we fill those bottom drawers and the three inside the doors with treasures from my 4 year old and 1 year old. I'm very happy with the way it came out and can't wait to take on my next project.