Cheerio, Darling!

I added a few new things to my wall this week.  I enjoy looking at the old LIFE magazines I see at my local Bookmans.  During the last visit I found Queen Elizabeth and immediately adopted her.  Who better to tell me to stay calm than the Queen herself?

It was fun thumbing through the magazine.  In this issue Elizabeth was just made Queen, a budding actress just started her new show ("I Love Lucy"), and the ads make me giggle.  I may even frame an ad or two for fun.

Just today I randomly ran into a 1937 British newspaper announcing King George's coronation at the thrift store.  I got it, of course.  It's a big ragged but fun to look at.  I think perchance I need to get an American flag hung on my walls to balance out the British monarchs.  Go America!

Chair Upgrade

So a month or two ago one I came across a free chair.  The chair was correctly categorized as trash (just click on the below picture to see how bad it looked)--but I thought it would be a fun project to work on while Ellie played outside.  I was inspired by the woven upholstery webbing on this chair.

This was one of those work on for a few minutes here and there so it took a while.  I had a great idea to use leather straps as an accent (okay, really they are the only thing holding the chair together).

There's more wood filler than I care to admit to.  I don't own a staple gun and wanted to keep costs down for a trash chair makeover, so I used upholstery tacks.

I had fun trying new painting/distressing techniques.

I still plan to make a seat cushion for it (I only kept the wood and springs from the original chair--the porous materials were icky).

All in all it took some time, but it was a fun experiment.