I bought this froggy chair from a friend of mine a while back. It’s actually hard to find chairs for kids that are in between high chairs and regular seats, well cheap ones at least. We’ve been getting by with dictionaries and just plain old kneeling, but often my daughters legs  fall asleep and then she’ll lie on the ground flailing while we finished dinner. Not really pleasant for anyone. So the chair. I guess I didn’t really mention that I was going to paint it, because everyone in my family was shocked and no one approved. For the few weeks it was at the table, it seems everyone fell in love with this god awful, garish froggy chair.  Well too bad. I just can’t stand that 80’s craft fair, dappled paint, googly eyed animal shit. And I love me some high gloss spray paint. Of course it’s still called the froggy chair. And I need to find another because the kids fight over it at every meal. I guess I better go hit up some old school craft fairs.

Oh and for all of you who subscribe to my blog via email, I’m sorry about that huge email you got with all the past posts in it. We upgraded WordPress this weekend and I guess that was the side effect. It shouldn’t happen again (and if it does, please tell me).

I got this fabric, well really it’s more like a print, from reprodepot last year. After asking my super talented art major friends how to display this ginormous piece of fabric, I went to the art supply store to get stretcher bars. Stretcher bars, if you don’t know (I didn’t), are used to make a simple wooden frame that you can then stretch your canvas over. Now that I think about it, they are like large square (or rectangle) embroidery hoops. They come in every length, so you can make a frame in whatever size you like. I only say all of this because if you like fabric, sooner or later you are going to want to put some on your wall and stretcher bars will help you out immensely. I was really nervous about this project–mostly I didn’t want to destroy this beautiful fabric. I finally got my nerve up at the last craft night and put a thousand staples in it. It may be a little wonky, but I’m okay with that. It’s in the kid’s room and they love it (I thought it might give them nightmares, I mean it’s pretty large and a little on the creepy side). When all the furniture rearranging (for this little baby) finally is finished I’ll show the whole room.

We’ve had jute rugs for a couple of years now (you can see one here) and they were getting ratty as hell. Not to mention totally beige and boring.  They hide every stain though and with two dirty dogs and two toddlers that is pretty huge.  But the boringness was outweighing their usefulness when the spring came, so I sprung for some new ones. Rugs are really expensive (if you didn’t know) and I would like to tell all the shelter magazines and design blogs to stop telling everyone that 1000 bucks for a rug (or a couch or anything really) is cheap, because it is not. 10 bucks is cheap. And that’s what I paid for one of these yellow stripey runners at Ikea.  I duct taped them together–classy I know–and now I have a rug that I is far from beige and cost less then take out.  I got two more for the living room and it like we live in a whole new house (granted one where I have to vacuum a lot more, but still they look pretty good).

I just realized I never posted a picture of my finished mobile I made for the swap.  My partner was very patient while I got it done. From top to bottom it goes: big house, cabin, barn, ice house. I explained how I made it here and there are more pictures here and here. I’ve received some lovely comments about it on flickr and a couple requests to sell them, but I’m not sure about that. I couldn’t find my X-acto knife when I was making these, so I used a box cutter–a sharp one, but a box cutter nonetheless–so it took longer than it should have. If I get an itch to make something with paper again, maybe I’ll put one or two up for sale.

A couple of you are concerned because you never received a mobile from the swap and I’m sorry for that. It could have gotten lost in the mail like mine, or maybe your partner’s life just got in the way. I try to think of these swaps as an impetus to make something different and try not to focus too much on what you might get. I’m going to host another mobile swap next year, so hopefully it will go better (I was a little lax when it came to managing it this year–I didn’t think it would be so much work!).