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DIY Lampshade Refresh

18 Monday Nov 2013

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Lamp1Lamp2
We have started a list of house projects for the upcoming indoor season.  Chris and I have a habit of getting overwhelmed by the number of things that need to be home-improved around here, and it prevents us from making progress on any of them.  We have decided to break down smaller projects and finish one per month while we save and plan for a huge house renovation.  One of the things on my list was to fix this little lamp’s shade.  We have had the lamp next to the bed for a long time, but the shade was always a little strange.  I got really sick of it when I was pregnant, borrowed some of Ada’s acrylic paints and covered it with what turned out to be an even stranger pearly metallic green.  We then bought and then returned two replacement shades, neither of which looked quite right above the little basket.  Finally I decide to try covering the existing shade with linen.  It was such a simple project and took less than an hour.  Such an improvement!  Why hadn’t I thought of that years ago?  To refresh your own lamp shade you will need:

* Linen Fabric (Be sure the fabric color and weave is heavy enough to cover existing shade color)

*Paper for Pattern

*Ruler

*Pencil

*Scissors

*Craft Glue

*Large Paintbrush

*Ribbon (To cover top edge)

Lamp4
1. Using your ruler, draw a straight line down from top to bottom of the lamp shade.  (Or use the existing seam if your shade has one).  Position the shade’s pencil line along the edge of paper.

2.  Roll shade and trace outline, stopping when you return to the line on shade.  The shade will create a curved shape as it rolls. Using the ruler, draw a straight line 1/4″ past the point where the shade stopped rolling.  This will allow for overlap of the fabric and create a neat seam on the lampshade.

3. Add 1/4″ each on top and bottom of curve.  This will fold over top and bottom of shade.
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4. Cut out paper pattern, place on linen and cut out.
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5. Squirt glue onto one side of the shade, as show.  (Don’t cover the whole shade at once or it will be messy).
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6. Use your brush to evenly smooth out glue.Lamp8
7. Slowly roll shade onto linen, keeping it the 1/4″ on top and bottom.
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8. Add more glue, brush and roll until shade is covered.  Slightly overlap the ends of the linen, glue and press down neatly.

9. Brush a little glue along the inside top of shade and fold linen over.  Gently press and smooth with your fingers as you go to work out any bumps in the linen.

10. Repeat for bottom of shade as shown.
11. Brush on glue and smooth ribbon on to top of shade.  You can add a bottom ribbon as well.

12. Allow glue to dry and try on your new shade!
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Bribery

04 Monday Nov 2013

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Jar
We are working on potty training around these parts. Some kids can get the hang of it in a few days and others…Well, let’s just say we have purchased some sweet and colorful little bribes.  Fingers crossed this will do the trick.

Linen Sheets

16 Monday Sep 2013

Posted by in Likes, Shop, Uncategorized, Vintage

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(First days of Kindergarten and a newborn baby certainly make for sparse blog posts around here…Sorry about that).

It was a hot July around here to be pregnant. My few pleasures involved eating and sleeping, and towards the end not even those were making me happy.  I had heard how amazing linen sheets are to sleep on and in a moment of weakness I ordered an expensive set of them online.  (I have never spent this much money on sheets and felt a little ill after I hit the confirm button).  But when the sheets arrived and we spent the first night sleeping on them, I felt much better.  (OK, technically I still felt ill and had to wake up to pee every hour, but the time spent actually sleeping was kind of amazing).  The sheets are huge- they generously touch the floor on both sides of the bed.  The color is soft and calming- they even look good when I am too lazy to make the bed.  Linen lasts for years and just gets softer with age.  And they are absolutely lovely to sleep on.  The sheets are a heavier weight than cotton, but light and cool in hot weather.  Now that the season is changing the sheets feel warm and comfortable at night.  I had planned to switch back to our normal cotton sheets when Dare was born.  She is in our bed and babies can be quite messy creatures, but I could not bring myself to switch back to cotton sheets.  I hid all of the cotton sheets upstairs.  I am in love and I cannot go back.  The baby seems pretty happy with them as well.

If you want to be really really nice to a pregnant woman (or yourself) you can find linen sheets here:  Restoration Hardware’s sheets, Garnet Hills sheets, vintage linen sheets on Ebay and Etsy.

Sweet dreams!
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Flea Market Finds: Side Table Bookshelf

03 Tuesday Sep 2013

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Table1 Table2 Table3
We found this table on the street last week.  I drove past it, and then looped back after a minute of thought.  (I love good street finds- they are one of the best parts about city living.  I also love putting stuff out on the stoop when we are finished with it.  Anything good will be gone in a couple of hours, and everyone is happy).  We recently moved our large bookshelf out of the girls’ room and into the office to make room for their bunk beds.  The girls have made a habit of looking at books in the office, which is great, except for the huge piles they leave on the floor every few hours.  We have been looking for/ designing/ planning to build a small bookshelf for the girls’ room and this little table happened to fit perfectly under the window.  Our new plan includes my filling up their table with fresh books every morning.  When they have read them all they stack the books back onto the table and I rotate new ones off of the big bookshelf.  This way the girls get to read new books each day, and I get to deal with less mess.

Flea Market Finds: Vintage School Map

29 Thursday Aug 2013

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Map1
We have been looking for a large-scale something to hang on the wall behind our sofa.  We are really bad about putting things up around the house. We’ve been here for two years now and have a list of things to be framed and hung, but still have a lot of open white walls.  A version of this Airstream print from Hatch Show Print is on our Want list.  (They had a beautiful red one at the shop when we visited in the spring and said they would print a custom order for us).  Chris found this vintage classroom map of the United States in the back corner of an antique shop.  It was a good price, although we weren’t sure where in our house it would fit at the time.  Perhaps I was inspired yesterday by listening to Martin Luther King Jr.’s beautiful I Have a Dream speech.  Perhaps I was feeling patriotic when I decided to hang the giant map up in the living room.  I copied the hanging technique from some friends and removed the map’s heavy roller case.  I tied strong twine around the two ends of the rollers at the top of the map and hung the string on two nails at the top of our wall.  The map seems much larger on our wall than it had in the cavernous antique shop ,but I think it works.  Ada is excited to point to the states she knows (albeit while standing on the couch).   I am excited by the map’s large scale and vibrant colors – and maybe a little excited about a refresher geography lesson.

To find your own vintage school maps you can check your favorite flea market, antique shop, Ebay or Etsy.  Happy hunting!

Inspiration

10 Saturday Aug 2013

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Inspiration40
Happy Saturday!

I hope it is not raining too hard where you are.  I keep hanging out the laundry and running to bring it back in between showers…We managed to venture out this week with the three kids.  It seems a bit crazy to get that many people dressed and fed and out the door, but we did it!  Dare is still being mellow and sleepy, thank goodness.  She has however decided she likes to be wide awake during the darkest hours.

*Sleepy Dare

*Clouds Over the City

*Josie, Covered in Tomato Seeds

*Ada, Hiding from the Rain

*Kisses, at Pier Six in Brooklyn

*Breakfast

Have a great weekend!

Welcome Baby Dare

31 Wednesday Jul 2013

Posted by in Inspiration

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Dare1
Sorry for the radio silence around here lately.  It has been a busy two weeks: Ada turned five, we had our annual block party and two birthday parties AND -best of all – we had a baby girl!

Dare was born at home at 12:50 on July 26.  She weighed 6 lbs 12 oz and was 19 3/4 inches long.  She is doing really well and already feels like she’s always been part of the family.

Chris and I have had all of our children at home, and we expected this third birth to be a relatively easy one.  We assumed that we knew what we were doing and we were lucky to have our same beloved midwife for the birth of Dare.  Thank you Joan!  But…babies and children have a way of reminding us that we have little control over our lives.  I was convinced that the baby was coming for an entire week before her birth and kept making Chris stay home for work.  I visited the acupuncturist two times to move things along, to no avail.  A slow leak put us on a path of castor oil and breaking my bag of water, and Dare decided to join us sunny-side-up which made labor and pushing much harder than the previous two births.  When we and the midwife made the decision to get labor going on July 25, Ada cried all the way home saying she didn’t want to share her birthday.  (Little Dare graciously held out for minutes past Ada’s day).  Ultimately all was successful.  Dare kept her heart rate up and worked as hard as I did to join the world.  My mother-in-law was a champ downstairs taking care of the girls and waiting through loud noises above.  When Dare was finally out (thank goodness!!), we had to shake Ada awake.  She had fallen asleep on our bed five feet away from my loudness, and missed the entirety of the pushing.  Both Ada and Josie woke up and smiled to meet their new sister.  My mother-in-law Pat cut the cord.  We toasted and I ate a grilled cheese sandwich.  (We have never had a baby at night, and it was too late for my usual post-labor Indian takeout).

So, here we are a family of five.  Three girls.  Dare has double big sisters.  She is a lucky lucky girl.  I am feeling so so happy to no longer be pregnant in August.  We are settling in to life with this new little creature,  feeling sleepy and happy and blessed.Dare2

Inspiration

28 Friday Jun 2013

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Happy Almost Weekend!

I can hardly believe that the Forth of July is coming next week.  It was hot hot hot here, so we did a lot of running through sprinklers in the backyard, popsicle-making and watermelon-eating.  Josie is happy to have her big sister home from school and we are getting excited about the upcoming summer birthdays.

Here are some of our Instagrams from the last couple of weeks:

*Party Prep for Cousin Clementine

*Hide and Seek

*Josie Stealing Honey from the Ants

*Dinner (All I want to eat is salad in this weather)

*Tent in the Back Yard

*Josie, Peeling Off Stickers from Ada’s Book

*Busy Bees

*Sister Lunch

Flea Market Finds: Vintage Barware

22 Wednesday May 2013

Posted by in Likes, Organizing, Vintage

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Stirrers

The neighborhood stoop sales were especially good this past weekend.  We barely made it to Ada’s school festival because we kept returning to the estate sale of a former set designer from New Orleans.  The sale was full of vintage Christmas ornaments, beads and glassware.  I found these stirrers for $.50.  The beaker is from a different sale and has pretty numbers etched into the glass.  It set us back $1.  How I love a good stoop sale!  We have been collecting nicer pieces for our “bar” (a shelf in the kitchen at the moment).  Chris likes to mix up a cocktail in one of his grandparents’ tumblers when we watch Mad Men.  (And he has been making me a virgin ginger beer version).  Everything tastes better when it is sipped out of a fancy glass.

Tea Dye

21 Tuesday May 2013

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Tea

I cannot survive with out tea.  I have no idea how other pregnant women give up drinking caffeine because it is the only way I can make it through my normal day, never mind nine long tired months.  My Grandmother always has a cup of Lipton tea in her hand, and at the end of my day I have to gather all of my own half-finished tea mugs from around the house.  I keep a pitcher of iced tea perpetually brewing all summer long.  Aside from getting me out of bed in the morning, black tea makes a great stain and dye.  I used to work for the photographer Sally Mann and at the time she was tea-staining giant 3’x4′ prints in gallons of Lipton.  The smell of the studio and constant brewing of tea made me feel a little less homesick.  I love the aged, mellow quality that tea-staining gives to materials.  To stain fabrics, I brew Lipton tea to a color that looks right, throw in a handful of salt to make the dye a little more permanent and stir in fabrics.  When the color seems a bit darker than I want, (it will lighten as it dries), I wash the fabric by itself.  The tea will eventually lighten over time and washes, and the staining can be repeated.