Baby Elijah

Bellisima Photography's shoot schedule is all booked up for spring. I pretty much shut the business down from Christmas to April, as our weather here is yucky and any shoots I do schedule always get canceled due to weather/sickness. So I enjoy a few months off until the flowers come back out and people start thinking pretty pictures again.

My newest little newphew, Elijah, kicked off our spring shoot schedule. My sister and brother in law seriously make the cutest kids ever. I definitely vote for them continuing to produce tiny adorable creatures like this guy.



Elijah was such a unique baby. Most babies love the little basket I bring to bundle them into, he hated it. :-) But hanging out on his tummy at four days old? Loved it. So funny.



Once I settled him into this furry blanket, he was dead to the world. Seriously, the little dude slept like a champ for the remainder of the session. Little cutie pie. :-)



So there you have it. The newest little guy on the block, and he is adorable. :-) Lots more shoots in the next few weeks, so hopefully I will have lots to show you!

P.S. If you live in my area, and would like to schedule a session for your cute little ones, just shoot me an email. I'll fit you in as soon as I can! :-)

Fun in the Snow

Back in February I  did a fun shoot out in the snow with little Makayla. We thought it would be fun to do a snow shoot, with some snowmen and fun hats and mittens. Makayla was a trooper and we ended up having the "perfect" cold day with lots of sun to make for great pictures. It was cold though, so it was one of those fast and furious shoots. :-)

These are such cute pictures, but I am glad that the snow is gone! :-)

A Little Love(Seat) for the Living Room

We recently completed another project - we refinished an antique wooden loveseat! It took us a while, but it's done now, and it looks great. :-) Here's how it went down:

We bought a much neglected loveseat from a guy on Craigslist last summer. He lives down by the lake, and had an entire house, porch, garage and detached second garage across the street filled with stuff. So, naturally, he didn't have room for this little wooden loveseat, and was willing to part with it. :-) The original price was $50. We hemmed and hawed a bit, not because of the price, but because it was yet another project to add to our list. While we debated, the seller dropped the price to $45, and then $40, with the statement that he "couldn't go lower." We thought it was quite funny, as we were simply considering the ramifications of yet another refinishing project. In the end our hesitation saved us $10. :-) We hauled it home in our little Saturn, and this is what it looked like upon arrival.



Yuck, right? That cushion got chucked immediately. Double yuck. The loveseat sat in our living room for a bit while we figured out how best to go about repairing it.  We knew that the seat needed some repairs and reinforcing. We finally settled on a homegrown solution - we drilled hundreds of holes and screwed eye hooks into the holes. Then we strung twine through the holes back and forth creating a rope support system for the cushioned seat we would put on top. We also added a few small boards perpendicular to the frame to add additional strength. This was the point at which we discovered that the wood was mahogany. We broke four drill bits in the process of installing these holes! This somewhat tedious process took us several months, as you might imagine. :-)



I had scrubbed down the frame with vinegar and warm water before we started working on it, and we planned to sand down the whole frame and refinish the existing stain. But then, at some point in the eye hook process, we realized that what we had thought was stain was in fact a very dark brown paint. Glory be! We could simply repaint it, and save ourselves tons of time! So, we picked out a paint color, and set about painting the frame. In the process of painting, we got a wild hair and decided to experiment with a faux finish. Basically, we sanded and wiped off some of the new paint, letting the darker paint shine through. Then we wiped stain over the paint, both new and old. Once that had dried, we coated the whole piece in some brush on lacquer, and loved the resulting finish.



Next up was cutting out a piece of fabric to line the top of the frame (and cover our support system we had designed. Which was super sturdy but not so pretty.) I cut it to size, leaving a little bit of an overlap that could be tucked under to create a smooth edge. Then we pounded in dozens of upholstery nails to hold it down securely.



The final effect was so smooth and pretty. See the pretty nails?



Next we flipped it over (setting it on the piano bench for stability) and cut a piece of black broadcloth to cover up the bottom. A few more upholstery nails held this in place too.



This created a nice professional looking underside.



We created the cushion out of two pieces of 2 inch thick foam. We bought a big roll of it at Hobby Lobby for about $25 (before a coupon!) and cut out one big piece, and then pieced together the second from the remaining foam. We used hot glue to attach them together, and it worked fairly well. A little crunchy, but otherwise fine. Then we wrapped the whole thing in muslin and sewed it tight to ensure it kept its shape. Then we cut out the actual cover and carefully sewed that on. I found it much easier to simply sew it on in place instead of coming up with some complicated system of fastening it. If we need to take it off we'll just cut the threads and re-sew it. No biggie. But this does remind me that I need to scotchguard it. :-)



I am bad blogger and forgot to take pictures of the cushion making step. So sorry. But here's the finished product, and doesn't it look great against our fireplace?



I love the curvy arms,



the detail on the back,

and the slightly scary feet. :-) They have toenails!



All in all we spent about $100 on this project start to finish, which includes the piece itself, the drill bits, eye hooks, twine, boards and brackets, fabric, foam and furniture nails, and paint. So not too shabby for a custom, beautiful little wooden loveseat, no? :-)

April 2011 Goals

(source)

I know, you're thinking, another goals post? SNORE. :-) I give you permission to skip this post in its entirety. Although I would love to know what you are shooting for this month! :-) Here's the rundown:

• Finish up the projects for a baby shower I am helping out with at the middle of the month.


• Work on the art we're making for the living room. If I finish this during April I will feel like superwoman!


• Update the castle tour page with current room photos. (Remember this one from last month? :-)


• Eat some yummy Easter chocolate. :-)


• Clean up the front and back yards.


• Continue working on website.


• Read Oliver Twist. At least once this month. :-)


• Work on spring cleaning.


• Post three times a week.


• Paint the dark side paneling.


• If warm enough, continue caulking and painting the back entryway.

I think that's about it for this month. Hopefully I have a higher success rate this month than the last two! :-)

March is over - how did I do?

March is over - hurray! For me the end of March  marks the end of winter, and the beginning of being outside again! :-) Of course, today it was snowing, so I can't say it has necessarily been warmer, but all the little birds and squirrels are going crazy in my yard, so it must be spring. :-) Here's how I did on my goals for this month. :-)

Finish my projects from last month: the Frenchy table and my website.

I finished refinishing (is that good English?) the Frenchy table. FINALLY! Pics to come. We are working on the website, but IE is giving us issues. Gotta love Microsoft. :-)

Finish current sewing projects; a tree skirt and a table runner. I finished the table runner at the beginning of the month. I just need one more spool of ribbon for the tree skirt, which I will pick up next week. The picture at the top of this post is my tree skirt in progress. I really love how it is coming out.

Continue scrapbooking (and decluttering the scrapbooking stuff) Hmm. Nope. Never touched those boxes. :-)

Finish the loveseat we started a while ago. Yes! All done! Pictures to come soon. I love it and it adds so much style to our living room.

Update the castle tour page with new pictures. Yeah.... never happened. This one is carrying over to next month. :-)

Finish editing old pictures. YES! I am all current on all of my personal photos. This is BEYOND exciting. :-)

Continue purging and decluttering. I took a trunkload of stuff to Goodwill. I mostly focused on finishing up projects this month, and not much decluttering. Me thinks April will bring more decluttering. :-)

Finish reading Oliver Twist. Hmm. Nope. But, I did read three other books this month. So that has to count for something. ;-)

Start reading another classic. (Maybe La Alahambra?) See above. :-) I am now two books behind my goal. Maybe saying that will motivate me? I'm not counting on it. :-)

Tomorrow I will post my goals for April. You're at the edge of your seat, aren't you? :-) Don't worry, I am not at all offended if you skip this post and the next one in your reader. :-) These are purely for my benefit. :-)

 

 

Replacing Sepia Pictures with COLOR!

When we redid the dining room, I hung a series of coordinated frames on the wall with sepia prints inside. Those are the pictures up in my header, and I took the majority of them. I liked them a lot, but after a while I realized that there was just too much brown going on in that area.

So, I put it on the backburner of my mind, where I mull over projects until I figure out what to do about them. This was the beginning of last year, when we were incredibly busy traveling. One of those trips was our trip to Spain, where I took many, many pictures.

When we got back, I knew I wanted some of those pictures I had taken hanging in our home. And then it hit me - replace the sepia pictures with color pictures! So I did. Eventually. :-)



And I love them. I love the colors, and the different memories that they hold. I love that they are from Spain, and that they remind me of the years that I lived there. Here are a few closeups.

I loved all the pots this lady had on her balcony. Summer must be beautiful here! :-)

I love old, chippy doors with interesting architectural details. This blue one was one of the first things I took a picture of when we arrived.

I can't tell you how much I love this picture. Something about it just screams Spain to me. The wrought iron, the drastic shadows, the shuttered doors, the balcony. Ah, Spain - I miss you!

Another chippy old door and a very cool lantern on a bright yellow wall. So pretty. :-)

So those are the pictures I selected for this wall grouping. Here's a wider angle of that side of the dining room to show you how the color pictures really warmed up the space.

So pretty. They make me smile every time I walk in the room. And they make me miss Spain. A lot. :-)

 

A Sewing Machine Project: A Cover!

Last month I mentioned that I finally completed a few sewing projects. One of them was a cover for my sewing machine. I figured since I can be a bit... slow about completing my sewing projects, which, in turn, means that ,y machine sits for a long time collecting dust, a cover was in order. This is project I've been meaning to get around to for, oh, well, forever. :-) I had dreams of making the cover all fitted and proportional, with piping along the edges, and smooth, even seams. And so the machine sat there, cover-less, collecting dust. Finally I decided it was more important to just HAVE a cover than to make it all perfect and time consuming. Here's the finished project.



I simply measured the height, depth and length of the machine, and cut two side pieces and one piece long enough to go from one end, over the top, down the other end. Then I ran two long seams, hemmed the bottom, and voila! A sewing machine cover. Easy. Breezy. Covergirl. :-)



I used some leftover linen I had from my lampshade recovering project. The cover was looking a little plain, so I printed out the word "sew" in a font that I liked, and slid it underneath the front of the cover. Then I held it up to a window and traced the font outline with a pencil. Then I just used a fabric marker to fill it in with light strokes.

I'm hoping it works as a sort of subliminal message reminding me to sew. So far it has worked a little. :-) I'm working on my tree skirt, and a few other little projects. And I am psyching myself up to make a few dresses an skirts. I'll let you know how that goes.

The sewing machine was my mom's. She went to school for fashion design, and this was her first machine. So even though it goes all wonky from time to time, I love that it has a history. :-)