Archives For Dining Room

Confession: sometimes in photos of my dining room I retouch the huge scratches on my wood floor. They’re from the edges of another piece of furniture that sat there ages ago and used to be hidden under the sofa, but now that we have two chairs there the scratches are pretty obvious. You can see them if you look closely below in this old photo that has not been altered at all, even to adjust the lighting.

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Can you see them? They’re right by the legs of the chairs. Now compare to the photo below, taken yesterday and also not altered in any way (other than to resize it for posting). Try and spot those scratches now!

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They’re still there but much, much less apparent, thanks to something so simple-olive oil!

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See? I didn’t even edit out all the dirt on my floors. This is total honesty, people. I just poured a little olive oil on a paper towel every night around dinner time and rubbed it on there, going with the grain. I wiped off the excess and that was that. Repeat once a day until you’re pleased. I didn’t remember to do it every day and still saw results within a week. It’s not perfect, but it’s pretty much a miracle cure if you’re not willing to sand and refinish your floors. I wonder if it would have any effect on the giant watermark in the living room?

Happy Friday, y’all! I hope you have a great weekend!

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I have never been one for decking my entire house in seasonal decor. I’m totally not knocking those who do, I’m just not nearly organized or energetic enough to manage that kind of thing year round. Even my Christmas decorations have been on the understated side the last two years. But I do like to change up a few things here and there to acknowledge the time of year, even if I’m the only one who notices. All of my “fall decor” can be spotted in the photo below (pantsless baby and Halloween cat included).You can see also that I’ve been making some progress in general decorating-I got a storage ottoman to slide under the sewing table and hung a few more frames on the wall.

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On the sewing table: a metal pumpkin that I bought at my first ever estate sale and a short cylinder vase full of pinecones I found in my parents’ yard.

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On the bookshelf: the mason jar lid pumpkin that I made last year and a couple of leftover pinecones tossed into the silver bowl that was already there. The cylinder vase was full but it seemed a shame to put the remaining pinecones into a drawer, so here they sit for now.

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And lastly, Halloween Cat! Actually, her name is Sheila, and she’s difficult to catch on camera because she avoids Jack and Juliet (both of whom are almost always on my heels). She is very sweet and well-behaved and I love her.

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I don’t even have a pumpkin on my porch yet! We were going to hit up a local pumpkin patch on Saturday but since it was expected to storm all weekend we postponed, then of course the weather was gorgeous most of the time. Maybe next weekend!

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Last winter when I was making a bunch of items using vintage book pages to sell in my shop I found myself with a pile of scrap pieces of paper that I couldn’t use. So I did what any sensible person would do-I put them in a jar, hoping that someday I’d find a use for them and maybe I’d just enjoy their prettiness in the meantime. Well, my friends, that day has come. I used some of the larger scraps to make these little paper tassels that you saw on my dining room frame wall yesterday.

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This project started on a whim while I was drowning my sorrows about LSU’s loss in a bottle of Abita Saturday night. It was only after I’d already completed the first two tassels that I thought, “hey, I should blog about this,” and snapped a few pictures with my iPhone. Step one: collect some long and thin scraps of paper. These were mostly the margins, which had too much white space to use for most other projects but worked just fine for this one.

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Stack them up nicely and pinch them firmly together.

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Then twist, baby, twist.

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Fold over in half. More pinching.

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Optional: use scissors to cut the ends into points, alternating the direction of the slant as you see fit.

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Use some thin string to tie a knot around the top and voila-you’ve got a tassel. I wanted three tassels clustered close together so I tied them accordingly.

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I stuck them up on the wall with a couple of brass tacks that I already had. I’ll be honest-I wasn’t at all sure how they would turn out (which is why I didn’t initially think to photograph their construction), but I’m really pleased! I think it’s sort of symbolic that there are three of them. One for each human who lives here.

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If you don’t have any scrap pieces of book paper lying around you can always find something worthy of destruction at a thrift store, but if that makes you squeamish you could use tissue paper, paper bags, or even fabric. Anything that doesn’t have a strikingly different reverse side should work. You can make them to any size just by cutting your strips shorter or longer. A whole garland of tassels in a warm neutral shade like this would be super cute for decorating a mantel or something of the sort for fall.

Thanks for reading, y’all, and I hope this Tuesday treats you well!

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This was one of those weekends where I felt like I was constantly working on something but didn’t really get much done. There are nearly a dozen half-finished projects scattered across the house and I feel like I’m losing my mind. But one thing I like about this particular project is that even though I’m only halfway done I can actually see it coming together, creating the illusion of accomplishment.

This area of our dining room has been through several incarnations. Back before I started this blog I had a dresser there that served as a buffet. Then I brought in a vintage sofa, covered it with a dropcloth slipcover, and called it a seating area. But recently I sold the sofa and coffee table and replaced it with a pair of vintage chairs and an old sewing table. The new setup allows much more room for Jack to play while I’m working in the kitchen and is easier to keep clean. A few weeks ago I hung an antiqued-ish mirror above the table, but it was still looking a little sparse for my taste and I knew that I wanted to hang more art and photos to fill the space above the chairs.

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I really wasn’t sure where to start, so I got out some graph paper to sketch it. As soon as I had it on paper I decided I wanted to have two clusters of frames that were each the same size and shape as the mirror. I feel like I’m not doing a good job of describing it but you’ll see soon enough.

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I measured out the size of the area I wanted to fill on my dining table, marked the edges with painter’s tape, then filled it in with frames I already had

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Once I had my arrangement loosely planned it was only a matter of hanging the first frame. I measured and marked so that the top of the frame would sit exactly level with the top of the mirror.

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I continued along the top row, keeping the tops level and spacing them so that the width of all three frames together was the same as the mirror.

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Then I moved down to the bottom corners. At some point I started using bits of painter’s tape to mark various spots as I measured.

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More frames…

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Eventually all my frames were hung and I’d only made maybe half a dozen unnecessary holes. I’m gonna call that a win.

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I was a little worried about the frames being so low right next to a chair, but shortly after I finished hanging them I walked in and found Nick sitting there completely unbothered. After he got up I used some museum putty to help stick all of the frames in place. This way they won’t drive me crazy by looking crooked every time I walk by or get messed up if someone brushes against them. Museum putty is a lot like sticky tack, except supposedly stronger but I don’t see a big difference. It’s awesome for securing pretty things in a house with not-so-careful people and animals. I need to use that stuff on the frames on our stairs!

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The next day I filled in the last frame with a photo I had printed at CVS and added some little whatnots to the larger empty spaces (I already had the big key; more on the paper tassels tomorrow).

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Nick was facetiming with his mom that night and when she caught a glimpse of the frame wall in the background she complimented it and said that I needed a colorful pillow to sit in that chair. I completely agreed and searched my house for the perfect pillow right then and there. This one might not stay forever but I dig it for now. If you look to the far right in this photo you can see that I’ve already started on the other side. I need to make a run to the thrift store for more frames and probably get a few more photos printed before I can finish filling it in.

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If I close one eye and focus only on this spot I can almost imagine that I managed to complete an entire project from start to finish. Almost.

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Next up: hanging more frames, adding some toy/game storage under the table, and maybe switching out the glass in the big frame for a real mirror to replace my fake antiquing attempt-I’m still not sure how I feel about it. Thoughts?

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