Handmade Home #10

Soon after we moved into our rental house (almost 5) years ago a friend was moving and offered to sell us her hutch. I jumped at the chance to have more storage in my kitchen which still mainly consists of plastic tubs under my countertops. 

I thought the dark stain was beautiful, but it had never been polyed, so it had a little bit of wear on it. We never polyed it either because I kept planning to clean it up first. You can see in the photo below all the calcium on the shelves from me not drying my dishes off before I put them away:

{The right drawer front had been refinished in this shot to test the stain}

I couldn't stand taking it to our forever house in it's current condition, so one Saturday morning I got Jimmy to move it to the patio for me to sand and re-stain. I'm pretty slow at projects, breaking them down into naptime sized time spots that I can work on them. Jimmy didn't want to live with me while I lived with dishes strewn all over my kitchen, so he took ownership of the project and finished it that afternoon. 

No more calcium stains!!!

It's so purdee! I love it! It is all nice and polyed now too. I cannot believe we found this stain. Usually the ones here in Petén are either tinted orange or purple. I haven't found this color since.

Jimmy really did a beautiful job!

Once we move I am going to just store my white serving dishes on it. Yay for future storage!!!

I finally finished reupholstering my desk chair I found at the new thrift store in Santa Elena. I loved the chair because there isn't a piece of plastic on it. It probably ways about 50 pounds... almost as much as Eden, haha! It took about 10 nap-times to finish, but they weren't consecutive. When the boys would wake up from their naps they would often wander into the office and ask me about my chair. They really wanted to help me spray paint it! 

First I made some patchwork fabric out of the leftover scraps from the sample pack of corduroy I used for Jonah and Silas' owls. 

Then I took the seat and back apart to use as a pattern. I found this in the process... pretty cool:

I have never made piping before. I used the rope that was inside the old one. It was fun to learn something new. This was a nice simple project, perfect for a beginner.

Here's the finished chair:

Since Christmas I've had a little more time to sit in that chair and sew! I still haven't gotten my hard drive back, so I only have instagram photos. I made some more Bible story finger puppets for the boys. 

Can you tell what Bible story this is from?! It has thugs and bears in it, perfect for Jonah and Silas! (Thanks, Amy, for the idea!)

I've made Eden some things too. This one is my favorite: