jaina's cooking party!

Jaina chose cooking for her birthday party theme about six months ago, and we've been talking about it ever since. She knew she wanted to make her own food, and I knew I wanted to use all of my vintage pyrex. ;)

 I've brought home so many vintage baking and tin pieces from my grandma's this year, and I love being able to use them.

It's fun when your dining room decor goes along with you party decor. ;)

I was a little stressed thinking of planning a birthday party just a few weeks after my sister's wedding, but turns out make-your-own food parties are THE BEST!

I made pasta and quinoa salads the day before, the kids topped their own pizzas and decorated their own cupcakes! No staying up late melting chocolate and icing cakes!

 I've loved that red Costco stool ever since I was a kid, and I'm so glad my girls get to use it now.

Plus you don't have to plan any games since cooking is quite an activity on it's own.

  When you're four you start to look quite grown up. ;)

Now I'm hungry...

 While the kiddos were waiting for their pizzas they played in Jaina's play kitchen, and I made "grown up" pizzas for the adults. Pesto broccoli, pepperoni basil, and sausage spinach provolone.

We always have the guests sign a "birthday book". This year's was Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs. 

I came up with the idea for these paper chef's hats, and they couldn't have been easier. I printed a page with each kid's name on it - landscape and centered at the bottom. Then taped it to another piece of paper and drew the lines on with a fine-tip Sharpie. It didn't matter if the lines were wavy since it only helped to make it more realistic. Each kid also got their own apron for their favor.

I always wanna know what they're talking about!

That evening Jaina gave me a big hug and said she had sooooooo much fun at her party. So sweet!

This girl's gonna have some big adventures while she's four. Preschool, ballet, and who knows what else! She is kind, helpful, funny, responsible, thoughtful, and getting braver every day. I can't wait to see how she continues to grow!



Party Credits
Party Styling: Kara Hallead
Aprons: Hobby Lobby
Linens: Vintage
Dishware: Vintage
Chair: Vintage Costco stool
Banner paper: A.C. Moore

pinspiration

Just trolling the internet for mind candy.

How cute are these Princess Aprons from Vessel Handmade's Etsy shop?

 via French Larkspur

I never met a vintage cart I didn't like.

via Emily Henderson. Wig form turned lamp.

We saw three of these come up at an auction a couple weeks ago! 

I wanted to get one, but they climbed well over $100 within seconds.

 via Demco

I've loved booktrucks ever since I spent my college years working in the library. 

I feel like they would be very useful around the house and a new way to display books or dvds. 

Plus, as my husband would tell you, you could slap wheels on just about anything and I'd fall in love.

Who knew they were so expensive, though?! $300 is a bit steep for me. It comes in 20 colors, though. 

Lots of punchy ones, too, not just gray and taupe.

Ben at HomeMade Modern's wood and iron table. 

Zach scored some great weathered planks for free last weekend, 

so we're gonna tackle our own dining room table soon!

I keep coming back to the Jefferson Loveseat from Thrive Home Furnishings.

I love how comfy our couch is, and of course how red it is, but it is waaaaay too chunky for our little living room. It would be much better in a basement or rec room. This one is just so cool, and would fit the scale of our room a lot better. 

I love this print from Hand & Eye.

Do you get it?

It's "Tutti Frutti" by Little Richard!

And, finally, how cute is this Matryoshka carafe and tumbler? 

From Fred and Friends, of course. Their stuff is hilarious.

covering the naked cabinets

After taking the doors off of our cabinets, we were left with this.

A lot less oak, but a lot more... pressed laminate? Not sure, but it wasn't that nice to look at. So I looked up tutorials for covering the backs of cabinets and found this one by Pretty Handy Girl. (What did I do before Pinterest?)

You can look at her post for the full tutorial, but I started by cutting out foam board to the exact size of each shelf.

I made little masking tape tabs to pull them back out. Once the foam board is in place it kind of suctions itself to the back of the cabinet, so that tab saved me from clawing my fingernails off trying to get them back out.

Once the foam board was cut and I had tested to make sure they fit right I ironed my fabric. Then I cut them to about two inches wider than the boards on each side.

Try to line up the pattern when you cut out your fabric. I laid out my boards on top of the fabric just as they would appear in the cabinet only with three or so inches in between them. That way, vertically, the pattern stayed on track.

Then, I cut notches in each corner of the fabric so that it would fold over the edge of the foam board easier. I like this better than the "wrapping the present" method. It's less bulky.

After that, tape time! It would have been much easier with packing tape on a tape gun, but a buttload of masking tape will do. I made sure to pull the fabric taught around the board.

Then, I just popped them in place! It adds visual interest, that's for sure.

Putting the plates in really brought it all together.

Even though this was a more expensive "decorator weight" fabric, with sales and coupons, I think this yard cost about $8 at Joann's. Add that to the foam board, and this project only cost $11! And if we decide we don't like it, we could have the panels out and the doors back up in about 20 minutes.

It'll be a nice way to live with our kitchen until we're ready to make some more drastic changes.



This post is featured on The Pinterest Challenge: Winter Edition with these lovely ladies:

Check them out!

Megan from The Remodeled Life

Kate from Bower Power

Sherry from Young House Love

Michelle from Decor & The Dog

pining for oak... NOT!

I am so thankful for the size and layout of the kitchen in this house. I love that it opens to both the living room and dining room. I love that it came with both a gas range/oven and a dishwasher. I love that it has a built in desk that I can use as my hub. But I am soooooo over the oaktastic cabinets.

 When we first moved in. Don't worry, 

the birdhouse border came down immediately. 

The ceramic knobs soon followed.

Oak. I'm sure the trees themselves are nice, but I can't stand furniture made out of it. We have oak lower cabinets, oak upper cabinets, and to top it all off, we have that awful oak band around the laminate counter tops. Even our borrrowed-for-a-season dining table and chairs are oak. Sigh. It's all just so barfy yellowy with crazy veins running all through it. I know this is called "movement", and it's certainly making me want to move right out of this kitchen.

As my father told 10-year-old me after I chose the filet mignon for my birthday dinner, I have very expensive taste. But I also can't bear to spend extravagant amounts of money. How's that for dichotomy? It makes for a lot of guilt over purchases and jealousy over magazine pages. Both things God is helping me work on, daily.

So how am I supposed to come to grips with this kitchen situation? What is my approach going to be? A gut job is out of the question. That's way too expensive, and we wouldn't want to over improve for a small townhouse. Every project I come up with seems to have a domino effect on the rest of the room. If I want to paint the cabinets, then we might as well change the counters, in which case we should change the sink, and of course the faucet...

It's enough to really confuse me, so I'm trying to step back and get some inspiration.

Jennifer's Bright and Airy Mish Mash via Apartment Therapy Home Tours

Charley & Jessica's "Patina Clean" via Apartment Therapy Home Tours

Alex & Sarah's Traveler's Home via Apartment Therapy Home Tours

via The Lettered Cottage

I know this was from Elle Decor, but I can't find the exact page on the website.

via Better Homes & Gardens

via The Lettered Cottage

Don't you love gathering all of your inspiration photos together and finding the similarities? Obviously I'm digging white cabinets. And while it might not seem like it, there's actually a lot of natural wood represented, only it's on the horizontal work surfaces, not the cabinets. Another feature in nearly every photo: open storage. That is gonna be the easiest way to get the oak away from my eyeline.

So, back to real life, here are some steps we might be taking.

- Change hardware. We've already done this, and it helped a lot. I just wanted something clean and straight, no swirly-whirly, and the cheapest brushed nickel pulls at Lowes worked great for us.

These might not be the exact ones. I'm fairly certain ours came in a 10-pack for only $25.

- Take cabinet doors off. Since I don't think we could sell a house with floating shelves in place of upper cabinets (at least not in Hanover, in a town home community mostly populated by seniors), I'm seeing how I like having the doors off. It took two minutes to take them off, and it wouldn't take much more to put them back on, so it's an easy thing to try on for a while.*

- Paint cabinets. We really wanna do this, but I don't know if we're quite ready to pull the trigger. It's gonna be a LOT of work. Especially for a husband who's only home and coherent about two hours a day. But when I think of saying goodbye to all that pesky oak.... I'm ready to get to it.

- Replace counter tops. Since we'd really like to do this anyway, it only makes sense to replace them while we're painting the cabinets. We're not sure what we wanna get. Butcher block would look great with the white. Polished concrete would be INSANE. In the end, we'll probably do a granite-look laminate. It's pretty inexpensive, and it'll sell well when it's time to move on.

- Replace sink. Anything stainless. Don't ever buy a white fiberglass sink. It will not stay clean. The previous owners put all these scratches in it, and now it always looks filthy. It gotsta go. (Standard sinks are pretty affordable, so I definitely see this happening.)

- Replace faucet. Kinda goes along with getting a new sink. Why are faucets so darn expensive? Goodness.

 I'm digging this one from Lowes. $119 isn't a bad price, considering I saw some for over $1,000!

 So, there's a window into our plans for the future of this kitchen. Now we just have to have the guts to go for it!


*Check back for my post on lining the inside of the cabinets in funky fabric!

ikea trip

Hello blogosphere! I hope everyone had as restful of a holiday as we did! I loved having my little family together for Christmas, and we even had some snow!

We took Jaina on her first Ikea run the other day. She seemed to enjoy it.

 She looks like she's getting ready to go skydiving.

She's just starting to sit up, so I got her cart cover out for the first time since it has extra straps to help keep her steady.

The trip was for my Christmas present; the Stenstorp.

 Stenstorp from Ikea

I've been looking at this baby for a long time. It's been a childhood dream of mine to have a kitchen island (seriously. i had very practical dreams.), and now I've got this cute little island/cart.

Ikea is probably the most family-friendly store there is. Did you know that if you're buying an adult meal in the restaurant they have jars of baby food for free?!? They have stools for kiddos in the bathrooms and even "emergency diaper kits" in case you forget. It's one of the few stores my hubby actually enjoys going to, so I see many family trips to Ikea in our future.

Here's the Stenstorp at home in our kitchen!

Isn't she sweet? I love the stainless shelves. There's already waaay too much wood in this kitchen, and all in shades I never would have picked myself (except for the antique pie safe. that was my great-grandma's, and i love, love, love it!). The butcher block top is great, and we can always stain it darker if we want.

Relatively baby-proof items on the shelves 

since we're anticipating her independence pretty soon. 

(I love having my Le Creuset on there. 

Hopefully it'll be too heavy for her to move.)

Adorable pitcher and glasses from my grandma's collection.

I've already put my island to good use. We used it to roll out samosas with the aunties the other night. And since then I've dished out no-bake cookies on it and used it to make meringues in honor of Downton Abbey's return. I'm finding it so much nicer to use it for kitchen tasks like chopping and such; rather than facing a wall at the counter. It gets way better light, and I can face Jaina while she's in her bouncy chair.

Speaking of which, I'll leave you with a video of this crazy chick.