What an Eventful Week

We had quite an eventful week last week, and I am just getting caught up with everything.  It began last Friday with a much needed get-away with friends from college.  I headed to Birmingham to meet my "Section 1 Girls" for a slumber party.  (We had all of our classes together our Junior and Senior years at Alabama so we became very close.)  We spent the night reminiscing, catching up, and discussing everyone's crazy classroom.  While I loved teaching, it made me very glad to be at home with my sweet Sterling.  We had so much fun and all went out for lunch the next day.

Then I headed to Montgomery for our niece's birthday party.  Not before picking up Toy Story 1 and 2 and some books for Sterling's Easter basket.  I was pretty proud of myself for getting TS1&2 DVD/Blue Ray combo pack for $7 each!  We also got two free tickets for Toy Story 3 in the boxes.

You can tell Alex enjoyed that more than Sterling!

Sterling is on the left hand edge of the picture trying to escape!

Then I drove back to Gadsden spent the night and went to church.  At some point I trimmed Sterling's hair, and my own.

Thank you Disney for Winnie the Pooh.  His head stayed still the whole time.

Sunday night I headed back to Birmingham to meet my mom and sisters who had been in Nashville for the weekend.  We had plans to go to Birmingham on Monday to shop for Easter clothes and I wanted to go to a children's consignment sale early that morning so we decided to stay the night in Birmingham, which I must admit felt a little strange.  

Monday morning mom and I headed across the street to shop for Sterling's spring/summer wardrobe and got so many cute things, most of them even had the tags and plastic garment bags still on them.  We also got a steal of a stroller because I never got the stroller to go with my car seat.  It's a long story but I thought I was being practical and I had reasons.  But we have really needed a good stroller with good storage and Sterling and I have gotten much use out of it in the short time we have had it.

Then we headed of to get our Easter wardrobe.  As children my mom always had the whole family matching perfectly every Easter and Christmas.  Growing up we normally had matching dresses made by my grandmother and my mom had a dress made out of the same fabric as well.  Of course my dad always had the same colors in his shirt and tie.  As we grew older we stopped wearing the same exact dresses.  Mine was usually a little different (older looking) and when Jameson came along he always had something made to match us as well.  When I became a teenager we started "coordinating"  Meaning we had a color scheme that our dresses had to fall under but we were no longer cookie cutter images of each other.  The tradition still continues today and any one who lives in my parents house (they usually have at least one non-biological child living with them, a friend or a cousin) must match as well.  

This year the theme was Black and White.  We decided to let everyone pick their own "pop" of color.  Alex and I had yellow, mom and dad - red, and it turned out that all other siblings picked hot pink.  (Pictures of Easter to come)

Tuesday was spent washing new clothes, taking a walk with our new stroller, and organizing clothes for storage and putting away winter clothes.

Wednesday I had a cookie craving so I made Easter cookies during Sterling's nap.

Thursday began the furniture refinishing extravaganza.  Over the weekend Alex cleaned out the garage, mowed the lawn, and washed the cars. While I began refinishing inherited furniture.

I love rich, dark furniture and our current computer desk just doesn't fit with the rest of the room. Plus it is way too big for our guest room. I also love having furniture with a history.  It is even better when you know what that history was!  Alex's grandmother left us a maple bedroom suit.   So we decided to use Grandmom's vanity for our computer.  But first it needed a facelift!

Here is a before pic

After a few coats of stain.  What a difference!  Now, I just need to apply a final coat of polyurethane and pick out some cute drawer pulls. The grand total for the refurbished desk about $20.

We did learn one important lesson through this.  It is better to sand by hand instead of using a power sander when staining.  The power sander left some marks that we couldn't sand out.  I think the dark stain and poly will cover it, but if you are doing any refinishing skip the power tools and do it the old fashioned way.  It was actually no harder to do it by hand especially considering how heavy that sander was.

We are also replacing my futon from college with some beautiful Victorian chairs.  We never purchased pieces to go with our sofa because our first apartment was so tiny and our couch was so huge no other seating would fit.  Right now we are using my futon which is covered in some pretty fabric but we have really been wanting to replace it with some chairs (more grown up).  Again we lucked up with some pretty antique chairs from "Grandmom's Attic."  So I am learning to reupholster

Here is a before shot of the chairs.  They have potential right!

 

Here are some pictures of the deconstruction.

Notice the cup sitting on the stool.  That is full of upholstery tacks that I had to pry out with needle-nose pliers.  I think there were about a thousand and I am only done with one chair.

Now I have to pick out fabric, respring the chair, and replace the horsehair and cotton with new foam and batting.

We took a break from all that working to bribe Sterling to walk.  We both had a fist full of goldfish, but he had to walk to us to get one.

Now on to what you have been waiting for:  Easter Pictures!

We had a great day at Alex's parents house Easter afternoon.  We have actually been going to the Vaughns' for Easter lunch way before Alex and I were ever a "thing."  Sterling had so much fun with cousins, grandparents, and aunts and uncles.  He actually did a lot of walking and has been choosing to walk much more ever since!