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Here we are, the puppy and I updating you all from our new apartment. After about a week and a half of moving, shopping, and unpacking, and oh yeah, working, I’m pretty much all unpacked. There’s still one big wall with five or six pieces of art leaned against it waiting patiently to be hung. And the coat closet is still waiting for a curtain to artfully (hopefully) cover it up. But otherwise, everything else has found a home. Including the eight throw pillows that I furiously sewed covers for to cope with the stresses and excitement of the whole move:
Please ignore the wrinkles, tennis balls, and puppy hair (you might not be able to see it on the photo but it’s there). You might recognize the floral Anna Maria Horner voile. At one point I had dreams that it would be a skirt. After several failed attempts, I think it looks pretty nice on my couch.
All in all, this new life is pretty excellent. Everyday flies by and I find myself rushing rushing rushing to relax for an hour or so before bed and enjoy the summer breeze. No complaints here.
The rain finally came down on Saturday and beat down the heat. My Mom and I took the opportunity to make up a batch of freezer raspberry jam. Raspberries are my all time favorite berry and, obviously, make my favorite jam. My Mom spent a morning picking at a friend’s house and came back with more quarts than we could ever eat fresh (even though I have been trying my best). So a few days ago she tested out the freezer jam recipe her friend suggested (which appears in the Sure Jell Pectin box). I don’t know much about jam making and canning, but as far as I can tell, freezer jam makes a lot more jam per amount of berries, has a fresher taste and involves less sterilizing and jar boiling because you always keep it refrigerated. And it is extremely delicious.
One half hour + 2 quarts of raspberries = 5 big mason jars of jam to keep me going until next berry season…or for quite a while anyway.
A new town and a new apartment called for some new bedding. I found sheets and pillow cases without a problem, but when I started searching for a comforter cover, I was pretty surprised. Even at Target a 100% cotton cover with a decent thread count was somewhere around fifty to a hundred dollars. Now, I think we all know that a comforter cover is two flat sheets sewed together with some buttons, and I bought my 400 count flat sheets for 7.99.
So I figured, I’ll just make my own cover. But here’s where the home decor industry gets tricky. They only like to sell sheet sets. So if you want to make your own cover, you’d need to buy two sets, and by that time you almost should have just paid the artificially inflated cost. Luckily, I found two lovely high-quality silver/gray flat sheets at my local discount store. Home decor industry: 0, Emily: 1. So Friday afternoon, still sweating in our week long heat wave, I got to work on my comforter cover. For a complete tutorial, check out my Hubpage. Otto also helped:
This project had one unintended effect. I learned that I am a true unflinching creature of habit. I probably should have realized this when eating the same lunch for months in a row, or sitting in the same seat in giant lecture halls for the entire semester, but when I really figured it out was when I came home from my bedding shopping trip. With a bag full of purples, tans, grays, and sage greens, I thought to myself “new colors for a new adventure.” And then I realized that these are the exact colors of my sheets in grad school…and undergrad…and high school. *Sigh*
Anyhow, here’s the finished product. I had to photograph it on my folks bed because my bed is currently covered with paper work and things that need to be packed. Throw pillow covers are on Saturday’s agenda.
After a week of trips to the hardware store, sweating in the once-a-year heat wave we’ve been having lately, sanding, gluing, staining, and oiling, I have discovered three things:
1. I love Minwax Red Mahogany Stain. It is the best and it was the perfect match to restore the six board antique chest.
2. I also love Gojo. It removes everything I manage to get on my hands minus the death factor associated with mineral spirits and paint thinner, and it’s exfoliating. So there you go, you should try it.
3. Happy mistakes. I learned this from my elementary school art teacher who was constantly facing budget cuts and used the term to keep us from running through a year’s worth of construction paper and paste in one week. And I am now applying this when I mess something up and can’t bear to go back and fix it. Most notably when I didn’t get every last speck of paint off the bureau and it created a sort of spotted (or pleasantly aged) effect when stained. But I did paint the knobs teal, so you can hardly tell…
And here are the finished products! I threw some intermediate pictures in there to show the process.
The Chest:
The Bureau:
The Sewing Machine Table:
Now that the furniture is all ready to go, I’ve moved on to the textile portion of my first apartment decoration  Coming soon: how to make a duvet cover for $20.
On Wednesday, I found an apartment. A beautiful, sunny, close to work and town and places to walk the puppy apartment. But more importantly, an unfurnished apartment. I’m so excited to move in, but I don’t own much furniture of my own. Luckily, my whole family has been extremely generous and between my parents, aunt, and my boyfriend’s parents, it looks like I’ll have some places to sit and eat and sleep. Hurray!
So this morning I set to work getting my very kindly donated furniture ready to go. Here are the before pictures of the first three victims.
This is a six-board antique chest from my Aunt. It is so beautiful and I’m almost afraid to touch it. Still, there are a few watermarks on the top and I’d like to protect it from myself with a few coats of something just on the top. I think I’ll be able to take a few layers off the top and slap on a few layers of polyurethane:
And this table is going to be my new sewing machine table. It’s nice and big and there are some big changes ahead for it:
This bureau came from my boyfriend’s parent’s house. I love the way it looks but after years in my boyfriend’s childhood bedroom, it needed some love. After a morning at the hardware store and a few phone calls to my Dad, I think it’s nearly good as new and ready to a new look:
Stay tuned for the after photos.
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