Finally....5 Years Later!

Warning: PICTURE OVERLOAD!

Derrick and I have been together for 5 Octobers. That's kind of crazy to think about.  I've told him every year that I want to go to a corn maze. He finally took me!! 5 years later!!  I found a groupon for a dog-friendly corn maze in Archdale, NC.  Archdale?? Yeah, that's what we said. But it was dog-friendly so it was a no-brainer.  The groupon was for 4 people so we invited our pals Jeff and Courtney along and their Golden Retriever Lucy.  It was everything I had ever dreamed of!

There were families with actual children waiting in line behind us to pose on these giant pumpkins :)

This is probably my favorite picture of the weekend and it's because of Lucy.

So, Farmer Joe is missing and there are 7 animal suspects, 7 weapons, and 7 locations. You have to find 6 checkpoints throughout the maze and each one will rule out a suspect, a weapon, and a location. Can you solve the mystery?   It was the goat...obviously.

This is what the maze looks like from above. They use GPS-navigated plows to plow out the image. Pretty cool.

She just barely made it.

After the maze we took a tractor ride around the property and learned about how they made the maze.

Crosby was not OK seeing the ground move underneath her feet. She almost pulled herself out of her collar and jumped off so she sat on my lap for the whole ride.

Lucy loved it though!

Lucy is one of our favorite friend's dogs because she's hilarious. 

A 5-year wait was totally worth it, but now that I know what I'm missing, Derrick's not going to get away with another 5 years until our next visit!

Signs of a Good Week

It's been a good week.

I've seen my best friend a lot this week and it's been great. We sometimes go a couple weeks without seeing each other or exchanging more then a few texts, and then we have weeks where we see each other everyday.  It's how we work and we are both OK with it. I've seen Nikki everyday this week and have plans to see her tonight too.

Nikki has been taking care of Steve and Somer's pup Kiwi this week. She is high energy and requires lots of exercise so I picked her up one day while Nikki was working and tired her out. She and Cros even get along which is an added bonus. Here's Crosby teaching Kiwi that the bridge is not in fact terrifying.

I received an award at work this week! And, despite it looking like a terrific kid award with some Microsoft Office clip art, it's actually a pretty big deal. I got the rising start award for September which means I had the best September out of all of the agents in my office within their first 12 months of business. My Mom gasped and oooed and ahhhed :) Such a good Mom.

I finished my dining room chairs! The living room was a wrecking zone during this project. Derrick told me "these are the times when you should be happy that a messy house doesn't bother me."

I worked on several projects for Nikki and Justin's impending Harry Potter engagement party. It's going to be epic! Crosby helped too.

And last night, Derrick and I joined several friends at Trivia. We haven't been to Trivia in a long time. We were teamed up with Courtney, Jeff, Justin, and Nikki and we were tied for 1st going into the last round. This form of trivia is really fun...you wager points based on how confident in your answer you are. We ended up wagering it all and missing the last question!! I don't know where we ended up, but we didn't place. It was a fun night though.

And tonight Nikki, Claire, and I are taking a walk around Lake Lynn. We will be out numbered by dogs and it will probably be raining. I'm planning on breaking out my winter boots because it's freezing!!!

Hope you all had a great week too!

Spoke too Soon

Remember 24 hours ago when I told you I was going to move ahead with my fabric on my $15 thrift store wingback chair? Yeah, within an hour of posting that I was second guessing myself. I just thought the giant print would be too much on a chair with that much fabric. There was nothing to break it up and I was just having doubts.  One of my best friends, Alison, is a sounding board for lots of my fabric-y projects because she is a fantastic sewer and has a great eye. She was the one that originally told me she wasn't so sure about that fabric on the wingback and I'm so glad she did. I was talking to her today, and she suggested using it on my dining room chairs!  Why didn't I think of that????

Remember way back when we got married and our parents housecrashed our apartment while we were living it up in Jamaica and put our entire apartment together? Best present ever! Well, they also surprised us by getting our dining room chairs reupholstered. They were a coffee color and looked like they belonged in a doctors office.  Well.....I loved the thought of it, but I didn't quite fall head over heels for the fabric. It was a fantastic upgrade to what was there, but something just didn't jive with me.  Don't worry...I called Mom before I took this project on to make sure I wouldn't hurt her feelings. Mom and Dad are the best. They just want us to be happy and Mom was in no way offended :)

So...Here's where we started. Cute right? But I'm high maintenance. I know it, Derrick knows it. Not high maintenance in the sense that I take forever to get ready in the morning (serioulsy...Derrick has to remind me to shower...) but high maintenance in the fact that I know what I like and what I don't and I haven't quite mastered the art of subtlety.

This was a learn as you go project which should be no surprise. At this stage of my reupholstery life, this is only the second project I've taken on. It really is easy though and if I can do it, you can do it!

First step is taking it apart. I started with the seat because seats are easy and the way it was put together was very straight forward. See those pins with the screws? That's all that's holding the seat in place and there was one in each corner.

Just unscrew those screws from the pins and your seat pops right off. Easy peasy!

Next I studied the back of the seat. It looked pretty straight forward. I'd never seen that black plastic used before but I made sure to save it and reuse it. I think it's purpose is just to cover up the raw edges of the fabric to make it look more finished and also to avoid fraying.

First step is taking out the staples. You cannot live without needle nose pliers and a flat head screw driver during this phase. Also, it helps to have Say Yes to the Dress on in the background because you're going to be here a while. Take the staples out that are holding the black plastic and then get to work on the fabric. You can also see in the picture below that I labeled where the screw holes were and which was the front and back of the seat.

This step is not necessary, but probably helpful. How do I know it's not necessary? After I recovered it with my fabric I couldn't see my screw marks and after putting the seat back in place, I realized I mixed up the front and back labels.  So....yeah.

I decided to reuse the batting because it was in perfectly good condition so I just peeled the fabric off of the batting. Now..reassembly time.

I used the fabric I pulled off the seat as a pattern. If you have a patterned fabric, make sure you pay attention to the direction it is going and how you want it to go on the chair. I cut my fabric about  an inch larger on each side. I don't really know why...I just wanted to make sure it wasn't too small and you can always trim it up later. I also went ahead and cut out the fabric for the other 3 chairs while I was at it so I could iron them all at once.

Once your fabric is ironed, lay your seat on the backside of the fabric and center it. I just put four staples in at first to make sure the pattern was nice and straight. You want to pull it nice and tight. I stapled all the way around except for the corners.

Once you have everything stapled but the corners, just fiddle around with them until each corner looks pretty. Then the seat is done! This next part was something I have never done before. The top part of the chair is held in place by hidden screws. See those dark circles on the side of the chair? That's wood putty hiding the screws. I googled around and there are different types of wood putty and different ways to remove it. I got lucky that mine was still pretty soft, so I just carved it out with a pair of scissors. I laid the old seat fabric under the chair though because that stuff will make a mess.

In this shot you can see the screw hiding in there.  

Once you get all four puttied holes cleaned out you just unscrew the top.

This is where I was able to see exactly how this was put together. The fabric is a big rectangle that is folded over the top of the chair so it looks nice and clean, but stapled along the bottom because you can't see that once is't reassembled. It's also got staples along each side edge that sits flush with the sides of the chair so those staples are hidden as well. Just take all those staples out along each edge to remove the fabric.

 Here is a shot of what the fabric looked like when my parents recovered it. Whoever reupholstered it just decided to reupholster it over the existing fabric. I decided to remove the green and yellow fabric 1. because my fabric has some white in it and I didn't want the old fabric to show through and 2. because there were so many staples in it, I wasn't sure I could staple even more in successfully. I did, however, reupholster right over this coffee colored fabric. I figured if it had been done before, it would be fine this time.

Tuck and staple and work the fabric til it's nice and tight. Then just reassemble it, putting the screws through the now open puttied holes and back into the chair. One of my screw holes was stripped and it was making the top of my chair wobbly. I'm not sure how this worked but it did. I put some hot glue down the hole and waited for it to harden and then just screwed into the hot glue...It worked and I felt like a genius. Here's the finished chair!

Three more to go!

Chair Fabric

I've had some mixed reviews on the fabric I've picked for my chair but I've decided to move forward with it. The worst thing that could happen is I hate it and try again. Here it is draped around the frame of my chair.

I found a new, fantastic fabric store in Durham. It's called Not Just Linens and it's across from the Target on 15-501. They have tons of upholstery fabric and most of them are $9 a yard which is a really good price for the cute prints they have. So I was wandering through these aisles oooing and ahhing and trying to find the perfect one. My plan was to bring a couple swatches home to drape over the chair and take my time deciding.

Well, in the back they have a remnants table where they have bits and pieces of fabric left over from when the bolt runs out. It's usually a yard or less...if you're lucky you'll get two yards. This fabric was back on that table and I was immediately drawn to it. I found two yards and was going to bring it home for pillows. Well, then, I found 2 more yards, and then 3 more yards! That was enough for my chair. Not only that, but the remnant scraps are only $4 a yard. That is unbeatable!!

I can't decide if it's going to be too much on the chair. Some people I've talked to think it will be and I can see that. Others like it for the chair and I can see that too.  But I decided today that I'm feeling cheap and really don't want to buy more fabric so I'm going to go for it! If I hate it, I'll pull it off and make pillows out of the front and the back :)

In other news, Crosby rolled in poop today. As in, we went roller blading and were less then 20 yards from the car to go home and she rolled in poop. She earned a carwash hose down for that one.

OBX Wedding Bells

The whole reason for our weekend in the Outer Banks was to celebrate the wedding of our good friends Travis and Claire. Travis and Derrick used to work together at SMT and I helped them buy their first home together back in May. (I just realized that sentence sounds like I helped Travis and Derrick buy their first house together. I guess Claire and I will have to start our house hunt next). Since then, we've been hanging out regularly and even joined the climbing gym together. I am so glad to have them as new friends and we felt really honored to be invited to their wedding. It wasn't a huge wedding and it really made us feel special to get an invitation.

Derrick and I were resting from our lighthouse adventure in our room with a book and I glanced out the window and saw the groomsman posing for a photo down in the hotel courtyard. The photographer had them all posed so nicely I had to grab my own shot.

The wedding was just right outside our hotel which was fantastic. It was on the pier over the water which is such a cool idea. Just look how gorgeous it was! It was pretty windy out there but Claire and Travis handled it like champs. The ceremony was short and oh so sweet and Travis didn't even make it down the aisle before he was crying. Crying grooms get me every time! Claire looked stunning! And they wrote their own vows which are always amazing to hear. Derrick and I were not that brave so I always love it when other couples are brave enough.

After the ceremony we walked right into the pier house for the reception and party. It was such a cool space with wooden beams, chandeliers, and a view of the water. We sat at table 9 with two other couples we didn't know but became best friends with by the end of the night. Oh, and see that fruity, pink drink? Yeah...the bartender was very generous with his alcohol to mixer ratio. I had to ask him to lighten it up on my next one.

The favors were lottery tickets! Claire's family opens a lottery ticket after each Christmas? I think that's right....so they shared the family tradition with all of the guests. We didn't win but I've already spoken to Travis about that and he said he'll take care of it.

 I loved their ombre cake!! And it was delicious! Derrick and I had the white chocolate/key lime pie flavor it was amazing. We dropped Claire and Travis off at the airport at 5 AM on Monday morning so Claire gave us a to-go box with a giant chunk of cake. If you know Derrick at all, you know it was gone that same day.

This is the best picture I got of the Bride and Groom.  Too bad because her dress was freaking amazing. Their first dance was to the Mario Kart Love Song which I LOVE and Derrick had to tell me to stop singing it out loud while they were dancing. They also broke it down to Ice Ice Baby not long after and it was awesome. Claire could move in that dress and Travis is hilarious on the dance floor. He threw his jacket at Derrick and took off for the dance floor when the song came on.

Our new professional photographer friends took this picture of us. Best of the night :)

 

Here's our table friends for the night. Strangers to BFFs. Seriously, we had our own dance circle going on and even made breakfast plans for the next morning. They ended up not working out, but hopefully we'll see them again in the future. We are facebook and instagram friends now at least :)

And with the bride and groom. Didn't I tell you her dress was awesome??

Travis and Claire, you throw a kick ass party! Thanks for inviting us! We loved every second of it. Hope you're enjoying your week in Antigua! We'll pick you up on Monday night....maybe.