This Week & Last

Whew! it's been a busy two weeks around our casa, and I have so much to share! After I'm write this post up, I'll be working on several posts for next week and beyond, ya know things that are currently happening around here and I didn't have time to blog about. Back in April I decided I wanted to start sharing a quick week recap of the weeks events, so I don't forget the small special (and not so special) moments that happened during our week. Well this week I'm sharing two weeks full of what's been going on around our Casa including sneak peeks at projects that we are working on and life. 

The whole family pitched in doing yard work, Avery supervised. I love putting this small gently used travel play pen in our yard while I'm doing yard work, it makes yard work more fun and Avery loves watching. When he's two, I'll have to my buy a kiddie tool set :)

Tabari is officially a middle schooler, deep sighs and holding in my tears my munchkin is growing up into this handsome creative independent caring responsible (very) young man. He makes me so proud.

Adding string to the banners for Avery's first birthday, too many emotions for this momma so many milestones this week. His birthday party is on Saturday! I will share all the deets next week. Love that Hasani can multi-task while helping, lol

Time to say good buy to this oh-so-not-us fabric on our vintage outdoor sofa (well sofa we are transforming into an outdoor one!)

Saying good bye also happened this week. My BFF moved across the pond permanently to England to start her new married life with her husband! So lots of tears, the past few weeks { happy, sad & nostalgic }  Once she gets settled in, she promises to give is a virtually house tour of her new home, its an amazing cottage in the English countryside. I'm visiting her there next year!

I just discovered the show Felicity on Netflix Instant. Loved Season 1, I'm trying my best to get though Season 2, maybe her haircut is distracting me? lol Crazy when the show was on the air, I never watched. I love discovered new to me TV :) Thanks Netflix! And nope, I wasn't paid to say that, although if they are asking, I would so want to have that conversation with them! lol 

I've made yummy vanilla whipped cream frosting, love the pretty peaks my mixer makes.

Labels, I've made lots of pretty cute labels for Avery's birthday party. Here's how the drink labels looked. I made them using Publisher. Again, I'll share all the deets next week :) 

So that's what's been happening around our house, lots of me getting emotional because my boys are getting bigger. Lots of yard work, birthday projects, sewing and more. 

How was your week? Did you watch the show Felicity? Any old shows, I should check out?

Stack of Cushions

I'm so excited to share this update! Do you remember the vintage sofa I found at our local Salvation Army last month on my B-day no less? Do you remember I even even got in on sale, love that Thrift Stores have sales! Do you remember how ugly the fabric was? I know lots of questions, lol. If you do remember, then you know I was planning transforming the vintage sofa into outdoor sofa with the help of paint and new outdoor fabric. Of course we plan on storing the sofa in our garage during the cold / raining season, we wouldn't want to ruin all our of hard work. I'm here to share a portion of the updated vintage sofa! Right now Hasani and I are working on the re-doing the body of the sofa ( upholstering & painting ) and I wanted to share what has been completed! The cushions have been recovered & they look amazing. Here's a quick reminder of how the old cushions looked, decked out in old vintage fabric that was actually in perfect condition (just fugly) 

After looking ALL over the Internet for a good deal on indoor / outdoor fabric, I ordered two fabric samples from Warehouse Fabric both neutrals. We ended up loving the indoor outdoor fabric color Toast, its the perfect neutral backdrop for the array of colorful pillows I'm sewing for the vintage sofa and our outdoor dining furniture. I ended up buying 13 yards total of indoor fabric! Lemme tell you 13 yards is a lot of fabric!! I love when I order fabric and I receive it on a bolt, it makes cutting the fabric for sewing much easier. Anyways, I forgot to mention the insane deal I got on the fabric for, per yard I paid 6.98! That's an insane deal, because outdoor fabric is p-r-i-c-e-y. I love the texture of the fabric stiff but also soft, i prefer stiff fabric since we'll be using the sofa outdoors. The color is much light in person, the perfect soft beige, which you'll see in the pictures below. 

The vintage sofa has six cushions all together with piping and the thought of doing all that working left me feeling exhausted, I prefer sewing curtains and pillows. The last cushion I sewed for Avery's vintage ottoman was so much work and tiring, the flashbacks were stressing me out, so I decided to have a seamstress do the work for me. I'm really glad I made the choice to have that portion of the project done by someone else. These days with a little one crawling around and me just wanting to love on him, it was nice to hand-off the fabric and in return receive new cushions! In the past I've had really good luck finding vendors on Craigslist: our Wedding Photographer, Hair Stylist, Landscaper/Gardner to install our sprinklers in our front yard. So again I turned to Craigslist and found amazing seamstress, she's very talented which made me even more excited to have her sew the cushions for me. We agreed ed on a flat price for the sewing, I provided the fabrics three cushions & old covers to get the fit exact and zippers. Here are my new cushions, pretty perfect! I really like box cushions and I'm glad I decided to keep the look of the piping. For me piping adds a crisp look on cushions { my next sofa indoor one, most likely will have piping :) }

I also love how she did the zippers, they wrap nicely around the cushions making it super simple to take the cushions on and off. I bought three 30 inch zippers for the top cushions and three 36 inch zippers for the bottom. I just measured the old zippers to get the right size. 

I'll do a complete cost breakdown on re-doing the vintage sofa once its done! We plan on finishing up the sofa this week and then I'll be able to share next week? I'm hoping! :) 


What do you think so far?? Can you see my vision coming together?