Moving and thrifting

We moved into our apartment in April and I finally feel like maybe it’s starting to look like a home. Still no couch, and we still have a twin bed taking up a large portion of wall in the front room, but we have art up on the walls, and the kitchen is freshly organized as of today.

I have a whole Pinterest board totally devoted to apartment decorating. Ideas on how to put up removable wall treatments, or how to make tons of space out of our itty bitty space. Seeing the reality when you are expecting so much perfection can be disappointing. I want everything to look cute, bright, and tidy, but currently our dresser doesn’t fit all of our clothes, and our closet is bursting at the seams with stuff other than clothes.  It’s a work in progress, and as we continue to live here we’ll have new ideas about our organizing. I am thinking that simplifying and possibly another trip to the Salvation Army might be in order.

Currently our “living room” is very bare, we have a table with one regular chair and one folding chair and a coffee table with a tv on it. No couch, no comfy place to sit.

Yesterday we had to drop some items off at the Salvation Army, and of course we had to get more stuff to fill the hole that our old stuff left.

What we got: an arm chair – $10, that’s all. Pretty good, if you ask me.

Comfy, but slightly dirty the chair either needed a good amount of lovin’. Because it was the weekend and we were feeling crafty we set out to reupholster the whole chair. We didn’t realize when we started how long it would take. But at the end we felt  quite accomplished and proud of our work.

We began by working backwards and taking off the fabric in the order that it had been put on. Not to hard right? Except that to get it off we had to remove hundreds maybe thousands of staples from the chair. Somebody had gone staple happy. Three hours later we were ready to move on to putting new fabric on the chair.

In the beginning there was this gross grey fabric.

The different layers that we had to take off the chair.

Almost there!

Just one pile of many.

Done!

We made a trip to the store to buy our own staples, staple gun and the fabric (7 yards total!). I had 50% off at Jo-Ann Fabrics. Booyah!

Getting artsy with the stapler.

Getting artsy with the stapler.

Then came the task of re-covering the whole chair. If you want to build yourself a stronger marriage — reupholster a chair together. It takes a whole lot of talking, crying, listening and trying to make sure you don’t staple each other. There comes a point when you’re just too tired, frustrated and scraped up to fold another piece of fabric, hammer another nail, or staple another staple. Take on this sort of project with someone you’re thinking of marrying and by the time you are done, you will know what kind of person they are, deep, deep, down inside.

I am really pleased with how our chair turned out. There were moments when we wanted to toss the whole thing out, but we powered through and now we have a nice new chair. Now we just need a second one! We might hold off on that for a little while though. 🙂

Learning to be creative.

It’s kind of funny how necessity can be the best teacher… or the best motivator.

Currently I have an editing position at a company that I love, however only having enough work for 4-6 hours gives me a paycheck that’s less than satisfactory. Hence necessity – in need of some extra cash I tried to figure out a way to bring in some extra money that didn’t involve going back to the deli.

My ideal job = getting to choose my own hours, sometimes I have the flexibility to work from home and the ability to be creative. When I dream of my perfect job I picture a sort of creative energy that flows from me into whatever work I am doing. In my imagination it looks like a blue cloud type thing.

This is when Klassic Kathleen’s was born. It takes a lot of courage to put artwork out there. I am dreading the day that someone buys one of my hand-drawn cards and isn’t satisfied with the product. This is where the learning comes in – learning how to run my own business, learning how to be proud and confident in the work that I produce, and learning how to be okay if others don’t appreciate it.

Through their art, the creative lays down their soul, making themselves vulnerable to the criticisms of others. This is an area where I am still growing and learning, but I hope that as I continue to create I can more easily share with others that which I make.

Oh and by the way, here is a link to my store: KlassicKathleens Enjoy!

Here’s to learning and doing things that scare us!