And now a word on lavender.  I was so excited by this news because I personally love lavender. Not only is it easy to grow, it is a beautiful addition to any garden, AND it is a natural mosquito repellent. Lavender also smells divine and tastes wonderful, especially in the form of  lavender crème brûlée and lavender martinis.

Anyway, back to moths. As I stated before, I am not taking any chances.  Therefore, I made sachets using both cedar and lavender. I used scraps of burlap and fabric to complete this simple project and placed one of each in all of our closets. Take that moths!

As a a little insurance, I am currently rooting a couple pieces of Eddie.  It is always important to plan for the future just in case my green thumb turns brown.

Anyway, here are a three examples of new additions to our home that I bought at a few of my favorite places – thrift stores, consignment shops and craigslist.  I have to confess that the little black chair needed to have one bolt replaced to make it like new and the tulip table required a little reassembly. But as you can see, Jed and Mattie Windsor completed this task with absolutely no help from me.

There was one room left to paint on the second floor of our new house, so it was only inevitable that our guest room was going to get a facelift in 2012.  Once again we chose Silver Satin by Benjamin Moore to brighten up the walls and to cover the pre-existing drab olive green.  (It is amazing how many rooms and hallways you can paint with one five-gallon bucket of paint.)  Priming and painting this room truly was a family affair resulting in all three members of the Hurt family yielding rollers and paintbrushes.  At less than two years of age, Mattie Windsor has already taken an interest in all of my projects and is quite the little apprentice.  We entrusted her with her very own paintbrush and her skills were topnotch.   She followed instructions well and actually painted the walls and NOT the furniture, the floor, her stuffed animals, etc, etc.  In fact, I think she may have managed to get less paint on her clothes than I did.

After the monumental task of painting was over, I sat down to my sewing machine.  The twins beds got new bed skirts made from burlap as well as new toss pillows.  On the walls, I hung a pair of glass doors that we discovered in our basement and think may have originally gone to the bar in our dining room.  I also incorporated the ladders from Climbing Papa’s Ladder  and used them to hang a vintage tablecloth and various other small items.   Last but not least, I stacked books everywhere, so it was only appropriate that I also add a cozy chair by the fireplace (see There is more than one way to crack an egg.)

We are expecting our first guest next weekend (Jed’s Mom) and hope she finds the updated space to be a serene home away from home.

Lately I have been pretty obsessed with getting my hands on an old ladder. Ideally I would love one of those vintage industrial ladders on rollers that you sometimes see in libraries. Low and behold, they are not only hard to come by, they are also rather pricey. Not to mention, the walls of our house are not exactly lined with built in bookshelves to accommodate such a ladder.

This brings me to my next ladder idea. Perhaps it would be nice to have a rustic ladder to simply prop against the wall to hang vintage linens. Sadly, the cheapest option that I have found to date was around $50, and I could not quite justify the cost.

And then a few days ago, I was checking out http://youresojane.blogspot.com/ where I came upon a photo of a ladder hanging sideways on a wall in order to be used as a shelf. When I showed this to Jed, he immediately gravitated toward the idea. Then he went on to suggest that I use his grandfather’s old wooden ladder which happens to be broken and sitting down in our basement collecting dust. Why hadn’t I thought of this? And better yet, it was a standing ladder that could be sawed into two pieces, so I could have TWO ladders. And you guessed it – one is now standing up holding a vintage tablecloth and the other is hanging sideways from our picture molding waiting to be adorned with various small lightweight objects.

Not only did I upcycle an old broken ladder into two, but I did not have to spend a dime to get the look I wanted. Papa would be proud.

Within hours of bringing it home, I stripped off the unsightly back and arm cushions. I decided to keep the vinyl exterior and give it a thorough cleaning. My original plan was to reupholster the inside back and recover the seat cushion. Upon further investigation, I determined that the majority of the chair was made of a hard styrofoam, and there was very little existing wooden frame. Unfortunately, it is next to impossible to get staples to stay in styrofoam. My first reaction was to take the whole chair outside, set it by the trash can, and give up on it altogether. After a couple of days of watching it sit there (luckily it did not rain), I welcomed the chair back inside and was ready to plan my next attack. After a little brainstorming, I opted to conceal the inside back of the chair by draping it with my Dad’s old army blanket. Afterwards I recovered the seat cushion and added a burlap toss pillow. Perhaps it was not my original vision but sometimes the best results occur when you have to change your strategy.

Each year I struggle to find the right spot to display all of the Christmas cards that enter our mailbox throughout the holiday season.  This year I decided to get creative and use a couple of picture frames that I bought at a yard sale for a total of two dollars. 

After disposing of the less than desirable artwork, I decided to utilize of my favorite craft materials – chicken wire.  I stapled a large piece on the back of each frame and then snipped off the sharp edges.  The whole project took less than thirty minutes, and it is easy to tuck our cards amongst the wire.  The frames are displayed in the foyer by our Christmas tree where they are slowly being filled with photographs and messages of holiday cheer!