The Spinach House

This past spring/summer Eric and I had a garden where we grew spinach. WOW. Freshly grown spinach is amazing. It makes you never want to buy spinach from the store. So, in order for us to eat it FRESH all year round I decided to make a little indoor garden. I bought this thing at St. Vinney's for cheap ($5 maybe?) I liked the idea that it could have shelves and that it had doors so that our naughty kitty, Becker, won't go in there and dig around (and perhaps use it as a litter box, as he likes to do with all our other plants).

My intention was to put a shelf in here along with a grow light and have a mini greenhouse. Well, I first repainted and cleaned the nasty dirty glass. Then I fastened a grow light (18" from Walmart, the fixture was $7.98 and the bulb was another $8) and then put a shallow tray of dirt and seeds in there. Well, nothing happened. Eric insisted that it was because the seeds needed to be much closer to the light. So, we put in some boxes to lift it up. The seedlings were still reaching. So, we put in more boxes. I also noticed that when we opened the glass doors it seemed like a friggin' sauna in there and the soil always remained damp. Eric's mom then told us that spinach doesn't like to grow in warm/hot weather. So, I moved the "garden" along a wall so there isn't any sunlight coming in to warm the interior. That helped a lot. Just yesterday I put in brackets and cut a shelf so we can have a layer of seedlings starting on top and then another light fastened to the bottom of that shelf to grow already started seedlings into maturity. Let's see how my plan works. If this doesn't seem to work well I know I need to move it all to the basement where it doesn't get much warmer than 50 degrees or so (that's what Linda said was ideal). But, I hate to do that because I like how we've put other plants on top of it. Oh well, I'll do what we have to do!

Navy Show Jacket

I decided that my light blue show jacket is too long to ride in, so I quick whipped up this little hottie. I think I made it a bit too short, but it will be fine if I put a tank top underneath... in fact, you'll never know.

Project Complete- China Hutch

Here she is, folks. Doesn't it look so much nicer than the "before"?!



So, you can see where I put it, in the dining room where the liquor cabinet was. "Oh yeah, the liquor cabinet. Where did that go?", you ask. Well, it went here- right where the chair WAS.
That guy's going to the basement to get reupholstered because the cats sheared the arms with their claws. They must not have realized that it wasn't a fancy scratching post :(

Make Way for the China Hutch

A few days ago I found a china hutch on Craigslist for $10 and thought it had good bones. Before getting my hopes up I checked with the owner to see if the piece was made of real wood. To that question I was told that it's probably too light to be wood, but he wasn't sure what it was.... So, with hopes of getting a decent piece to work with, we went and picked it up. Surprise: there isn't a spot of real wood on the thing. Anyway, we took it home in hopes of working a little magic on it. As you can see, there were scratches

We went to Home Depot and got some spray cans of paint and quickly got home to work on it. We tried to sand the "wood" (I mean, plastic, fake wood) so we had a smooth surface to work with. That worked out okay, but we were worried about the little spots of gunky goo on it, so we gave the thing a bath in Goo Be Gone. We really tried to make sure this wouldn't come back to haunt us. We painted it, but some parts still bubbled up. Oh well. I sanded them down tonight and sprayed what I hope is the last coat of paint. Then all we have to do is put the handles back on the sliding doors for the bottom cabinet and install the sliding glass doors. I can't wait to see what it will look like in the house with our CHINA in it! Here's a sneak peak at it with primer...what color(s) do you think we went with for the final version?
Now, the question you might ask is, "Where on earth are you going to put that hutch, Carrie? You don't have any blank wallspace". Ahh, you're right. If you know my house, I have 2 fish tanks, both of which get algae build-up really quickly because of our skylights and windows. Well, I found a place to move the fish tank that was in the dining room to a new location. What do you think?

WAS: Dresser NOW: TV Stand

I bought this dresser at St. Vinney's on Willy St. back in March because I had a vision to make it a TV stand. The tag had it priced at $35.50, but when I checked out I found out there was a sale on the furniture so it came to something like $30. Then, as I was leaving the guys who helped me load it into my car noticed that there was a nice big mirror that came along with it. I gladly took that home, too, because big mirrors (with nice wood trim) aren't cheap! Anyway, the dresser came with legs but I didn't use them (which means I have some cool legs that I can use for another project in the future!) You can't tell but there were a ton of scratches on the dresser when I first got it.

I wish I had better tools to use for cutting through the wood, but I made do with what I have. I'm really proud of the turnout. Plus, it looks great in our house and it matches all of our wood.

Here is a shot that shows how the middle drawers have the fronts that pop open so you can access the media players. As you can see, I cut the fronts of the drawers off and put a piano hinge on the bottom so they flip down. Then I put a clasp on the top of each drawer so that they snap into place and aren't just able to open up at any time.

Modification of Siri's Blanket

My little girl is getting big. Her large foal sized blanket is too small and she's already fitting into a big pony sized blanket. I found an unused blanket on Craigslist for only $35, which is an amazing price because I've seen them new for $150+. The only downside to this blanket is that it was really big in the chest (because it's meant to fit a mature pony). I cut open the closed front, sewed strips of red jersey fabric onto the ends and then sewed strips of velcro across the chest. I'm happy with the way it fits her, and I'm also happy with the way it will be able to fit her for awhile because it's adjustable now.

The Showmanship Jacket

Here is the show jacket that I started last year with the pattern I received as a Christmas gift from my cousin last year. I'm quite happy with the way it turned out, though I can't believe it took me as long as it did to finish. That being said, it never saw its debut into the show world yet...hopefully it will for 2011. Wish me luck on that! (Oh, and wish me luck on starting/finishing the matching show pants!)