Back in the Swing of Things

Life is settling back down around here. Daughter 2 has returned to school in South Carolina, and will be leaving for Italy for the semester on Friday. Our downstairs bathroom remodel is finished, except for a bit of touch up painting and the hanging of towel bars. Those items will be done today! Then I post the official "before" and "after" photos. The master bathroom remodel will begin next week. Hubby and I will move into Daughter 2's bedroom for the duration.

Daughter 1 had her first bridal shower a couple of weeks ago in Georgia. What a fun day it was! All the photos are on Emily's camera, so I'll have to get them from her. Below is my present to them.

She'd requested a rust and teal quilt, simply squares sewn together. She even picked out the fabric, a lovely Joel Dewberry collection. I was happy with the results (and so were they).

I'd gotten some questions here about my dining room table (formerly our kitchen table). After 26 years of family meals, it was dinged and worse for wear. So slowly, but surely, I've been refinishing it. The worst part was stripping it. Messy. Smelly. Goopy. Yuk!!! Then I progress to lots of sanding and 4 coats of dark walnut stain. Then I finished up (yesterday) with the final coat of polyacrylic finish. I applied 4 coats of this in total. Ta Dah! I'm very happy with the results - especially since I'd never refinished a piece of furniture before!

I'm still looking for new dining chairs. I found some I adore, but the price was overwhelming, to say the least. I'm going to check with the manufacturer in North Carolina to see if I can get them cheaper by buying direct.
We took down the old chandelier this weekend. What you don't see here are all the crystals - dozens of them. Hubby carefully removed them for me to clean. I wanted to find a new home for it; I decided it would look beautiful hanging in our downstairs bedroom. I'm going to clean it, spray paint the ugly brass a lovely ivory color. Then it be hung in its new spot, and the crystals will be put back in place.
Here's our new dining room chandelier - I do think I'm in love with it. (Can you be in love with a light fixture?)
In the background you can see two new lamps. They seem to balance the room, and if you look closely, you'll see that the brown dots are big buttons. I do love buttons.

So we are making progress around here. This room only needs a rug, and of course, the dining chairs.

Meanwhile, I'm ALMOST done with my latest t-shirt quilt, and I continue to have hexie love each night in front of the TV. I almost forgot - I had my two year blog anniversary last week! WOO HOO!