The High Chair!

It's done!  This is the pictorial evolution of an old wooden high chair, spray painted white for a first child, fancied up for the second!

Nice chair, but boring, right?

Bought all the paints, excited to get started.

Jackie picked the colors from several samples I brought home; left it up to me to decide  where they went.

Trying to come up with a plan!

Along about now, I was thinking "this isn't as easy as I thought it would be?!?"

I like the color combination!

Wondering what to do next...

Love the blue and pink, but too predictable.

The orangey color is my favorite!

Wondering if I should stop...

Starting to add the details.

This is fun!  (Hoping I'll know when to stop!)

OK.  At this point I decided the seat was too solid.  Even though Jackie doesn't like yellow, I thought it needed either white or yellow for a pop.  So I made a home depot run and bought some paint tape and took a chance!

Yellow.  Like the centers of the flowers.  Hope it looks alright.

Now what?  Not crazy about the stripes.

Maybe if the stripes are in more places?!?

And I know I'm going to put dots on the legs, so why not in the seat!?

It's coming together!  I think I like!

We're about 2 weeks in at this point.  Hmmmmmm.

I'm liking it, but I need to add the flowers to the inside of the arms too.  And I think I'll stripe the top of the arms like the back.  Apparently at this point I had decided to never quit painting on this chair...

I think the details are cute!

It's time to do the tray!

Had Jackie choose the font she wanted from about 10 or 12 options.  She narrowed it down to two.

For some reason, I didn't take any pictures of the tray until it was almost done.  Oh, and those are my toes...

I like.

Decided the arms of the tray needed a little something too.

Finished.  Just adding the 5 coats of sealer......

Put it all together to see how it looked.

Juliette is getting a high chair for her first birthday November 1st.

Shhhhh.  Don't tell her.  It's a secret!!

Love you Jackie!  Hope you love it!!!  And you can show Jason that it's not ALL purple!!

Fresh Start!

Yeah.  So I lied.

It's September and I'm not making any excuses for having waited until now to write!  Let it be known, however, that I have been painting.

This is a smaller version of the two I painted for Kelli's apartment.  I love the bamboo.

I sold this one.

So now I'm starting a new project for a friend.  She had an old wooden high chair her husband had painted white for their first child.  Her new little girl is going to get a fancy one though!  We're going to use lots of pretty cool colors and make it special...stay tuned for pictures!

So far, it's been cleaned and lightly sanded.  Paints are on the schedule for this weekend or early next week.  I can't wait!!!

Hope you all have a wonderful Labor Day weekend.  Do something fun with family and/or friends!
(If you're retired, do you have to work on Labor Day???)

Graduation Day!!

Hey y'all...it's been crazy at my house for the last week or so....

Kelli graduated from college!!!

and the rest of us celebrated!  We had a party at the lake last Friday for friends and relatives which involved a bunch of planning and cooking and mostly loading and unloading of cars and boats.  Great time with everyone, and lots of fun on the lake.  Graduation was actually Saturday morning; weather was awesome and it was a wonderful day...graduation, cookout at Ally's, then more lake fun and grilling of steaks and scallops for dinner!  (Did I mention we ate well???)  We were all surprised by Kelli's ex-coach from Argentina, Juanpa, along with a special visit from Chris and Jenn from Thomasville.  Chris was Juanpa's assistant and will be Kelli's new boss in south Georgia!  All-in-all, it was a great weekend and it took until today to even think about doing anything productive.  Can you say old and tired???

There were 6 girls who stuck it out and played soccer together all four years.  Kelli and two of the others played club soccer together since they were 10 or so as well.  They referred to themselves as the sophomore six; they came in with a few others as freshmen but the six of them lasted all four years.  Anyway, I painted each of the other five girls a picture as a little graduation gift.  Here are the canvases, some of which weren't completely finished when I took these pictures, but for some reason I didn't take finished pictures of them??!:

for Binks

for Kayla (unfinished when photo was taken)

for MR

for New

for Ally (not finished in this picture...)

As for food, Thursday before we left I cooked 3 pork roasts and made barbeque of them.  I also made s'mores in bell jars, fruit cups in cinnamon/sugar tortillas, and really that's all I cooked before we left.  I have to admit, I bought macaroni, potato salad, and baked beans from a caterer in Milledgeville.  She's the sister of a lady Kelli worked with in the solicitor's office, and her food is awesome!  I almost couldn't lift the giant pan of mac and cheese to get it in the oven!!

This is what I know...I'm proud of my intelligent, beautiful, caring daughter.  And I love her very much!

For Juliette