Logan Wolfram

Enjoying Life for Dessert

Giveaway!!! Tote from 31 Gifts!

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I promised you a giveaway once I reached 100 followers on here, so here goes making good on that promise!
My amazing sister-in-law, Lauren, is a consultant for 31 Gifts. You may know about them because they make some super cute and stylish purses, accessories and products to help organize the lives of busy women and their families. Or you may not know about them at all, so consider this your introduction.  
31 Gifts makes loads of fun items to meet the needs of just about anyone!  Their mission is “to celebrate, encourage and reward women through offering quality products and an outstanding opportunity to become successful business owners.”  They have tons of great patterns and anything can be personalized. 
Today, we’re giving away this great multi-purpose tote!  I’m always on the look-out for any good sized bag to get all of my gear around and half the time I end up grabbing a reusable grocery bag…which is not cute.  This bag though is perfect for a trunk catch all, grocery store tote, pool or beach tote, sports equipment and many more!  The tote is wipe-able material so perfect for all the fun crazy stuff you do will your kids!  Check it out!
This giveaway will end at noon tomorrow, Friday June 10th.  And here are the rules for how to enter.

Mandatory 1st entry – Check out the 31 Gifts catalogue and come back here and leave a comment with the name of your favorite item.

For additional entries:

  • Follow Life for Dessert on Google Connect and tell me you did so in the comments section
  • Follow Life for Dessert on Facebook and tell me here that you did it
  • recruit friends to follow Life for Dessert and when they enter, tell them to put your name in their comment with their item selection so that I can credit you for each recruit
  • Follow LifeforDessert on Twitter
  • Repost this post on Facebook or Retweet on Twitter (1 entry for each action) and let me know what you did.
  • Like 31 Gifts on Facebook HERE and tell me you did so

I’ll also be randomly selecting a second winner who will receive 20% off of his/her favorite item for purchase.  I’ll announce the winners tomorrow, so get commenting!

PS. If you have trouble commenting on here for any reason, I will count comments on the Facebook page as entries as well!

Milk and Cookies…

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My friend Emily at Crisp Interiors sent me a link today to this and I just HAD to share!  So thanks Em for sharing and to  Family Chic for this creative dose of fun! 
 
I’m mad about cool bottle reuses and this one is seriously topping my list of fun ideas right now!  
 
Milk and cookies…
 
Reuse green Schweppes Ginger Ale bottles with just a straw and some store bought butter cookies. How fun is this for a party of for any afternoon snack?!  I’m thinking you could also do lemonade and lemon cookies, chocolate milk and EL Fudge, or if you’re feeling super crafty make some fun shaped sugar cookies and poke a hole in the middle to make room for the straw before baking.
Your kids will think you are especially fun for this!  Imagine doing it with Christmas cookies for Santa.  Possibilities are endless!  If only Oreos had holes in the middle!!!

 
I also think this would be cute with any other glass bottles you could save…mini coke bottles, club soda bottles….cute cute cute!
Hope you’re having a great day!

I’ve Been Commissioned….

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Remember recently I told you about a new kind of paint that I’d ordered called Annie Sloan’s Chalk Paint? If not, read about it HERE. Well, the paint arrived few weeks ago and I’ve had a blast messing around with it lately.

I painted that china cabinet there on the left (I’m not showing you the finished product yet because I still need to get a piece of glass to put in the front,) but I promise, it is gorgeous!  It’s a combination of Annie Sloan Chalk Paint in Paris Grey and Old White.

Just yesterday, I guess I got a “bee in my bonnet” (as my mom likes to say) and started a painting another dresser, as well as an end table… that I was commissioned to do!

Can I just tell you how fun it feels to say that “I was commissioned” to paint something for someone?! Oh my words…does my ego a world of good! No worries…not overpuffed, just feels nice to have someone else like what I’ve done enough to want me to do it for them!

Check out this table though. I am so pleased with how it turned out in the end… and the owner, well she was so excited about it that I got even more excited!

Excitement is contagious you know?!

I’m not one of those people who can “play it cool” when I’m excited either.

I really do promise you though that one day I’ll forgo my overwhelming urge to start a project prior to taking a “before” picture.

At least this time I got a picture before the stripping agent had completely done it’s job. Even with the stripping stuff making it cloudy on top, you can tell that this table had a seriously orangey finish on it…which is what the owner hated. She was going to get rid of it, and I suggested to paint it because it is a super cute little table.  She was thrilled with the idea and I took it with me at the end of our appointment on Friday.  When I got ready to paint it, I realized that I couldn’t bear to completely cover the really beautiful inlay. I figured that worst case scenario, I’d strip the top and it’d still be ugly…and then I’d just paint it anyways. But if things went in real life the way that they were in my mind…then this was definitely the way to go. Strip the top and paint the legs.

You all know most certainly by now that some things in my life do not always go the way that they do in my mind. Remember my awesome craft project the other day?…yeah, case in point.

Once in awhile though…I get it right. This time was thankfully one of those times…especially since it wasn’t just my own piece I was messing with here.

There really wasn’t anything wrong with this table before…it just was a color of wood that the owner didn’t love.  I’m more of a dark walnut kind of gal myself, so that’s what I went for here. A couple good coats of Citristrip stripping gel (actually smells nice), some scraping off of nasty gooey finish, a good cleaning and then about 3 coats of Minwax dark walnut stain.

The base was painted with Annie Sloan Chalk Paint in Chateau Grey, distressed with a sanding sponge to my liking, then finished off with a combination of Annie Sloan’s soft waxes in clear and dark brown. I waxed the top with a couple of coats of the dark brown and then one last clear coat to protect it.

I told my client that if she ever wants to get rid of this table, I can find a nice home for it…
in my house.
Don’t you just love a semi-BEFORE and AFTER?!

Glory hallelujah…It’s Extreme Makeover: Table Edition!
 
If you’re thinking that you might want to try the Annie Sloan Chalk Paint, I HIGHLY recommend it.  You don’t have to sand or prime before applying it which saves LOADS of time.  Also, it has the most creamy texture and goes on so smoothly, and I should mention that a little goes a pretty long way.  Sanding it off with just a sanding sponge is a piece of cake (if only my feet were as easy to get smooth!)  It’s more expensive than just a can of Oops paint at Lowes, but if you’re an instant gratification sort of person like I am, you’ll appreciate seeing faster, and more beautiful results with 1/3 of the prep work.  If you like sanding and priming though, have at it…glad you enjoy the tedious part. 
I’ll have more of my adventures into chalk paint fun coming up to share soon, so stay tuned!

 

Baby Baby…. Nursery Decorating…

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I hope you all don’t think I’ve been a total slacker today!  I promise that I haven’t.

This morning I had a design consult with a client to decorate her new baby’s nursery.  Have I ever told you how much I love decorating a nursery?!  Well, if not…

I love decorating nurseries.  

Hands down, they are my MOST favorite rooms to design.  I love them for so many reasons, but the number one reason is that I love the time and care people take to create something beautiful for a new baby.  For me, it’s the first thing that new parents do for their baby to say “I love you” before the baby even arrives.

I’ve also found, generally speaking, that most people will take the time to address even all the little details that really complete a nursery as well.  That makes it particularly fun to “do” nurseries for me.  To have a vision with a client and see it through to completion…it’s very satisfying.

So that’s why I wasn’t around earlier today.  I’m also going to be helping these particular clients with some other areas of their home as well which will be really fun.  They’ve commissioned me to refinish a changing table, and today I took a small end table to give some new life.  I got to work on that this afternoon while my kids were resting.  It’s going to be awesome.

In all this thinking of nurseries today, I just thought I’d pick back through a few of my old nursery pictures and show you.  Baby LOVE….

This one above was obviously for a baby girl.  All of the bedding in this one and all of the ones I’ll show you below were custom made.  One of my favorite things about decorating nurseries is picking out loads of fabrics and textures.  The rug above was custom as well and it was so gorgeous, I just can’t tell you!!!  This client really liked mixing vintage and new together, so it was right up my alley as that’s my natural bent as well.

Ok, now these clients didn’t ever find out what they were having and wanted to make sure that the bedding and window treatments that we used could be reused for multiple children.  Custom bedding is an investment, so I wanted to show you how a few tweaks here and there with the same bedding can feel really very different for each child.  (In this case 3 children!)

Recognize this one above?!  Yeah, it’s my most favorite one yet…probably because it’s mine and every single thing that went in that room was exactly what I wanted.  18 months after completion and it’s still my favorite room in the house.

This one was Tid Bits nursery in our old house.  When I took these pictures back 5 years ago I apparently hadn’t finished everything int he room as evidenced by the empty sconce shelves on either side of the mirror above the changing table.  Oh, and see…I reused my glider up there in both of my boys’ rooms and just recovered it.  (Just a tip…recovering a glider like this one with removeable cushions is much less expensive than a fully upholstered chair.  I only need 4 yds of fabric and it’s about $150 to have it all recovered professionally…as oppossed to perhaps 8 yds of fabric and $300 upholstery fees for a fully upholstered chair.)

Well, I just thought I’d take a trip back down memory lane for fun.  I’ll of course show you pictures of this nursery I’m starting on as soon as it’s completed!

Enjoy your weekend!!!

PS. Spell check isn’t working and I’m going to eat dinner finally…so if I missed a lot along the way…please be kind and overlook it?!

Glamping….I Think I’ve Been All Wrong…

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Just last night I learned a new word…

Glamping. 
And not only did I learn the word, but now I want to do the thing.
When I was a kid my parents took us 3 different times “Out West” in an RV to tour around states we’d never been to and camp in national parks along the way.  We went to places like Colorado, Wyoming, Utah, South Dakota, and Montana.  And when we toured around, we rolled Winnebago style.
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This one above might seriously have been the exact one we had a couple of times.  
The Minnie Winnie.  
My sister and I used to sleep in that part over the driver’s cab, and it was fun to ride up there even though we weren’t allowed to do it very often.  I have good memories in the Minnie Winnies…good times…good times.
My mom always said tent camping wasn’t really her thing…and more than that I’m not sure it was my dad’s thing either.
I like it though, and so does my Hubs.  Tid Bit has done it a couple of times and we’re gonna camp in Montana in a couple of weeks with some friends with both of our kids and their 3 kids as well.  Tent camping…5 kids under age 7…good times….I think….maybe…hopefully.  I am confident though that we will not be glamping.
I’ve realized today with this new addition to my vocabulary that apparently I’ve been doing it wrong all along, because there’s nothing about “Glamping” that I don’t think I’d like.  No…scratch that…that I don’t think I’d LOVE!
Glamping = Glam + Camping
Allow me to show you what I’ve run across….glamping goodness to be sure.
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Vintage Cottage Camper
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Yes…I think I’d like glamping.  It looks so wonderful that I bet bugs don’t even come in your tent when you Glamp.  I bet coffee serves itself to you in bed when you Glamp.  I bet you sleep well and don’t have a sore neck when you Glamp.  And I’m sure that I’m now just coming up with new reasons to say the word….Glamp.  Do you think if you’ve already done it before then you’ve “glumped” or just “glamped?”  Either way…I’ve not done it at all.  But I will…even if it’s in my back yard…
I will go glamping.
So now I have to ask you all…do you camp or glamp?  And if you do it with kids then show me some comment love and give me some tips on how to make it as fun and painless as possible with a 5 year old and a 16 month old?!  I think though that “kids” and “glamping” may not be allowed in the same sentence….for sure one likely interferes with the other.
By the way, my new favorite thing might just be Pinterest.  You really must check out Pinterest.  And you can check me out on Pinterest HERE. Pinterest is a place where basically you can create boards of loads of your favorite things with links to where they came from.  So for say recipes, you “pin” the picture and it links to the recipe, crafts…pin a picture and it links to the tutorial.  It’s fabulous, but you have to be invited to do it.  So if you want to be invited, send me an email with your name and email  address to LifeforDessert dot gmail dot com and I’ll send you an invite.  You will love it.  It’s where I found and compiled all of the above glamping.

Getting Crafty…Massive FAIL!

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Since Tid Bit is out of school for the summer, I decided that I needed to figure out some crafty things to do to pass the time with a bit more fun.  So, first thing this morning I set out to make this day full of crafty fun!  We headed out early, went to get bagels for breakfast and then hit Walmart to buy some colored yarn.  See, I had this awesome idea to make baskets with glue and yarn.  You know, where you blow up a balloon and mix a little water and glue and soak your yarn in it.  Then you drape the yarn all over the balloon and hopefully it looks like this in the end.

Yarn Basket Tutorial

Adorable right?  I didn’t find the tutorial that I linked until after I made a mess of things.  I read one thing that said to mix equal parts water and glue…I think that might have been just one of the places where I went wrong.  Don’t do that…just use glue.  Another thing I failed to realize was that apparently Tid Bit was opposed to getting “all gluey” today, so I ended up being the “gluey” handed one.  So much for blogging during craft time.  I also set the balloon on an empty soymilk container too, which wasn’t good since the yarn that fell down stuck all over the box, and the balloon would get too weighted down on one side or another and flop all over the place.  Fortunately, I did realize that I shouldn’t pop the balloon until the yarn is completely dry…which it’s not…even 5 hours later.  Will have to keep you posted on how that turns out later.  For now, here’s what we’re dealing with….

 Don’t you love how the yarn is just hanging off the sides.  This craft was not awesome today.  I’ll try it another day though when perhaps Tid Bit is feeling a bit more in the mood for gluey-ness.

I did salvage the crafting extravaganza though with a couple of twigs from outside and the yarn we made such an effort to acquire today.  Check this out…

God’s Eye camp craft

Pretty cute huh? 

Apparently it’s called a “God’s Eye.”  No idea why, but HERE is a tutorial for making them if you’re interested.  It was easy and I couldn’t find our popsicle sticks so I sent Tid Bit outside hunting for good twigs for a solid 20 minutes…they worked great.  Once he got the hang of it he made three of them. 

Now he’s insistent that we go outside and have a lemonade and cotton candy stand and sell these amazing wares.  He has also made some paper and ribbon bookmarks and drawn 4 pictures of our family and our house to sell.  His sweet little heart wants to do all of this to earn money to put in his Jesus jar and send to help the people in Haiti… “because even though it’s been a long time since the earthquake, those people and dogs and buildings in Haiti still need our help.”

Makes my heart glad to hear that even if our crafting wasn’t what we thought it was going to be…he’s turning it around to do something great!  Thatta boy!  Guess it wasn’t such a fail when I look at it from a child’s eyes afterall.

Secrets of a Great Illusionist….The Perfect Pedicure!

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I’m in serious need of a pedicure.  I mean…BADLY!

Last night I went to town on my heels with a PedEgg because they looked something like this.

photo by Ariadne Van Zandbergen

No, I’m not kidding.  It was a bad bad scene.  It was so bad that my pride and vanity took over and would only take a picture of my foot post PedEgg and post about 14 gallons of Eucerin cream.  And still, they looked like this….

So today, I’ve come up with a solution for the gal with nasty feet in need of some TLC…or in my case, some serious elbow grease.  So my friends, I give you my own invention….

The Redneck Pedicure!
 First, like with any project, you will need to gather your supplies.
  • 1 set of horribly neglected feet, already subject to the redneck paint job of the past…layer upon layer of nailpolish. 
  • Some nailpolish remover, or for the true Redneck Pedicure experience, you might find Paint Thinner or furniture stripper to be just as capable of doing the job. 
  • A cotton ball.  One cotton ball should do it for this sort of job.  It doesn’t really matter terribly if there is a bit of polish left on your piggies, you’re just gonna cover it back up anyhow.
  • And the piece de resistance…your trusty orbital sander.  Yes friends, it had gotten that bad!  I’d recommend using a 120 grit fine sandpaper… since this is afterall your foot we’re about to go to town on here.

 
Head outside for this part of your pedicure.  It’s a nice time to relax, enjoy the nature around you, and also, you don’t want all of the sawdust from your last furniture project shooting out of the sander into your house, along with your nasty footskin.  Better to just head outside.

Position your sander (in this case I used a Bosch orbital sander) along the nastiest, most calloused part of your foot…and sand that bad boy down.  Your foot may start to look smoother at this point.  If the sander feels too hot to your skin, remove it immediately…it’s likely you’ve sanded off too much and probably didn’t need this drastic of a method afterall.

Lucky you.

Once you have sanded to your hearts content and to your foot skin’s maximum allowable removal point, pack up your gear and put it back into the garage.
The next part of your pedicure can be done within the comforts of your home.

Before polishing your nails, smooth some really thick cream onto your feet.  For a true redneck pedi experience, Crisco should work just fine.  Today I opted for something more traditional though and used Eucerin cream.

Since I follow a pretty strict redneck polishing regime and over time like to put multiple layers of polish on my nails to save time, I highly recommend using a clear basecoat.  Who knows how long it will be before your nails see the light of day again, and serious staining will occur if you don’t at least clearcoat them first.

Paint a base clear coat onto your nails and wait the 60 seconds that the bottle recommends….or if you’re me, just wait until you finish painting the other foot before applying your first layer of colored polish.

For this pedicure, I was feeling cheery to no longer have heels and toes that look like a desert in Nairobi, so I opted for a red polish to really draw attention to my happily smoothed toesies.

Put this polish on and then lean back and admire your handiwork!

Ahhh yes.  Much better.  The next time I decide to do a pedicure though, I think I should reconsider the 2 glasses of wine I had before I last shaved my legs.  As you can see on my left leg above my ankle, that decision wasn’t one of my better ones.
Happy pampering friends!

I Fix…I Dig…Ok, Maybe not so much…

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I’m back from DC!  Exhausted as all get out, but it was a great weekend.  Lots of learning, lots of fun, and the company was top notch! 
I’m still playing catch up from last week though.  It was a full week of life, and flubbers, and gearing up for going out of town…all while the Hubs was in Atlanta.  I think tomorrow I’m due for something awesome like a pedicure.  Yeah…that’ll probably happen in all my free time.
Don’t you love how you can almost guarantee that when your husband is gone, something in the house will inevitably break or go wrong?!
The Hubs and I got married a month before I turned 25, and so that basically meant that I had been out of college and living alone for 3 years before we got hitched. In that 3 years time, I got pretty good at fixing when things needed to be fixed for the most part. When you’re on your own, you become pretty accustomed to making things work and fending for yourself.
Then I said “I Do.”
I don’t know about all of you, but there are just things that my husband does better than me. So, I’ve pretty much completely abandoned some of those things that I once had a basic knowledge of… in favor of letting him just take care of it. That goes specifically in our household for things like electronics, mechanical moving parts, computer maintenance, anything involving the septic system or sprinklers. I don’t know really anything about any of those things anymore.  So around here, it seems that somewhere in “I Do”… actually, “I Don’t.”
My husband is adamant right now that I note that “anything involving a shovel” is also not my bag. I, however, beg to differ. Recently, I thought it would be a good idea to dig up the concrete mass that had once upon a decade ago held a basketball goal at the end of our driveway. The Hubs had been avoiding it, and about 3 days before our Easter Egg Hunt, I decided while he was out of town that the 1 inch metal remains sticking up (tetanus waiting to happen) needed to come out. I got a shovel and went to work. What I didn’t realize until after I’d started digging though was that the concrete mass went down deep enough to practically touch the earth’s core. I dug for well over and hour, almost broke one shovel (so naturally I just switched to the snow shovel,) and finally gave up when I couldn’t get to the bottom of it. I also realized that the concrete mass had to have weighed well over 300 lbs and there was no way that I was going to be able to get it out.
The Hubs came home to a muddy pit around a concrete safety hazard at the end of our driveway that he says “then HAD to be dealt with regardless of if he had the desire or time to deal with it.” We had to attach the mass to the car to pull it out…it was THAT big.  Sadly, I really thought I’d have surprised him with a job well done instead of a job horrifyingly botched. The point here however though is that I do not entirely avoid shovels.  
Perhaps I should.
This past week while he was gone, the garbage disposal broke.
Insinkerator Evolution Essential
So I, being the wiser for the shovel incident, called a plumber instead of trying to replace it myself. The plumber told me it was going to be $375…I told him to go home. Ok…so not really. I told him to come back the next day so that I could then basically give him the remains of our tax return and to get a new disposal. Really though, he was a super nice guy, but it was more than I thought it’d be. So after I decided that $375 seemed like too much, I called our friend Rick.
When the Hubs has been gone before, Rick has been known to save the day.
 
<—This is Rick.  He might shoot me for introducing you all to the top of his head, and for making you think that it took 2 beers worth of time to do this job.  It didn’t.  It took 20 minutes, and one of those little bottles was mine….for moral support.
Rick is an an old friend of ours who lived with us for about a year (he will tell you it was 6 months…we agree…but it was 2 separate stints of 6 months each.) He is engineer who works for BMW, and I just assume that since he knows about cars, he may know about anything else mechanical. Surely if you can engineer a car, you can install a disposal, right?
He and the Hubs talked on the phone about what kind of disposal to get, I went and bought it, and then he installed it, for the hefty price of a McAlister’s Deli club sandwich.
I had to clean out underneath the sink so that Rick could get to the disposal. Who knows how long the broken disposal had been leaking…long enough to create mildew, but thankfully not long enough to warp the wood or to attrach roaches. It was nasty though. 
Just look what all I found under my sink!!!
Needless to say, I did some serious “cleaning out” of the cleaning supply.
I have a feeling that I probably need to motivate that cleaning out to other hidden cabinets as well. Maybe next time the Hubs has to be gone, I’ll tackle that….with a shovel!

I Will You To Do This…

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This weekend, we left our kids with my parents and going on a trip.
I had you at “leaving our kids with my parents” didn’t I?!
It’s the first time that we’ve left Little Bit overnight since he was born. He is 16 months old now. I get called out of church nursery almost weekly because he pitches a fit. Remember not long ago I got called out of church because he had pitched a fit…and then later, I pitched a fit too?  Yeah, I’ve had some concerns about leaving him overnight.
My parents are great and my kids love them. Mom is super creative and fun, and my dad loves taking them to the Science Center to explore. They’ll have a wonderful time I know. But it’s still hard.
The Hubs and I have actually really been looking forward to a 7 hour car drive. Seven hours in a car without kids is way more like what “road trips” used to be…fun, an adventure, good quality time together. But then there’s the business of the “what if you die” thing.
Yeah, that’s completely unawesome to have to think about or talk about in every way. But we’ve never actually done a living will. Have you?
It’s one of those things that everyone talks about, but how many of us have actually taken the time to sit down and do it? Maybe you’re more thorough than I am…you probably are.
So on the way to Washington, DC I clinked out a really rough email on my phone that basically said what to do with our kids, money, and debts if we died. I’m sure that it’s not good enough. Thankfully, the Hubs’ dad is a lawyer and he quickly turned that 5 sentence email into an official document that should serve the purpose, if heaven help us, it needed to.
But I thought that if you out there haven’t ever done this before (and don’t have the Hubs’ dad to fix your poorly constructed will for you,) you might like a link to an easy way to fill out a living will that a friend sent me awhile back. (I know, I know…I’ve had it but STILL haven’t done it.) You can do this at home without the help of a lawyer, even though I’ve been told it’s best to eventually really iron things out with legal advice. Still, it’s better to have something in place that would stand up in a court than nothing at all.
So here you go…for your filling out pleasure….in case you kick the bucket. Your Last Will and Testament 
– Logan

Refinishing a Dresser….it’s easier than you think!

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I’m kicking myself.  Once again I did a piece of furniture without a before picture.  I swore I had taken one though, but apparently I didn’t.  I’ve checked 2 cameras and my phone…nothing.  SO just imagine with me would you?

This dresser, but just plain wood.  Pretty color stain though…dark…walnuttish, but seriously bubbled up from being out in a hot barn for too many years.  I don’t know why this was in a hot barn…it’s gorgeous!  And it was in a set…there’s a bed and a desk that went with it.  I talked my friend T into buying the other pieces for her little girl in their new house…I can’t wait to see it in a little girl’s room.  I was obsessed with this dresser though, so she kept 2 pieces and I got this one.

I painted it with a grayish oops paint that I found for $2.50/qt.  I have absolutely no idea what color this was…but it looks bluer in this picture than it actually is.  It’s definitely got blue in it, but not this much.  (And I did take the hardware off to paint…I put all the pulls back on though to use this as a drink stand for our Easter Egg Hunt.)

I’d painted this first coat on before I learned about Annie Sloan’s Chalk paint which I just ordered some of yesterday for my next project.  With the Chalk Paint you don’t have to sand or prime…you just paint and distress and wax…and it’s all non toxic.  It’s not as cheap as my oops paint by a long shot though.  But with 2 little kids at home…time is money, and it takes a LOT more time for me to sand and prime than is worth the money to me.  So next up is this china cabinet…. It’s gonna see some chalk paint love and I cannot wait!

Ok, so back to this dresser.  I think I’ll name it Beatrice…sounds like a pretty old name for a pretty old gal, and it’s the first name that just came to my mind when I looked at it.

I took the drawers out and dry brushed everything in Benjamin Moore Moon Shadow…which is sort of a pale creamy taupe-ish gray (and I already had some of it.)

After I lightly drybrushed everything, I then went back and sanded to distress.  This piece I really concentrated on the edges of the drawers and the higher relief areas what would get bumped when opening and closing.  When you sand across everything, it softens the look of your drybrushing as well… which I, for one, really like.

After the sanding, then on this piece I used Minwax Walnut stain and brushed it on and wiped most of it right back off immediately.  I do this part in really small sections so that the stain doesn’t dry (it happens fast, so I brush on with one hand and off with the other with a rag.  Mr Miyagi would be proud…I have some serious “wax on, wax off” motions going when I’m doing this.

So here’s how 2 of the drawers turned out.  

I did concentrate more of the Moon Shadow on this gorgeous  raised scrolly part to really make it stand out.  I also did the same thing on some detail work on the sides which you can see here below as well. 

Look at the way that the bubbling of the finish from before turned out when it was painted, sanded, and stained….oh my words…it is UH-mazing!  Thank you to the previous owner who’s neglect made Beatrice that much more beautiful!

And here she is…all done.  Beatrice is by far my most favorite piece that I’ve refinished…probably why she is the first one I’ve bothered naming.

Try not to notice the lamp cord under there…I just tossed her into the guest room and didn’t mess with things like lamp cords before I took the picture.  I know…that’s not any way to treat a lady!
Tomorrow I’ll get back to my story from earlier this week.