The Backup Singers or It Takes A Village

No one puts their house on a home tour by themselves.  No. One.  Today I'll share the village it took.

The doors.  The doors in our house haven't been easy.  Hubby built our front door several years ago.  He refinished it this summer.  Every interior door was different and some were not pretty.  Once we added the master suite and chose doors for it we decided to replace every interior door to match the new ones.

That may sound easy but in an old house it's not easy.  In spite of all of the issues Hubby replaced each and every interior door.  Sometimes the surrounding trim too.  The back exterior door got stripped and refinished, the garage man door got replaced by a door that had to be refinished.

Hubby spent a lot of time on the doors getting ready for tour.  We are so glad that we did it but boy howdy it wasn't pretty in the process.

I couldn't live in the Stone House without Hubby.  He maintains a lot of old, broken things here and I am very grateful for him.  As I came up with ideas he said, "yep, we can do that."  Well, except for getting the Aloha finished.  He knows I need boundaries. 

Hubby likes to go junkin' with me, has vision and then the talent to carry out my crazy schemes.

Thanks hon!

My friend, Shelly said from the beginning that she would help me if we did the tour.  She wasn't kidding.  We spent Mondays wrapping, decorating, gathering poinsettias, etc.

More importantly, she listened, told me when to stop and put up with me.

I made her a gold shiney brite wreath to thank her and remind her of our time together.  It's kind of crazy but so were our Mondays.  Thankfullly, they ended with wine.

Chris let me use her studio(it is the best, happiest place in L-town), her German glass glitter, her paint and her wisdom.  It's pretty great to have a former Annie Sloan Chalk Paint stockist stop by your place to give a color consultation every time you call.

She gave me the sheet music wreath, apparently she made four of them one evening while watching TV.  Honestly, who does that?

I went junkin' so many Saturdays with Chris and Shelly I lost count.  And we drank so much coffee at Woods that my points paid for two new Christmas mugs.  The girls let me have first grab on the Christmas goodies and helped me find the goods at estate sales.  It's nice to have those two tall gals on your side.

CW Designs aka Cheryl Westra sewed my laundry basket liner.  She donated her labor as her way to contribute to the Bethany tour.  Isn't it pretty?  Santa left his laundry in it for tour.

My friend Lisa brought us dinner one night during the week before tour.  The best chicken enchiladas ever.  Hubby was so happy to have real food.

You'd be excited to eat a home cooked dinner too if you'd been eating like we had last month.

My sister, Kathi asked if she could please do something.  I asked that she pick up some pretty cupcakes in Bellingham.  She did one better.  She enlisted her friend, Marla, a baker extraordinaire to bake cupcakes with her.  Gorgeous for staging and yummy for stress eating.  Thanks Marla and Kathi.

 *We hired Annetta H. to come and help with the cleaning the week of tour.  Best decision, ever.  Nothing beats a good Dutch cleaning.

*The girls at the Print Stop.  Thanks!

*My sisters, Kathi and Jodi agreed to help on tour day.  We were so thankful that they were here to watch the stairs and keep our guests safe.  My sister that is a Snapsister took the picture of our Bethany baby, Zach.  Thanks sis!

*Special thanks to my friend, Sheryl.  She ran over to our house and consulted on all of the rug purchases and then stayed for a glass of wine.  She also helped me move furniture one day.  Nicely done.

*Our best friends, our dear foodie friends, Mark and Karen and Vern and Shelly made dinner for the night of the tour.  It was so great to come home, enjoy the house, have yummy food and just enjoy the work being finished.  Friends came by and it was like the five loaves and fishes all over again.  

Only with much better food!

*The Stremler sisters!  Oh my, did we laugh at ourselves in the months leading up to tour.

*Thank you to Mark V. for showing up with a keg after tour.  Possibly the funniest thing ever.  He just happened to have one and knew there would be people at our place.  To the best of our knowledge this was the first kegger at the Stone House.  But we have three sons so we aren't entirely positive that it's a first...

I hope I haven't forgotten anyone because each and every person that helped  and encouraged is appreciated.

Next, I'll share my favorites from the other homes on tour.  Oh my, crazy beautiful!

The Details, Bits, Bobs and I'm Crazy

Some behind the scenes, details and craziness goes on when your home is on the Homes for the Holidays Tour.  I'll share some of that today.  

The lights in the mixer were a happy accident.  They were laying on the kitchen counter when I needed room to whip up a project, they got thrown into the mixer and I plugged them in, voila!

 I gained five pounds finishing the 'for display only' cupcakes.

 The Santa and his sleigh on top of the globe with a jewel on our town is my favorite thing in the entire house.  I love details and I Spy books.

Pinterest and Hubby rock.  I saw the wood in the fire place on Pinterest, showed Hubby, he went outside, cut down a tree, used the chop saw, arranged it just so and bam it was done.  Love it.  And him.

An interesting selfie, I might add.

I had fun adding the little toy soldiers to the garland in our US Army Combat Medic's bedroom.  It wasn't fun finding his soldiers in the attic, I crawled on my stomach OVER boxes and junk to find them, much like the soldier you see in the garland doing the army crawl.

I love to set a table with details.  I've used this ice skater theme before for dinners with family and friends.  I mentioned to Shelly that I wasn't sure how I'd set the table for tour.  She told me I would be setting the ice skater table for tour because it's her favorite.  Done.

 This Fall I found a silverware set for eight at an estate sale.  I got home and researched it to find the pattern and I realized it was designed to be engraved and hadn't been yet.  I called around, never had time to get it to Bellingham.  Hubby told me to forget it, that we were done and things were good enough.  Well, I ran into Cheryl from Hat's Off in Lynden and asked her if they did engraving.  Yes, and she was willing to do a rush job because of the tour deadline.  Great!  In passing I asked her the cost, $9.95 set up and 15 cents per letter. I didn't mention it to Hubby because he had told me to stop and was tired of me spending money.

Then I started thinking about it in the bed one night... What if the set up fee was per piece of silver?  What if each piece was $9.95 + .15 = $10.10 per piece X 40 pieces= $404?

Hubby had said no.  I did the math again.  NO!  This couldn't be.  Calm down.  Go to sleep.  You have a million things to do tomorrow.  Sleep.  $404.  

So, I lost two nights of sleep.

On Friday they called from Hat's Off that it was ready.  Good thing, since tour was Saturday.

I dilly dallied, got a nervous tummy ache, then went.

My legs were weak, honestly.

That will be $36 and some odd cents.

Thank you Baby Jesus!  

I love it, Hubby loves it and Sam called it for our estate so he must love it too.  Hahah

I'm crazy.  But you know that already.  I'm sleep deprived but everything is okay.
Isn't it pretty?

 I had fun in the laundry room, playing with my vintage Santa collection, tacky plastic garland and my craft supplies.

 I love this guy!

 For weeks the counter in the laundry room was covered with junk, a foot deep sometimes, most of the time.

 Ziploc bags of deer, beads, old pipe cleaners, light bulbs etc.

 By having everything sorted by color and type I could whip up a project quickly.  I made the wreath for the old screen door in 15 minutes.  Boom, it's done!  Shelly ran to her house for a minute, came back and it was hung on the door.

For tour I left a tray of 'craftermath' of the counter.  The aftermath of a crafter.

The wall upstairs on the landing was blank so I picked up mirrors at garage sale, made my antler craft, 

Chris K. helped me with the 'Night Before' and that was an easy, inexpensive fix.  Ask Chris about my stenciling technique next time you see her.  Apparently, it's painful.

I have a wrapping cart named Stella.  She goes everywhere during the season.  I have all gifts wrapped but as the guys come home they'll pull her into their rooms and wrap their gifts too.  She has lights and a Santa hat to help you feel festive as you work.

I always replace the cord and lights in my blow molds.  They make me so happy with their little glow.

That's all for today...  Next up, the people!

Not So Musical

I am not musical, I cannot sing or play an instrument.  So it was a little strange that I purchased an old pump organ at a rummage sale.  But I had a plan.  It was at that point that Hubby told me if I thought we were going to complete the plans I had for the organ and the restoration of the '57 Aloha before the home tour I was married to the wrong guy.  "Yeah, yeah," I thought, "we'll do both, he just doesn't know that yet."  Uhmmm, Hubby was correct about not getting to the trailer.  And he is the right guy for me.  The pump organ to liquor cabinet was a lot more labor intensive than I anticipated.  The '57 Aloha did not get restored, placed in the driveway and decorated for Christmas.  Let's just say, Hubby was right and 2014 is another year for another project.

We had no intention of ever playing the organ, so we tore into it.  First I washed it with tsp and water, the yellow paint came right off.  I don't have a picture of it when it was yellow.  Trust me, it was yellow.

When taking it apart, we found an old Kirby vacuum inside.  Someone had used the Kirby to retrofit it into an electric organ.  You just never know what you'll find when you tear into a project.

I painted the organ with Annie Sloan chalk paint(ASCP), a gray on the cutwork and a old white for the base.  The gray took some touching up and messing around to get it to show through without the white covering.

When I washed it and the maker showed up I decided to leave that piece unpainted.  

I pulled off the carpet on the pedals and the red felt behind the wood work and replaced it all with burlap. 

As always with ASCP I sanded it afterwards and waxed it.

The ivory on the keys was pretty loose so I painted the base with ASCP graphite and then glued the keys back on.  Only one was missing.  I used graphite on the scroll work too.

Hubby rebuilt the bottom to have a cupboard for liquor storage and also built the slides for glass stemware.  The piece that could be pulled down to cover the keys was taken off, and then fit back on as a counter for the bartender.

I found a frame at a garage sale with burlap on it, so I painted it using ASCP graphite, sanded so the wood came back out and then made a chalk board using the graphite paint and not waxing it so we could post drink specials on the chalkboard.

 We found a bottle opener on ebay and added it to the side.  The handle makes for a nice towel rack.

I wrote "making spirits bright" on the chalkboard.  I was inspired by Dean Martin's Making Spirits Bright Christmas album cover.

Our record player was set up with vintage barware.

I love the little match boxes that I found at a garage sale.  Chris at Red Gate Farm used match boxes to make an Advent calendar.

Our swizzle stick collection is growing and makes for good conversation starter when guests are served.

Before we added a master suite to the house this little sitting room was our bedroom.  The furniture was recovered by our friend, Gerrit.  I had it in my apartment when I was single.  Hubby proposed to me while we were sitting on the love seat.

I had fun painting the printer's drawer and filling it with treasures.  There is room for more.

Hubby and I enjoy this little room to put our feet up, have a drink and visit.

I hope you enjoyed it too.
And if you have enough drinks, you'll think you can sing.
I kid.