Welcome to Tulips and Turnips - Handmade for Baby!
The place of my creative journey. Most of my posts,
at least so far, have been about the processes involved
in starting a new business on my own.
My hopes are to have a few tutorials each month,
a giveaway each month, and previews of new items
and ideas, and various ramblings by me. Please feel
free to comment, share ideas, be a critic, etc.
Thank you for visiting and please check out my
Etsy shop!

Monday, January 30, 2012

Tulips and Turnips in 2012

At the beginning of the year, a month ago already, I had big plans to be posting more, having more give-aways, and more tutorials, and it just hasn't happened. Many things have kept me from this and I am trying to rush through some of them to get back to my blog and my extremely slowly growing business. I have been finishing my studies to become an IBCLC and currently work with the Nursing Mother's Counsel here in Santa Cruz, Ca. where we provide free breastfeeding support and breastfeeding classes. I have been very involved in my son's preschool too, and as my one year old is growing he is proving to be a very willful boy who needs more attention at this point. Thus I've been going to bed much earlier than I used to, basically cutting out the time I always had reserved for my blogging and sewing/crafting time. As I finish up some of the things that are very time consuming over the next month or two, I'm going to try to slowly get back into blogging! You will see more of me in the coming months : )

Tuesday, January 10, 2012

The GIANT hutch project

My hutch project has gone from just painting a giant hutch (handed down to my husband and I when his great grandmother passed away), to completely transforming it. It started out a maple shade of wood of some kind with extremely ugly colonial hardware and icky hart-shaped and curvy features. I took off all of the hardware and striped it down to the bare straight angle design. I bought some wonderful Annie Sloan chalk paint in two colors and started painting. This paint is so great, you don't have to strip the wood before painting it and it goes on soooo nicely! The important thing is to use nice brushes because it will make a BIG difference!
I finished the bottom just before Christmas, which was great, but the top half has been much more challenging. I decided I hated the middle shelf the other day right in the middle of painting, I had actually been painting around it, avoiding it for some reason. I knew I hated it but I just didn't know what to do with it. I decided to try and go for something I've always wanted in a hutch, a shelf rack for plates, the kind that you can display plates vertically back to back. I found a great tutorial for the shelf on Nest, Nesting, Nested. I'm hoping to finish it soon. I SO wish I had taken pictures of it through the stages of its transformation, but I will post a picture of it finished. And I might be able to dig up a before shot somewhere, wouldn't that be cool?!






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About Me

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My name is Shawn and I am a stay at home Mom of two boys and also a student. After many years of school and a Master's degree in Psychology, I decided to go back to school for Lactation Consulting. I spend most of my time with my children, and working on my sewing projects. Currently the sewing projects have to due with my little side business of making things for babies, which will be the main focus of this blog. I also love spending time with my husband but I see him very little now because he is busy with work and paramedic training. We have been together ten years now and married five! I love making things for special people in my life, I feel like it's something I can do to stay connected and maybe they will think of me when they see the blanket, pillow, curtain, or whatever else I have made. Since I am a somewhat introverted kind of person sewing seems to fit me, it's a way to express myself creatively, and put love into each piece, for each person. My life is quite challenging at times but I make sure to think about things I am grateful for each day.