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 : )

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?!