Check...check...and Check!

Yesterday I posted about a planning system I use over and over to help organize my whirling mind and systematically schedule out my to-do's in order to get things done. 

I pointed out that getting things done wasn't the best part of my plan (I claimed that having a plan was the most beneficial perk of all), but I must confess the "getting things done" is a pretty huge perk, too.  Today I'll show you a few things I've completely (and I mean, completely) finished the last couple days as a result of scheduling them in my Notebook.

First, a few shots of something pretty for my daughter's room:

In case you can't tell from these pictures, it's a chair I finally finished for Amaya after starting and stopping oh, seventeen or so times over the last year.  I received this from a friend of ours, and it came looking like this (okay, I confess I dug into removing the upholstery within the first month of ownership, but 100% gave up after that first back panel.  Yikes!  Who knew Ethan Allen would/should/could use so many staples??):

The chair then sat alone for several months.  One day I got inspired again, and with some suggestions from Mr. Wonderful regarding using the right tool for the right job, I was able to remove all most of the staples. The chair sat alone again.

Then I painted it white.  And distressed it.  It sat alone again.

Finally, one day I was at the fabric store and Voila!  There was my fabric for the chair.  Of course, new inspiration hit, and one evening I went to town with my pneumatic staple gun (can't imagine doing upholstery with anything else....):

The back went quick and easy, but when I got to the seat panel, I was so busy snapping pictures and texting back and forth with my SIL Kathy (yes, you!),and trying to coordinate dinner plans, when I realized with horror that the seat panel had shifted and I no longer had enough length on the right side after already stapling the front, back and left side.  AGH!!  Kick me, kick me, kick me!

I desperately tried removing the staples, but simply couldn't do it without ripping the fabric.  I tried returning to get more fabric, they were sold out.  Tried ordering new fabric online, but received different color and textured fabric in spite of ordering the same item #.  Kick, kick, kick!

So the chair sat......and sat......and sat..... looking like the picture above for two months.

Until just two weeks ago, lo and behold, I'm in JoAnne's and there's more matching fabric!!  One cut yard later, 8 yards of trim, and staple gun in hand, Amaya and I went to town on this pretty little chair....and we DID NOT STOP until the last inch of trim was glued securely down.

And now, here it is in her room, all sassy and inviting:

Whenever I see a chair in a bedroom now, I think of something Suzanne Kasler said once about chairs:  "If there's not good seating in a room, I don't stay long."  So interesting how true this is.  Already, we linger longer in Amaya's room because there's somewhere comfy to sit besides the bed.

Just for kicks, we added some new butterfly knobs to her desk (found these in the $1 bins at Michael...too cute to pass up).  Gotta love all those princess stickers on her clock.  Goodness, sticker mania has hit her like no one's business. 

The other to-do I've completed is sewing extension panels on the curtains in our guest/school/studio room:

I painted this room back in June, and since then have decided to incorporate what was previously my sewing/guest room into a school room as well.

Our home has 10' ceilings in every room, which I really-really-really love, but that means the normal 84" curtain panels you normally find in stores are never long enough.  I wanted simple white panels, and found them for quite cheap at Fred Meyer's, but knew they'd be too short.  My solution?  I bought one yard of linen-type fabric at JoAnne's, cut and hemmed to fit all four panels, and sewed the linen swatches to the tops of each white panel:

Now, if you look closely, you'll see on the right edge of the drape below the linen doesn't reach all the way to the end of the white curtain.  And that, dear friends, is what I get for measuring the width of only one panel and presuming all 4 panels would be the same width.  Silly me. 

I'm counting on the fact that with 10' ceilings the tops of the drapes are too high to notice such insignificant details.

I've also cleaned out my scary downstairs pantry, entered receipts in Quicken, signed Amaya up for gymnastics, and stocked up on bread making supplies from our local Co-Op, Wholy Living (have you ever purchased a 50# bag of Rolled Oats before, and then carried it on your shoulder across the lawn in cowboy boots?  I highly recommend it.  It'll make you feel like a true, sturdy cowgirl heading out to feed the herd.) 

I'll admit not every week is this productive.  It may have something to do with my husband and "bounce off the walls" middle son tackling the great Salcha River on a boat survival trip this week, making the house not only a little quieter.

Speaking of quiet, I've let my sticker princess sleep too long.  She may be up all night.

Jaimee