Sunday, January 19, 2014

A Couch Story

Once upon a time, I got a wild haired idea to revisit the land of reupholstering couches (as opposed to just chairs) and I found one of the most difficult type of couches to do, of course

This is the chesterfield treasure as I found her on craigslist....










A perfect mix of velvety, orangey-brown. Everyone's dream in the 70's. Thankfully this is not the 70's, and more thankfully this couch has amazing bones and lovely curves. Sigh.

I knew I could turn her into a true beauty.

I just didn't realize how hard that would be. This couch is, to date, the most difficult project I have ever taken on. There were lots of obstacles, and those lovely curves I spoke of, turned out to be what nightmares are made of.  
See how the fabric on the curve is being pulled towards the curve? That is the opposite way that fabric should go. It was unbelievably frustrating.

I was feeling the pressure. A couch of this size, and with 89 buttons, takes a couple hundred dollars worth of fabric and supplies to get it done. So when you buy a couch with the intention of making money off of it, and you are in a couple hundred, and its not working out, like at all, it gets a little scary.

But after literally staring at this thing for hours on end one day, trying to problem solve, and ruing the day I bought this couch, I finally figured it out. And this couch story came to a happy ending.

Here is the beastess, turned beauty.....





 She is looking quite at home in my living room, but alas, I must sell her to a kind loving family.



Thursday, January 16, 2014

Happy Day!

Today is a happy day in the Bell household. I just got off the phone with Steve, and he informed me that he just passed his internship presentation! What that means folks, is that Steve has officially completed his master's degree in School Administration!
I am so proud of him, he has worked so hard on this degree, and especially hard during his internship.
I am so excited to have my husband mentally "here" again...he has been in his own homework and internship world for a while now. Good things are happening and we are excited to see where it will take us in the years to come!

Wednesday, January 8, 2014

Citrus

One of the things I love about our yard is our two citrus trees. I know its not a novelty to have citrus trees in the valley, but every year it is so fun to eat a juicy orange (or a couple hundred) off of our tree. The oranges have gotten juicier every year we have lived here, and our grapefruits are getting bigger....like lots bigger. Freakishly bigger.




 This thing was huge, but was suspiciously light. When I cut it open I half expected it to be rotten inside, but no, it actually just had a really thick, foamy-like, rind. The actual meat was normal size and wonderfully juicy. Mmmmmm!