we followed him all over.

There are some perks to living in the country.

Like, animal neighbors.

so you should get organized, too.

Well, I ran out of calendar sheets a couple of weeks ago, and I thought I'd design a new one. This one has a space for the month, and for the day number (so you can plan ahead.)

This time I used my nifty super stapler to staple all across the top. ($10 clearance find at Office Depot.) After everything was stapled, I cut the edges down with my paper cutter.

There are three color choices, spring green, turquoise and teal, and black and white. Click below to download the .pdf files. I hope you use them as much as I do!

I went to one of the weirdest places...

I am going to go ahead and say that Greenfield Village near Detroit is one of the weirdest places I've ever been. Patrick and I stopped by on our way out of town... and... yeah.

It basically consists of a lot of historical buildings and houses that were purchased and transplanted from their original locations to a perfectly manicured town. There are cottages, plantations, factories, slave quarters, cabins, offices and more. It has everything Edison related, down to a boarding house he used for his workers (all of the lightbulbs in the place are old fashioned.) It had the Wright brothers' house and shop.

Do you see how creepy?

Anyways, they also had a printing shop, and we took a few pictures. (They're lucky that pictures are all I took... some of that equipment was yummy.)

The also has Noah Webster's house, and a bunch of old school texts. I love old books, the typography is so quirky.

Anyways, go if you ever get the chance, because it's actually kind of neat to see so many places all in one location.

Neat, and disturbing.

and guess who else like the couch?

Cooper Does.
Yes, He's Cooper. As in Alice Cooper, Agent Cooper, Anderson Cooper, Hanging with Mr. Cooper, Cooper Street and let's not forget, Cooper the Pooper.

because I have a kitten.

I decided to say yes to the mewing of my biological clock, and we have recently acquired this fellow.

I know, he's just hideous. We haven't named him yet- waiting for the right name. I wanted to name him Baskerville...

but it just didn't stick.

He's currently in a room by himself, which the other cats are watching all the time. Should be fun when we introduce everyone.

He is VERY vocal, VERY friendly, and VERY playful. It is difficult to get a good shot.

Anyone have any name suggestions? We've been considering Booth (after david boreanaz on Bones) because Angel is named after "Angel". All suggestions welcome!

**Edited- Acquired is now spelled correctly, and a new photo was added.

we finally finished the sofa.

Old upholstery is gross... almost too gross for me. We stated by taking the pieces all apart, and removing the dust cloth from the bottom.

c- We found the tag. The company now makes office furniture. While taking the upholstery off we found little bits of avocado green vinyl and a tag giving instructions for the original upholstery. The frame is teak.

d- It took hours to remove all of the staples and padding. We reused as much as we could. This is one half of the seating frame. The two pieces are completely separate and connected by screws to the frame.

The main cause of the sagging seat was a lack of enough springs. We decided to remove the springs altogether and replaced them with a wood base. It makes for a firmer seat, but it will last forever.

g- Here's the wooden base.

h- We put the cotton padding back down on it, as smooth as possible, and covered it with acrylic batting. We wrapped the edges around and stapled it to the back.

i - Did the same to the other side of the frame, and the other half.

j - The main covering pieces were not as complicated as they could have been. Each cover (one for the seat, one for the back) was made of four pieces sewn together to make a partial box. (The tricky back comes later.)

I know you probably wanted to see more of the covering process, but we had our hands full with shaping, staple gunning, and stretching. If you do a project like this yourself, make close notes about how the piece was upholstered in the first place. The professionals know best... really.

Anyways, it just took moments for the cats to be back on the upholstered pieces. I guess that's success?

k - The back portion was maybe the trickiest. We reused the tack-bars from the original. They were evil, dull, and bent but Patrick took care of them.

l - The tack bar had to be pushed into the side of the fabric, which was turned under. The top of this portion was stapled to the top of the piece (turned under) and then the tack bars were nailed in and stapled again at the bottom.

m - The result looked pretty good. I am glad to say we didn't crew anything up too much.

n - The two seat portions were screwed back into the frame and voila...

the cats have a new seat. They will defend it with their laser eyes.

and this is where is now sits, in our little entry way. Now I need a little coffee table....

in the meantime...

I know, I know, but my sister said "Don't you name it Owlbert," so I had to.

More radio silence over here... for a couple of good reasons. ONE, the weather is horrible and I can't seem to shake the "it should be summer" blues. TWO, I'm assigning myself (and my helper) big projects to get the season rolling.

First project was a little kitchen repaint that Patrick did. (I will reveal what shade of Alisonblue it is soon.)

Second has been to address the reupholstery of this little mid-century gem. The upholstery was necessary because the moment we brought it home it was sat upon and mishapen by the cats. (Can you see the cat imprint?)
Additionally, the upholstery fabric made Jovi do this...
Which seems like the first line of a very sad story.

Anyways, we just have a couple of steps to go to finish the arduous task. Then I'll show you the final piece, and maybe a couple of progress shots.

(BTW, this burgundy fabric is the result of an unwise recovering. Originally, in 1966, it was covered in avocado green vinyl and had 5 lovely buttons on each back cushion.)

even my doodles are weathercentric.

Where did the sun go?