365 Book

I have been taking a photo of Amelia every single day, since day one.  I have been documenting these on my Instagram feed with the hashtag #365baby.  I love it.

I've been debating what to do with these photos at the end of 365 days.  Blurb books can not be made big enough to host 365 Instagrams.  Also, there didn't seem to be anything that fit what I was looking for on Etsy either.

I knew that I wanted something small in height and width but that needed to be FULL of pages, 365 pages to be exact.

Brilliantly, I remembered that my dad was a professional book binder :)

My dad was not going to let me get by that easy and he taught me how to make my dream "Amelia 365" journal, step by step.

It took me a whole day but it's totally worth it.

It's so fat.  It was so fat to begin with, like 5 inches thick.

Then, when I started adding the Instagram photos, it won't even come close to closing anymore :)

Each page has the date stamped on it and then the Instagram photo that I printed from Printstagram.  These were so cheap and the quality is fantastic.  I also love how you can print them to look like Instax photos.  So rad!

The book now holds photos from Day 1-Day 199.  You can see what that looks like :)

I plan on displaying the book like this:

Open and standing up for anyone to look at :)  I think it's definitely going to be something that we treasure. The fact that I made it with my dad, makes it even more of a treasure!!  

You can check out our whole book binding process right here.

Thank you dad!!

xo

janel

I have a DIY dad.

Who has a grampy that makes DIY onesies for her?

This girl! 

Have you ever seen the movie St. Trinians?  It's a movie about a boarding school filled with "delinquent" little girls.  It's funny and it's a favorite of my dad and I.

Well, my dad loved the movie so much that he made Amelia three different St. Trinian themed onesies.

Seriously, how cool is that?  The one pictured is my total favorite.  Another one has the St. Trinians' symbol and "Head Girl" printed underneath.

I just love how thoughtful this little gift was and that my dad is so great with handmade gifts.  

Thank you Grampy!

Love,

Amelia.

"We're facing the biggest crisis of our lives and you're behaving like bloody children. If this place closes down, we have to go to other schools. And by that I mean *normal* schools. "

-St. Trinians

retired.

Yesterday was my dad's last day of work....ever.

My dad worked for 43 years and never called in sick (well, until Amelia was born and then he called in for three days just to spend time with her every day).

He started working with the phone company before he was drafted and returned to the same job a few years later when he got back from Thailand.

He worked his way up the ladder (sometimes literally as a lineman) and finished his years there as a pretty big deal :)

When my sister and I were embarking on college, my dad made the decision to use his retirement money that was being put away to pay for our college tuition so that we would never have to pay student loans.  That is something I will NEVER forget.  He worked many many years past his retiring date so that he could do that for us.   He ended up having to work until he was 62 (HAPPY BIRTHDAY DAD!!!) so that he could get social security.

It was a huge sacrifice, but that's just the kind of guy my dad is.

My heart is so full with the love and support he has shown my family through the years.  My sister, mom and I never wanted for anything.  He worked hard to make sure that we always had a roof over our head and food on the table.  

I feel so blessed to have such a hard-working, loving, and kind dad.

I feel blessed to have him here with us every single day.

I feel blessed that Amelia has such an awesome grampy that talks to her non stop, and sings silly songs to her, and teaches her how to roll over.

My dad is my hero.

Dear Dad,

Happy Birthday today.

Happy Retirement yesterday.

I love you so much and I am so proud to be your daughter.

Thank you from the bottom of my heart for everything that you did for our family and for everything that you continue to do.

You are the best.

I love you.

xo

janel

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nostalgia

A couple of weeks ago, my parents and I looked through a bunch of old photographs and albums from my grandpa.  He was quite the memory keeper :)

Amongst these photos, were a lot of old slides that I wanted to get developed.

Yesterday, we got the photos back from the slides and had another great day reminiscing.

Here are a few things that I learned from these photos:

1.  Contrary to popular belief, I apparently get my craftiness from my MOM not my dad.  My dad is super artistic and creative but my mom has some hidden secret talents that she has kept from me all these years!!

*  She made that huge macrame hanging!!  (and then apparently sold it at a garage sale sometime in the past)

crewel embroidery! umm hmmm!
And my dad tells me that she was quite the cross-sticher as well.
My crafty soul...I get it from my mamma :)

2.  My dad is the cutest hippie I know.

3.  My mom looks so much like my sister and my cousin Kelly and so many of these photos.

4.  I started blinking in photos from an early age :)

well, only sometimes...

I loooove looking at old photos, don't you?  I would love to have a little flashback post every once awhile just for the nostalgia of it all :)

xo
janel

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Project #6

I had all intention to make a cute book tonight with photos of everyone in our family with their names for the baby.  I even got it started see...

But then, the opportunity to hang out with my dad presented itself :)

  I was at my parent's house tonight when my dad came in and told me that he had his telescope out and that you could see Jupiter and it's moons really cleary tonight! 

I am a TOTAL stargazer thanks to my dad and his telescope.  We spent many nights looking at the stars and planets and him teaching me about nebulas and constellations.  

Clearly I was excited, and decided to do some "Planet Gazing" instead of book making.

We saw so many cool things and my dad showed me how to play with the F stop and ISO of my camera to get some pretty shots of the stars.  Living in St. Louis, doesn't really allow beautiful starry skies (too many lights) so it was cool to capture what we did.

In no way am I a professional photographer, AT ALL, and I know these photos aren't the greatest.  To me though, they are perfection and a captured memory of a night hanging out with my dad.

I learned a lot about my camera!! It does so much more than I ever knew it did!  

Oh and here are some shots of Jupiter...

The coolest thing about it is if everyone goes outside and looks for the brightest "star" in the sky, we would all be looking at Jupiter no matter where we live.
Crazy!!
This next one I took with my iPhone, shooting through a pair of binoculars :)  It's really cool though because you can see the moons of Jupiter and I captured the Dopplar Effect too!

I'll have to finish my little book project another night.  Tonight's project was all about learning new photography tricks and spending great time with my dad in the backyard, with a telescope, camera, and binoculars.

good times.

xo

janel

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Reupholstery Phase II

(image) 

Sunday, we worked on Phase II of our reupholstery adventure :)

We finished stripping the base of all of the fabric and stuffing until we had just the "skeleton" of the chair left over.

It was really really neat to see just the base of the chair, and where it's form comes from.  I am finding myself looking at the upholstered furniture all over my house to trying to visualize and guess what it's insides look like :)

Here are some photos from Phase II:

Yesterday, I went to JoAnns and picked up all of our fabric and supplies so that could start deconstruction the old fabrics into patterns for the new fabric.  (Maybe tonight)
I didn't go with a bold print since the shape of this chair was just SO mid century.  I wanted to stay true to the era so I used some of those swatches I found on the inside as inspiration.
This is the fabric that we chose:

It's very tweedy, and Sherlock Holmes-y.  It think it stays true to the vintage fabric but with a tiny modern twist to it.  I love it, and it's perfect!!  I will get my pops of color from accent pillows :)

xo
janel

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reupholstery: phase 1

**

One of my garage sale scores from today was this chair:

(I will definitely be back with the rest of my finds tomorrow :D)

The mid century modern style and shape was perfect, the price was perfect but man does this baby need some work!

I have been wanting to try my hand at reupholstering for a few months, and my dad was really excited about the idea as well.  When we saw this chair today, we knew that it would be a great project for us to do together :)

We worked for a couple of hours today taking deconstructing the chair and pulling our millions of dirty, rusty tacks...

It was really cool to see all of the vintage fabrics that were used in here.  There were at least 8 different fabric swatches that we found :)

Our next step is to find a perfect fabric to reupholster it with.

I'm not sure if I want to go with a mid century modern vintage fabric or it I want to go with a more modern-day bold print fabric?

Here are some favorites that I found here.

I can not wait to get back to work on this chair.  It's going to be such a special piece because it's something that my dad and I are doing together :)

I will definitely keep you posted on our progress.

xo

janel

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