Mama Chair

as advertised on Mudah

I have been naughty. I've been online shopping again. BUT in my defence, I bought it on Mudah :o) it's about HALF the price from what I found in the shops. Yes, it is used, pre-loved if you like :o) but the previous owner has kept it real well. It was advertised as "mama chair" and I fell in love with it at first sight. It was already midnight when my eyes set upon it and I had the crazy impulse of sending a text message to the owner there and then to ask whether it's still available ..but I managed to stop myself :o) barely :o). I wrote the owner's number on a little piece 0f paper and went to bed dreaming of the chair.. heee..

I had a very busy day the next day, somehow forgot all about it and only saw it again when I surfed the net a couple of days later. I was sure someone would have already bought it by then but I decided to just try my luck. I nearly fell off my chair when the owner replied that it's still available! I quickly called hubby and arranged to view the item with the owner and the rest is history! :o)

See, it is feeling right at home.. :o) Aaaaahhhh.. (doing the happy dance..)

..and this is the other side of the buffet and hutch..

Two for the price of one.. (oh, and the lovely lady owner threw in the cushions too for free..) Proves that it does not have to be expensive to be beautiful! (if you know where to look!) :o)

Petals & Berries

Cake Stand

I'll admit, there are a lot of things that I would like to have for our new home. Some are just waaaay down our list with the budget that we have set. Like a vacuum cleaner for instance, that has gone into the "luxury" category, also known as, the "not within our budget at the moment" category. But well, there's always my mum's to.. ehem.. borrow :o) So it is always a pleasure to find things that you think would break your budget but with just a bit of creativity, would turn out to be something that you always wanted but at a much more affordable price.

About a month ago I was walking around a local thrift store, treasure hunting as usual, and guess what I found?

This green 12" scallop-edged plate with flowers embossed on it. And the tag said RM10. How can I resist? I was happy to take it home as is but wait.. what is that I see??

This dusty little green bowl sitting quietly all alone at the bottom most shelf caught my eye. Does it match the plate? Yes!! Price tag - RM3!

So I happily bought them and started on my project. You see, I have always imagined having a pretty cake stand on my dining table (I would love to entertain!:o)) but the large, pretty ones are always so expensive. But look at how these turned out..

Just measure the diameter of the bottom of the bowl and measure and draw that on the bottom of the plate. Make sure that where you draw, the surface is flat and smooth, otherwise the bowl will not stick.

Use some ceramic glue (I just could not wait to get some ceramic glue so I just used super glue :o)) , and glue the bottom of the bowl to the bottom of the plate as shown.

After the glue has set, turn it over and voila! A pretty cake-stand. How charming.. just what I needed.. ok,ok.. wanted.

On a diet? A fruit stand it is :o). A pretty cake-stand for a total of RM13, I say that's a wonderful bargain!

Twigs & Feathers

Re-upholster: Dining Chairs

As everyone knows, the economy is not doing well, globally. So, wherever we can, we try not to spend too much. We have a budget for everything and we try really hard to stick to it. So when we saw a dining set which is sold at a fraction of the normal price, we had to grab it. My husband loved the solid wood but the fabric covering the seats? Well, it was a dull brown with some red and orange flowers and get this.. it even had some gold thread peeping through here and there. The 80's here we come. Lets just say, it did not compliment the other soft furnishings that we had and I would not have agreed to buy it if I knew we would be stuck with it. We bought the set with an agreement that we would later re-upholster it. Well, it didn't last a couple of weeks. I just HAD to have it re-upholstered. I'm even surprised that the photo below actually made it look decent (that's because you can't actually see the gold threads, trust me!).

The salesperson at the shop that sold the dining set to us told us that we could have it professionally re-upholstered for about RM30-40 per seat. We had 8 chairs so that would roughly come up to RM240-320. And that does not include the transportation fees of picking them up and sending them back. No way. So my husband and I decided to try and do it ourselves. Here's how we did it:

Just turn the chair over and see where they screw the seat in. Unscrew them. Ours came off pretty easily.

Cut off the material covering the bottom of the seat and put it aside. You will need to put it back on later (cause I'm too lazy.. erm, I mean busy, to find, buy, measure and cut another one :o))

This is what it looks like with the back cover off.

Next, put the upside down seat on the wrong side of the fabric that you would like to use (am I making sense here?). I didn't even bother to take off the old fabric. The thicker the better, I believe :o). Then, cut the fabric to size, so that you have enough fabric to staple to the bottom of the seat. I'm not very patient when it comes to measuring so whenever I can get away with it, I just eyeball it. Believe it or not, I did not even measure the seat before going out to buy the fabric. I'm adventurous like that :o). I just told the salesgirl "I need 2 metres of this.. no, on second thought make that 3, no, 2 and a half would be perfect. Thank you :o)". I know, I drive them nuts sometimes. Haha!

Next, you just pull the fabric taut and then staple, pull and staple, until you turn it over and it looks like this.

After you're happy with that, you can put back the back cover and re-staple it. Please ignore the uneven edges of the cover :o).

And then, just put the seat back on the chair and re-insert the screws.

And we're done! Ahhhh.. that looks much better. And the price: fabric RM60, staple gun RM30, the look on our neighbour's face when she saw what we did - Priceless! :o)

Twigs & Feathers