The Chair

Back in May we bought a comfortable & cheap chair at Savers, which unfortunately had really gross fabric on it. So we also bought a lot of really cool blue upholstery fabric to reupholster the chair with.

Russell lounging in the chair we just bought from Savers back in May. Notice how dirty the chair is! 

 We started the process by slowly and methodically peeling back the layers of fabric, and we eventually got to the bones of the chair. I did most of the deconstruction, and Joanna did the fabric.

Dissection of the chair started with removing the skirt, which was just stapled in place with cardboard. 

At first we couldn't figure out what was holding the side panels to the chair, then we discovered that flaps of the panels were wrapped around this tack strip and hammered into the wood of the chair! Chair-makers are clever! 

Here's the chair with no back and side panels, no skirt, no cushion, and no rotating/rocking metal base! 

Once the back panel was off, we started removing the staples from the front panel.
This is the top of the chair which has fabric, fluff, and a supporting web-like rigid mesh all sewed together! 

Here is the front pillow/panel of the chair detached from the frame, and the arm-rest panels have been removed too.
Hundreds of staples were removed during this project! 

This is the lower arm rest exterior. There was soooooo much nasty junk caught in here!
I found toys, popcorn, coins, rocks, wrappers, etc.
And the fabric had lots of stains all over it! Gross! 

 When we were all done with the deconstruction, then came the fun part! We put the chair back together the best we could remember that it went. . . .

Here's Joanna with the completely naked chair frame.
She is attaching the first of the new upholstery panels!
She's thrilled. 

After an evening of work, we had the pillow back panel reattached, the front panel, and the left arm panel
Joanna spent a lot of time meticulously copying each panel from the old fabric, and making sure all the pieces were sewed together properly! This was here uber-craft for the fall! 

 We ran into a little bump in the road when we couldn't get the tack strips to hammer nicely back in to the chair, so we improvised and ended up with a more fancy looking chair! (Joanna had to hammer in most of these silver button nails because for some reason I kept bending them!!) Plus Russell loves to push the chair's buttons!

Finally the front-facing parts of the chair are all stapled back on! I did most of the reconstruction up to this point, but then I turned it over to the hammer skills of Joanna to put the new back panel on.
I did this because I kept ruining the upholstery nails/buttons we bought, and the tack strips were too bent out of shape to re-use. . . 

Tah-dah! Here is the finished product!
Notice how bright and vibrant it is!
Now that IS a chair we want to sit in!

Russell loves it!
He is very proud of  his mommy and daddy for this new-look and feel comfy chair for his room! 

Here is the chair back in its spot in Russell's room.
Russell is admiring its splendor . . . . 

Bonus Russell picture!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

All in all, it was a great learning process, and the chair now looks fantastic!!

So everyone should come visit us just to see our newly reupholstered chair!!!!!

- Ben

Just kickin' it

We spend most days just kickin' it around the house. We are trying to cut trips into town to save gas (one of the reasons we moved close to Ben's school). It hasn't been as successful as we hoped due to one church calling requiring someone to go in more frequently than we expected (three times this week, not including church).

So, Russell and I try to find ways to keep from going to crazy.

 No-shave Movember. Russell isn't a fan.

 I guess when you are 18 months you can wear whatever you want.

He is so happy when he is helping. I'm keeping this to remind him in a few years when he starts complaining about  having to do work around the house :)

Halloween

This Halloween was much more exciting than last years Halloween. We started off with the ward chili cook-off and trunk or treat and young women fundraiser. Our trunk or treating experience wasn't nearly as bad as Sarah and Brian's, but we have way fewer children in the ward, and they did it inside in the classrooms so kids couldn't go around super fast.

Russell really got the hang of getting candy in his little trick or treat bag pretty quick. He even would say trick or treat if he was prompted.

Two scientists and a little mummy. I made the mummy costume which worked out pretty well once I figured out what I should do.

Ben was sad his chili didn't win. I was sad because I made some little boy ties to donate to the young women bazaar/bake sale and left them on our kitchen table. Now Russell has lots of new ties for church.

We also carved our pumpkin and played with the Mr. Pumpkin-head kit my visiting teaching companion gave Russell.

The Mom Smile (or Grandma Smile in his case).

 Real pumpkin carving wasn't quite the smashing success as the pumpkin-head kit was. Russell didn't want to touch the inside of that pumpkin at all, but he enjoyed smelling them (?) and then the finished results. He liked looking at the jack-o-lantern everyday.

That was how we celebrated Halloween this year. My last mission companion came to visit and flew in on Halloween day. We didn't end up getting back from the airport until almost 7 so Russell didn't get to go outside and do any real trick-or-treating. He still had lots of fun anyway, and we still have plenty of candy to eat.