A place for princesses and a pretty light!

I seem to find so many ideas from all of the blogs that I read and facebook links. There never seems to be enough time, or space, to try each idea that I find. But two I just had to try are both pretty and functional.

The first one I saw at a birthday party for one of Bel’s friends. This particular girl has an exceptionally talented grandmother! The things she makes gives me craft envy. Not only do I wish I could sew like her, but I also wish I had someone who would just make the beautiful items and give them to me. It would save me a lot of time! But I digress…What I saw at the party was one of those cubbies that fits over the dining table. The one that I saw was fully lined with embroidered flowers, a letter box, a removable door that could be replaced with a puppet theatre (complete with matching wooden spoon puppets). In short, it was completely amazing and every girl’s dream cubby!

I also saw a similar thing on Better Homes and Gardens and then again at the amazing Ikatbag. They were popping up everywhere! I did make Bel a princess tent a couple of years ago, but it got to the point where it had seen better days and she never used it because the slightest gust of wind would send it flapping and she hated that! So I toddled off to the discount fabric store in the city while Grandma was on school holidays and bought the brightest pink fabric I could find with bright green ribbon and purple lace. Then what I had bought sat in my ‘To Do’ stash pile for quite a few months. One day I was actually motivated to begin. I loved what Ikat said, that she woke her girls up from their nap to view theirs for the first time, so I wanted to do the same thing. There were squeals of delight from Bel, and Willow was thrilled that the box cubby had been vacated by her big sister and she could now have dominion over it!

The second thing that I just had to make was a chandelier that I saw on Craftzine’s facebook feed. I did not want to faff about with glass test tubes, so I bought some plastic ones from E-bay. Once again, the magnificent Jay from Birdie & Bug came to my rescue, finding me the perfect flowers for my light. Needless to say, I love it and it makes such a pretty shadow on the ceiling. It also only cost me $50, which I think is an incredible bargain!

So now we are almost half way through the year and 10 weeks away from Willow’s first birthday. Before I even start thinking about that, we have even more birthdays this month and I still have my ever growing ‘To Do’ pile. Stay tuned for Bel’s amazing new raincoat (if I do say so myself!)…