A very full holiday season…

All the wayyyyy back in November, I wrote a post (in my head) about all my preparations for Thanksgiving…. now that the train has traveled all the way down the tracks to May, I think it is high time I posted something here.  In the interest of wanting this to sort of be as much of a journal as a blog, I am going to fill in with some posts about what has gone on since.

November started out with me trying a new project.  I am not much of a decorator, but I love TRYING to do things myself.  I have a set of antique cherry Chippendale dining room chairs that were given to me, along with a dining table, when we moved into our current house thirteen years ago.  The fabric on them, while a lovely color and not terribly worn, was stained in several places where I could not get the stains out.  They were desperately in need of new fabric. I knew this would require disassembling the chair bottoms and completely redoing even the spring coils on the underside of the chairs, as they had slid out of place.  In case you’ve never seen this, the above pic is what it looks like underneath a spring coiled dining room chair seat.

All of the fabric underneath the springs had dry-rotted, so it was no longer supporting the weight of a person, and badly needed to be replaced.  This required removing the old – which had been tightly stapled together and then nailed to the chairs with about 40 gazillion nails – and adding the new.  Removing the old was quite the task, and adding the new took nearly every bit of strength this old woman had.  After crawling around on the floor, pulling, then stapling, then pulling, then stapling, and repeating that until all strips were tightly criss-crossed underneath and the springs firmly in place, it was time to put the padding over the top and to staple the fabric on. 

I purchased a lovely damask fabric in golds and greens which I had kept for about 6 months with no “round tuits.” After cutting the fabric to fit the chair, I took staple gun in hand and went at it with just about all the strength I could muster.  Once I had the fabric securely on, I then stapled a layer of dark cover fabric on the underside to cover the unfinished places.  Lastly, I glued on the trim.  And the above photo is the result.

I absolutely love the fabric on these chairs;

I really enjoyed doing this myself, but I have to admit that I really overdid it trying to get this done in two days and injured my back in the process. They were, however, all ready for Thanksgiving which I held at my home for both sides of the family, including my brother- and sister-in-law and their family.

Of course, I got busy and forgot to get photos once the guests arrived.  But, at least I remember how I decorated the tables.  I was lucky enough to find these lovely cloth napkins in fall colors from Christmas Tree Shoppes four for $2!  What a steal.  The tablecloth was $3.  So, for under $10 I had cloth napkins for everyone. Not only did I feel like my house looked so lovely, but the fellowship was just wonderful…  so much so that I am still looking back fondly on the day and being thankful!