A Hoosier is not just a resident of Indiana....

      I'd been looking for years for a cool furniture piece to put in my kitchen, to display my junk but also look super cool. Junk shops, flea markets, church thrift stores, yard sales, and resale shops are the best places to find something old to make new. We are really lucky in Peoria to have tons of great thrift and resale shops. There are about 5 Goodwills in the tri-county area, along with 2 Salvation Army stores and 3 South Side Mission Marts, and tons of other hidden thrift shop gems. I found this awesome piece at a little thrift shop called God's Mission Thrift Store on McClure St, off Knoxville, in Peoria. It is a great little shop packed to the brim with good junk at pretty cheap prices. Like I said, the search for my kitchen hutch thing had been on for years, and I was really looking hard over the summer and into the fall. It was actually a pretty memorable day when we found this piece, because we had been to the doctor to find out the sex of our new baby (girl!!!). We swung by the thrift shop to kill some time and right inside the door was this cute, but battered up vintage hoosier kitchen.


It was a little rough looking, with some terrible tacky stained paper on the insides. It needed some TLC and we were the ones to give it. We snatched up the cabinet and stuffed it into the back of my car. Luckily it separated into 2 pieces so we could sorta stack it in there. 







The good things about the Hoosier, it had all the original hardware, which just needed shined up. Also it had a cool glass display window and a sweet cutout shelf too. It had a pull out iron table/work space that was in great shape with only one major scrape on one of the corners. It also had the flour sifter still in the top left cabinet....complete with some dusty old flour!
Our first thing to do was sanding. My dad helped me sand the cabinet doors until they were smooth and striped of much of the gunk. I had found a cool decorative paper on Etsy that was a retro 40's reproduction. It had a few different colors in it, and initially I wanted teal, but then, after my mom's suggestion, I decided on yellow. We found a pretty bright golden yellow paint at Menards and set to work painting. The paint was REALLY thin.
At first, any little variety in the color or texture of the piece was showing through the paint. We put on coat after coat after coat after coat of paint and then coat after coat after coat after coat. I went home and my dad continued to add coats of paint. Eventually the paint looked bright and smooth like we wanted. Next we had to measure and cut the paper to fit inside the cabinets. I really wanted paper on the backs, sides, and bottom of each cabinet. We had just enough paper to cover each cabinet with just a few scrapes left behind. We used a spray glue to attach the paper to the cabinets...that stuff was STICKY. Gloves were a must!

Here are some random shots of the progress of the Hoosier cabinet. It was about a week long project, with help from both of my parents and with my boys in school during the day. The final finished project was a super awesome kitchen hutch that I can proudly say is redone by yours truly. It was a fun but challenging project and I was lucky to have help from my parents and my dad's giant garage, tools, and
his painting expertise (he paints hot rods professionally).

I was about 7 1/2 months pregnant during this cabinet recreation, so I wore a mask when sanding and painting. It was a good project to help with the pregnancy waiting game!

 

A Hoosier cabinet (also known as a "Hoosier") is a type of cupboard popular in the first decades of the 20th century. Named after the Hoosier Manufacturing Co. of New Castle, Indiana, they were also made by several other companies, most also located in Indiana.

 Houses of the period were frequently not equipped with built-in cabinetry, and the lack of storage space in the kitchen became acute. Hoosier adapted an existing furniture piece, the baker's cabinet, which had a similar structure of a table top with some cabinets above it (and frequently flour bins beneath). By rearranging the parts and taking advantage of (then) modern metal working, they were able to produce a well-organized, compact cabinet which answered the home cook's needs for storage and working space. Hoosier cabinets remained popular into the 1920s, but by that time houses began to be built with more modern kitchens with built-in cabinets and other fixtures. Thus supplanted, the Hoosier largely disappeared. They remain common on the antique market, however, and are still used as supplemental cabinets.(wikipedia)

Finished product in my kitchen. It is a little more piled up with stuff now, but I admire it everyday! I imagine a mother in 1910 preparing a meal for her family around this cabinet, with a kiddo on her hip and bread in the oven. Love the fact that this piece of furniture has a history to it. Wish I could see where it has been.

Hopper Picture Person Project

Ground Swell, by Edward Hopper was the latest work of art I discussed with my 1st grader's class. The kids liked it because of the boat and the ocean, and in the middle of a harsh Illinois winter it seems almost like paradise. Hopper is a famous American realist painter, most known for his painting, Nighthawks.


Anyway, Hopper is known for painting everyday realistic themes that evoke feelings of loneliness and sadness. His use of color is an important factor in his work and for the kids' project we used color to create an emotion. We talked about Hopper's life and how his work was different than most artists at the time. He painted things to look realistic in a time when abstract art was all the rage. He loved to paint boats and the ocean and other everyday scenes.

I found the project in this AWESOME book. It is a great project that even Charlie (who is 4) loved. The finished project is totally frame worthy.

First off I mounted drawing paper (not sketch) on a board. My makeshift "boards" were made
from free USPS shipping boxes cut in half. I used thick blue artist tape to tape the edges of the paper to the board, covering about an even strip around the edge to create a border when removed. I brought a ton of black permanent markers and told the kids to draw something emotional, something that would create a feeling. I had them name some feelings and then we asked them to tell us what they could draw.
We practiced it at home, like we always do, to test the time and mess factors that will be involved in the project.

Jack drew a dog and Charlie a happy face. Once they drew their main subject, we put the permanent markers away. I then had the kids color with some washable markers, letting them know that those colors would fade and spread out. Some kids colored with crayons too.


As the kids finished up I took them back to a table where I had watered down about 5 different colors of acrylic paint. I had them pick a color to represent the emotion they were showing in their picture.



Most kids chose 2-3 colors, but it was ok since they were really watered down. If they got too much water on the paper we used paper towels to dab up some. They liked the effects the wash had on the marker areas.


The end results were so awesome. My husband actually thought that the dog Jack did was the print we were discussing!! I let the pictures dry in the hallway for a few hours and then removed the tape (carefully). There were so many cool different pieces.







My kids pictures are hanging up in our house!

Yo Gabba Gabba T-Shirts

For Charlie's 4th birthday we decided to do a Yo Gabba Gabba theme. That should not surprise those of you who know me, I am as obsessed with that show as Charlie is (maybe more). There is nothing about that show that is NOT awesome....best kids show ever!

Anyway, I have been working on some homemade decorations for the party for a month now. I had tons of ideas for party games, a cake, decorations and so on, many which I saw on Gabba Friends. My main project was making t-shirts for all the kids attending the party.

First I looked at the characters and made rough sketches for the shirts. I bought bright colored shirts at a local craft store, once I had polled the kids' parents for their shirt sizes and favorite characters. Each shirt was a basic color of the character- yellow (Plex), green (Brobee), Blue (Toodee), Pink (Foofa), and Red/Orange (Muno). That background color was their "body" and I painted each face on the shirt! I used freezer paper to make a face stencil, referencing my sketches for help. I cut out the areas that would be painted on, eyes, mouth, ears, or other distinguishable features.

It is helpful to have a piece of cardboard or a t-shirt form (found at craft stores) to hold the shirt in place and to keep the paint from bleeding through. I used regular acrylic craft paint.
Placing the freezer paper stencil on the shirt (slick side down) where I wanted it, I ran a hot iron over the stencil to affix it to the shirt. You only have to hold down the iron for a few seconds and the paper is lightly attached, it is super cool! Next I just painted in the eyes, noses, and mouths, and let those dry. The eyes took a few coats of white before the background was covered. When doing multiple coats, I stuck a paper towel between the shirt and cardboard to prevent it from gluing itself to the cardboard and ripping off once it dries (learned this the hard way). I let the shirts dry for a few hours, or overnight, then pulled off the stencil to reveal the face. Some things I hand-painted on, once the face was dry-pupils, teeth, flower accents. It took about 1 week to plan, get supplies, and then paint all the shirts.

The birthday boy had Muno with a few extra accents!

Muno and Brobee were the most simple, and definitely the most hug-able.


Plex was the most complicated, but turned out super cool.

Lots of the girls wanted Foofa, since she is PINK!

My oldest son wanted DJ Lance, so I improvised and hand painted him without a stencil.

My husband and I had to have shirts too, so I chose Toodee and he chose Muno (well I chose for him).

I rolled up the shirts and tied them with a ribbon and name tag.

The shirts were a huge success, the kids and parents loved them. Made a great "treat" for the kids to all take home and enjoy.

RAZZLE DAZZLE!