Fabric Covered Shelves: An Accidental Project

I accidentally covered my linen closet shelves with fabric this weekend. How did that happen, you might ask?

The linen closet next to my master bath was something I overlooked the first few weeks of living here. One day I turned around and said, “Wow! I have another closet!” It became a place for stashing miscellaneous items.

I have a ton of sewing materials stowed away in shoeboxes and bins in various closets around the house. I actually have stopped sewing because I could not find anything I needed for my projects. If only I could get them all together in one place! Recently I decided to empty out my extra linen closet and use it only to store linens and sewing material.

I started by completely emptying out the middle three shelves. (The top and bottom shelves contain books that I will need to find homes for another day.) I cleaned off the old wooden shelves and decided to cover them with contact paper.

Here is where the serendipitous accident occurred. I grabbed what I thought was patterned contact paper, cut it to size, and started to peel off the backing. Then I discovered that it was actually a clear contact paper, which I use to cover the children’s school workbooks.

Then I thought: how nice it would be to have a pretty paper or fabric underneath! I took out a thin gauzy material that was unsuitable for any sewing projects, cut it to size, attached it underneath with masking tape, and covered it with the clear contact paper.



The result is a pretty pattern on my shelves that are destined for storing materials. This will serve as a constant reminder that I am only to use this space for that purpose. As I go through the contents of other closets and come across more material, I have a place in which to store them.



As soon as I had covered a shelf and put it in its place, I had a pile of curtains ready to go there. My covering is not perfect either, and the paint is original to the house. I am not Martha Stewart, nor do I wish to be. These are real pictures of a real closet in a real house, belonging to a real mom with real kids. I hope I have inspired you to do something fun and different with your fabric today!

My Son's Eighth Birthday Party

Around Christmas, I posted about the “gingerbread houses” we made for my daughter’s tenth birthday.

That went so well that I decided to do it again for my son’s eighth birthday.

The party program:

2:00 arrive

2:05 start building Boboli pizzas

2:10 blow bubbles outside with Mr. Miller (it was a pleasant 52 degrees) while Mrs. Miller cooks the pizzas

2:30 pizza time

2:45 build Easter bunny houses (composed of graham crackers, royal icing, and lots of Easter candy)

My 8-year-old son's:



My 10-year-old daughter's:



My 11 1/2-year old daughter's:



3:00 build birthday cupcakes



3:15 eat cupcakes



3:25 open presents

3:30 whiffleball outside with Mr. Miller

4:00 good-bye

We only had two boys as party guests, but add that to my four and there are enough kids to have a good time. I was exhausted at the end of the day, and could not believe the quantity of candy consumed! For our dinner, we reheated the leftover pizza and then had another cake. My son was very happy.

My Best Four Inventions

We were all sitting down to breakfast when my nine-year-old asked me if I had invented her baby sister.

“Invented? No, I may have given birth to you all but God is the one who invented you. I couldn’t have invented any of you if I had tried!”

“Hmmm…” they all mulled over my statement.

“If I had wanted to invent you I would have had to ask for my firstborn to be this incredibly sensitive, intelligent, athletic girl with brown eyes and wavy brown hair, who really loves bunnies…”

(Here my eleven-year-old’s eyes lit up.)

“And for my second child to be an intuitive, creative, insightful, and artistic girl with green eyes and straight brown hair, who really loves elephants. . .”

(Giggles from my nine-year-old.)

“And for my third child to be a silly, smart, easy-going, boy with hazel blue eyes and brown hair, who never stops playing baseball. . .”

(My seven-year-old looks out the window thinking about going out to play some more ball.)

“And my fourth child to be a fun-loving, musical, laughing girl with brown eyes and brown hair, who loves berries and standing up in her high chair. . .”

(She is standing as I pronounce the words; I fetch her out of her high chair.)

“No, I could never have asked for all of these qualities because only God knew what to give me. He knows us better than ourselves.”

They all just sat there thinking about that for a few minutes.

It is amazing how our children see us as their own inventors. It makes me feel humbled to be given such credit and I am happy to be able to set them straight and give credit where it is due. But it is also wonderful for our children to know that if we had been given a choice as to what qualities they would have been given, we would not have changed a thing.

“Lo, children are an heritage of the Lord: and the fruit of the womb is his reward.”
Psalms 127:3

Painting: Margot in Blue, Mary Cassatt,
1902, Pastel on heavy paper with light canvas back; The Walters Art Gallery at Baltimore, MD

Creative Messes

In college I became friends with a young woman, one of three daughters, who grew up in a very traditional Italian home. Years later she came to my home for dinner. She was thinking about getting her own apartment and was looking forward to learning how to cook. I remarked with surprise that I had assumed her mother would have taught her how to cook.

“She didn’t want us to mess up the kitchen,” she explained.

The last time I made brownies with my son, I asked him to crack an egg into a bowl. He accidentally let the entire egg open outside of the bowl.

“Oh no,” I started, then checked myself. I thought of my friend.

“It’s okay,” I continued in a calmer voice, “Just try to get it into the bowl this time.”

Kids make messes. Four kids make lots of messes. Often it seems like all I do is clean up after their continual mess-making. Sometimes it seems like a fruitless use of my energy and abilities. But messes are necessary bi-products of creativity; creativity yields higher-order thinking; higher-order thinking yields productive, moral, intelligent adults.

So let your kids bake and make a mess; then have them all pitch in to clean up. You will have made more than a nice batch of cookies. The smell of the freshly-baked goods, the feel of the powdery flour, the taste of the uncooked batter, the sight of the rising dough, the sound of timers and chattering siblings, all come together firing hundreds of neurons from multiple brain centers to make a memory that will last a lifetime.

“Give her a reward of her labors, and let her works praise her at the city gates.”
Proverbs 31:31

The All Purpose Joy of Cooking by Irma S. Rombauer, Ethan Becker, and Marion Rombauer Becker (Hardcover - Nov 1998)

The only cookbook I ever really USE!