How to: Recover a Dining Chair

None of my dining chairs match.  They have all been salvaged from (usually) a trash heap in front of someone else's yard.  I took four very different chairs and using vivid paint colors and some oilcloth turned them into a bright and fun dining set.  Here's what I did:
Pick your chairs.  They need to be sturdy, but other than that you can work with almost anything.
For wooden chairs, sand them lightly,
 Next, wipe all of them down with a wet cloth and allow to dry completely.
 For metal chairs I use spray paint, and for wooden ones I used acrylic craft paint.  It's super cheap at any craft supply store, and comes in a huge variety of colors. I chose four different colors, but obviously you can have a more matched look by using the same color.
Next apply a couple of coats of polyurethane to protect them.
For the seats, I removed them and covered them in oilcloth which I found by the yard at Casa Ramirez on 19th in the Houston Heights.  I did not remove the original covering except in one case, where it was badly torn and would not have laid smooth under the oilcloth.  It's pretty easy to recover the seats if you take a look at them.  Some of them require a screwdriver, some a hammer, and some just pop out.  Fiddle with it long enough and you'll get it.  Fold the oilcloth tightly over the seat and secure with tacks on the bottom of the seat, and replace it.

Voila!

New life to old chairs.  

Toe Mopping (if Toni does it, it must be OK)

I am a Stay-At-Home-Mom (SAHM).  My kids are both in school, so my job every day is to do the laundry, cook the meals, pack the lunches, garden, fix broken things around the house, help with homework, and keep the house clean.  I love gardening and cooking, I enjoy helping the kids with their homework, although at about 4th grade my math skills started to fail me.  I don't even mind laundry.  The rest of the housekeeping I, let's face it, suck at.  It's just relentless.  I keep the house more or less clean and free of clutter, but my heart is not in it.  If I could afford a maid I would have one. I am forever seeking short cuts to those tedious endless chores.  So imagine my delight when I walked into Toni's kitchen door and caught her toe mopping.  My friend Toni is also a SAHM, but she is actually good at it.  Whenever Sugar Snap decides to run away she tells me she's moving in with Toni.  She is a professional decorator and her home is tasteful, smells good,  and is put together.    Not to mention, always clean.  ALWAYS.  I would rather eat off Toni's floor than my Fiestaware.  And there she was, mopping her kitchen floor using a damp rag and her pedicured toes!  I have used this half-assed method of floor mopping for years in shame, and here was Toni, the Queen of Clean, using this same method unabashedly.  Apparently, she does it all the time.  She wipes down the kitchen counters with a rag, and then drops said rag on the kitchen floor and using her feet, mops it up.  I realized hey, we are all just trying to get through the day with our sanity intact, and any little trick we use to help us out that isn't illegal is OK.  I'd love to hear your housekeeping shortcuts!

Here's a link to Toni's decorating blog:
The Half Assed Decorator