Rock a Bye Baby

Remember how I told you about all of the babies being born in my neck of the woods, well that is most certainly true, but the post I'm doing today is about a baby gift I made sometime ago.  While going through my creation photos the other day I came across this and thought it would be nice to share, or even possibly inspire someone.  Here ya go....

I like to upcycle, I always have.  I've been a re-purposer forever.  I had to, we were B-R-O-K-E growing up.  By 7th grade I had been to 5 schools.  I always had to reinvent myself, at least I thought I did.  I was constantly meeting new people and well, to be honest, trying to fit in with a different crowd often.  In came my upcycling.  I used to get hand-me-downs from neighbors, friends, cousins...you get the drift.  I have nothing against hand-me-downs...but seriously, when they don't fit or just aren't "cool" anymore who wants them?  Well, my parents didn't care about any of that.  Luckily, they also didn't care that I would create "new" clothes from my hand-me-downs.  As long as when I went to school I was what they considered presentable, whatever I did to re-invent my clothes was fine with them.  Anyway, the gist of this story is that repurposing has been something that I've always just done...so, needless to say, I now have a hard time getting rid of things that I just know someone else can use.  We're not talking just clothes either, I however, repurpose an item before I give it away so that the item is "new".

My oldest was given a hand painted rocking chair at 6 months old.  Very cute and very tiny.  By the time age three rolled around, baby #1 could no longer fit in the chair, so I held on to it till baby #2 could use it and when it no longer fit our needs anymore I stored it.  Storage is a hot commodity in our home. We don't have a huge place and I'm not a fan of the cluttered look.  While rearranging the attic one day and purging what I could part with, a light bulb went off in my head to repurpose this great rocker for a cousin of mine who had recently had a baby.  

My littlest cousin's room was sage green, cream and had brown stars on the walls as accents.  Easy peasy, lemon squeezy, I could paint something to go well with this room!



I sanded the rocker, primed it with some Kilz and then got to paintin'.  I stamped stars randomly in a pattern by accident on the rocker, and clear coated the whole thing with two coats of poly.  I gave this repurposed gift to my cousins and they loved it!  FYI...the intent of the star stamping was to be random but somehow, they turned into a pattern.  Must be a little of my OCD..aka know as COD (cause it has be alphabetical to be compulsive...lol!)  

What do you have that you can repurpose and give as a gift or donate?  Clean out your attics people, there's something...I guarantee it!  Here's to inspiration...

'Till next time...