Making Over A Kid's Table & Chairs, Part 1

I am a bit behind... I still owe you a 2nd post about our Christmas 2012. You will see it over on The Etc Lists within the next couple weeks. For Christmas, I gave a little table and chairs set. It is called Latt and it is from Ikea. As usual, I couldn't leave the set just like I bought it. I had to dress it up a bit. Also, as usual, it took me about 10 extra tries to get it right. You get to see all of my exciting spazzy errors in Part 2 of the Ikea Table.

Here is the before and after:

I do love some green!

I always start a project with some serious brainstorming. I think about the colors I want to use and I picture what kind of vibe I want to end up with. As soon as my brain has exhausted all of its ideas I head on over to the Google machine. I like to see what other people have come up with. 

From my brainstorming I knew that I wanted a chalkboard top and plenty of color.

Here are some of my favorites Latt Hacks (the sources are at the end of this post):

A colorful top! I hadn't even considered just painting one area. Google was already up 1 on me.

Fabric and paint! Fantastic! I loved the idea, but was worried about the durability. 

Another inspired person wrapped their Latt chairs in fabric. Pretty funky! 

Who doesn't love a map! This one is super neat, but not quite the vibe I was going for. 

This Map Latt was closer to my vibe, but I do not have near enough talent to make that.

A chalkboard top! And, they color-blocked the chairs. A great idea! 

I was excited to find this one. Ikea green was one of the colors I was considering. So, I was happy to see that someone else had already tested it out for me. And, with a chalkboard top! This was about as close as I was going to get to what I was looking for. 

I drew up a possible design for the chair tops in my favorite program, Microsoft Paint. I wasn't sure what colors I wanted to use so I drew up 4 possibilities.

Now you know the riveting process that went into my Latt-hacking. I'm sure you are losing your mind with excitement about Part 2 coming up soon. 

I will give you one more sneak peak. This photo is from the first time I showed Cora that you could write on the table with chalk. I wrote, "Cora's Big Girl Table" and she insisted that I also draw a hat. So, a sombrero was drawn.

Time for Wednesday's Weekly Rather Question:

WYR:

dfsf be caught in a serious nose pick on national TV (like this guy)

or

have to wear a very strange cartoon-looking sombrero (like the one I drew above) 2 hours per day every day for the next year?

sources: fabric topped, yarn wrapped, maps, color blocked- green, color blocked- yellow, red with map