fire, toile and a potted plant

So let’s say your house is on fire. You have only seconds to grab what you can and run out the door. What do you grab? The photo album? The row of journals on your bookshelf documenting the early days of dating your husband? Your heirloom wedding gown? Or, in a desperate attempt to grab what is most valuable does all rational thought fly out the window and it suddenly become essential that you grab your L.L. Bean pea coat and that potted plant by the door?

Evidently, I would grab the plant. No, my house has never been on fire. But almost as bad, I did one day get a call from my sister stating that she and a friend were on their way over to “see how cute the twins room is!” It was like someone yelled “Fire!” in a crowded building because, let me assure you, their room was in no condition for an open house. It was a wreck. So what did I do? Make the beds? Pick up toys? Vacuum? Of course not. True to my inability to properly prioritize, I quickly decided the single most important thing to do between the phone call and the doorbell was to line the inside of their drawers with scrapbook paper.The girls have this used-to-be-changing-table-now-a-dresser dresser in their room. When they were babies, these drawers were so cute with the see through window in them. I would fold fuzzy burp cloths and proudly display them in neat rows of yellows and pinks. And then they turned 3 and the dresser became the toy chest and all of a sudden, it wasn’t so cute anymore.

So I cut paper. And scotch taped it to the inside of the drawers. The girls were fighting in the background and I stuffed toys under the bed with my feet. But that dresser, it looked so cute when I was done. I finished with time to spare. Boy, do I know how to prioritize.
It definitely wasn’t perfect. I had actually planned to get some fabric for this project. But seeing as how I kind of hyperventilate when I go into a fabric store (unless The Nester is there to talk me through it), that was not to be. The paper was only 12×12 but my drawers are wider than that. I had to piece them together. Lucky for me, toile just looks all toiley from far away, so it’s hard to see where one paper stops and the other begins.Can you tell? Bet you can’t. It’s been over a year since I did this little project and now the tape is beginning to fail, as you can see from this inside shot.
My sister recently posted about lining the back of her dish hutch (what do you call that thing, anyway?) which kind of reminded me of this little project. She also used scrapbook paper, but she used a glue gun. Evidently tape is for amateurs. Seeing as how mine is falling apart, I guess I agree with that.

So now, instead of seeing this…I get to see this…
It fits in nicely with my cleaning habits.