The Next One Will Be About a Cake

This site is called "Split Chestnut Cakes," right? Perhaps I should have called it "Split Chestnut Crafts and Random Home Projects," since that's what I've been doing lately. I do have plans to make a cake next week in honor of the first week of school, so then we will be back to our regularly scheduled cake blogging.

A few weeks ago in a fit of furniture rearranging, I decided to remove the old headboard off Kate's bed. And when I say old, I mean old. I believe it came from Zach's grandparents. While we still use the nightstand and dresser that match the headboard in Drew's room, I decided that the headboard didn't work in Kate's room next to the "new" nightstand I had just rehabbed and painted for Kate's room. By "new," I mean old. It came from Zach's Granny's garage, and she told me it was one of a set that came from her in-law's home. Are you sensing a theme here? I accept furniture from anywhere.

So without a headboard, I thought the bed looked a little bare. But since Granny didn't have any headboards in her garage, I started looking for some alternatives. The internet showed me all kinds of things I could do...shelves, doors, shudders. I landed on an idea from Better Homes and Gardens where you mount a piece of wood with hooks on the bottom, and on the hooks hang a long pillow that spans the width of the bed.


It is a really cool idea, and I even got some pillow forms from my Mom, but I had a couple problems: 1) I'm not confident in my textile selection skills. And with a plaid bedspread, I was going to have a hard time picking a fabric. 2) I can't sew. I had thoughts of an elaborate tape or iron-on situation (staples, perhaps?), but the fact is that this pillow would need to be pretty sturdy, and tape and safety pins probably wouldn't do the job.

Um, Mom? Duct-taped pillows aren't pretty.

So last weekend Kate and I visited Lowe's to see what kind of pre-made wooden molding they had. As we wandered through the aisles, I found some wooden rosettes used to dress up the corners of doors and windows. We plopped down on the floor and started laying out several pieces to see if I could fashion some kind of installation art.


So I chose to buy eight rosettes with the intent of painting them white, pink, and green. Thankfully our attic is a library of used paint cans that reads like a retrospective of our painting projects through the years. Anytime I get a wild painting hair I head up to the attic and pull down the colors that match the current color of the room I'm working on.

At first I thought the outer circle should be green and the center circle pink, but I was afraid that might too closely resemble a nipple, so I reversed the colors. Here is how they turned out:


At this point I wasn't sure how the rosettes would be arranged on the wall, and even thought I might have to enlist some help to do a crown molding "outline" above the bead and arrange the rosettes inside. But after some sketching I decided to just use the rosettes. Here is how it turned out:

After living with the design for a few days, I think I like it. It's one of those things where I wasn't sure about it at first, and I still think something might be missing. But I don't think a molding outline will do the trick. As with any home decorating mission I undertake, I reserve full rights to rip the whole thing out and start from scratch. Maybe I'll come across some fabric that would work and I'll attempt the pillow headboard!