The Fern Dresser and Apple Picking

I couldn’t resist, y’all are getting 2 furniture makeovers in 1 week! 🙂

A little over a month ago, I was brainstorming a dresser makeover. I wanted to do something hand-painted, like the popular Blue Bird Dresser I have done or the Coral Bird and Branch Dresser I did this spring. However, I wanted something more distinctly ‘fall’. So I went outside late one night and picked a couple ferns. I wasn’t sure it would turn out the way I had imagined in my head, but I figured I didn’t have much to lose. So I just started painting what I saw…

 This type of painting is therapeutic for me. It requires much less concentration than the Union Jack dressers that I have done time and time again.

It took me a couple hours, but I finally came up with something I loved and which sold quickly at St Louis Vintage Market Days:

 

To give you an idea, here is what I started with:

I had to completely re-glue that entire drawer, replace ALL of the drawer bottoms, and several other drawers needed to be glued and clamped. I also lined the drawer insides with a pretty gray and white fabric that had a wood grain pattern.

The body is painted with Annie Sloan Chalk Paint in French Linen. I did not distress this one, but sealed it with clear wax. This particular type of oak finish had some texture to the wood, so the paint absorbed really well. I only took a extra fine grit sanding block and smoothed out the bumps of the hand-painting, added some clear glass knobs and called it good!

 

It was quite the crowd pleaser at VMD but lots of people thought it was a stencil. Really?! haha So I finally had to write a little sign saying, “Not a Stencil: Hand-Painted Perfection”

Here it is again, side by side:

In other news, this week we went apple picking for the first time since we moved to the midwest! Kids had a half-day, so we drove out to Eckert’s in Millstadt. It was a day all the entertainment was closed, so entry was free! All we had to pay for was the apples we picked (which was a lot) and the pumpkins we picked! It was a perfectly warm autumn afternoon… 70 degrees with a slight breeze.

My kids have never eaten fresh apples! Can you believe that? What kind of mother am I? 😉 This will definitely be a new tradition. So I decided to take some pictures to document this new tradition, and told them to stand in the shade of one of those heavy-laden trees while I snapped away. The shade made for some beautiful lighting and it didn’t take long to get some keepers:

The funny thing was the kids couldn’t even finish an apple because the bees were EVERYWHERE and would hang on to the juicy- sweet, bitten apple, and would not let go! Alex (my middle child) is a little terrified of bees, so they ended up throwing away the half-eaten fruits.

The pumpkin patch was a couple minutes away on the tractor ride, and it was so fun to walk and walk and pick our own sizes and shapes! We’d get a little tired and sit a little on nature-made stools. 🙂

 

I kinda love those scrunched-up faces!

What are your fall traditions? Do you have apple orchards close by? What is your favorite apple recipe?

With all the apples, I know I’ll be using lots to make apples pies this weekend and several of these desserts from earlier this week:

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