I am my mother's daughter. I say it loud; I say it proud!

I am my mother's daughter. I'm sure of that. One hundred percent. I got my dad's chest, legs, and love for salting beer, but I got my mother's soul-filled creative whimsy. She loves tap dancing in elevators and marching down the sidewalk with her folded umbrella held high. She bursts into show tunes mid sentence. She can stop any battery-operated clock cold. But best of all, she can take anything simple and make it look fabulous, all on budget.

I was raised in a small Iowa town where we were always well taken care of and well fed, but we didn't have a lot of money-- my dad was a tractor salesman. But somehow, everything looked great: Mom's magic touch.

Recently, in our new home, My Man and I decided to put our huge L.A. dining room table in the attic and use my butcher's block art table for eating, and we needed new chairs. Following a Design*Sponge lead, I found these pretty, classic chiavari chairs at Gala Source on-line for a good price. I primed them and jazzed them up with blue spray paint.

I love the way they turned out!

All the while I was fixing them, I thought about Mom and how she worked her magic with paint, wallpaper, duct tape, and her sewing machine. (To this day, the smell of fresh paint transports me -- it reminds me of the summers when she'd repaint my room, and made me feel like a princess!) We're all on a budget these days, and reclaiming, refurnishing, redoing is becoming standard. Having learned it at my mother's knee, I'm so glad to be my mother's daughter.