Archive for July, 2011

RECIPES/FOOD now has a separate link. If you want to link up a recipe, make sure to scroll down to the 2nd inlinkz button instead of the first.

{Here’s a great way to browse all the previous Link Parties.}

Love the projects this week! Check it:

Well Hello, Sunshine recovered this little step stool. Love the fabric.

Making it Homey found a desk, fixed it, and then refinished it. So pretty.

Look at these cute bows by A Southern Lady’s Ramblings.

Annabellea Design Studios painted this pretty canvas.

Loving this awesome wainscoting design from This Home of Ours.

Way cute sunburst mirror. Check out the how-to at Thrifty and Chic.

A Kitchen Table for Two made over her lazy susan.

The Gunny Sack shows how to make paper bag mailers.

Aren’t these apothecary jars so cute? Check them out at Wayward Girls Crafts.

J & J Home painted her own rug.

HMH Designs made some fun cute meringues.

If you’ve been featured you are AWESOME so grab a button and tell everyone!

Post about anything you’ve worked on recently!

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{Someday Crafts has a great party each Thursday for this!}

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Here is an EXCELLENT article by Crafterminds about Link Party Etiquette. If you are unsure about Link Party Etiquette I highly recommend you read this article.

Ready. Set. Post!

Have you ever read the book, “If you give a Mouse a Cookie?”

THAT is my life. I start one little project, and everything just snowballs into total mayhem.

This is our gameroom:

We pretty much haven’t used this room the entire year we’ve lived here. Huge room just sitting there untouched and unloved.

Why? Well, honestly, I don’t know. Hmmm, well, the kids aren’t use to playing alone upstairs. They like to be downstairs. The wall color reminds me of poop, so I stay away. We don’t have a good TV situation. I hate the couch.

So, I’m trying to keep all these excuses brief in fear of boring you to death, but finally, we decided that since our 2nd TV has sat in our room untouched & unplugged for a YEAR (we are not huge TV watchers, especially in our bedroom), we might as well put it in the gameroom.

Here’s where we gave a cookie to the mouse… It’s all downhill from here. This gets crazy kids. You are now forewarned.

So we brought the TV up and I convinced Ben that ALL the gaming stuff (wii, PS3, etc) just had to be moved upstairs. {I want our downstairs TV area less cluttery and I want the kids to play upstairs and keep my living room clean!}. So, we moved all the gaming stuff up last week.

Well, this couch is a thorn in my side.

It is too huge, too dark, sucks all the energy out of the room, and is the completely wrong configuration for the room. It worked perfectly in our last home, but for our new house, it just was not cutting it.

So we listed in on Craigslist for $300. Probably way too cheap, but it was only in okay condition and part of it was broken. Within 10 minutes we had a buyer on their way over. Yes!

Well, now we had nothing to sit on. So with $300 cash in our pocket, we hit the road and headed to IKEA.

After sitting on every.single.chair.and.couch. in Ikea, we finally decided to splurge and spend $400 ($100 more than we sold the sectional for) on the Karlstad Sofa.

We figure, when we decide 100% how we actually want to decorate this huge room, we can either add pieces to this couch to create a sectional situation, or we can move it to our bedroom ’cause we want a couch in there anyway eventually.

Finally the couch was assembled. It’s so random that you have to actually assemble your couch when you buy it at IKEA, but hey, if it makes it cheaper, I’ll assemble every piece of furniture!

The kids were so eager to try it out.

Yes, we got white. I know! We are cra-zy. The kids! The dog! It’s W-H-I-T-E!! A) it’s washable. B) food is not allowed upstairs, nor are shoes, markers, crayons, or anything else that is sticky or messy. {I will not insert any Michael Scott jokes here}.

Of course, Ben had to drag over our ottoman from our family room couch to go with it. Lovely.

Isn’t the couch lovely? I especially love my blue pillows I found on CLEARANCE at Target last month for $6 each. They feel like down. So squishy and cuddly.

And here are two shots of the whole room just to give you an idea of how much bigger the room feels now that we ditched the huge beast of a sectional.

So I’m sittin’ on the new sofa, and I’m totally digging that it fits the room and feels so much more open in there, and I just can’t get my eye to stop twitching over the poopy color on the walls, as well as the bagillion holes from the previous owners. I think they must have hung at least 10 shelves, and owned a dart board.

How are we expected to sit on our new couch and play video games when we are forced to stare at those horrible holes in the wall. Plus I felt like I was inside a poopy toilet. That color is awful. Plus, it’s GLOSS! I need sunglasses from the shine.

Can you understand why I just avoid this room and pretend like it doesn’t exist?

So now it’s become my life’s mission to paint the gameroom. I swear, this room (and the connecting hallway) is like 1000 sq ft. Painting is no easy task. But, remember, I’m the mouse, and when we moved the tv upstairs you basically gave me a cookie.

Of course, because nothing is ever simple for me, I first have to remove all the screws, nails, and anchors in all the walls, then patch all the holes before I can even think about painting.

Yes, this is for real. I pulled out TWENTY EIGHT nails, screws, and anchors from the walls of the gameroom. And I found two more today. So we are now at THIRTY.

After I was done cursing the previous owners {and then equally thanking them for getting evicted so I could purchase the home for a steal from the bank}, I started in on filling all 30 holes in the wall. Except it was more like 100 because one wall looked like it had been hit with darts repeatedly.

Finally! My gawd. It took half a day just to fill all those holes. But still I must forge on!

(If this furniture situation causes any of you to start having eye twitches and hives, I am really sorry. Trust me, I hate this furniture more than you do! One day at a time, peeps.)

Now, finally, FINALLY, I can paint. This project is killing me.

The paint color is Martha Stewart’s Bedford Gray. I painted our family room with this color, and I had a gallon and a half leftover, so the gameroom gets it because it’s free!

I wish I had a happy ending, but not yet. The room now looks like this:

The cutting is done, but the rolling hasn’t even started yet. It’s going to be a long week.

The point of this entire diatribe?

We got a new couch for our gameroom!

And we LURVE it.

Unlike my usual empty promises, I swear on my stack of Twilight books I will show you the room the second it’s completely painted. And if I forget, may Edward bite me in the neck.

A few months back I scored several decorative pillows from my neighbor’s garage sale, all for $1 each.

A dollar for a pillow is cheaper than buying a bag of pillow stuffing!

If you need a pillow, like, right this very second, or you just aren’t lucky enough to find a garage sale 3 doors down with dollar pillows, Goodwill always has a plethora of crappy pillows to choose from.

Then I found this purdy teal flat sheet at Walmart for only five bucks.

Yes, I went to Walmart. {sigh} I try to avoid it at all costs (you guys know how much I love Target!}, but sometimes I head over there just to check out the decor. Walmart has some pretty good decor, believe it or not. (Shocking, I know!)

Anyway, I washed the sheet, just in case you didn’t figure it out from the photo above labeled “washed sheet”.

Making your own pillows is so easy. It’s probably the easiest thing to sew.

Okay, so the making of the pillow… It’s so easy, if you blink you may miss the tutorial, so pay close attention!

Cut two equal squares. Make sure they are square. Make sure they are the same size. I folded my sheet in half and cut both at once. I *think* they were 18″ squares. Just measure the size you want your pillow and add like 2 inches. This will allow for a nice thick 1 inch seam allowance that should hold up to fraying.

{See, I’m so lazy I don’t even finish the edges.)

Now, bust out the sewing machine and sew the fabric together around the edges. Make sure to put the right sides facing each other and to leave a big gap on one side to stuff the filling in.

I could NOT for the life of me figure out which was the right or wrong side of this sheet, so I just picked one. Made my job a whole heck of a lot easier.

Now is where I tell you to fold your pillow right side out, then iron on the big fuzzy hibiscus flower you printed from your Silhouette. But I suck majorly and didn’t take any photos of that.

Also, Target, Walmart, Michael’s, and the like have loads of iron-ons that are ready to go and so ca-ute, so if you don’t have a Silhouette, don’t go drown your sorrows and end up with alcohol poisoning. Just go pick out an equally cute (or cuter) iron-on. They even have blingy ones!

Okay, so once your pillow case is all ironed and your iron-on is stuck and beautiful, grab a pair of scissors and cut your crappy pillow open. Feel free to take out your frustration for not owning a Silhouette on the crappy pillow.

Ah! Glorious pillow filler. Loads and loads of glorious pillow filler. It’s just sitting there begging me to stuff it into a new beautiful pillow.

Okay, so this is the hardest part. Are you ready for it? Seriously. Pay.Attention.

Are you paying attention?

Pull the stuffing out of the crappy pillow. Shove the stuffing into the new pillow.

Eek. That was so friggin’ hard. Srsly. Almost killed me.

I’m not sure why I keep on talking and talking since my photos are already labeled with the directions. I just think this tutorial is so nice, I’m repeating it twice.

So this part really is the most tricky part. Honest. I’m not joking this time. {shocking, I know}.

Pin your gaping hole in the side of your awesome new pillow closed. Using a zipper foot on your sewing machine (the foot that lets you sew right up next to the edge), slowly stitch the hole closed.

If you and sewing machines just don’t mix, hand sew it instead. Or you can just do what Beth does and hot glue it closed. Whatever floats your boat.

And that, my friends is all there is to it.

And in case you are thinking I’m crazy for coming home and sewing a pillow, I didn’t. I made it before the vacay. I just never had a chance to post it before we hit the road, Jack.

Cost breakdown:
$1 for crappy pillow
$5 for flat sheet, but I have tons left for other projects
GRAND TOTAL: $6, but probably more like $2 if you subtract the extra leftover fabric.

Oh, almost totally forgot… I made the pillow for my daughter Kinsey’s bedroom.

Here are a few more pillows I’ve made recently (okay, fine, here are all the pillows I’ve made; all two of them.)

Placemat pillow:

Cloth Napkin Pillows (with hidden zippers):

Can it get any more random and DIY than napkins from placemats, cloth napkins, and bed sheets? I’m on a laundry roll.

Have you made any pillows recently? Do you have any totally random things you’ve made lately from linens around your house?