Getting in the spirit

While I haven't decorated my house yet, I did decide to decorate for Halloween. So I gave myself a budget to stay under $20 and see what I could do.

We started by adding some spiders..

...then some bats

Lots of bats!

I changed up the mantle a little bit...

and added some pumpkins.

Here's the complete living room (with the ottoman of the last post)!

Happy Halloween!

Ottoman

Well a few months ago we made the plunge and bought a couch for our living room downstairs. We decided to make a fun craft project for ourselves and build the ottoman.

Our couch ended up being chocolate brown with these pillows (that came free with it...I plan on making some fun spring pillows to switch out later on). 

Anyways, I went to the fabric store looking for a cheap upholstry fabric that matched the pillows. This is what I came up with. I then did lots of measuring and cut it into the strips and blocks I needed.

Phil was in charge of the woodworking.

I used the staple gun and put batting around the edges and cushion foam on top.

We wanted to make it a storage ottoman so we can shove toys in it later on (much later on) when we have kiddos. 

For the feet we used wooden balls that had one flat side. I stained and sealed them... and then Phil screwed them onto the ottoman.

I'll show you the finished product in the room in my next post!

Oklahoma!

Well hello there! I feel like my life has ramped up in busy-ness and as a result my blog has been neglected.

That aside, let me just tell you about my show that is opening in a little over a week. I have had a lot of fun learning how to dance again! I've never considered myself to be bad at dance, but it sure has been awhile since I've been challenged with legitimate ballet.

Also, to avoid a $75 costume fee I opted to provide my own. Let me show you what I've been up to today:

I made this here brown beauty today. I was going to do a plain circle skirt. Then I realized that my bolt of fabric was 45in instead of 60 in and thus not long enough to make a full circle at the length I needed. Bummer right? So I improvised and revisited some middle school math and made a smaller circle skirt with a ruffle making it the necessary length!

I also pointed my toes to take the pictures. It's a talent.

And guess what else? My Seven Brides for Seven Brothers dress lives on! The world can breath a sigh of relief. 

This happens to be the first costume that Phil saw me perform in! 

I can point my toes in this dress too!

Hooray for Oklahoma!

Things related to eating...

As the house is S L O W L Y coming together I get more and more excited about how it's turning out! I'm a big fan of owning a home despite the amount of work and costliness of it! 

Anyways we now have a happily growing garden and a dining room to brag about! 

Here's our happy garden! 

We've got tomatoes, peppers, cucumbers, grapes (those will take a couple years), basil, rosemary, chives, watermelon and cantaloupe! 

I've learned that weeding is miserable. I thought my fingers were going to fall off and I didn't even finish. Ugh...there were also a lot of spiders scampering around on me. Oh well, I'll be happy when I get to eat things. 

We finally got a dining table! Now we have real seating for 6 people! I feel like a big kid! 

I'm not going to lie, we got the table and chairs from Walmart. But they're solid wood and most of all cheap! I think it looks much nicer than $250! 

Kasie's painting found it's home on the wall again! There's not a lot of decoration, but I like it like that! 

So now I officially  have 2 decorated rooms! We'll just disregard the amount of painting left to do!

It only took me a few months...

Awhile back I got really excited about making some of my friends baby gifts! And while that excitement didn't necessarily die down, the rest of my life picked up ie: buying a house, moving, the holidays, etc.

So anyways I thought I'd show off what I made...nothing totally new but oh well! It's still fun to look at!

I made a couple new changing pads and wipes cases! 

 I really like both fabrics!

I also made a little pacifier clip

Then I went back to the Itty Bitty Dress pattern that I got from http://www.made-by-rae.com/

I thought the dress needed a cute headband so I went to town with some fabric scraps and hot glue.

Here's a closer look at what I came up with

Now I need to go focus and make another leopard print baby outfit. Only this time she asked that it be hot pink! Ha! I'll let you know how it turns out. 

Next on my to-do list of sewing projects is to learn how to correctly size and make different patterns of my own. For that I'm hoping to go to the clearance racks of walmart or something buy some cheap baby clothes in different sizes that I can take apart and figure out how they work! Wish me luck!

On a non sewing note, I just got cast in a local community theatre production of Oklahoma! It should be fun, although a little weird. I got called back for the lead, Laurey, but that didn't work out. What makes it odd is that I was cast as a dancer. I definitely don't consider myself a dancer, per say. It should be a challenge though and I'm excited for that! I'll let you know how that turns out as well. 

Thanks mom for the pretty bathroom!

My mom came to visit this last weekend and I had so much fun! I really like her!

Part of her reasoning for coming down (at least to my step-dad) was to help us with the house! So we decided we'd tackle the master bathroom while she was here! It was great because I probably would have saved it for last, and who knows when I would have gotten around to it. But, now that it's done I'm really happy it got bumped up on the list!

Here's the before picture again:

and after:

We painted it a light blue that coordinates with the bedroom. I like it...the color feels clean to me.

Then as an early birthday present mom bought some decorations to help make it happier! 

I really like the flowers!

We found the poster at Michaels for $3.50. However a frame eluded us. I'm not sure what to do about that, but for now it's stuck to the wall with magnets. 

Don't mind that we only have two lightbulbs. 

The vanity. I like the double sink. Phil also fixed the cabinets and then I promptly bend one again. whoops. 

That's it! I like it a lot and I like my mom even more!

I hope everyone had a great easter weekend!

Headband Makeover

I had a really ugly puffy white headband that I wasn't sure what to do with. It was a hand-me-down and I never wore it. So this morning, in an effort to avoid cleaning the house, I decided to make my ugly headband into something I would wear!

I used some leftover piping and bias tape from other projects, some leftover brown fabric from my rug redo, and lots of hot glue!

It's hard to take a picture of yourself that shows off a headband...this is the best I could do!

And finally, Phil and I had a nice relaxing Valentines Day. We don't really celebrate it much, but we did go out to eat and then played a nerdy board game (called Dominion) together. He also let me watch The Bachelor. I'd say it was a good night!

Oh My!

At my visit to the dentist last month I was chatting with the secretaries about life as a trophy wife. I mentioned that I've been learning to sew and then got a request to make an outfit for one of the ladies to give to her niece/friend/Idon'tremember. She wanted everything to be leopard print and black.

I'll admit I'm not a huge animal print fan, but I do like dressing babies up in non-baby fabrics (you know without the baby animals and pastels). So I got to work and made a dress, some shoes, and a head band with detachable bow.

It makes me giggle. It reminds Phil of the Flintstones.

Adventures of Binding a Rug

My neighbor recently re-carpeted his condo and asked us if we'd like a big square of leftover carpet. Seeing as how our (hopefully) house has ceramic tile floors in the living room we couldn't pass up the opportunity for a free area rug. The only problem was that it wasn't bound around the edges and shed like a beast.

So I took to figuring out how to cheaply bind it.

I ended up buying a yard of matching fabric (on clearance for $6) and after measuring the perimeter of my rug rectangle, cut 10, 44 inch strips. I then ironed a fold into each strip about an inch down.

Next I took to cutting the carpet. This started out okay, but by my 9th yard my hands were dying! Anyways I cut the carpet down about an inch up to make it easier for me to attach the strips around the edge.

After that I took my  handy stapler and lined the folded part of the ribbon with the edge of the carpet, then stapled. I found out that the less cheap the staple, the less likely it will be to fail. I also learned here that after about 9 yards of that the palms of my  hands wanted to die. 

Next I folded the strip over the edge and hot glued it to the back of the carpet, with LOTS of glue! 

The front ended up looking like this.

Here's a view of (almost) the whole rug (my "workspace" was too small to unfold it entirely). 

I think it turned out pretty nice! It will definitely be a nice $6 area rug for us, for the time being atleast!

***House update***

We have our inspection on Friday! 

Lots of baby crafts

It's that time of year again....baby time! There's a plethora of people having babies in the next few months so I get to make lots of baby things! I've been having fun learning how to do a couple of new things. The sad news is that I can't post all of my pictures yet because Britany reads my blog and I don't want to spoil the surprise for her little baby girl.

I can show you a picture of this!

One of my friends just had a little boy, and she is obsessed with The University of Texas. SO i thought she would enjoy a little something for her guy to support UT on game day! Below the booties is a pacifier clip, minus the pacifier, but that will be added later! 

And since I know I often don't make things right the first time, I took a practice run at an adorable dress I found from this website: http://www.made-by-rae.com/

That green fabric is my practice fabric,  but I think it actually turned out pretty cute! (Lauren I almost started and finished this entire dress while the boys played video games! I was proud!)

Well, that's all I can divulge for now! 

OH! And I forgot to mention that Phil and I are officially house hunting! Hooray!

All of my jewelry is in one spot!

For awhile now I've wanted to get some sort of jewelry hanger or box so I could get all of my jewelry in one spot. Right now it's spread out in my room and closet and I forget about a lot of it. So to solve my own problem I decided to make my very own jewelry hanger using these simple items:

• A picture frame
• some corkboard
• hooks
• hangers
• wood glue
• drill
• wire cutters

• I took the glass out of the frame
• Drilled holes on either side where I wanted my earring bars to go
• glued two pieces of cork together (just to make it thicker)
• put the earring bars in place
• added the hooks where I wanted my necklaces to hang
• glued it all in place
• and called it good!

Here's the end product before I added jewelry

And after:

It's right next to my dresser now and I have a feeling I'll be wearing a lot more of my jewelry!!! 

That's my little craft project! Now I'm going to go make a pizza with homemade crust from my bread machine!!!!!

Let's see if I can make it this time!