Easy envelope pillow covers

Like most people, I have several perfectly good throw pillows that no longer match my decor. And while there are some really gorgeous ones out in the stores, I don't want to shell out $30/each for new ones, either.

I found some funky fabric at Hancock that was calling to me. I love funky, unusual things in my eclectic decor, and this white denim with gold foiling fit the bill. I wouldn't normally look twice at something like this, but it kind of reminded me of cowhide while still remaining animal friendly :).

I removed the red silk covers and then sewed envelope pillow covers for the down pillow forms. I wanted them to look a bit nicer, so I added black piping. Believe it or not, as many projects as I've sewn over the years, I've never sewn piping. It was a bit tricky figuring out how to connect the end pieces, but once I did, it was easy. I put them in the corner of the pillow so they wouldn't be as noticeable.

I'm pretty happy with how they turned out. I'd like to eventually have our monogram embroidered in the middle with black thread. I think that would be a fun touch.

I'm not sure where I'll put them, but they are neutral enough to go anywhere in the house. Right now they are sitting on my extra dining chairs that I have flanking the table in my foyer.

Have you worked on any sewing projects lately?

Decking the halls

Here's a quickie with some pix of just a few of my trees. While I did put up all 10 of my trees, my heart just wasn't in it, so I didn't put much else out. I'm just not feeling it this year. :( Which makes me sad, because I'm all about Christmas decorating. Maybe next year I'll really go all out. Because I took these pictures at night, they aren't coming out very well. Hey, I never claimed to be a photographer. :)

I just did the bare minimum for the mantel. Mine and my hub's stockings fell down, so it's just the dogs' stockings left.



This is my tree that I decorate only with vintage glass ornaments. I love it. I usually put this on the fireplace hearth, but this year decided to stick it in an old sap bucket that I found at a flea market years ago.





My cardinal tree, which is my very favorite. I use all cardinal ornaments, vintage chandelier crystals, clear glass icicles and red berry garland. It looks so much prettier in person than it does in pix.





The "drum tree" for the hubs. He thinks it looks too "blingy" with the crystal garland I added to it this year. :)



Of course I have a dog tree...doesn't everybody? :) It was looking skimpy this year, so I dug through my ribbon drawer and found this blue glittery mesh stuff that seemed fun, so I wound it around and was done. It actually does make it look better in person.





Our main tree is a hodgepodge of ornaments: those from our childhood, some that were given to us, others that we have collected while on vacations, etc. Earlier this year, I was at a fleatique store and saw this rusty metal "believe" sign. I had nowhere to put it, so I stuck it up at the top of the tree. And I kind of like it there. I also wound some red berry garland around it, and I like that too. I have a ton of that stuff.





This is the white bird tree I have in our bedroom. It's one of those skinny alpine trees that has pine cones on it. I use white birds, white poinsettias, white berries and clear glass icicles.





My dining room looks like a forest.



I found this at a garage sale a month or so ago for $2. It's a heavy ceramic serving plate, with an even heavier metal stand. I figured it was worth the $2 just for the stand, but I do love the plate.



When I was in Austin for Thanksgiving, I found this little wicker sleigh at a thrift store and thought it would be cute to use as a holder for our Christmas cards.



I have a few more trees and a little bit more holiday decor out, but it's not really blog worthy.

Thanks for stopping by!

Mirror, mirror on the wall (before and after)

A few weeks ago I shared this mirror I found at a garage sale for $5.



What I like about it is that it's an antique...meaning it's heavy duty with a real wood backing. This sucker probably weights at least 20 lbs.

However, I don't really need another plain old mirror. I wanted to jazz it up a bit.

I started with this F that I printed out from my computer. F being the first letter of my last name, though I guess it can stand for anything really, like friend, fabulous, freak... Then I cut it out with an X-acto knife.



I used a combination of redline and painter's tape to make frames around the monogram. I would have liked to have done something a little fancier, but I wanted this to be as quick and painless as possible, so straight lines it was.



After a few coats of Valspar Frosting spray, this is what I got.



Who knew it would be so difficult taking a picture of a mirror? The middle square is slightly tilted. Which really irritates me because I measured and measured again before spraying. Eh...I'm still fairly pleased with how it came out.

But since it's so heavy, hubs had to hang it with some sort of special toggle bolt. And he said he's not moving this thing EVER. So I guess it's here to stay. ha!

A quick little "crappy to happy" project

I went to Ross the other day. I usually stay away from that place because the one here in town is sort of...well, gross. But sometimes I can find little treasures hidden on the back of a shelf somewhere, needing a new home.

On the clearance shelf, I found this little sign.



Because it had been roughed up somewhere along the way and had a little chunk missing from the top, I got it for $2.99.



And while I'm sure some of you would just take a brown marker to fill in the broken area, I'm far too ambitious for that. (ha!) Besides, while this bronze color is nice, it didn't really do anything for me. So I gave it a quick coat of white paint.



And added some raw umber glaze I had from previous art projects.



I like how it turned out, but...I don't know. It still doesn't feel right. It almost seems too "girly" for my tastes. Any suggestions?

Cissy and Sammi say hi!

Time to dig that box of fall stuff from your attic

My housework is done for the week, and since we've had a lot of rain the last two weeks (as in I'm-going-to-trade-my-xterra-in-for-a-boat kind of rain), I'm in the mood to pull out my fall stash. Something about dreary weather screams fall to me.

Here's some inspiration for you from Better Homes and Gardens as well as Pottery Barn. Everything here can be copied/made easily yourself for very little money.

How cute are these pillow cases? All you'd need is a stencil and some $.59 craft paint from Michael's. You could also do this on napkins, table runners, etc. If you wanted to decorate your bathroom with a touch of fall, how about taking an inexpensive white shower curtain and stenciling brown, orange or green leaves on it (or a brown shower curtain and white leaves)? Seriously, that would be so cute and super easy. I came up with that idea myself. :b



Little leaf buttons simply attached to plain white napkins.



I love this wreath. It's neither fancy nor colorful, but it's natural, and that's what I like about it. Wrap a styro foam form with ribbon, glue nuts and you're done.



Same idea as the acorn wreath, but with leaves. I think you can never have too many wreaths. I hang them all over...on the front door, from the pantry door, the back door, my windows....so get cracking and make a few to spruce up your space!



This little cutie could be easily made using one of those dollar store tin pails and a little paint. How cute!



I adore Halloween...it's my absolute favorite. This tray is awesome, however it's $25. Instead, buy a thrift store tray, spray paint it black and silver, then decoupage a skull (or other "character") to the top. Seal it up and it's ready to go!



Candy corn topiary...we all need one of these. Use paper, rick-rack and a dollar store pail.



A ribbon and leaf can really add just enough oomph to a simple napkin. Love this.



If you have any ideas, please share! Happy crafting and decorating!

Doing the side table shuffle

This is our guest room, which we call "Cissy's room" since that little beast always parks her butt on top of all of those pillows.

(note: yes, I know, the puke yellow walls...it's actually a pretty color in person, I SWEAR! Whenever I see the pictures I've posted online, it makes me cringe and want to repaint it all. Then I walk into the room and it looks really good. Maybe if I took pics during the day with natural light it would look better, but I never blog during the day. ;) So you'll just have to look at the wretched color since I took the picture just now..ha!)



When we first bought the house, I had a cute black iron day bed in there, and so that black iron side table matched it. Then a few years ago we bought a new bedroom set for our room, and we moved this wood bed into the guest room. (Isn't it gorgeous?! It's an antique from the 1800s. I love how the headboard is very tall. My parents bought this bed when *they* were first married in 1970. It was painted a horrible yellow color and my dad stripped it one summer and stained it. They used it for years, and then I got to use it when I was in high school. When I moved into my first apartment, my mom let me have it. Technically, I guess it's still "their" bed, but not really. You know how that goes.)

(note: ignore electrical wires and crap on the table, thanks..ha)



For a while now, I've been wanting to get something else to use as the side table. But hubs always thinks that's unnecessary when the thing we have is functional as is. The iron table is cute. I still like it. But it was just too small for that massive bed.

Then tonight an idea hit me. I have this antique tea cart that I'd been using as a TV stand in our bedroom (until I rehabbed this antique nightstand) to use instead. Since that rehab, the tea cart was relegated to the garage, where it's been collecting dust. I pulled it into the kitchen and cleaned it up. When I put it next to the bed, it seemed to fit the space perfectly.



This allowed me to put a couple of quilts on the shelf below, which will come in handy if guests get cold during the night (the pink quilt was made by my grandmother and the blue one was made by my mother and her quilting group. Both were given to us as wedding gifts, and they are very special).

The top of the tea cart was pretty gnarly and scratched up. Then I remembered I'd bought this rattan tray for $1 at a garage sale earlier this spring. It's been sitting in a pile on the floor of my craft room taking up space. I tried it out, and it was the exact size to fit the top of the tea cart and cover up all of the blemishes.

So, what do you think? Is the round iron table better, or the antique tea cart? Or is there too much wood in here now, because I have this armoire in the corner:




(ok, so this older photo makes the paint color look *slightly* less garish...slightly..it's closer to the "real" color....similar to that famous peanut something-or-other and tobacco road, but a smidge darker)

I know you bloggers always have good opinions!

Thrift store rehabs revealed

We bought this house about 5 years ago and have slowly worked our way around the house redoing everything. Most of this was cosmetic, consisting of taking down wallpaper (kitchen and bathrooms), painting, redoing the floor, etc. We didn't get to the guest bath until about 2 or 3 years ago. We took down the wallpaper, pulled up not one but TWO layers of linoleum, smoothed out the walls, painted, put down ceramic tiles (hubs rocks) and changed out fixtures. I couldn't figure out what I wanted to put on the wall over the towel rack, so it's remained empty since that time. I thought about painting some canvases, but that never happened. I actually bought a piece of funky metal art at a Dallas art festival a year ago, but decided it didn't work for me in there.

Then last week I found these at the thrift store.



I loved them the minute I saw them. I knew I'd paint them silver....I could definitely see the potential. They reminded me of those retro midcentury modern starbursts from the 1960s (photos courtesy of etsy).





I originally thought I'd put them in the dining room, but tried them out in the guest bathroom and loved them there. (side note: I don't know why my wall colors always come out so funky on camera...the bathroom isn't apple green...the 2nd picture is more true to the actual color)







Not everyone's style, but I love a little funkiness in every room. Not bad for $4 thrift store find.

Remember this hideous gold mirror?



I love it now. It resides in our bedroom. (again, my wall color isn't Texas Longhorn orange..though I do love the Longhorns since I grew up in Austin :) , it's actually a pretty pumpkin color, though you wouldn't know it by these pictures!)





Then there's the $3 hook rack I found at Goodwill last week. This didn't need a rehab, it simply needed a lot of cajoling, prodding and begging for me to have hubs hang it up outside. It works out *perfectly* for hanging our towels by the pool! This eliminates the need to lay the towels on the ground, having ants crawl up in them and then doing an "ants in my pants" dance when drying off. Not that that's happened or anything. ;)



I feel like I've gotten quite a bit accomplished this week. My "to do" list is getting shorter. It feels good. But then I will have to make another "to do" list for next week. So the fun starts over again. :)