Same Blog

Don't worry, its the same blog, just a new name. I was getting tired of the old name but wanted to keep the same URL.

French Braid

I figured out how to French braid my hair in a circle! I've been French braiding my hair since I was a little girl, so this was fairly easy once I figured out where to stick my elbows!

Velvet Pumpkins

I bought five plastic pumpkins for a dollar each at Big lots {Dollar Tree will have some, too}. I was able to pull most of the stems out and set them aside. Using some velvet shirts {I found slightly stretchy velvet works best for this}I cut a circle out. You have to play with what size: I used a plastic child's plate and that was perfect. I also wanted it to be pulled tight. I ran a basting stitch around the edge of each velvet circle, and gathered it lightly, popped the pumpkin inside and continued gathering. Eventually, the velvet ran out of space to keep gathering, and the pumpkin was too tall for the circle. So I tied off the loooong threads and used those to sew opposite sides of the circle together until it was snug up to the hole where the stem was. I popped the stem back in, and had four velvet pumpkins!

I did not hem the velvet, the raw edge gets hidden nicely and it would have been to bulky anyway.

The last one I painted with white pearl Martha Stewart paint.

Welcome Fall!

New Sofa

Our old sofa was a free hand-me-down from my parents {Daniel asked for it}. It was very comfy, but big, ripped, and the wrong color. It overwhelmed the living room. Our new sofa is antique, bought from a friend, longer then the old one, but dainty. Someday I'm going to re-upholster it myself. We're still looking for the perfect fabric. Though now I'm OK with keeping it this way until all future babies are past the spit-up stage!

Chair Re-uhpolstering

Ikea curtain with permanent marker

I bought this chair at the thrift store while we were engaged. I knew it would be easy to re-upholster, but I didn't have a fabric picked out. About a year later, I saw a similar chair in a magazine with fabric that had French handwriting on it. I asked around at all the upholstery stores, but all they could give me was this fabric. Not what I was looking for! So, I decided to make it myself. I found curtain fabric at Ikea that was the right weight {and cheap enough!}and considered screen printing it. But the complexity of doing so deterred me. So, I skipped some steps and just wrote on the fabric with permanent marker. I tested it for water-fastness and discovered ironing it on the highest setting {this is cotton fabric} made it water and soap fast. I did not try it the washing machine, though.

The text is from Pride and Prejudice, you can find the full text online here. I copied selected portions into Google translate.

Work

My favorite part of the week: having taught children how to throw on the wheel all week, at the end they get to teach their parents what they learned.