Family Room and No-Sew Curtains

We are very lucky to have a large addition off of the back of our house with beautiful peaked ceilings. It looks like a log cabin. We don't use this room very much since we spend most of our time in the living room where the TV is but it is good for company and for when we put our Christmas tree up! The room doesn't have heat or air conditioning which is the other reason we don't use it that often and keep it closed off...It does have fan and a gas fire place though. When we do use the fire place it heats most of the downstairs!

One thing I don't like about the family room is all of the wood paneling. I think the real wood on the ceiling is beautiful but not the stuff on the walls. I really really really want to paint it but my husband likes the cozy log cabin feel of the room. We even had a vote at our house warming party and I lost! Shocking. So he agreed that we can keep the wood paneling for 5 years and then paint it. Soo 3 more years to go. In the meantime I am trying to embrace it and use warm colors in the room.

We have not spent too much money on decor in this room. The orange chair is from a yard sale, and the couch and two trunks were passed down to us. We DIYed the coffee table and the curtains. 

I did not sew the curtains but it was still a long project which took me about a month while watching TV last winter. I used hemming tape to hem the curtains after seeing that on Young  House Love (remember, sewing machines scare me). The fabric I bought for the curtains is really thick upholstery fabric which made it harder to use the iron-on hemming tape. However I think the thick curtains help keep the cold/heat out/in and we keep them closed most of the time. Since there are three windows and two doors in the family room that I wanted curtains on it made sense to DIY them due to all the unique sizes and the expense of curtains. Even DIYing them ended up being expensive though because the fabric I wanted was about $17 a yard. I also didn't really understand at first that curtains should be wider than the actual window so I did not buy enough fabric. And then the fabric was discontinued. Pascal came to the rescue and suggested layering with white fabric. The white fabric was only a couple dollars and I think my mistake worked out in the end! We bought the curtain rods and clips on Amazon.  

 

Homemade Happy Birthday Banner

Last week I wanted to get a banner for my coworker Sarah's birthday. I decided that I could probably just make one on my own instead of getting one at the dollar store. I picked out a bunch of scrapbook pages that I already had and then decided to glue it to cardboard for added stability. 

I used an Ikea and Snapfish box for the cardboard and a brochure as a template. Conclusion: Snapfish has higher quality cardboard than Ikea. 

Once I had cut out all of my cardboard squares, I cut out the scrapbook paper about an inch bigger on each side. I added slits at the corners to make it easier to wrap around the cardboard. I glued the front on and then wrapped the paper around to glue it on the back as well. 

Once everything was cut out it went pretty quickly. I just used a brown sharpie to freehand the letters and I used a gold sharpie to add some accents. I think if I did this again I would just use white paper for the base and then cut the letters out of scrapbook paper and glue them on. 

I used a hole punch to make the holes and then put the letters on the ribbon. I didn't knot the ribbon on either side of the letters. The ribbon was thick enough so the letters did not slide around. 

And finished! I really like how it turned out. I made the letters really big so I did two banners instead of one. Cost of this project: free. 

Livingroom Updates

Over the holiday weekend I finally finished some livingroom updates. You already saw the end tables that we bought for $75 after I sold our old ones for $80. Those are in our livingroom now and are working out great. Now I originally wanted to paint them, because um I like to paint things, but for now Pascal isn't letting me. The wood is in such good condition I was even hesitant to paint them and Pascal likes the wood. I argued that we don't really have any wood in the livingroom and he reminded me that everything doesn't have to match which was part of the reason I sold our black end tables...touche. So we are going to work on bringing more wood tones into the room. We already would like to get a wood/metal/industrial coffee table (like this, this, or this) but we just need to find one that's not $300 or DIY one?

The next update to the room were some pictures that I bought from Etsy a month ago. I think Etsy is awesome but I get overwhelmed by the sheer volume of art on there and don't know where to start. I was just browsing all types of art and found a shop (Sea Shore Prints) that did blueprints of major cities. I really like the look of blueprints so decided to get the Baltimore and Washington D.C prints. The size I wanted for one of them actually wasn't listed but I sent the shop owner a message and he responded right away and added the option! The prints were $13 each plus shipping and were shipped out the next day. The shop had great customer service so I would recommend them and I think all the different pictures would make great gifts. My only complaint was that although the pictures shipped right away they took almost 2 weeks to get to me instead of a week but I think that was out of the shop owner's control.

This picture is a bit blurry

So I have had these pictures for a month but finally got around to getting frames over the weekend when we made a trip to Ikea...dangerous! We were there for 2.5 hours...we did also eat breakfast. They have breakfast for 99 cents! Seriously, I could live there. Anyway, while there we picked up two of the Ribba frames. The only thing I don't like is the measurements of Ikea's frames are a little off. Instead of being 11x14 its 11.5x15 so the mat doesn't quite fit the picture. I wanted to buy the black frame because, um, all our frames in that room are black, but Pascal convinced me to get the "metal" ones.

I ended up using the gray insert as part of the mat as well since the included one was slightly too big. Am I the only one who has trouble framing a picture? It makes me unnecessarily angry. The back was hard to open and close and getting the picture straight inside took me forever even with using tape. I am inside swearing and sweating over this while Pascal is outside just, you know, re-shingling our shed.

I hung them on either side of our window in the livingroom and moved our old pictures. So our last update for the livingroom was the couch. When we first bought our couch the plan was to get the chaise to attach to it. But then I got nervous about it and we just bought a different chaise cover and kept it separate. While I really liked that the chaise was a different color and added some more dimension to the room, we just didn't use it that much. And I knew that we would use it more if it was part of the couch. So we finally broke down and bought the matching chaise cover knowing that we can always change it back if we want. Amazingly enough I actually still had all the pieces to attach it from when we bought the couch two years ago. 

It is already the new favorite spot in the house. On the downside, there is a lot more beige (although technically the couch is light gray) in the living room and the couch looks gigantic (which it is). But the comfort and function are worth it. Also, you can't even tell the difference between the old cover and the new cover which shows how great it has held up since I literally am on this couch every single day. At the Ikea store you can tell some of the other, thinner, covers don't hold up as well but ours still looks brand new. We have the Kivik couch with the light gray Teno cover.

Here is a before picture and then the afters. 

My Biannual Scrapbooking

For the anniversary of our two years of dating, I made my boyfriend-now-husband a scrapbook. It was a big scrapbook with pictures of our first two years together. I spent a lot of time on it and really enjoyed it. I also spent a lot of money on the scrapbook...I told him that if we ever broke up I wanted it back, ha. I decided that I would make one every two years. This was February 2010...And it is now November 2013 and I have not made another one and it is almost time for me to make a third scrapbook! So time to get on that all ready. 

I have a Snapfish account and they send me regular emails with coupons. I got one last week for 300 prints at a penny each! So I figured now would be a good time to make my scrapbook. I went through my computer and Facebook and ordered 238 pictures which was only $2.38! And $12 in shipping...but still a good deal. This will be my scrapbook for 2010-2012. A lot happened in those years! We got engaged, I graduated twice, we got married, and we bought a house! We shall see how long it takes for me to actually put it together...last time I spent a couple of months on it. Thankfully I already have a scrapbook I bought on sale about three years ago, ha, scrapbook paper and various stickers that I have picked up over the years when on sale. 

Here are some pictures of my first scrapbook (I made 45 pages total)...Definitely not professional or something you would see at a scrapbooking party. But it is personal and that is all that matters! I do love the photo books you can make online now but something about the scrapbook is just more special to me.

My New Favorite Thing: Making Tutus

My friend and coworker Jenna tricked me into signing up for a Halloween 5K. She promised that I would get a t-shirt and that we could dress up. Of course I also had to run...We decided that we had to wear tutus and we could also use them for our Halloween costumes. For the race we just wore the tutus but then for actual Halloween we were a butterfly and a witch.

We bought our tulle at Walmart. Most of it was only 97 cents a yard. We looked at a couple of pins on Pinterest and the general recommendation was 8 yards of tulle for an adult sized tutu. I bought 7 yards in purple and then a half yard each of 4 different things to add on and some ribbon. I spent $23 at Walmart.

My supplies 

Jenna's supplies

I already had a bunch of purple ribbon (leftover from my wedding) so we decided to just use that instead of elastic for the waist. I think I might try it with elastic next time. The ribbon is fine though and is adjustable. I just knotted it in the back and it did not come undone even while running.

The entire tutu making process took about 2 hours. The longest part was cutting all of the strips of tulle. We just measured how long we wanted the tutu to be, added a couple of inches for the knot, and doubled it. I think my strips ended up being 30 inches long and then 4 inches wide. Once the pieces were cut it was pretty easy to knot the tulle on the ribbon. I wanted my tutu to be poofy so I pushed all of the knots close together. 

My tulle looks blue in the pictures but it is purple!

Besides the regular tulle I also added sparkly tulle, velvet, ribbon, and lace. Jenna did a couple of different colors and added ribbon and spiders. She used spider rings and just slid them on and they stayed by themselves.

Finished Product

Not too bad for $20 and two hours. I already have gotten to wear it twice and I am sure I will wear it again. Now I want to make a tutu for every holiday and occasion!

The tutu got a little beat up on the 5K from getting stuck between my legs and in bushes/branches but it survived and so did I...I even got 3rd place in the race in my age group. Out of 3 people...I only made it because of Jenna encouraging me!

Pre-Race

Post-Race

For work, we wore our full costumes as witch and butterfly. 

Mission Tutu = Successful