wishful thinking..

I sooooo wish I could make my little girl's nursery look like this adorable room:

(And I could handle having that rug in every room in my house!!)

you can find the full article here

Halloween Mantel

Here's the final product. I put all of these projects together and I'm happy with the way it turned out.
Definitely an orange theme going on.
The only two things I didn't post about earlier that are included in the picture are the orange runner I added to my wreath and the little damask frame where I just stamped '31 october' on fabric.

Happy Halloween!

Inspiration from Julie

How to cover up a big ugly white wall??

This solves that problem:

First, I got this idea from my friend Julie Browne. She is a mastermind of high-impact, low cost decorating and fashion. She has a big fabric wall hanging in her front room, and I wanted a similar look (can't you see how amazing Julie is?).

So... we tried it out by stapling a large piece of home decor fabric (which, by the way, I got on sale for $2.00/yard at Home Fabrics!) to a wooden frame we made from wood purchased from Home Depot. I think this project cost maybe $7.00. And, it only took two little nails to hang it from, so we didn't have to junk up the wall with a lot of nails. I might have purchased fabric with a little bigger pattern on it, since it's such a big piece of art. But I like the dimension it gives to our front room.

Thanks Julie!

Spice Up My Shrubbery

Announcement: I officially have a green thumb :) Okay maybe not quite yet, but I did plant some flowers in a pot a few weeks ago and they are GROWING! I haven't killed them yet!

Speaking of pots and plants, I came across this V and Co. tutorial for decorating your basic pottery with jute. What the heck is jute, you might ask? I did. Apparently, jute is a type of plant fiber used to make common items such as rope, twine, chair coverings, curtains, sacks, hessian cloth, carpets, and even the backing used on linoleum. It resembles hemp to me, and I suppose you could use hemp as well for this project. I really liked the polka dots. What a happy centerpiece!

Fabric Decorative Balls

I was thinking the other day of how I could make my own decorative balls and just today I came across the PDF instructions for sale from V and Co.

I find them to be most adorable. Probably going to have to give them a try.

Inspirational Farmhouse Bed

How cute is this farmhouse bed that Rachel MADE!! She got the plans here. Now all I need is somewhere to build it, and I would seriously attempt it. SO beautiful.

Speaking of Burlap...

Lindsay's post the other day of the burlap wreath reminded me to post this project which now hangs in my front room:

Here's how I did it: First, I stitched a length of fabric down one side of my burlap piece.

Then, I folded my piece of burlap in half length-wise and tied a knot in one end of it. Then I made a rosette out of it by simply wrapping the fabric around the knot in circles, and twisting while I wrapped. Once I'd wrapped it, I hot glued the end to the underside of the rosette, and hot glued in a couple places inside the rosette to keep it together. Simple simple.

Next, I stitched down one side of a length of green fabric that I had ironed in half. Stitching down just one side gives it a little more dimension as it can pop off the fabric a bit.

Now for the leaves. Just free-handed them, and ironed on some interfacing between the front and back to give it substance.

Stitched around the edge of the leaves and actually hot-glued them into an accidental hole in my stitching of the stem. oops :)

I staple-gunned the red fabric backing to my wooden frame.

This is how it looked before I hot glued my burlap rosette onto it:

Hot glue to secure the rosette and a couple push pins in the wall to hold it up, and it's finished!

I LOVE TREES {especially fabric ones}

I LOVE TREES. I really do. All kinds of trees. Right now, I'm loving tress with BLOSSOMS, but being that it snowed here last night, I'll have to wait for that. Anyway, I came across Kalleen's "At Second Street" blog and I fell in love with this tree craft. Click over to her site to see her tutorial. She did it using her kids' hand prints for the branches, which adds character for sure. Super super cute! I'm going to have to try it out..

Window Pane Decor

In my opinion, this project has the biggest "bang for it's buck." I was given this old window pane from my friend Lori, and I just stapled fabric to the back of it and hung it on the wall. Super easy and low-cost. I need to find more friends willing to give me their old vintage treasures. Don't throw away those old window panes!

Quick last-minute project for Easter

Easter is almost here! I came across this darling little project idea on flikr. The artist has made these buttons into a circle.. but I think you could easily rearrange it into the shape of an egg, for Easter. Or possibly a flower, for spring. I'm thinking to make an egg shape, you could layer different colors of buttons to look like a decorated Easter egg.