Straight lines are tiring.

True story.

I am tired of sewing.

Don't get me wrong, I like sewing because it produces pretty things but over the past week I have spent too much time in front of the machine. I need a break from mating one piece of fabric to another piece. Ha mating fabric.

Since last Wednesday I've sewn four 3 foot long curtain panels and 5 pillows. That's a lot of straight lines. But not so hard work pays off. I cozified our bed with new pillows!

Here's our bed before. Try not to fall asleep looking at this picture.

That's special. Not so much. Boring. So I went to Ikea this past weekend and bought 5 feather pillow inserts. Key: Buy the feather pillow inserts, not the cheap polyester fiber filled inserts. The feather inserts are so much more comfortable and you can actually lay, snuggle, pass out and touch them with out worrying about the pillow losing its shape and becoming a pancake.

The pillows make our bed look small but that's mostly because the pillows are big. Big and cozy. The big back pillows that are in the same fabric as the curtains are about 2 feet wide each.

and here they are all fabriced up!

I'm pretty in love with the fabrics. The 2 back pillows were made from left over curtain fabric and the gray fabric and purple floral fabric I found at Joanne's. The floral fabric mixed with the geometric pattern fabric does it for me.

Our bedroom is finally starting to develop a personality!

I'm definitely already scheming up some more ideas for this room.

"They are yellow, brown and creamish." "They sound really ugly." Thanks Aj

Curtains. Done. Up.

All I have of them right now is some iphones pictures because I got a little to excited and started on another bedroom project before I thought to take real pictures.

I'm a fan.

The room feels so much more cozy now. I really don't know how I allowed our bedroom to go naked for almost a year. Oh yeah, grad school.

These were the first curtains that I've ever 100% completely sewn and I have to say they aren't hard at all. Just a couple of long, straight lines.

The fabric for the curtains cost $55 for 7 yards from fabric.com. I made 4 panels (2 windows) and two huge pillows for the bed with the 7 yards. Good deal. Good deal.

I knoow what you should ask for for Christmas........

A sewing machine.

Dooo En My Hobbies

I'm on summer break. A 2 month break. With really nothing to do but whatever I want. For 2 months. Yeah if I were you I would hate me too. I'm pretty blessed to have 2 months of complete freedom and relaxation. I'm fully aware that I will probably never have a break like this every again.

Everyone keeps asking me what I'm going to be doing during this break. My answer is dooo en my hobbies! It's going to get crazy around here with crafts and decorating and watching Bravo.

Here's my goal list so far of projects to get done this summer break:

-Make curtains for our bedroom

-Make curtains for the kitchen

-Stencil burlap pillow in the living room

-Finish up the living room gallery wall with a couple more frames and fill up the empty frames currently hanging out on it

-Make pillows for our bed

-Make new wreath for front door

-Make the bathroom look cuter in general (new curtains, towels, rug, storage)

-Organize the guest bedroom somehow.......no guest can comfortably stay in there right now

Making curtains for our bedroom is the first thing I'm tackling. I went to Joanne's yesterday to get INSPIRED INSPIRED by fabric! I found some fabric I loved and decided to take a day to think about it. Here's hubbalicious with the said fabric.

He's a good man coming along to the fabric store with me. As long as we are spending time together he doesn't care what we are doing. Did you just gain five pounds from all that cheese?

Then today, I had a moment where I thought that I should just make curtains out of painter's drop cloths. Like below. It's a hottie tottie thing in the DIY world right now. Reasons for doing it would be that its cheaper (only $20 for two windows) and easier than making curtains from nothingness (3 sides are already hemmed for you) and I liked the neutralness and roughness of it.

from pinterest

but then after texting my stylish, crafty and smart sister about the idea this morning I decided that no, I'm going to go with the orange pattern fabric. Because my little heart loves it some color and pattern.

So off! Off I am to make bedroom curtains. Well tomorrow I am because a My Big Fat American Gypsy Wedding marathon is on that junk is crazy.

Cooking is to egg sandwiches as sewing is to pillows

Analogies people.

See whenever I don't feel like cooking or I don't feel good, my sweet Aj will offer to make me an egg sandwich. Now egg sandwiches are delicious, but Aj's offer to make me an egg sandwich comes from the god honest ability to make a real good egg sandwich but more importantly it comes from the lack of ability to cook anything else. Bless his heart. The boy can only cook egg sandwiches because it's the easiest thing in the whole wide U S of A to cook (this may differ from country to country). This is why I sew pillows. Pillows are the egg sandwich of the sewing world. I would guess curtains would take the silver medal.

If you performed horribly on standardized tests growing up and you still don't understand the analogy (umm bless your heart) what I'm saying is making pillows is crazy easy!

Do it.

I did. and I barely know how to.

So yesterday, I spent my day off wandering threw fabric stores and embarking on the task of sewing 6 new throw pillows for the room of living. I know, my idea of a great day too!

I've been wanting to spruce up our living room with new pillows for a bit and ever since this chevron goodness entered our lives I've wanted to give him some fluffy friends. Our current pillows were...you know cute but I wanted a little more boldness of color in the room. and patterns my heart needed more patterns.
Oh and best part of this whole thing was that I didn't have to buy any new pillow cushions/inserts. I took the covers off of the old living room pillows and off of other extra old pillows we had around da house.

So here's what the old couch pillows looked like

and new couch pillows

and the window bench/ottoman before

and now

I'm planning on stenciling something on front of the burlap pillow. The best part of these two pillows is that they have a different pattern on the back. See...

Loves it.


Bold, patterned pillows and egg sandwiches for everyone!

Katie's Bridal Shower

This past weekend was spent up in Northern Virginia celebrating a very special bride-to-be!!

Katie gets married in a little over a month!

To this guy, Austin.

So these two girls threw her a bridal shower.

Here are some pictures of the shower.

and she was happy!

This was a very fun shower to decorate!

The decor goal of the shower was just to make it as pretty as the bride.

Pretty, soft, rustic, vintagey and full of love.

Yayyy Katie!!!

The UPS man came today. This resulted in me throwing up in my mouth a little.

Lalalalalalalalalaaaaaa!!!

The ottoman I order a month ago (Really target? You make a girl work for it (work for it=checking order status obsessively )) finally arrived. and I love it. I was so excited for this stupid thing that I got butterflies in my stomach when I saw the UPS man out front. and now I can't stop giving it love looks from across the room. Problems much Courtney? Um duh.

When I ordered it, I was a little worried that it wouldn't be large enough but the size is on point.

Grey chevron goodness.

A little Real Housewives OC is good to mush up your mind after a long week.

Eventually, I hope it kinda but not really looks like this. I think rustic burlap pillows mixed with bright patterned pillows, oh yeah.

Can you believe I blogged about something that isn't diabetes related?

You big red bulls eye you

Target I'm impressed with you.

You sweet sweet big red bulls eye you.

I was continuing my constant search today for a bench/ottoman thingy for our living room and found some amazingness on Target.com.

Check out these beauties, I want them all. 

 

Not only did I find and fall in love with those hot thangs but I also think I found the ONE for our living room.

Baby angels, procede to sing.

Sugar-free isn't the only kind of free I'm enjoying these days.

I love myself some art prints. We have them all over the house. I usually end up buying them off etsy but they can get a little pricey (especially when your current life goal is to fill up a gallery wall and pallet kitchen shelves).

Lately I've been searching for free art prints online. There are a lot of blogs out there that offer free art that you can download and get printed for dimes at your favorite office supply store.

Check out some of the dime pieces I got printed.

This might be my favorite, its from this site

So simple and sweet and cheesy

This one I'm going to take a permanent marker to. I'm going to change it to "If life gives you lemons make sugar-free lemonade"

My first born will be named Mason Ball

Look at one of my favorite Chirstmas gifts from Aj!

He bought me this amazing, big, mason jar screenprint from this etsy shop. I love it! It's looking pretty adorable right now in our kitchen.

Why are mason jars so amazing!?

I know, I know they are!

They make me so happy. and I'm not the only one who feels this way......

here if you really want to know..

Hey thanks Ryan Gosling, you actually brought up my next point. Mason jars are so versatile. The reason must people want and love mason jars is for every reason besides what they were made to be. They were made for canning vegtables people (That's actually just what I'm guessing they were made for, I'm not really sure). Not to spray paint them gold and hang them from a tree. But it's now what we do with them and I fully support it. Do it girl!! Make random things out of mason jars!!! I want to do it too.

Here's some mason jar amazingness.

For your pleasure.

You're welcome.

My dream is to make a light like this for over our  big old, rustic farm wood dining table, which sits on a bold colored rug. Dream big people dream big.

Umm I want to go to their wedding! It's probally going to be a very rustic and southern affair. I bet there will be sweet tea there.

This is just great. Simple and sleek. I want to grow me one of those.

This isn't a mason jar but it looks like one. I can't handle how adorable that would be at a vintagey, romantic bridal shower.

You sir would look great on my pallet wood shelves.

and of course this crowd favorite. A drinking glass.

*All these images (except the ones of my Christmas present) are via pinterest, cause pinterest makes you lazy by not making you surf the internet for other pictures*