Family Silhouettes

I was feeling thrifty and crafty the other day, so I put together this project using things I had around the house:

I started by taking profile shots of the hubs and myself using PhotoBooth on my Mac.

Then I resized them to the size I wanted and printed them out. I cut out the two images and traced them onto the paper I wanted to display. I took creative liberty with my hair and gave myself a hairstyle that was cuter than what it was actually like in real life.

Once they were cut out, I secured them onto a piece of painted cardboard, cut out some vinyl for the bottom, and stuck in a frame. I opted to tape the silhouettes so that we could rearrange the whole thing in the future as our family grows.

Pillow Parade

I'm excited. I've been wanting to fill our large sectional with tons of random pillows. It's like having accessories for the couch.

My mom called over the weekend to say she was stopping by to drop something off. She walked in the door and it was like Christmas. Really. She was lugging two huge garbage bags full of stuff. Much to my delight, the bags contained pillows. And it was amazing.

The one with the button is my absolute favorite.

Aren't these awesome?

Even Jake likes looking at them.

Linked up to these parties.

Monogrammed Pillow

So now that I have curtains up in the family room, I needed some matching pillows for the couch, right? I thought so, too.

I wanted a monogrammed pillow, so we picked up some white fabric from Joann's and started with this:

We just used thread that coordinated with the green fabric from the curtains and Mom put it through her fancy sewing machine.

Then we added some Wonder Under to the back of leftover green fabric and cut out an H.

Here is where the pictures stopped happening. Between Zaxby's, recorded episodes of The Glee Project, and someone bleeding massively due to a sharp needle, no more action shots were taken. The gist of it is that we ironed the H in place on the front of the pillow, then did a satin stitch around its perimeter to ensure that it lasts a long time. After that, we added cording and then attached it to another piece of white fabric to complete the pillow.

Isn't it lovely? It feels so Pottery Barn-ish to me.

Non-Shower Curtains

When I was growing up, my mom made sure that my sisters and I knew how to run a household. She taught us how to cook and the basics of sewing. Luckily for the hubs, I retained all of my cooking knowledge. But sewing? Not so much.

I needed some curtains ASAP for the family room to add some color to the otherwise bland room. We have an open floor plan and it's all painted builder's neutral.

Nice blinds, huh?

I found these shower curtains from Target and fell in love with the pattern. I thought maybe I could cheat the system and manipulate the curtains so that they could fit without me having to sew.

Sadly, that didn't happen. Windows are a lot longer than showers.

Duh.

I bought three curtains and some coordinating fabric and headed over to my parents' for a refresher course on sewing. I ended up ripping out the seams of the curtains and sewing all three of them together. We then added a two foot strip of the green fabric to the bottom. Hemming 18 feet of fabric was a chore! However, I must publicly admit that it wasn't nearly as bad as I thought it might be and I'm glad I didn't try to just staple the fabric together or anything.

Thanks, Mom.