Ruffled

Have you seen this fabric?? I've seen it around the world wide web and have wanted to play with it for so long! When I was working for Adornit I was able to go to the International Quilt Market with them and picked some of this fabric up for myself. Well I FINALLY got around to making some skirts with it and I am so happy with how they turned out.

Here's how it all went down:

Step 1: Measure! First I took my elastic and pulled it a little bit snug around my waist. I took that measurement and cut my elastic. Remember to account for your seam allowance! Next thing I did was measure the widest part of my butt. That is the width that I cut my fabric.

Step 2: I don't have a picture for this step either but it is fairly simple. You need to sew your elastic together so it makes a circle. So fold it and put the ends together. I also opened my seam and sewed the seam down so it wasn't so bulky.

Step 3: Cutting! This part was a little bit harder than measuring. Now is when you take that butt measurement and cut your fabric. When you are cutting make sure that your ruffles are all facing the same way! My cutting board was pretty small so I also measured how long I wanted my skirt and cut the length so I had a little less fabric to work with.

Step 4: Pinning! Pin the right sides of your fabric together. Once again, make sure that you pin all of the ruffles so they are going the same direction! Do you see how some of the ruffles are sticking out? Not a problem because you can just cut them off later.

Step 5: Sewing! This was the most difficult part of the whole skirt for me. I went really slow and tried my best to keep all of the ruffles going the same direction.....

 

But unfortunately some of them got caught up in the thread and I had to unpick. Lesson learned: use more pins! And I also learned that you can unpick on this fabric and it doesn't damage it-just unpick carefully :) 

Step 6: The Elastic. Once you have your ruffly tube skirt sewn together, you can pin your elastic on. Make sure you are pinning the right side of the fabric to the right side of the elastic. That way you wont be able to see your seams on your elastic when you're done. Now sew sew sew!   

Step 7: If you haven't done so already, now is when you can cut your skirt to the right length. I measured how long I wanted it and then added one more ruffle so I made sure it wasn't too short. The skirt was so simple to make because after you cut off your length, you don't need to hem! For a more detailed and picture filled tutorial, check out Vannessa Christensen's tutorial here. 

Happy Sewing!

Christmas Spirit

It's snowing outside, my new wallflower is blooming with scent, and my tree is lit so I figured it was about time I did a post about Christmas! Christmas is my favorite time of year and it has been ever since I can remember. I am so excited for this Christmas especially because we get to spend it in our own home. I have had a lot of fun decorating for the holiday season-I don't want to take any of it down! Here is little tour of our Holiday Home:

The first decoration I made was this "joy" picture. I was inspired by something I saw at the Novemberfest and knew it would be pretty easy and inexpensive to make. It took me about 3 seconds to cut out the word joy on my silhouette. Then I added a red piece of paper and a nice white frame and this is what I got. I really like it because it is very simple which seams to bring more meaning to the word. 

Next is my ornament collection. I ran down the street to Dollar Tree and purchased some fancy ornaments for my tree and then realized I already had some in storage. I took some of my extra ornaments and bundled them up inside my glass cake stand lid. I really like how this turned out.

I have to thank my amazing mother-in-law for this decoration. It is a beautiful metal tree with fancy red and green ornaments to hang on it. I love what it adds to my homemade decorations.

Here is a shot of my entry table with the cute decorations. The cake stand is on the bottom so you can't really see it. I love that blue is now a Christmas color-it makes decorating a lot more interesting.

I also made/designed some Christmas pillows! If you like these, you're in luck. You can buy all of the fabric, rick-rack, and the patterns for these pillows at http://www.etsy.com/listing/87698206/christmas-pillow-kit so you can make some for your own house! These pillows are really easy to make. I am a beginner sewer so I made sure the instructions are easy-to-follow and the pillows wont take long to make. Let me know if you buy them and have any questions. 

Next I covered some Styrofoam balls in cute scrapbook paper using Mod Podge. This was the messiest thing to make out of all of the decorations. My original idea was to use them in a wreath but instead I ended up putting them in a little box on my dining table.

Last but not  least, I got this beauty in the mail! Have you seen all of the fun advent calendars that have been made with this? I was so excited when it arrived.

After looking deeper in to how many little boxes I was going to have to cut out my enthusiasm took a plunge. This was going to be a lot of work. I started out by making a list of what box/drawer I wanted to use in each slot.

Then I started cutting. I used post-it notes to mark each box and lid so that I didn't get them confused. My floor looked like this for a few days because I needed a break from the project for a little while. 

Finally I made time to put the boxes together. It didn't take as long as I thought it would! And I'm really happy with how it is turning out. I still need to put the numbers on the boxes (and figure out how to fold the ones that are missing) and then it will be done!

I'm just not quite sure where to put it...

Well there you have it. Our Holiday Home is complete and we are loving every part of it. What has been your favorite thing to make this season? 

New Additions!

Since moving in to our home in March, we haven't done much as far as decorating goes. I enjoy sewing and making crafts, and I have TONS of ideas (thank you pinterest) but I just haven't put forth the effort to actually create anything-UNTIL NOW!

My first project was for my dining table. I wanted a cute centerpiece that I could keep out most of the year. After I burned a few fingers off (I'm not very experienced with hot glue) this is what I came up with:

Some cute yarn balls! Originally I wanted to do about 6 balls but my fingers couldn't take any more hot glue at the time. These lovelies started out as plain old Styrofoam balls and look at them now! Oh and the cute dish? A Shopko steal-of-a-deal. 

The next thing I needed to jazz up were my new couches. How do you do that? Pillows! I wanted to find a fabric that had a few different colors in it that I could use as an inspiration piece for the rest of my house.  I found some Michael Miller fabric that I absolutely loved when I was down at Gardner Village during October and over the past few weeks I've been able to gather some coordinating pieces. To make things easier we set up a big table in the computer room so I had a place to sew. I love my little sewing nook. And this is what I came up with:

Finally some color in this house! The pillows look so great! I was especially proud of that ruffle baby. I have never done something like that before! (maybe that's why it took me ALL day to make it!)

The last spot in the house that I was ready to tackle was the entry way. On Pinterest I see all of these cute entry tables that are dressed up for each season and holiday. When my eyes fell on this beauty

But for $2,500? No way. I showed the Mr. this picture and we decided that we could make one ourselves. It took us a few months to finally finish it, but I am so happy with how it turned out!

Next step is to decorate it for Christmas! (That's right, I'm skipping Thanksgiving because it's next week and I don't have any decorations.) And according to Nate Berkus I need to find a mirror and a lamp to really make it feel homey. We had such a fun time making this table and would love to have a reason to make another one. The Mr. says he would gladly make one and sell it to whoever is interested so keep us in mind next time you're looking for something like this! 

UPDATE: I just joined my first link party and showed off the table! Go check out the other fun things at http://daysofchalkandchocolate.blogspot.com/2011/11/latest-and-greatest-friday-6-and.html

As you can see the process of decorating is a long one. I am such an indecisive person so it makes it even harder. We are really happy with what we've done so far and I'm excited to create some more projects! Next on the list? A cute holiday "wreath" for the door and an advent calendar. 

Here's the inspiration for the "wreath!" 

$40.00 later...

Part of being a good wife is making lots of treats and goodies, right? So how could I pass up a great deal on chocolate chips at the local grocery store!? Every year Lee's Marketplace has a Holiday Food Show. They have samples of food, games, prizes, and some great door busters. This year my favorite one was the $1.66 chocolate chips-and they were the good kind, too! My mom and I decided to brave the crazy lines and headed to Lee's for our purchase (and the free samples). After browsing around the store and tasting all the samples, we headed to the baking aisle and grabbed our stash. Rather than wait in the long lines (they were literally going up the aisles) we headed to the deli where they would ring you up if you had 10 items or less. We ended up having 17 bags of chocolate chips, but luckily they rang us up anyway. After we paid my mom and I look at each other and she says "I think they overcharged us." We ended up paying $40.00 for our chocolate! As much as the Mr. likes chocolate chip cookies, I don't think he would have been to pleased to find out that I had spend that much money on chocolate. Anyway, it turns out that there was a LIMIT of 6 bags per customer and after the 6 they charge you full price. Luckily Lee's is such a great place and allowed us to come back later and fix the mistake. With all of this chocolate, I better get baking!

pilot post

Here it goes! The infamous first post. The Mr. and Mrs. have been married for just over 2 years and still get asked "how's the married life?" This is our way of showing, rather than telling, how the married life is going. And if you ask me, it's going pretty darn great. We want this blog to be an expression of who we are, what we love, and how we are making our dreams a reality. The Mr. is a handy man and The Mrs. sure knows how to put him to work. We recently built our first house and our current adventure is figuring out how to make it a home. We hope you will join us on our ride to eternity and tune in to see how the married life is really going. 

"It's not what happens to you, it's what you do before it, during it, and after it."

Alan Weiss