diy placemat pillows

So, we have needed some color on our porch and I've been meaning to traipse over to Joann's and look at some fun fabric. However, we've had a lot of unexpected expenses come up with the new house so I wanted to figure out a cheaper (free) option. I was organizing some things this past weekend and I found some old place mats that don't really match our dining room anymore! I remembered back to my sophomore year in college when I made these pillows out of place mats, and since we don't use those anymore I was able to use the stuffing!!

 It's super easy! I got out my handy seam ripper and ripped enough of the paisley mats to get my hand inside to stuff with batting. Place mats are perfect because they are already lined, sewn and finished all the way around! It saves a lot of time. You are limited to only a couple different sizes, but I think that they are a perfect size for accent pillows!

Once I stuffed them to my liking, I simply stitched up the small area I had opened! These took literally like 15 minutes to make and now we have some colorful accents on our outdoor couch! I might make a couple more since they are so easy and I have 6 place mats to work with!

-L

diy dropcloth curtains

I'm always looking for an opportunity to design, create, or build something for half the price of what you can buy it outright for. It gives you a sense of accomplishment and saves you some mula! Pretty good feeling I'd say... Well Rod and I both loved Restoration Hardware's linen curtains. But guess how much they are a panel... anywhere from $200-400!! And after doing some more searching, curtain panels and hardware in general are just expensive! So, I took to my good friend Google and did a little search for DIY linen curtains and this turned into a search for Drop Cloth curtains which I found a good tutorial here.

I bought our drop cloths at Lowes because I liked the color of them better than Home Depot, however Home Depot sells a 2 pack for $10 of a 6x9 panel and Lowes is a 1 pack for $10... But, because our bedroom windows are smaller I was able to get one panel for the living room and one for the bedroom out of 1 pack! That's $5 a panel basically!!!

Since the 4th of July weekend was rainy it gave me the opportune time to spread out in my in-laws living room and sew all weekend (thanks for letting me turn your living room into a craft explosion for a few days...)

I washed on hot and dried all of the panels to make sure they shrank, which they did, about 4". And then I got to ironing the wrinkled mess, measuring and cutting. This process takes a while to get everything just right, but it's part of it and in the end I am so pleased with how they turned out! I ended up hemming all of the edges. On a lot of the tutorials they say you can leave the pre-hemmed edge from the package, but mine were already fraying so I hemmed them to tuck that away just so it wouldn't get worse if I ever washed them.

We have 36 1/2" wide windows in our living room so my finished sewn panel was 42" wide. I left them a little long at 93" to hang 6" above the window and drape on the floor a bit. What do y'all think?!

The curtain rods are so simple and a little stroll through Lowes I probably would have thought of this myself, but another google search led me to electrical conduit for the curtain rods!!! $1.93 for a 10' length. My awesome husband and father-in-law helped me cut them down, sand them, prime them and spray paint them! BIG thanks to them!! We spray painted them Rustoleum's Oil Rubbed Bronze and they turned out fabulous!! I did take a stroll through Lowes on my own and find wooden finials in the wood/stair-building? department, I attached them to old wine corks and we spray painted them and they slide into the ends of the conduit rods!!

       

So total costs for FOUR windows (16 panels)

(4) 6'x9' drop cloths $40

(2) 10' long 3/4" diameter conduit $4

(4) 2 pack of wooden finials $12

(8) wine corks FREE

(2) cans of spray paint  $12

Mounting Hardware (L brackets & Conduit clamp) $8

8 sets of ring clips $70

The ring clips were the most expensive item, Ikea has them really cheap, but we don't have one close by, so I had to splurge on those at Lowes...

TOTAL:

$146 ($36/ window for everything!!)

Total Time: One weekend

Next crafty project is to paint some artwork to add color to our living room!!

homeowners

So, it's been a while. Rod and I have been immersed with learning all about Birmingham, being swamped at our awesome jobs, meeting new friends and deciding to buy or not buy a house. We rented a cute (or quaint?) little blue house in West Homewood. The house was perfect for us except the kitchen was TINY. Think washer, counter, sink, counter, dryer and that's it! No pantry, dishwasher anything. I would often use the top of the dryer or washer to prepare food on!! As we neared our year mark in the house, we looked at about 12-15 houses from brand new all the way to foreclosures. Nothing ever worked out. We decided we were going to rent for another year and start looking next early spring. Until I was just browsing one day and decided we should go check out 2 more houses. Just had to be sure, ya know?!

The first house was a bust, we liked it, but it would take a TON of renovations and now as we have even seen the expense of time and money that a farely "new" (1989) house takes, I am SO glad we didn't try to tackle a reno. The house we chose is a cute house tucked away in a "newer" neighborhood with 3 bedrooms, 2 baths and a 2 car garage! This is rare for Homewood which is where we wanted to stay because it is SO close to everything and in Birmingham there's 280 traffic and I-65 traffic and "ain't nobody got time for that"... Most houses in Homewood were built in the 1950s or before or else totally demo'd and rebuilt and will run you about a bajillion dollars, so we felt we found a gold mine, a newer home, in our price range and in our location!

Just yesterday I found out about an awesome development plan that the City of Homewood is doing in our neighborhood!! I can't wait to see it pan out. Check out the link: http://westhomewoodplan.com/

We will post before and after pics of the inside of the house soon!! Our DIY curtains are almost hung (I will post on this later as well) and the wall colors, that Rod pretty much picked out I might add, look great!!! Big thanks to friends who've helped us paint and we will be having a house party soon, don't worry!

xoxo-LB