Tuesday, March 27, 2012

Chevron Curtains

I finally finished my Chevron Gray and White curtains!!! I was so intimidated for the longest time, so I was afraid to start them (sort of like the 2 chairs I have in my garage that needs to be re-upholstered.)

Chevron CurtainsThis is my lovely Target lamp and the shade I covered with left over material from my pouf! I LOVE LOVE LOVE the lamp and base combo! I love that mustard yellow color!!!! The curtains were not hard to sew, but they intimidated me, and once I got past that, they were easy!!!! (It's just sewing 4 straight lines with the top and bottom a bit wider than the sides) I also took great effort to make sure that if they were pulled shut the pattern would match up between the two panels.

Chevron CurtainsI spray painted some black grommets I purchased on sale white since I thought the black would stick out too much. They were very easy to paint and look great!!
Chevron CurtainsI love how light and flowy they are compared to the brown curtains that were there before. I am glad I finally got over the intimidation of finishing these and actually finished them!! Now to actually start those 2 chairs that are in my garage. When I actually find the time I know I can do it after my last few projects!


Visit thecsiproject.com

Little People Frame

Don't you love it when you have so many things on your to do list, and decide to just tackle a random project!

Next week is my little man's second birthday and among the many million other things going on I have a HUGE HUGE HUGE to do list! Page and pages long of a to-do list.....

Over the weekend my mother in law handed me a huge bag of the old un-safe Little People. So today I hot glued them to a frame and ended up with this fabulously cute little frame!!! I LOVE IT!! Its so cute! AND SO EASY!!!


These are the Little People that my husband played with when he was a little boy, so I love the sentimental factor of the frame!

With my huge to-do list, I actually have finished a few projects, but it's just finding the time to blog them :) So for now I am sharing my frame, but hopefully this week I will have lots more fabulous things to share!!

Wednesday, March 21, 2012

How to cut burlap

I am not a fan of burlap at the moment, but only because we used it to make my sister's shower invitations and it makes a huge mess and smells a bit funky!

I originally gave my mom the task of cutting the burlap into strips. Well that did not work so well because we did not realize there is a WAY to cut burlap and in case you do not know how, here is how you do it! We were even considering ordering burlap ribbon because it did not look nice once cut! But this easy trick saved us the $20 for a roll of burlap ribbon!

Determine where you want to make your cut and pull out a piece of the string as shown below. Continue to work the entire string all the way out.
Then you have a nice line where you can make your cut!
Use your sharp scissors to cut along this new line!
Look no fraying!
And now you have a nice piece of burlap!

Sunday, March 18, 2012

My new chair

A few weeks ago or so when I was on one of my many trips to Target on I stumbled upon this chair that at the time was an online only chair (they now sell this chair in the store) so it was on sale for $49! I didn't think twice and grabbed it!

While it's a very nice gray colored chair, it didn't really go with any of my rooms. I originally thought I would recover it for my master bedroom, but after thinking about it, in our family room if we have people over we seem to not have enough room for seating, so I decided to keep it on our first floor to move around as needed.

For this chair recover project, I used fabric I bought this past fall when I was in New York and went to Mood. So I sadly have no clue what it is called and have not seen it anywhere else (if you know what it's called let me know!!)

I don't have many during pictures because this was NOT as easy as I thought it would be. I pinned, pinned and re-pinned. The bottom cushion was not as hard, but the top was a bit more of a challenge. I found that pinning it in sections was the easiest.
I pinned and sewed the top in 4 different sessions.
I took out chunks of my fingers while sewing this from the pins! (My poor fingers still hurt!!!)

I was so happy when I thought I was done, only to realize that I ran out of thread on the bottom and it didn't sew the last part..... so I had to re-pin is AGAIN!!!!!
Here is another before shot! Once I had the slip cover sewn, I used my staple gun and my glue gun to attach it to the chair. (And I burnt a finger with my glue gun..... so my hands really hurt after this project!)
Here is my finished chair! AND I LOVE IT!!!!!
I purposely took the time to make sure my top seat cushion lined up with the bottom seat cushion. (It would have looked VERY VERY funny had I not!)



I love my new chair! And am so glad it's done! I thought it would take one nap or so to finish, but it took a lot longer than that!!!

Thursday, March 15, 2012

Lot's to do!

Back on January 30, I posted my To Do list! And I have to say it was VERY ambitious!!

I had 9 things on my to-do list and currently have one officially crossed off. By my deadline of April 1 I should have 3.5 of the 9 done.

My little man turns 2 on April 1, so I am busy getting ready for his birthday!!!! Plus I under estimated how much time wedding invitations for my sister would take! (But they are DONE!!!!!! YEAH!!!!) and planning her wedding shower.... AND to top it all off we decided to add a surprise week long birthday trip for my dad's 60th birthday! (We told him last night, he is VERY excited!!!!)

So I have been VERY VERY VERY busy lately :) With birthday party details, wedding details and figuring out how to sanely travel with a 2 year old... (AND I AM A HORRIBLE FLYER!!! I HATE TO FLY!!) Plus I have been working on a few "fun" projects... though I am not sure a project were you take a chunk of your thumb out with a needle is fun....

So that's about how crazy things have been lately!!! But's all been fun :) and it's keeping us all busy!!

Monday, March 12, 2012

Runners Award Display Board

I've already had one of my three sister's as a guest poster on my blog. Today I have my youngest sister's project to share!

She recently ran a half marathon and a full marathon and has run several shorter races. Being that it is an accomplishment to run a marathon she decided she wanted a way to display her race bibs and her awards.

She searched around Etsy and other places for something to display them and could not find anything. So she made her own!

I am not really going to go into the details on how she made it. She followed the directions of the Subway Art Sans the Silhouette post I posted in January (my other sister's creation!)

She started with a white base coat and added her saying.

She spray painted a couple coats of black. Removed the word Run and distressed the board.
She added 4 hardware metal hooks on the front for the bibs and medals. It is also important to note that you need to hang TWO hanging hooks on the back or it will not hang right!


Thanks again to my sister for sharing her project!!! I love that I have creative sisters!!

My entry into Show Me Extraordinary sponsored by Appliances Online and Bosch Washing Machines.

Thursday, March 8, 2012

I am on Facebook

I finally started a Decorating the Dorchester Way Facebook page!

Come on over and follow me if you like!