How simple would this be to add a little Halloween fun to the fruit bowl.  It’s just edible marker on an orange.  I bet you could even use honey or something else a bit tacky to put on candy corns or felt for the facial features.  Image and idea are from Zakka Life.

zakka life.

I added a ruffle to the bottom of the bathroom curtain I made to go with that shower curtain I showed you last time.  I just took a long strip of brown fabric, and pinned it into little ruffles all along the bottom of the curtain.  Then, I sewed it slowly, making sure things stayed ruffled as I went along.

Another curtain for the kitchen.  This is a nice big window, but it faces a brick wall with a bit of the neighbors house peeking over the top.  All to see at the foot of the wall is a dirt ditch.  No fun.  So, up with the thick curtains.  It’s four cafe curtains (2 sets) and a small panel of tan fabric in between the top set to break up all the stripes.  The bottom tier is held up with a tension rod and the top (and most of my curtains) are held up with cup hooks and wooden dowel rods.  So easy and affordable!

These are in the downstairs guest.  The silvery panel I bought, the blue ones I made.  They need to be shortened a bit, but this will do for now.

Here’s the front room curtain.  It’s one black/tan panel cut in half to make two with a tan panel I made in between.  I need to make one more tan panel.  I think they’ll look better with a bit more fabric, all scrunched up.  I need to make a cover for the top portion still.  ~sigh~

These are 2 valences that I sewed fabric to to make long draping curtains.

Again, 2 valences with added fabric.  Between you and me, I cut the white fabric too short and had to add the tan on afterwards to make up for it.

Bought this window panel, made the tan one.

One cafe curtain from a set with white fabric added on.  There is an identical window on the other side of the bed where I used the other cafe curtain.

Again, I’m SO sorry about the lighting and everything!  I still have six windows to go.  When I’m finished I’ll try to get some pictures up that don’t make you cringe too awfully.

All of the curtains I bought were between $3 and a little over $4, except for the long black and tan one which was $7.  I found then on clearance at Target!  All of the extra added on fabric is from the $4 twin flat sheets we bought at Wal-Mart to cover the windows when we first moved in.  So, along with the cup hook/dowel rod hanging system I concocted, we’ve saved a bunch of money and things look good.  :)  Well, they look much better than the sheets tacked up.  ~grimace~

Of course AFTER I did all this, I found Thrifty Decor Chic’s blog.  She has some excellent tutorials over there and actually knows what she’s doing!  :)  Here are a few posts on curtains she has for you:

Cover Your Windows.

Faux Roman Shade.

The Easiest Window Treatments. Ever. Period.

Window Treatment Tutorial.

Third Time is a Charm.

Go check her out!

I made a slipcover for our little sofa!  Are you proud or what?!  The sofa had originally been my younger brother’s when he had a little ‘ol bachelor pad.  Well, he moved home and his sofa moved to my mom’s garage where it sat and sat for a couple of years.  So, as happy as I was to get a free sofa… ew.  I steam cleaned it with our Bissel, but the ick factor didn’t come out with the stains.  So, I had these three red sheets layered on top of it and decided to turn them into a cover.

All I did was:

1. Draw pictures of the sofa.  Mine were 3 pictures, one of the back, a top view, and a front view.  If your first reaction to that is “draw… I CAN’T draw!” no worries.  My drawing were literally a bunch of simple shapes (e.g. rectangle, for the back of the sofa).

2. Measure.  Use a measuring tape (or tape measure…or yard stick….) and list all of the measurements on your drawings.

3. Adding an inch to each measurement (for sean allowance), draw the same shapes from your drawing to your fabric and cut them out.  I seriously did this with a regular pencil on carpet.  So, my shapes weren’t so pretty or perfect.

4. Lay shapes onto the sofa, wrong (the side you DON’T want to see when your done and it’s on the piece of furniture) side up.  This is a good way to make sure you got your measurements right!

5.  Using pins, pin the fabric together around the edge, leaving at least 1/2 inch of seam allowance all the way around.  This helped me see where I was most likely going to have watch things carefully while sewing.  Places like the ends of the arm rests were a bit tricky.  Pinning the fabric together while it was laid on the couch also helped me make sure the fit was snug, but loose enough to take off and wash.

6. Take the cover off of the couch and sew together, taking out the pins as you go.

That’s how I did it.  Obviously I’m no seamstress.  This was like the third time ever using my sewing machine.  I think it turned out good and it hasn’t fallen apart just yet.

image from:

simply a silly girl: gettin crafty: a little mod podge is an amazing thing.

I found this screen printing tutorial on Simply a Silly Girl via Ucreate.  I always thought there had to be an easy way to screen print.  Can’t wait to try this out!

Since we moved into our house last June, all of our windows have been covered in some sorry manner or other (see above!);  Usually a $4 flat sheet from Wal-Mart with clear tacks holding it up. I decided to try and upcycle some of these sheets into decent looking curtains.

I made a shower curtain and matching window shade for our downstairs guest bath.  Here’s the shower curtain:

Recognize the sheet from the first picture?  I added portions of a light blue sheet to the tops and bottom.  I used parts that already had a seam; less sewing.

Then, I found some cafe curtain at Target on sale for a little over $4 and made them into curtains for our porch door:

See, cafe curtain on top and a portion of sheet on the bottom.

I still have a lot to go, but this is a start!  Eight dollar curtains.  Nice right?

And here’s the inside:

We had this old stiff quilt laying around so I used it as the rug.  The inside walls are still pretty bare.  I’ve been thinking about maybe decorating them in sections.  Like a little kitchen area… stuff like that.  I could use smaller boxes decorated as a little stove, washer, dryer etc.  For now though she’s not quite into pretend play just yet.  So, I’m done.  If you made a cardboard house for your little ones or have any other great ideas for recycling items leave me a comment with the link and I’ll try to feature some.

The “castle” is coming along. Instead of going out and buying paint I decided to find another way to decorate it. I have TONS of magazines! So I thought I’d chop the pages into strips using the strips like bricks. I’m sticking them on with Mod Podge.  I also have some wrapping paper with pretty butterflies on it.  I want to cut the little critters out and paste them all over.  I might use some scrapbook paper to make big flowers and glue those on too.  As soon as I get the bricks and mortar finished  I’ll get some more pics up.

PS. If you aren’t a magazine hoarder like me, I always see people giving away boxes of them on freecycle.  So, go get your own brick-making material FREE!  Or find something that you have laying about taking up space… old newspaper, crinkled wrapping paper, junk mail…

After getting a little inspiration from here, I decided to make my little girl a playhouse.  I have a nice collection of larger boxes from our move.  I wanted it to double as kind of a room divider too.  We have a large play room that also doubles as my craft room.

I extended out some of the boxes and things ended up getting pretty large.  So, I thought I might make a castle instead.  Use some of the long skinny boxes as turrets and little cubbies.

It doesn’t look like anything spectacular just yet, but I’m pretty excited to get roofs done and decorate.

My first sewing machine was a Singer. I only used it a handful of times.  It was a good little machine, but I hated loading the bobbin with a passion!  I know… lazy.  Really though, the mere thought of taking out that little metal gizmo and fiddling with it kept me from using the machine.  So, I gave it away.  

Well, recently my little family bought our first house.  With all that is going on in the economy today, more than one (ok, more than 10 is more like it) well-meaning relative has reminded us moving into a larger space doesn’t mean we have to fill that space right away.  So, no shopping spree here.  My crafters eye looks around this place though and just wants to do SO much with it!  Curtains… a slip cover for a hand-me-down couch…  Doing it all without a machine is possible, but time consuming.  Time for a new machine.

Obviously, if we’re trying to tighten our belts and not spend a ton decorating the house, I couldn’t exactly go out and just buy the fanciest machine around.  I wanted a machine with a drop in bobbin mechanism though.  Not another basic model Singer.  So, I asked about the machines at my local craft store.  The least expensive machine that had the function I was looking for was $250 for the Singer Confidence.  A little more than I wanted to spend.  

So, off to the internet I went.  After reading blog posts and product reviews about many machines, I settled on the Brother CS 6000i.  I just received it the other day and barely took it out of the box.  So, I can’t give you a full review just yet.  I do have to say, though, that this machine comes with so much stuff!  I don’t know what to do with half of it really, but I’m excited to find out. The machine is actually $6 cheaper than I paid on Amazon now at $169.99 and includes free shipping (which I LOVE).  So, if you are looking for a decently priced machine with tons of accessories, features and that includes a hard case, check it out!