Playroom pillow talk and the evolution of a sofa

Happy Wednesday friends!

If you read THIS post, you saw some new additions to the playroom/living room (that I happened to have made myself the night before the girls' party last week because I'm crazy anal like that)

What am I talkin' about?

pretty pretty pillows...

I made the green/white chevron pillows and the pink elephant pillow using fabric I ordered from fabric.com.

Anyone else shop from there? The site is FULL of the most beautiful fabrics, AND

the prices are outstanding,

AND

they also sell patterns,

AND

every order over $35 ships for free,

AND

It's never taken more than 3 days to receive an order from their site.

(yes, I've made quite a few orders now)

Anywho...

I used what I like to call the 'envelope' method to make the pillow covers. No idea if there's an actual name for this, or maybe it is indeed called an envelope pillow since the finished product resembles, well...

an envelope.

Why a removable pillow cover instead of a sew-and-stuff pillow?

I've got 3 kiddos.

I love the fact that I can pull off the pillow covers and throw them in the wash to remove strawberry poptart goo and boogers and apple juice, which is also why I made the slipcover for the sofa.

They were super-simple to make and maybe took me 45 minutes, TOPS, for all 3. (And that's including stopping every few minutes to pour more juice into a sippy, or to find a missing blankie, or to retrieve a chewed-up piece of book out of the babes mouth.) Planning to post a tutorial within the next couple of days since I'm currently working on a few more for the master bedroom.

Also-

I purchased two of the pillow inserts (which are all 18' square, by the way) brand new at Hancock fabric, but the insert I used for the pink elephant pillow was actually a down pillow that came inside a red silk pillow cover that was used on our bed 2 comforters ago. The thing was beautiful, but, hadn't seen the light of day in a while since our master bedroom color scheme has changed twice now since it was first used.

* That's a great tip-

 before you go out and buy new pillow inserts, check your house for decorative pillows that maybe aren't being used anymore! It will save you some moolah and will also give some poor, sweet, non-used pillows a second lease on life!*

And, just to give you an idea of what the sofa looks like on a normal basis:

yep.

that's life at the Mathews.

And now...

a look back at the humble begginings of our armless sofa,

because it's come a long way, baby.

This is the 1st photo I have of our sofa, taken in the furniture store before I purchased it. It was love at first sight, not only because of it's price ($75), but because I loved the fact that it had no arms and looked a bit retro-vintagey. Yes, vintagey.

circa Sept. 2008

I kept the original pillows on it for about a year and then swapped them out for some black/white pillows my grandmother made and a red one that was a gift from my mum.

Couldn't resist sharing this pic of the babe asleep on it.

And no, internet, I didn't leave her alone asleep like that. I just hopped up, real quick-like to snap the picture and then returned to her side.

In March of this year, I made a slipcover for the sofa out of canvas drop-cloths. My *biggest* sewing project to date.

ATTENTION: I'm not a trained seamstress.

I don't even know how to make a button hole, so when I say this is something you can tackle with even limited skills,

I mean it.

You can find all of the details on how I made the slipcover HERE,

as well as how I made the cute red/white pillow out of a kitchen towel I found on clearance at Target.

And now-

3 pillows made by me,

and 2 yellow rosette pillows by Dwell Studio for Target.

**those yellow Dwell Studio Target pillows are actually kinda famous, as in, TONS of bloggers use them in their homes which may or may not have led me to throw two of them into my red buggy several months ago**

case in point-

via 6th Street Design School

via The Brightsides

and,

my favorite blogger of all:

Becky Higgins

and folks, if it's on Becky's sofa and it came from Target, well I reckon it'll be on my sofa too...

I've linked this to:

Weekend Wrap-up at Tatertots and Jello,

Metamorphosis Monday at Between Naps on the Porch,

Tutorials and Tips Tuesday at Home Stories a 2 z,

meet my new BFF's

so...

I have some new best friends.

They helped calm me down when my living room looked like this after Christmas...

(cue blood-curdling scream)

 (gasp)

(eek)

 (save us!)

 there was stuff everywhere

 (and yes, even MY stuff was a mess)

Since this is where we put the tree, it's also where we had Christmas at our house, which is where all of the toys wound up. We currently only had two, yes TWO storage baskets in this room for toys. One under the right end table for Oliver...

and one under the left end table for Eliza...

And that was it.

Two baskets.

That was all she wrote.

Enter my new BFF's, the storage ottomans.

We'll call them Ebony and Pepper...

 It was literally love at first sight when I spotted these lovelies on my (first) trip to Target yesterday. And to top it off, they were on sale.

Yep.

Only $59 buckaroos a piece and I just happened to have some Christmas money burning a hole in my wallet.

After some clever positioning in my truck, they came to live at the Mathews house.

In no time at all, I was in organizing heaven...

I used the same 'bag it up' method I used with O's puzzles to store some of his new games...

and after several changed diapers, a few tears, and lots of my sweat, the room looked like this...

(cue Hallelujah chorus, please)

One of the ottomans holds E's toys/tutus...

and one holds MM's...

(and yes, there are several sing-a-ma-jigs in there. Anyone else seen these things? I seriously love them. They sing songs, do scales, they even harmonize with each other.  I know...utter coolness.)

and, since my parents gifted us with a new tv cabinet, my scripts and craft supplies got to remain in the old one that moved to the dining room, giving me space to do this in the bottom cabinet...

can you feel my excitement?

Let's check out that 'before' pic once more...

(ghastly scream)

and now the 'after'

(angel chorus is singing)

and even after these two spent all day thwarting my best efforts to clean, everything had its own spot when they were done.

LOVE it.

So...there ya have it.

The story of my two new best friends.

Ebony and Pepper- the storage ottomans.

Oh, and did I mention they have safety hinges? Meaning they won't slam on little fingers? Well, they do. They're also faux leather, and wipe clean with a damp cloth. Meaning you can pee, spill, vomit and poo on them, and guess what? It just wipes off. Yep. You heard right.

Next up:

my desk/craft space

because it needs help

hope you had as lovely a day as we did here,

in our organized room,

with our new ottomans,

and our sing-a-ma-jigs.

This post is linked to the CSI projects organizational linky party.

check out all of the other organizational inspiration!

**also linked to Thrifty Decor Chick's Organize it party