Happy Monday!

Hello Friends!

I hope all of you had a wonderful weekend-

I'll be back this afternoon with a full weekend recap, but until then,

I wanted to share a quick peek at a project I worked on last night with my friend Christa-

The fabulous fabric is from fabric.com, but there's a surprise when you turn them around...

Until later,

hope you all have a wonderful Monday morning!

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,

weekend recap

hello all!

Hope you had a wonderful weekend!

I actually took very few pictures, which is probably a good thing since the girls both had snot dripping down their faces and O woke up at 7 Sunday morning vomiting in bed. Was that too graphic?

sorry

I was covered in pretty much every bodily fluid yesterday with the puking, and the snot, and oh yeah-

did I mention the babe had a touch of diarrhea?

because she did.

and she'd peed through her diaper during the night so when I picked her up yesterday morning to love on her...

bam.

pee on my pj's.

But hey,

it happens.

moving on to some happier times from the weekend-

My parents took us out Friday night for my birthday.

We ate at Iguana Grill which is one of my faves and YUM-O, it was good.

MM really dug the decor too-

lots and lots of lanterns hanging all over the ceiling-

Saturday morning was the pancake breakfast for Cinderella. As some of you know, I'm currently directing the show for a children's theatre company in my town and before each show opens, we usually have a breakfast- it's a great way to raise some money that goes towards the show's budget,

AND

 who wouldn't want to eat pancakes with Cinderella and her entourage? I loved seeing the little girls coming to eat in their Cinderella dresses! So precious!

aren't those costumes fab?

by the way-

if you're local, the show opens Friday night for the public and will run through Sunday. Show times are 7:00 pm Friday and Saturday night, and 2:00 pm on Saturday and Sunday. If you have young children, or older children, or if your children have children, or if you KNOW any children- you won't want to miss it! You can purchase tickets online HERE.

I needed to get out of the vomit house last night so MM and I took a little trip to Wal-mart. I'm not usually a Wal-mart gal and to be quite honest I felt like I was straight up cheating on Target, but I'd heard good things about their Better Homes and Garden line of home decor items, so we went.

Just look at the lovely sunset we saw on the way-

There was also some sort of carnival set up in the parking lot of what used to be a Dillard's department store. I'm sure those rides that are packed up and moved around a lot are 100% safe.

Well-

BHG did not disappoint. Just look at these lovelies...

Barbie totally had this one in cardboard in her very first dream house. Anyone else remember that? Circa 1961?

Since I'm still working on our Master Bedroom re-do, I needed some pillows in my accent color to go with the new bed linens. Wal-mart sells 1 and 2 yard packs of fabric in several differnt patterns/colors. I totally did not know this.

Now I do.

Two yards of pumpkin orange came home with us.

MM was doing a few ankle exercises while we looked at fabric.

And...

while it's not an actual craft project,

I did work on something this weekend-

whatcha think?

Are they blingy enough?

And last, but certainly not least,

I picked this up to read because you can bet your sweet bippy I'll be going to see the movie.



10 points to the person who can tell me what show "bet your sweet bippy" comes from.

And was it 'bippy'?

I guess I'd better be quoting it right if 10 points is up for grabs.

Anywho...

have any of you read this? If so,

what did you think?

I'd love to hear...

how I got a new sofa + pillow for 31.39 plus tax

happy Monday friends!

how was your weekend?

we are celebrating our first day of Spring Break here (which I find odd since it's not even technically Spring yet) so you can expect to find me and the kiddos in our pjs.

all week.

no joke.

playing, singing, dancing, coloring, building, crawling, napping...

so excited to be hanging out with them this week.

Now- onto some business.

I had a VERY productive weekend.

I turned this...

into this...

with the help of these-

and even made that awesome red + white pillow out of,

get this,

a towel.

and if you've been reading this blog for a while, you know I don't consider myself a seamstress.

because I'm not.

 I literally know the bare minimum to make the machine GO, so if you're intimidated by sewing projects,

well...

don't be.

Why did I feel the need to cover our living room/playroom sofa?

it's dark,

it's old,

covered in who-can-remember-what-that-substance-was stains,

little hands + fingers are constantly adding new nastiness to it every day,

I needed a project.

can't sit still, remember?

here's the deets-

I made a pattern out of brown packaging paper like this...

cut out my fabric, piece by piece.

(I decided I wanted the cover to go to the floor which is why it's much longer than the pattern)

started pinning the pieces, wrong sides OUT, onto the sofa.

this was the most tedious part to me-

pulling tight and pinning,

pulling tight and pinning,

(you'll want some great music playing or something on the tv to listen to since this will take a while)

pulling tight and pinning...

I had help while I was doing this, of course-

and also while I was doing all the sewing-

and even though it took the better part of an entire Saturday and 2 1/2 hours on Sunday,

it's finished.

and even though I'm still planning to buy new pillows,

I found this kitchen towel last week at Target and immediately gave it a new purpose-

let's zoom in on that price tag,

shall we?

hmmm?

boom.

I used a scrap of drop cloth left from the sofa for the back of the pillow.

(again, I had a helper who wasn't interested in putting her pjs on or going to bed at this particular time)

for the pillow, I pinned wrong sides together

or

right sides out-

turning the sides of the drop cloth in to give a finished edge-

then I used the seam of the towel as my guide,

sewing right over the top of it to connect the two pieces-

leaving a 4 inch hole, I grabbed a bag and a half of poly-fil (which I already had on hand) and started stuffing away-

I would also advise you use this time to catch up on some tv since this took a good 25-30 minutes.

once that baby was full, I stitched up the remaining 4 inches,

and thar she blows-

three 6 x 9 canvas drop cloths (9.97 a piece) = 29.91

one awesome kitchen towel on clearance = 1.48

total for slipcover + pillow = 31.39

and that, my friends, was my productive weekend.

Also loving the fact that I get to check off 2 items on my 31 by 31 list.

love checking things off...

what about you?

make any goodies this weekend?

or maybe you got to rest?

I'll hopefully be doing plenty of that this week while we're off-

and again,

if you need me,

I'll be here in my pjs.

this post is linked with Metamorphosis Monday at Between Naps on the Porch,

Craftomaniac Monday at Craftomaniac,

Mad Skills party at Mad in Crafts,

Strut Your Stuff at Saturday Mornings,

Amaze Me Monday at Dittle Dattle,

Making the World Cuter Monday,

Pink Hippo Party at Pinkapotamus,

Market Yourself Monday at Sumo's Sweet Stuff,

Made by You Monday at Skip to My Lou,

Get Your Craft on at Today's Creative Blog,

Handmade Tuesdays at Ladybug Blessings,

I Made THIS Tuesday at This and That,

Nifty Thrifty Tuesdays at Coastal Charm,

Show Me What Ya Got at Not Just a Housewife,

Take a Look Tuesday at Sugar Bee Crafts,

Anything Related at All Thingz Related,

Tutorial Tuesday at Hope Studios,

Tutorials and Tips Tuesday at The Stories of A 2 Z,

Talent Tuesday at Vintage Wanna Bee,

Spring Fling at This Blessed Nest,

Anything Goes Party at Type A,

Whatever Goes Wednesday at Someday Crafts,

Transformation Thursday at the Shabby Chic Cottage,

Show and Tell at Blue Cricket Design,

Flaunt it Friday at Chic on a Shoestring Decorating,

Feature Yourself Friday at Fingerprints on the Fridge,

Frugal Friday at The Shabby Nest,

Fantabulous Friday at Mommaskindacrafty,

Frugalicious Friday at Finding Fabulous,

Show and Tell Saturday at Be Different, Act Normal,

Saturday Nite Special at Funky Junk Interiors,

Friday Flair at Whipperberry,

VIP party at Designer Garden,

Weekend Bloggy Reading at Serenity Now,

Sundae Scoop at I Heart Naptime,