Happy Saturday

Last Saturday the sun came streaming into the house for the first time in what felt like a long time (at least when I'd been home to enjoy it!).

It was finally warm enough to open the windows...

...which the cats took full advantage of.

I took advantage of the energy that comes with a beautiful day. Among other things, I:

* made these chocolate "freckle" candies. I got the idea (it's so simple you can hardly call it a recipe) from Gingerbread.

* scrubbed the kitchen floor (not everything gets a photo). :)

* vacuumed the whole house.

* did a bunch of laundry.

* cleaned out the freezer. (And it looked so pretty as the cold air hit the warmer air in the sunlight).

* and made these cherry ice cubes. My mom used to make these for my birthday parties when I was little. Now I like to make them and put them in lemonade. I guess the warm weather got me thinking about it! You just take maraschino cherries and put them in your ice cube tray, then fill it like you usually do. This photo is from before they went in the freezer. Once they're frozen they look lovely and frosty and pink!

After a very grey, rainy/snowy week, the sun is out again on this beautiful Saturday. Temperatures are supposed to be up. Here's hoping for another productive day! I'm off for a run now to enjoy this spring weather.

Beautiful Summer Dress

Grosgrain is having another super-wonderful giveaway! Go check it out. (You have got to see the "before" pic of this dress. Kathleen is one talented lady).

Summer of 69 Thrift Store Refashion Frock GIVEAWAY!!!!

Happy St. Patrick's Day!

Here's a really cool St. Patrick's Day project - I found the link on The Crafty Crow. I'll share my own finished photos of the project later on.

In the meantime, The Crafty Crow is also hosting a giveaway - you could win a doll kit from Pretty Ditty! The dolls are so cute. :)

Hop on over and check it all out!

A Recent Project

A friend of mine has a table and chairs that belonged to his parents when they were first married. The chairs may not have been recovered since then, and they needed some work. I helped pick out fabric and brought over the tools we needed to fix up the chairs, including my staple gun.

Mostly what needed fixing were the bottoms, because there wasn't any support there, and so the cushioning had been pushed out over time:

We took all the seats off the chairs and cut and sanded wood to the right size, then attached the wood to the frames of the seats to support the cushions.

Then we took the fabric we had picked out, and recovered all the chairs:

His idea was to do each one in the same fabric, but a different color. 

And it was so easy to do! You just cut the fabric to the right size, pull it taut over the cushion, and use the staple gun to secure it to the frame. The hardest part was definitely making the bases for the cushions. If you have a chair with enough support already, you can recover it in no time. Go try it!

And Another One

Oh, wow, I LOVE this dress. I must have it!! But I am still sharing the link with you, cause I'm nice like that. Also cause I have to. :)

Sunday Laundry Shirt Dress GIVEAWAY!!!!

Just a Quick One to Say...

...that Not Quite June Cleaver is having another giveaway!

And speaking of giveaways, my one-year blog-iversary came and went without me mentioning it! It was earlier this month, and in celebration I will come up with a giveaway and let you know what it is soon.

A little bubbly to celebrate.

Deliciousness

Hot chocolate with whipped cream and sprinkles. Yum.

[Still feels very much like winter here. More snow predicted for tomorrow.]

Valentine's Day...

...because it's better late than never, right?!

So I haven't shared a lot of personal information on here, but I have had some big changes I wanted to tell you about. This past summer, my husband and I got divorced. I don't need to go into details here, but suffice it to say that we are both better off this way, and I am much, much happier. It's sad when something like that happens and a chapter in your life is over, but at the same time it means a new chapter is starting. 

And so, on to the bulk of this post: for Valentine's Day I bought my boyfriend this tie on Etsy, from a super cool store called Sugar Lust. I love the idea of taking old ties and creating something new with them, and I thought that would be fun to try.

I got my chance sooner than I thought I would. Just after the sweet robot tie appeared in the mail (but before I had given it as a gift), my boyfriend picked up several ties at a thrift store, including this one:

It wasn't until he was showing them to me later that we discovered this on the inside:

Super-funny that he hadn't realized it was there, but that didn't mean he wanted to wear it. He threw it away, but later I thought to pull it out and repurpose it.

First, I dug through my fabric stash, and found just what I needed with some lovely things that I won in a giveaway that Amy had awhile back. I'm so sorry I didn't get a chance to put it on the blog before now, Amy! She sent me this sweet pack of fabric, among other things:

In addition to the fabric, Amy sent me some beautiful ribbons, buttons, paper cut-outs, and lace. I will have to get some pictures of it all when we start having some sunny days around here. :) I pulled this bird from Amy's goodies, and hand stitched it over the logo on the tie:

From the fabric, I chose a floral one and hand stitched it inside the tie, then I took off the label that was on the tie:

And added my own:

So that the whole thing looked like this:

Much better, don't you think?

I took the robot tie from Sugar Lust and the tie that I had fixed up, and wrapped each of them up in their own boxes. I wrapped the boxes in white paper, and then fashioned some pipe cleaner hearts as decorations: