It's A Sham.

For a chair. :)

In fact, this chair. Meet Poang:

And meet Cat #2. The furry, dimwitted kitty that loves this chair. Not because it's comfy. No. That's not why at all.

Apparently, Poang has a perfect combination of whatever kitties see as desirable when it comes to ripping apart furniture.

Case in point:

Yes. Lovely, isn't it? No, she's not declawed. I could go into my whole soapbox speech about why we shouldn't declaw cats. But. I'd be lying if I said the thought to get her declawed hadn't crossed my mind. Mulitple times.

But, that ship has sailed. Onto dealing with the chair.

I've been drooling over slipcovers from Bemz. But, my checking account hasn't. And while I would love one of those gorgeous slipcovers, I just can't fathom spending more than...let's say more than $25. I'm thrifty.

Thank goodness I can sew. I  got 2 yards of home decor fabric (on sale for 50% off. Score.) at the fabric store. Then I headed home and went about to making a slipcover sham for the chair.

First, if you are covering a Poang cushion, make sure you get 2 yards of home decor fabric that is 54" wide.

Cut off the lovely white ends so all you see is your beautiful fabric.

Next, fold the top (skinny) over about 3/4". Sew straight down to make one finished edge.

Yes, you'd probably use pins. But, pins hate me, and to be truthful, I'm not too fond of them either. :) They jab me unexpectedly. I forget about them and run over them with my sewing needle. No, pins and I do not get along. At. All. (Although I did have to use them later in the project.)

Now you'll want to cut your fabric in half, from top to bottom (skinny top. I have no idea how best to label this.), essentially making two 26" x 2 yards rectangles. Am I making any sense? If not, check out the picture below. :)

Alrighty. That's what one rectangle should look like. Now...here comes the "play it by ear and hope it works" part.

Take your cushion and lay it on the WRONG side of your fabric. Leave about 10" of fabric on the finished edge side. This will become the top part of the sham. Fold the fabric over.

Now, take the second rectangle, and place it on top of the cushion. Make sure finished edge is by the other finished edge. This will become the bottom part of the sham.

Starting to look like a pillow sham, isn't it?

Now you'll want to trim the bottom of the fabric. I left about 2 inches past the end of the cushion. Does that make any sense? I hope so because I failed to take pictures of this step.

Essentially I ended up with about 6" or so of excess fabric from one piece and about 18" excess from the other.

Next, you'll want to flip the rectangles over so they have the RIGHT sides together. Line up the bottom edge (not the sham edge) and pin. Yep, that's right, I said pin.

You'll end up sewing a square "U". The larger rectangle will be on the bottom, and it will be longer than the smaller rectangle. Make sure you line up the UNFINISHED bottom edge, not the finished edge. Start sewing at the finished edge of the short rectangle, and sew down from there. (This makes your square "U".)

Now, the next part is another cross your fingers and eyeball it. Slip the cushion into the cover, and fold the long edge of the cover over. I estimated where I needed to sew it over into a flap, and it ended up being about a 5" overlap over the short rectangle.

You are just going to sew the two sides from the fold down to the finished edge. You now have one long, rectangular sham, right?

Turn the sham so it is right side out. And begin the awkward task of trying to stuff your cushion into the sham. I don't know what is more difficult...this or trying to put a duvet comforter in. Haha.

But.

If my directions made any sense at all (I sure hope they did...if not, please ask!), you should end up with something like this:

It's not as fitted as the original slipcover. But...I like the way it looks casually comfortable. Dear Sweet Hubby was impressed. And Cat #2 can't quite figure out what happened.

It took me about an hour to do this, from start to finish. I really apologize for the semi-cruddy tutorial, but I hope it gives you an idea of the process. In summary, if you can make a pillow sham, you can make this slipcover. :) It was a lot of eyeballing and estimating, but I'm very happy with the results.

Pinterest 30 Day Challenge Day 3

I have been wanting to make an advent calendar for a long time now, and when I saw this pin, I fell in love. What a good idea to use activities instead of gifts! After a quick tutorial on how to cut fabric with my cricut, I went to work. To be honest, this took me a few days of work in between other projects, but it was pretty simple! And so much fun...some of our activities are to go see Santa, go sledding with Daddy, and bake cookies for a neighbor.

Pinterest 30 Day Challenge---Day 2

I love my new fall boots. And I was pretty much convinced to buy them after countless pins in my style board that consisted of the same type of boot. :)

So I got the boots. I got the leggings.

But you can't wear leggings everyday. And I am convinced that there is not a single pair of skinny jeans made out there that fits me just right...so when I saw this pin I knew I had to give it a shot. So, I grabbed an old pair of baggy boot cut jeans that I bought right after LBB was born and went to work.

And here's the results: (Sorry for the cruddy pic...it's nearly impossible to take a picture of yourself with a toddler grabbing at you. This was seriously the best one I could get.)

Yay! Skinny jeans that actually fit!!!! THANK YOU PINTEREST! :)

Pinterest Challenge Day 1

I started off with this pretty simple project, but it was on my Christmas Gifts to Make board, so I thought it'd be a good one to do today. :) Not to mention...I've got all this cute scrap fabric that I keep picking up, and never know quite what to do with it.

So, here's the little Sleeping Bags I made for LBB's Bearemy and Ni-Ni, both of whom seem to really dig them. And in fact, I had to resist from letting LBB con me into giving it to him sooner than Christmas, but I can proudly say that it is tucked away and Mommy didn't give in. :)

I'm really happy with how it turned out, and it's hard to tell in the photo but I even did a little quilting on the top. Bearemy's Outer Space sleeping is sporting some swirlies (like spaceship trails), and Ni-Ni's Batman bag is super cute with it's chevron-like stitchs. :)

These will be perfect for Christmas because I have it on good authority that LBB will be receiving a super cute sleeping bag of his own for Christmas...now he can have campouts in his little tent in his room with Bearemy and Ni-Ni.

And, I better add my thankful thought for today! Day 15 of thankful thoughts is: I'm thankful for the mess in my house today. There are train tracks covering all of the living room and into the hallway. There are cars scattered about. There are tractors and trucks lined up in LBB's bedroom. And it all is proof that my little guy has been busy playing, learning, and having a blast. I'll be the first to admit that I love having a clean house, but the days that LBB is busy at toddler work are the best days. :)

Pinterst 30 day challenge

So, I was on pinterest the other day (shocking, right?) and I came across a pin about this very creative lady who was doing a 30 Day Pin Challenge. And I pinned it and moved on. But then tonight, after spending probably way too much time pinning way too much cute stuff, I realized that I'm pinning more than I'm doing. And maybe that challenge might be a good idea.

I currently have 109 pins just in my crafty lil' things folder. That's completely separate from my recipes, LBB crafts, Preschool activities, sensory bins, home decor, clothing, garland, and yadda yadda yadda. Needless to say, there are tons of projects I could do.

So, I'm going to embark on my own 30 day challenge tomorrow. I am only going to do the simpler ones for now, mostly because it is the holiday season, and I don't want to overwhelm myself with all the other things going on. Who knows...maybe after this I'll want to do it again in a few months. :)

Wish me luck! I'll post my first project tomorrow night...now to go decide which one to do.

And I just have to add...this is my 96th post this year!!! What's so special about that, you may ask? Well, my goal at the beginning of the year was to write more than I did last year. And then our computer crashed, and I was sure it wouldn't happen. But...last year I wrote 96 posts, so this means I completely achieved my goal!!!! WOOT WOOT!!!!

Beginning Fall Decorating

I'm a tad behind in getting my Autumn decor up, and I think they are buried somewhere in the garage...so until my hubby goes on an expedition to find the bin, I decided to make a few things for around the house. I've been so inspired my all those cute little felt leaf garlands I've been seeing around the internet, and I decided to make one for our humble abode. It was soooo simple. In fact, so simple I was able to complete it in an evening with LBB by my side. :) I hung it across our IKEA expedit unit that is in the dining room...

...and I had left over garland. So, I stood there, looking around trying to decide what a good use for it would be. And then I looked up...at our new dining room lamp that is gorgeous (and completely free and installed for us...it's moments like this that I LOVE apartment living, haha.) Those beautiful wrought iron curves just screamed for a little autumn festiveness. So, I wrapped some of the garland around each curve of the lamp, and voila!

Dear Sweet Hubby came home and just loved it. :) I also made a garland for my bedroom, but haven't gotten a picture of that yet...I need to get our decor up so we can have our Annual Family Fall-ebration. :) I'll take more pics then. :)

Art Caddy Tutorial

I've been drooling over this divine little treat from pottery barn kids. However, my wallet hasn't been.

image from potterybarnkids.com

So, the other night in bed I was forcing my very sleepy hubby to look through their newest catalog when I kept going on about how I want one of these. And then, my genius of a husband said, "Why don't you just make one? It'd be easy enough...just get and old toolbox and put dividers in it." Well, duh. Of course I'd thought of that...of course. ;)

And then, pure genius struck me. Sitting empty in LBB's cabinet in his room was this little gem I'd picked up at Goodwill months ago:

I paid 99 cents for it. And I said to Dear Sweet Hubby: "We can just use that little toy wooden toolbox in LBB's room!" And I got back a sleepy sounding "Yeah." So today I set about re-vamping the unused tool tote. I pulled two flaps off LBB's diaper box. Grabbed some BasicGrey scrapbook paper, and went to town. First I cut the cardboard into 3 strips...1 long one and two short ones that fit the short width of the box. I trimmed them down to the same height as the sides, and then trimmed some paper to size.
After wrapping the paper (and I'm sure you could use glue...but tape was next to me and I honestly didn't feel like going to get the glue. LBB was distracted long enough to give me time to do this, I didn't want to press my luck. Haha!), I cut two slits halfway in and halfway up the short pieces, and then cut two slits going halfway up the long piece. I spaced them 3" in from each side, leaving a 4" space in the middle. (I really hope that makes sense...)
Then I put the pieces together (think TinkerToy style), sharpened all the colored pencils I could find, rounded up some crayons and markers...and voila!!!!!
Our very own Art Caddy...and it only cost me about $3 (and that's figuring in the paper I already had on hand!)