So much to share...

I have had so much going on lately, I have hardly even had time to be online this week.  First of all, we finally got our new carpeting, so I can finally get my guest room done :)
Here's the living room after we pulled up the carpeting, pad, and a million staples:

How do you like that wall? There is a huge corner entertainment center/bookshelves that goes in front of there, so no-one sees back there.  Lazy?  Me?  And here's our white trash front porch:

I love the new carpet, it is so clean and fluffy!!!

 I stopped by a yard sale on my way home from the store today.  We usually don't have yard sales this late, but we have had a wonderful fall, and the temps were still in the 60's today.  Here's what I picked up:

I started stripping paint off the top before I remembered to take a pic.  I'm going to clean up the bottom and re-paint it white, and I'll do the top in black stain.  I'll post pics of that soon.  Here is the top after I got as much off as I could with the stripper (I hate that stuff!):

It had a few layers of paint on it, and I figure I'll sand the rest off tomorrow.  Did I mention how much I paid for this? ONE DOLLAR!!!!!  How could I pass that up??

I paid another hard-earned dollar on this:

Isn't this a great chair?  It's in perfect shape.... for ONE DOLLAR!  This lady was really wanting to get rid of stuff.  Ok, well, it's not completely perfect:

The lady said, "I bought it like that, it works fine!"  And, actually, it does!  I know my dh can fix it, and if he doesn't, it can go on the front porch with the last thing I bought at the sale:

It's a little rough, but not too bad.  We never use the front porch (people come in the side door,) so it's just for looks, anyway.  With the cushion, I paid a whopping TWO DOLLARS!!  That's right, $4.00 total for these three pieces.  I'll take that any day of the week :)

If you read this post, you saw my bench that will go in my guest room.  I finished painting it.  I don't love it, but it will have pillows all over it and I think it will look good in the room:

I will post pics after I get it set up in the room.

Here's one more thing (since I didn't post all week, I'll do triple duty on this.)  At the same flea market I found the bench, I found a great old dresser.  I paid $75 for it, but it was worth it.  It had obviously been sitting out for many years, and was filthy.  I thought I'd have to re-stain and varnish, but I found some awesome wood cleaner/restorer, and it cleaned up beautifully.  I'm upset I didn't get a before photo, as you wouldn't believe the difference.  Here it is after its cleaning:

Hope all this makes up for not blogging all week.  I'll be linking up with some DIY parties!

Lamp re-do

I have several projects going on right now for the new guest bedroom.  I was going to look for a new lamp, but then took a look at the lamp that my dd had in that room when we first moved in and it was an 'angel' theme room;

I decided it was a neat lamp and I would paint it.  But wait!  I realized that the top and bottom had cool artwork on them that I wanted to keep, so I'd just paint the middle 'angel' part.

Isn't that cute?  I just couldn't cover it.  So, I taped it up and painted the middle part:

I like how it turned out!  Now for the shade.  I thought I'd give painting a try - can't hurt!  Then if it doesn't work, I can go to Dollar General and buy one...
So I taped the top and bottom of the lamp and spray painted the shade 2 coats of white.  I didn't get a picture of it, but it looked good enough to work for awhile.  So, to see it all together, I put on the shade and turned it on:

BWAHAHA!!  The picture came right through the paint!!!!  WTF?  I had to laugh and call it a great lamp base.... I'll just plan on going to Dollar General and spending $5 on a new shade.  Alas, better than buying a whole new lamp :)
Another fun make-over.  I just love this stuff!! 

I finished up a couple other projects today... something to post about tomorrow, although Thursday is a busy day/evening for me.  Peace ♥

Linking up at

Candle organization

I have a thing for candles, as I'm sure many of you do.  I have a tart warmer that always has a candle in it when I'm home - it's located in a central location in the living room, so the smell goes all throughout the first floor:

All my candles and 'candle stuff' are in a basket under that table.  Today I got a new shipment of Yankee Votives, so on a whim I decided to clean out the basket.  Ummmmm, there were magazines and catalogs in there from 2004.  Need I say more???
I didn't take a before picture (I always think of these things too late..), but here is a picture of what all was in that basket:

The 9x13 pan is left-over from my cabinet clean-out yesterday,  the plants were brought in to avoid the freeze, and the bowl by them contains chocolate muffins :).  The other stuff was all in there.  After washing out the basket, I re-filled it with just actual candles that had been organized:

It's not much, but it's one more little place in my house that is organized.  I cleaned it on a whim, but it does make me feel just a little better.  That's not a bad thing!

And now here is my bar after I got everything put its place:

That's a big ole beautiful blue ball jar full of zinnias from the yard.  It's supposed to be in the low to mid-30's the next three nights, so that will probably be the end of my flowers.  I've covered the mums, but I picked all the zinnias that were still in good shape and brought them in so I could keep just a little more summer around :)

I'm attempting to link up to Organizing Junkie's 52 weeks of organizing.

Oregon

Busy, rainy, dreary day here in MO.  I went to a district retired teacher's meeting for most of the day.  Not too exciting, but a great lunch :).  I didn't do anything crafty or organiz-y today, except clean out one cabinet in the kitchen - Every time I clean out cabinets, I get rid of stuff.  I've had that cabinet organized about the same way for 10 years, and I finally re-arranged it in a way it makes sense.  Why did it take me so long????

I have no picture of that, so I thought I'd just leave you with a picture of Mt. Hood.  We recently got back from a Nat Geo cruise down the Columbia and Snake Rivers.  It was awesome!

kitchen-towel pillows

I am continuing this post from the previous one, in order to get my pictures on here.  If you're reading this post, it actually  begins on the next post (next older post, here  .)   Blogging trouble....

I simply folded the towel around the pillow, and had the nice end out.  That left me a bit over one inch on each side, and I decided to just sew straight down each side.

 Here it is, pinned up:

I sewed down that line, then also sewed just about 1/4 inch in from the side:

ROFL!  Did I just mention that I am having trouble downloading pictures?!?!?!  How this pic got on here, I do not know.  Looks like some early garden bounty...

Back to the pillow:

This is the mark I penciled in so I had a guide for sewing.

This is the aforementioned quarter inch I was going to sew:





Hard to explain, but very easy.  Voila:

Here's the envelope back:

The second pillow was a nice travel pillow that I got for 2.00 at Pamida.  It was just the right size for me to fold over this great gray ticking striped kitchen towel and sew up each side:

I just love it!  So, I had one towel left.  I decided to actually cut off the extra of this one and sew it inside out.  But what to do to make in fun and to do something with the edge I cut off?  Hmmmm:

I looked up several ideas from my pinterest boards, and got some inspiration, but couldn't find exactly what I wanted.  So I tied it in a knot (I know, brilliant, out-of-the-box thinking!!), stuck it in there, and sewed it up, then turned it right-side out.

I just love how it turned out :).  So here they are, all together:

I think it's taken longer to write this blog than it took to sew up these pillows!  I will keep on the look-out for dishtowels from now on - that made these pillows easy-peasy!

pillows made from dish towels

Surprise!  I haven't blogged for a few days.  I will try to make up for it today.  I just can't get to the computer every day.  I'll try to do better :)

Friday I had the best time making pillows!!  I want to pretty up the bench I showed you in the last post.  Here's what I got for my birthday:

I thought I had a better picture, but yes, it is a new sewing machine - with 88 pre-programmed stitches.  That's probably 86 more than I'll use :) 

Anyhoo...I ordered the comforter for the bed in the guest room from Target.  When I was in Target the other day, lo and behold, there was a set of kitchen towels that matched my comforter!!!  I was way too excited there on the spot over kitchen towels!!!  The pic above is the very same print, and here are the other 2 towels that came in the set:

I had 12x12 and 14x14 pillow inserts, and found that the 14x14 were too big, so I had to go with the smaller ones.  I'll do something different with the larger pillows.
I hate to stuff pillows, so I sewed each with an envelope close.  Here's the first one:

Sooooo, my computer is not letting me upload my photos.  I'm going to publish this and then see if I can start a new post to finish this.  This is why I don't blog as much - it takes forever to upload one photo....grrrr.  I wish I knew more about computers and could figure out my problem :)

Guest Room

We (I) are changing our daughter's room into a guest room.  I am SO excited, as I can finally do a room the way I want to - no-one else telling me what "they" want in there.  I am giving you a sneek peek of one of the pieces going in there:

I found this bench at a flea market for $20.  This is it hosed off (and the mud-dauber nest sprayed off of it :))  I have it partly painted and have all the batting to make several pillows for it.  I am so excited!!

Here it is cleaned off.  I used a mixture of about 3/4 vinegar and 1/4 Dawn, and a stiff brush.  I was going to strip the black paint off, but I decided to just sand it down, paint gray over the black, and distress it so the black will come through.  I'll keep you posted...