Quilling

  Sometimes I see projects that I know would take forever to complete but I still want to try them anyways. Paper quilling definitely falls under that category. I searched around on Pinterest for some letter styles that I like, and I'm really dying to try my hand at it for my daughter's bedroom.

How-To: Piping

 I purchased a large ottoman awhile back that desperately needed to be recovered. The original had 2 lengths of piping wrapping around the middle and bottom of it that I wanted to keep, but with my new fabric. If you've never sewn piping it might seem a little tricky at first, but it's pretty simple.

First, gather your supplies:

-sewing machine
-thread
-pins
-old piping from ottoman
-new fabric strips (just measure the width and length of the old stuff to see how much you'll need)
-scissors
-chocolate (for when you might accidentally stab yourself with a seam ripper...)

Next use your seam ripper to remove the old fabric and pull out the cording hidden inside.

After you've gotten the cording out, you'll sew it into the new fabric. The new fabric you're using should be several inches longer than the cording. Mine wasn't quite long enough so I had to stitch two pieces together. Rather than perfectly aligning the two pieces on top of each other and sewing a straight seam I joined them at a 90 degree angle to each other, and will be sewing a diagonal seam (it makes for a better seam that lays flatter and isn't as noticeable).

First pin them, right sides together, at 90 degrees and pin in place.

Next line up the pieces in your machine like this, and stitch:

Now I've got my diagonal seam.

Open the seam and press flat with your fingers.

Flip to the wrong side and trim off the excess fabric.

 

Next we'll be sewing the cord in place. Line it up down the center of the fabric and pin in place, leaving a couple inches of fabric empty at the beginning.

Keep pinning down the length of the fabric.

Next, using your zipper foot (to stitch very close to the cord), line up your folded fabric under the presser foot of your machine. The goal is to stitch as close to the cord as possible, without going through it.

Stitch down the entire length of your fabric.

And ta-da! Now you've got a beautiful new piece of piping! (I'll be sharing the rest of my ottoman makeover project soon)

Chocolate fountain

Awhile back I hosted a girls night at my house. This time I had a chocolate fountain and invited the guests to bring something yummy to dip. We ended up with a pretty good selection, and a few things I hadn't even thought of that tasted great!

I looked up some more good ideas of fun things to dip in a chocolate fountain. Basically you'll want to have a couple from each of these categories: salty's, sweet's, savoury/othe.r.

-strawberries/bananas/pineapple/other fruits
-pretzels
-marshmallows
-brownie bites
-cheesecake bites
-cookies
-biscuits
-rice kripie squares
-oreos
-eclairs
-pound cake
-mini cupcakes
-bacon
-timbits/donut holes
-gummy bears
-cinnamon chewy candy

Feathers of Fancy

I've been working on a furniture project with a big dose of kelly green. As I was thinking of some colors to coordinate with that bold green I came across this picture. I've already got a lot of blue and grey/silver in my house so these colors are just perfect!

Image via Pinterest

Ring Around the...Evergreen Tree

Our front yard has been bugging me ever since we moved in last October. Unfortunately the inside of our house was in need of so many fix-up projects that we largely had to just ignore the outside of the house until now, when we are (mostly) completed with the indoor projects and Spring and (relatively) sunny weather has returned to Newfoundland.

We did however paint the front door back in October, which you can read about here. It used to be this sad light blue shade of rusty-licious, and we brightened it up with a bold shade called "Daring Indigo." That, unfortunately, is where we stopped as far as the exterior goes, until now.

After some thorough instructions from my mom (aka gardener extraordinaire), we built up a raised bed around the base of our tree with some old (aka free) cinder blocks we found under our deck. Then we filled them in with dirt and planted some Hosta bulbs. The kids loved helping in the "garden."

The Hosta's I planted around the tree (the Frances Williams in the large picture, and the Siebaldiana Elegans in the top right corner):

The cinder block ring:

Lincoln and I staking out where each bulb will go:

Filling in with Dirt:

Watering our bulbs:

We took a little break at this point because we ran out of dirt, and Lincoln wanted to watch the big back loader right beside our house at work.

Later when daddy got home from work and brought us more dirt we finished filling in, and then topped it off with some mulch.

Scarlett had a grand time digging around with her little cultivator.

There are six Hostas planted, you can see the tops just barely sticking up through the dirt.

Our next outdoor project is to do another raised bed just behind and to the right of this one, underneath the bay window and the surrounding area which is also quite awful right now. But for today I'm quite pleased with our little plants. I can't wait for them to really start showing.

Gallery Wall

I've been buying ugly art canvasses on clearance at HomeSense with a project in mind for a large empty wall in my family room. It's going to be a collection of quotes, photos and art that are meaningful to our family.

Here's a peek at one of the quotes I'm using:

(Originally I found a similar one to this on Pinterest which I loved, but the colors didn't quite work with my plan. I also discovered that it was slightly misquoted, so I made up my own in Publisher. Here's the talk it came from in entirety)

I'm hoping to finish off the other canvasses this weekend. I'll post up the rest when it's done.

SLC Temple

This is quite possibly my new favorite picture of the Salt Lake Temple. For an upcoming project I was looking for a great print of the Temple, and I had originally found another. Unfortunately when I tried to contact the photographer to ask about purchasing a digital copy of it that I use to print from I never heard a reply. Her loss. I found this one instead, which I love even more. Aren't those tulips so beautiful? It just makes the Temple look like a magical palace, and reminds me of the way it looked when my husband and I got married there in the spring almost 7 years ago. I'll tell you though none of our wedding pictures came out this good (sadly, being poor college students we cheaped out on a photographer and have regretted it ever since).

 

Salt Lake City Temple in the Spring, by Scott Jarvie found here. I'm not being paid to say this, but he's got a lot more really beautiful temple prints as well, and he allows free downloads for personal computer use. What a doll! I actually wanted a hard copy print to use in a project so I purchased a digital download from his site.