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.

Mexican Star Pinata

For my son's 5th birthday we had a Mexican fiesta theme. I wanted to make a pinata and let him choose the style. Lucky for me he chose the traditional star shape which looks great and is fairly simple to create.

I wanted a perfectly round ball, so I bought a punching balloon from the dollar store. It blows up pretty big, so I ended up with quite a large pinata. The make the points of the star I cheated a little and used birthday hats (If you want a longer point then you can roll of newspaper into a cone shape).

After adding several layers of papier-mâché to my balloon, and letting it dry completely, I added my hats.

I started with one on top, and then about a third of the way down the balloon (longitude)  I added three more (just imagine a triangle shape when you are looking directly down on the pinata/bird's eye view). Then at about two-thirds of the way down I added three more hats with my "triangle" shape rotated slightly from the one above so they pointed out evenly in different spots on the pinata. (Sorry if this sounds very confusing!) To attach the hates you can either use hot-glue, or more strips of papier-mâché (that's what I did). There is no hat at the very bottom of the pinata, because it will actually get flipped up-side down and have a hole for the candy there.

After the hats were in place and dry, I popped the balloon inside, and made the opening a little bigger, and then attached string.

Next for decorating I decided to use a variety of colors. I have 7 cones, and wanted each to be a different color.

I started by decorating all the cones. I cut 4-5 inch lengths of streamers, with snips cut into them to make a fringe. Then, started at the tip I used more papier-mâché paste to attach them, wrapping them around the cone. overlapping slightly and working my way down to the base of each cone. 

For the body I cut lots of little squares from each color and then stuck them on with the paste in little clusters of color.

 A view from the bottom of the pinata.

I also added some skinny strips of streamers at the point of each cone. It's really pretty when the pinata swings on it's rope with the fluttering steamers! (sorry this isn't a great photo, I forgot to take one before the party started).

Cake Number 5

I'm really not much of a cake decorator. I want it to look good and all (things always taste better that look pretty, am I right?), but I just can't really get behind the idea of spending hours to decorate something that will be eaten in about 2 minutes by a bunch of unobservant five year-olds. When I saw this idea, I knew it was the cake for me! Simple and cute.

Once again, sorry for the poor quality pictures, I decorated this right as the guests were arriving (which is why this cake idea is so great, it only takes a few minutes to do), so I didn't have a chance to get a great picture of it.

Basically you ice the cake, the lay a piece of paper, whatever number or letter you're using in the center and carefully spoon the sprinkles all over the exposed icing. I learned pretty quick to just do a few sprinkles at a time, or else they just bounce off the cake and all over the counter. It helps to gently squish them into the icing too, so they stay in place. After the cake is covered remove the paper template and you're done!

Here's the birthday boy!

Diaper Cake

I made my first diaper cake this week. I like the simplicity of it. I didn't know the gender of the baby, so I tried to keep it pretty neutral. I can't believe how tricky it is to make these things, but I'm really happy with how it turned out.

¡El Cinco de Lincoln!

Last week we had my son Lincoln's birthday party. Sometime a few months ago I was brainstorming ideas for a theme, and I had a stroke of pure genius to do a Mexican Fiesta and "El Cinco de Lincoln" was born. Nothing like a good old fashioned Mexican Fiesta to chase away those mid-winter blues.

For the invitation I was able to find a free template online. Here's the front:

The inside:

I was so excited about the theme I really has a lot of fun planning and making decorations. We had a build your own Nachos table:

My mouth is watering looking at this spread: tortilla chips, shredded chicken, cilantro-lime rice, refried bean dip, salsa con queso, shredded cheese, guacamole, black beans, pico de gallo, tomato & cucumber salsa, sour cream, black olives, and green onions. Oh, and pineapple at the back too. 

 

 Drinks, and some treats: Las frutas and Mexican Jumping Beans.

 Festive ruffled streamers, and Mexican inspired banners:

(¡Feliz Cumpleaños! : Happy Birthday!)

 These are the same fiesta fans we had hanging in our dining room all week since Lincoln's actual birthday:

Once all of our little amigos arrived we got busy with activities. First off was Pin the Tail on the Burro.

Next each of the boys got to get dressed up like little Mariachi's with their own sombreros and homemade ponchos (from a garbage bag).

 They also made little maracas out of plastic spoons, Easter eggs filled with popcorn kernels and wrapped in masking tape.

 

El Don Diego himself. I'm so happy he agreed to wear his sombrero. It was adorable. 

Showing me his finished maracas:

 We had all the mariachis line up for a photo op. Adorable I say!

Next they had a little maracas race. They each lined up on one side of the gym and had to dance and shake their way across while we played la musica de los mariachis (aka Mariachi music). When we stopped the music they had to freeze in place and if they moved they'd start again. 

Honestly it was pretty cute and hilarious so we actually let them go on for awhile, going from one side of the room to the other before we actually declared a winner. 

After the Maracas race was everyone's favorite: A Piñata! I've actually been really excited about making one for the party even before I came up with the El Cinco de Mayo/Mexican theme. This one is the first I've ever made  and if I don't say so myself it's a beauty! I was actually pretty sad about it getting smashed to pieces though. After spending more hours than I can count making it I kind-of just wanted to hang it up in our house as part of our decor!

At first I was thinking of doing the classic burro shaped piñata, but I let Lincoln choose what he wanted, and I was very relieved when he chose a much simpler star shape. Here is a step by step of how I made it.

 

The boys loved hitting it. The great thing about homemade piñatas is that they are so much stronger and takes a long time to break them open so everyone gets a lot of hits. Each time one of the points of the star would get hit off the one of the boys would claim it and wear it like a party hat. After about 3 rotations I think we were all starting to get worried that it would never break, but fortunately at about the same time I was thinking that Tony Wood hit the strings at the top and it fell to the ground and then he proceeded to smash it open.

Zach Wood wearing "the ultimate party hat"

 Here is also the first birthday cake I've ever made.Instructions can be found here.