Make a dress, any dress!

I have really gotten into a rut with sewing. I use tutorials and patterns I have purchased online, but I hadn't really done anything "on my own" in awhile.

Yesterday, I pulled out a dress that I think looks so comfortable when my daughter wears it, but since she is so tall, it is getting to be short on her long legs!

I traced it, used some basic sewing knowledge to apply to the construction of it, and duplicated it into a new one.

This took probably about half a yard to do, and then I made bais tape from a coordinating brown knit. 

You can do it too! Trace your dress (or tshirt or pants or skirt!) pieces onto paper before cutting into your material. This way you can tweak until the pieces look right. Always give yourself a lot of wiggle room, especially if you are making the outfit bigger than the original. Don't forget your seam allowances!

Then, you can embellish it however you want! Bows, buttons, pockets, ruffles, you name it!

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New (to us) Dining Set

This summer, I have been looking high and low for a new kitchen set. They are so pricey brand new and we had our eye on one, but I still did not really want to spend $$ on that. I was checking craigslist and thrift stores frequently as well, but no luck.  The problem was, our hand-me-down kitchen set was falling apart big time. I would jsut hold my breath when we would have people over, praying that the chairs did not fall apart!

One day, I was at the thrift store and got an email asking if I would be interested in this set:

For FREE!

I jumped on it so fast, because this was PERFECT for our family! It has a leaf and seats 8 or without the leaf it seats 6. It is already over 40 years old. It was just God taking care of us once again!  It was destined to go to Goodwill but Goodwill wasnt going to pick it up for a month or two.

I knew this baby had a lot of potential. I had seen a picture online of a table that looked like the one that we were getting and knew that was exactly what we wanted. So my husband and I worked on it every day for 7 days whenever we would have time, usually in the dark and when the kids were in bed.

Yesterday, we finished it up. Here it is still in the garage, with the leaf in.

And here it is in the kitchen without the leaf and only 6 chairs!

I kidproofed the chairs with some clear vinyl I sewed covers for. I am still super paranoid though!

  

We are so grateful for it and I hope it lasts a long long long time! Pin It

Living Room Update

My husband and I are mutually getting sick of the decor in the living room. We both really like the colors but there are things we would love to change. Like those mirrors on the wall above the couch. Or the couch itself. 

One of the perks that my husband's job has been doing is giving small gift cards here and there that you can choose where to spend them. Usually, he picks Amazon or Lowe’s. They are pretty handy to have and we have even been saving up here and there to buy a new dishwasher once our’s gives out (which we know might be soon).

Saturday, I decided on a whim to redo the living room frame of the kids. Ellie has been pointing at that one and the kitchen one and saying everyone, and looking for herself as well. I thought it would be a quick fix to add some new pictures and be done. But if you give Rebecca a a picture, it turns into a collage, which turns into…..a whole new project. And I got a jig saw for my birthday I was dying to put to use. But the cool part about this project is that it cost us nothing to do, and we used a lot of what we had here at home!

Here’s the before: ( This is a very old picture, I need to add pictures of the little entry way by the door. I have changed it up a lot over there!)

Buh-bye mirrors over couch!

This is the original collage that I was fixing.

which turned into a scalloped piece.

which turned into a larger frame of the scalloped piece.

Then we decided to frame it out above the couch.

And then paint it.

Then take those old ikea mirrors and make new frames. I drew out the shapes and then we cut them out with the jig saw and router-ed the edges and painted them.

Which all turned into this:

It’s hard to really show the details in the pictures, but we are both super happy with it. And Ellie loves standing on the couch looking at all the pictures of….herself.

We also put new feet on our couch just to raise it up (which is cheaper than buying a new couch!) and can tell a difference between that and our love seat (that we still need to do). And now I have an empty wall space in the living room I can add something new to (I have ideas)!

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