Tulle circle skirt

Well, the last time we blogged, Eden was still in her mama's belly, and we had no idea even that she was a girl. And now look at her! A chubby 3+ month old. She is ever fashionable in red skinny jeans, while her mama shows off her tulle circle skirt. Here are a few pictures of the project:

^^Cutting out one layer of lining and four layers of tulle, using a circle skirt pattern from a skirt I made last fall. Here's a good reference for making your own pattern.

^^Arranging and pinning all the layers to prepare for sewing on an elastic waistband. The waist was just the right size that Karen could slip the skirt on over her head and we didn't need to add any buttons or other fasteners.

^^The seamstress hard at work!

^^The finished product (along with cute chubby baby feet).

^^Just because you can't have too many pictures of baby E :)

--Kelly

Before and after... back patio makeover

 

So the middle of June came and summer finally decided to grace us Montanans with her presence.  And let me tell you, when summer arrives in Montana, it is glorious! As soon as it gets warm, all I want to do is be outside if at all possible, morning, noon and night.  When we were first married, I never used to do much with flowers or really anything decorative for outside, but the last couple of years, I've been getting more and more excited about it. However, after a long dreary winter, our patio was looking a little... neglected.

 

 

(My dirty table!  Gross, huh? And below, the dead remnants of my little herb garden from last summer... sad.)

 

 

 Obviously, a little spiffing up was needed.  One major aesthetic improvement came when our vine finally got its leaves back.  As nerdy as it is, that vine is pretty much our pride and joy.  Since our patio gets the full-on afternoon sun, it didn't used to be very pleasant to sit out there for dinner, so probably at least five years ago Jesse and I planted this vine, but a couple of fierce hailstorms kept knocking it down as soon as it was getting big.  It's only been the last two summers that it's finally achieved the dreams we had for it all along, and now it provides perfect shade for our little table in the evenings!





 

 

 

And who doesn't love pretty little lights? :) I bought them last summer at Target and they were a great $25 or so investment.  They add nice atmosphere and actually put off a lot of light.

 

 

Does it look like I'm trying to block out the neighbors?  That's funny, because that's exactly what I'm trying to do!  Why?  I'm glad you asked.  It's because their back patio looks like this:



 

Pretty, huh?  (Please don't tell my neighbors I posted their back patio on my blog!) The bamboo shade was a freebie left over from someone's garage sale last year, and it's on its last legs.  This summer will, I'm sure, be its last. Then I'll have to come up with a new way to block out the ugly!

 

Next comes the fun part... flowers!  Jesse found four wine crates being thrown away and brought them home for me.  We turned them into two simple planters for flowers... I'll post a how-to on those soon. I love how they turned out and by setting them on the open edges of the patio, they somehow help to make it seem even a little more cozy and private back there.

 

  

 

And this lovely pot above is my mom's, but she left it at my house and headed down to St. George and hasn't come to reclaim it yet.  It was looking kind of lonely, so I  planted some flowers in it.  Much better than an empty pot, right?  Right!

 

  

 I apparently delayed buying herbs for so long that they were all sold out of the standards (basil, cilantro, rosemary, etc.) everywhere I looked, so I just decided to put flowers in the pot that had herbs last year. I wish I had herbs though.  Next year maybe I'll be organized and start my own seedlings early.

 

 

And there you have it!  Much improved, no?  My future plans involve a new doormat, possibly an outdoor area rug(??), and someday, my husband building me some modern patio furniture (this part may be just a fantasy, although he totally has the skills needed!) In the meantime, I'm looking forward to a long (I hope) summer of grilled veggie salads and cold drinks in this little spot of ours.

Necklace

"When I am old I shall wear pearls." Isn't that the saying? No? Well, anyway . . . I wanted to make a necklace with a strand of freshwater pearls I had, so this is what I came up with. 

 

 

I randomly spaced some gold beads in with the pearls, and then added some wood beads, too. Here's the finished product, worn a couple of different ways.

 

 Karen says you have to punk it up (like with a Bob Dylan tee), since you don't want it to look "old lady". Or, maybe you do. We'll leave that up to you!

Randomness

It took sooo long for spring to get to us, so when we finally had a nice sunny afternoon we had to take advantage of it by heading to Lindley Park . . . after stopping for a red velvet mocha. But of course.

 

  

 

 

 

You may notice Karen's fantastic sweater here. Yes, it's a DIY! We got the idea from Sincerely, Kinsey.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Sweater pillow

It is so important when starting any craft project to fuel up first. On this particular snowy (aargh!) April day, our snack of choice was blueberry muffins. Really just my snack of choice as they were already in the oven when Karen came over, so she had no say in what I made.

She contributed some ginger tea, in hopes of alleviating her recently acquired morning sickness. Yep, surprise! She's preggers!!! This was her first day of morning sickness, and my solution for everything is food, hence the muffins. They helped slightly, as did the tea, but let's just say her stomach wasn't stellar today.

So here was the sweater I started with. You can't tell, but there are holes in one of the elbows, so it was no longer wearable. However, I didn't want to throw it away as it was a gift from my brother, so it gets to be repurposed as a pillow.

I turned it inside out and sewed the bottom and the sleeves shut, to make a three-sided square. Then I turned it right-side out and trimmed off the shoulders until it was about an inch bigger than my pillow form.

(This is my "concentrating face".... Also, how do you like that shirt of mine? I thought so. That's my latest Goodwill score.)

I tucked the pillow form into the sweater case, folded the unfinished edges in, and hand stitched across the top.

Then, for a little interest, I cut a heart out of some light blue fabric and stitched it on to the front of the pillow with red embroidery thread. I left the edges of the heart unfinished.

I like to call this "rustic", which is an appealing word to describe anything homemade that doesn't look perfect. So you can expect to see that word used frequently on our blog.

--Kelly

Pull up a chair

  

This is my husband Jesse. When he's not busy looking geeky/handsome, he sometimes likes to build furniture. Really nice furniture. I'm okay with this hobby of his. Recently we decided on a whim to put our fine-but-not-super-cool dining room table and chairs for sale on Craigslist, and when they quickly sold, we were left with no dining room furniture. So Jesse built us this beauty:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The top is made of solid walnut, with a natural finish.  We ordered the legs from hairpinlegs.com, and I love the way they look.  For the moment we are living with the chairs from our patio table, until the checkbook says we can order ones we like better.  The stumps were actually drying out in our garage for a future project, but they're sort of growing on me, so who knows, they just might find a permanent home as stools.  "Rustic-modern," folks, that's what that is.  --Karen