Green Room

 

My friend Jenny is moving into my spare room.  It will be good, because I need more money.  She decided she wanted to paint it, which I was fine with seeing as it was actually the only room in the house I hadn't painted since moving in.  We painted it green.  You can see the color in the picture above. 

  

Here it is with the curtains and the trim all done.  It looks dark in this picture but it's really not.  It turned out quite well - I am pleased.  :)

Dressmaking 101

 

I look like a doofus, but whatever.  I MADE THAT DRESS BITCHES!!!!  And, it wasn't even that hard.  Although Jenny did struggle.... 

(To find the tutorial, go to Talk2theTrees - thanks to her for this great idea!!!)

What is it?

Here is my latest cross stitch project, and how (not) far I've gotten thus far - can you guess what it is?

"Making Love"

Valentine's Day is rapidly approaching, and we are poor. Andy & I have agreed we'll just have a nice dinner and exchange cards. I ordered a letterpress card from Etsy, and I'm sort of thinking of trying to make him something. Had I planned better, I'd have saved the Edward Sharpe cross-stitch and given it to him now, but of course I did not.

If you know of any good homemade Valentine gift ideas let me know. I have a few things up my sleeve, but since I just sent the link to my blog to Andy this past week I'll refrain from posting them for now.

Day & Night

I took several pictures today and couldn't decide which to use. I narrowed it down to 2 but I can't choose out of them, so I'll tell you about both.

Tonight we hosted a board game night at the house, and so I spent the day getting a lot of cleaning done. Sunday is always my cleaning day anyway. Having been feeling pretty crummy this past week and trying not to get sick, I wasn't feeling like cleaning, so to get myself in the mood I started off by hanging the wall decals Mom got me for Christmas:

I like them. This is in the spare bedroom/computer room, and we've been spending a lot of time in there lately so I wanted to put some more of 'us' in that room. When I first bought my house my cousin moved into this room, and it's the only room we haven't repainted or done really anything with so I figured hanging pictures and cheerful things was a good route to go. I also hung a tie dye 'curtain', which does nothing to block the sun but it looks cute!

So then we had people over for board games. There ended up being 8 of us, which was probably the perfect size for something like that. We played Apples to Apples, Taboo, and Quelf. All are great games in a group setting, and good 'icebreaker' type games if not everyone knows each other. So I'll leave you with a picture from our game of Quelf. Andy drew a card that dictated he do ballet until the timer ran out:

Cross Stitching Success

Finished!

I was able to get this finished in the nick of time - with Mom's party and all the other Christmas ends to be tied up, I was a bit worried I wouldn't make it! I stayed up late last night until I fell asleep working on it, and finished it this morning. I have to say, I'm quite pleased with how it's turned out, and am even toying with the idea of starting an Etsy shop. I would mostly start off cross-stitching song lyrics, but if people wanted specific phrases I could do those too. Then, if I ever get good at any other crafty things I could put them there too. What do you think?

I hope Andy likes it!!!

Stitchin’ Bitch

Progress!

I have been taking my cross stitching with me just about everywhere I go. Sitting on Dave's smoking patio while eating 75-cent tacos and drinking beer...I didn't think it could get any better until I started cross-stitching too!

I wasn't sure if I'd enjoy picking this back up or lose interest right away, but I've been doing well and I really am enjoying myself. Maybe I'll cross stitch song lyrics and frame them and sell them on etsy for outrageous amounts of money!

Gift Giving for Po' Folk

This year I am more broke than I have ever been before. I fully intend to obsess over online sales, as well as scour eBay & craigslist for bargain gifts. I have ideas for everyone on my list and all of my ideas are out of my price range, so I'm just waiting patiently for good sales to come.

I have bought 2 gifts so far, both for Andy. In case he reads this (which he won't), I will not tell you about one of them. The other was inspired by this. I believe I was looking online for a good photo of Alex & Jade when I was pondering my couples-I-want-to-be entry when I stumbled across it. When I was MUCH younger I really enjoyed counted cross-stitch, and since Edward Sharpe & the Magnetic Zeros have become a "thing" for Andy & I, I decided I'd try my hand at it.

I printed off some 14 graph paper, and several hours later I had a pattern:

We popped in to the Hobby Lobby after my massage (fuuuuuck yes.) last night, and here's what I got:

$10: 50% reclaimed wood picture frame (8" x 10")

$2.76: 4 skeins of variant color embroidery floss (yellow-brown)

$2.99: navy blue aida, 14 ct, 12" x 16"

$1.49: #22 needles

Andy's delight upon opening the gift -- Priceless???

... Perhaps not, but I think for $15 it will be a pretty cool gift! I hope he likes it. My mom said it was lame, my sister says adorable. We'll see what Andy thinks! I'll keep you guys posted on my progress :)

Day eleven!

Friday we got to enjoy a nice evening at home. It seemed like it had been a while since we were at home relaxing, just the 2 of us. After beer tasting, we just went straight home and Andy made us a wonderful steak dinner.

Then I went to work assembling this:

I'm waiting for some ModPodge to arrive so I can affix it all to the canvas, but I made this for a friend's baby's nursery. I'm going to make another one that is more boy-friendly, since they aren't finding out the sex until it's born. I can't decide if I like it or if I think it's too busy, but everyone I've asked says it's cute so I'm trusting them. Now I just need to trust USPS to get everything to me before Saturday!!!