DIY table runner, on a budget

After putting away Christmas decorations, it always feels so bare in the house. At least at mine anyway. While decorating for the holidays, I came across a festive table runner that I had forgotten all about. Yes.....had forgotten all about when I had just purchased and used it last year. I know, pathetic...but what can I say? Moving will do that to ya.

Remember this?

The placement of the runner sort of was an accident, but I loved having something under the tv so that it wasn't just a bare cabinet underneath.

So I set out in search of an everyday option. I looked at several stores and just wasn't finding anything that appealed to me. There were lacy numbers...bleh. Stripes...again.bleh. Florals..uh uh. I'm not quite sure why it took me so long to get to my next conclusion. Why not just make my own? Oh that's right...cause

I DON'T SEW!

So what is a non-sew-er (it looked strange w/o the dash) to do in times like this? Turn to blogland for inspiration of course.

I've seen so many neat projects others bloggers have done using burlap, and even seen Nate Burkus endorse it on his show.That's it!

Today I set out in search of the burlap. Not knowing my way around the fabric section, I had to ask for help finding it. They had light brown, tan, white, black, sage, and hunter green. I had given thought to some green to add a little color, but really liked the natural raw look of the natural brown. But oh crap! I forgot to measure the cabinet top before I left. So I got 2 yards just in case. And thank goodness!

I had more than I needed, but 1 yard would have some up short. That just means I'll have some leftover to use on other things...yippee!

I then eyeballed about how long I wanted the sides to hang off..

And then made a cut. Of course as soon as the scissors made the first cut, I realized that I was cutting into the unwrinkled end of the burlap. Crap. I could have easily cut off the other end so that I didn't have to iron it. Oh well...ya live and learn. It was too late at that point.

After cutting off one end, I folded the material in half lengthwise to cut the width to the correct size. I'm horrible at cutting a straight line, so I wanted to lessen the length I'd have to cut. The burlap was a little hard for my scissors to cut through since it was 4 layers thick, but they also have a hard time with paper..lol. So I cut 2 layers at a time up to a point, and then followed with the same cut on the remaining layers, making sure to follow the same line as the first cut. (That made sense in my head. Hope the picture helps)

It was than time to fray the edges. Here is where I'd like to give first time users of burlap a little piece of advice. Do not sit on the floor, in dark jeans while fraying the edges of burlap. Don't say I didn't warn ya.

It gets messy. Just sayin.

But it's worth it. It has the natural look I was going for and has just enough color to be a good backdrop for other decor. Oh and it's CHEAP! At only $3.99/yard, you can't go wrong.

Oh yea, and I also bought a couple yards of burlap webbing. I had originally planned to wrap it around a few vases, but the burlap needed something a little more to go along with it. But at 79cents/yard, I can easily go back for more.

I've had this frame for only a whole year and a half, and just now filling it with pictures. I love when projects motivate me to finish others. It's sat in a box, unfilled until now. (Bought from Michael's some time last year cause I HAD to have it....yep)

On the left are 2 of 3 whiffle balls from the 99cent store covered in hot glue and jute string. I love all the ideas you can find for cheap. Decor balls can get so pricey!

On top of this thrift store book find, is a glass piece that belonged to my grandmother. On our most recent trip to Indiana for Thanksgiving, my dad got some of her things out of their storage. I didn't see a lot that I could envision using in our house, but this way too cute to pass up. In person it looks almost like lace. I had originally thought it would make a great landing place for jewelry while doing dishes.

Not bad for a little over $10 right?

The tv doesn't look so bare anymore :)

It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas!

I love this time of year! Family, the big dinner, eating anything and everything that makes you feel good, oooh eggnog!!!, seeing the faces of family as they open their gifts that Santa brought..........but one other things stands out to me as well. Decorating for Christmas!

The tradition starts off with my daughter and I assembling the tree. Yes, we have a fake tree every year. I don't think that I've ever had a real tree. And while a lot of people prefer them and can't imagine Christmas without them, it's just not what I was raised with. And let's be totally honest....

I'm way too OCD about our tree to not have the ability to mold the limbs in just the right way!! Yes it does mean fluffing, fluffing, fluffing...but it's all worth it when you can move the pieces around to hold that special ornament in just the right way.

Once we get the tree up and fluffed to perfection...it's my husband's job to string up the lights. Just as he has no patience to assemble and fluff...I have NO patience whatsoever to put on the lights.

And once he gets the lights just so, my daughter and I jump in and decorate with all the ornaments that we've collected over time. Although most of them are store bought simple colorful balls, we do have a select few that have special meaning. And to me, that makes them stand out even more. But the best part of the whole tradition, is to complete a task with my daughter year after year that she loves. I love seeing the plastered smile on her face the whole time we work together. This year I got a little choked up and had to pause for a second just to give her a great big hug. I stopped to let her know how much I enjoy decorating the tree with her every year, as well as making sure to let her know that I know she will have her own wonderfully decorate tree of her own someday.

Some people may not share this tradition with their children, and that is completely fine. But for me, as long as she's in my house, she will always decorate the tree with me. And as long as that happens, I will love it forever.



A friend once told me that this blanket reminded her
of Freddy Kruger.
I can't help but to think of that every time I take it
out of storage. But it's one of my favorite things to
see in the house around Christmas.
Plus it's oh so soft and comfy!



This wreath was a happy accident.
I had a plain greenery wreath, box of candy canes,
leftover ribbon, and poinsettia flowers leftover
from years' past decorations. Combined together
they became a fun, whimsical holiday wreath.



Here is another self-made wreath. It's simply a wreath form from Dollar Tree,
 2 packages of red garland (50 feet each), newspaper, tape, and ribbon to hang on.
a $4 price tag...sweet!!

Second only to the tree, the bow above our tv is one of
my favorite parts of all the decorations. The fabric covered
canvases are everyday decor, but needed a little "Tjuzs"
as Carson Kressley would say. Using a thumbtack, I pinned
the ribbon directly to the canvas. LOVE!!!!!!!!!



Not sure if you noticed, but I did not include a picture of the tree I was gushing over at the beginning of the post. You know that OCD I mentioned....well it applies to pictures of it as well. I took all the above pictures during the day today, but really want to wait til it's dark enough to use only the lights on the tree as light for the picture. It seems to make the tree look more magical and pretty. So that'll be a post for another day.

How WILL you stand the wait? ;)



update and ----- Happy Thanksgiving

Not that I've been a very well scheduled blogger, but it's been some time since I last blogged. And unfortunately I can't really say that I've been so super busy. As a matter of fact, it's been the opposite. With the husband at work, and the child at school....it's left Mom at home alone with not a whole lot to do. And who really wants to blog about being bored? Really?

Soon I won't be able to claim boredom. In a couple days, we are embarking on a 19 hour road trip to visit my dad and step-mom in beautiful southern Indiana. I fear that I'll be too late for the fall foliage I have been missing, but seeing family will more than make up for that.

As a matter of fact, my step-sister is due to have her first baby girl some time soon!! I'm so excited at the thought of possibly getting to see her. We're going to do everything possible to put her into labor while we're there...lol. Even more family to see..and of course photograph.

Oh and as if Thanksgiving and the possibility of a birth, my niece turns 12 on Thanksgiving day as well. oh wait there's more....they are also expecting a couple litters of newborn miniature schnauzers around that time as well!! Woah..that's a lot of birth and birthdays all wrapped up in one little span of time. (In case you are a new follower...my dad and step-mom breed miniature schnauzers.)

While I say that I've been bored for most of the time, I did have a few moments of enjoyment making a few gifts to take with us, for the new baby, the bday girl, and her sister.

Here are my latest projects:

for the baby...a couple custom onesies

"my aunt think I'm cute as a (sewn on button)"

L is for Lanise

and a close up of the design just cause I like it so much ;)


a hand painted princess jewelry chest


And here are a couple other projects that don't really
fit in the Thanksgiving/road trip grouping..but I'm just too
lazy to add them to their own post. Hey....just being honest...lol

a hooded sweatshirt for my daughter's school


a keychain made using a beer bottle cap and Mod Podge Dimensional Magic
(it's was a gift for my neighbor to give to her new husband for his bday.
the pic is one I took at their wedding)





Who knows, I may come back and share more details on a couple of the above projects. I'm just not makin' any promises. Capeesh? ;)


PS. I forgot to mention that the background in the baby gifts pictures is actually a blanket I made for the baby as well. It's the cutest brown and pink damask fleece. Backed with chocolate brown fleece, I made her her very own tied fleece blanket. I warned my sister that I didn't really want to part with any of the baby stuff, but have no real reason to keep it hostage.

Make your own custom tshirt

So my husband likes to hang on to clothes. For a LONG time! I can't really put my finger on how long because he has several items that he's had before even meeting me in 2001. Yep! And a lot of those items would include t-shirts. College team t-shirts, old athletics event tshirts...etc etc.

I can't at this moment in time remember where we were, or what we were doing, when I saw him wearing one of his favorites, a Duke Basketball shirt. I had never paid much attention to it before, but this time would be the last! The only thing I DO remember was that we were out in public with no option for a quick change. Drats!!

As lovingly as a wife could be in this situation, I turned to him and said something along the lines of......

"OMG! That shirt is so old! Look it has a big hole at the neckline and it's ratty! You have to get rid of that thing!"

And he replies.... WHY???? I love this shirt. I've had it forever. *pouty face*

"EXACTLY!!"

I don't think he saw what was coming next.  "What if I got you a NEW  Duke shirt? Would you finally throw this one away?" And he said yes! He doesn't seem to remember it too well, but he said yes.

So the wheels get to turning. And that's when I ran across this tutorial over at Crap I've Made. Pure Genius I tell ya! So I had what I was going to do. Now to find the shirt. you would THINK that finding a plain royal blue tshirt in his size would be semi-easy. I checked 3 thrift stores, Wal*Mart, and Big Lots before heading to Michael's. I didn't expect to find this

The ONLY one! And it happened to be in his size! The long drawn out search had ended.

So to the design. I googled the Duke logo. There were a couple options. But I knew being me, that I would need to take on the most complicated version.

Yep. That's the one. The one with a million and one cut outs. Hmm...was I making the right decision? All for love, right?

I'll walk you through my process. I feel like I need to add a disclaimer here first.
DISCLAIMER: read this entire post before starting. You'll see why!

Supplies:

-Plain tshirt in choice color
-freezer paper
-cutting mat (mine is a small one from Creative Memories)
-cutting tool (mine happens to be a scalpel, but could have easily used my exacto knife)
-ink pen
-cardboard (to put in the middle of the shirt to prevent bleach going through to the back)
-iron (with no steam)
-bleach in a spray bottle

Ummmm....I believe that's all. A lot of what I used should be typical household items.

So I started out with tracing the design. For this I just used my laptop screen!! Oh I almost forgot, when cutting the freezer paper from the roll, make it large enough that you have some leftover around the design. That will help prevent any outside bleed or accidental spots :)





Trace the design onto the non-waxy side of the freezer paper. I would recommend tracing lightly if you use my method. I used light pressure as to not damage my screen! If you don't have a laptop that you could use in this manner, I'm sure you could print out your design and trace that.  

Once I had the design fully traced, I compared it to the original to make sure that I had gotten all pieces. And got started on cutting it out. Make sure to keep all of the loose pieces. It will help when positioning your design onto the tshirt. Or may provide useful later on. (As I soon found out)

It was at this point that I wondered what the crap I was thinking trying to use such an intricate design.

I even contemplated leaving the design like this:

I tried to rationalize it to myself. I could see what it was supposed to be. Who cares if it didn't have the detail. But being the perfectionist that I am strive to be, I googled to see if there were any manufactured shirts that looked like my half done cut out. Nope..of course not! Dang it. Ok I'll keep cutting *pout

When you have it all cut out, place the freezer paper waxy side down onto your shirt. Iron the paper onto the shirt. When the waxy side is heated, it adheres lightly to the shirt just enough to provide a great stencil. Make sure not to move the iron from side to side..it could get caught on the smaller pieces and possibly rip or tear them.

Then using a spray bottle of pure bleach (do not dilute. It won't work as well), lightly spray over the cut out areas until fully covered. The problem for me was that I didn't do it too lightly. I wanted to make sure that I was thorough. I used a little but too much and it ended up soaking through the inside of my stencil. Darn it!

So what I had was a big bleached out D without any inner design. NO!!!!!! All that work?? For nothing??

But wait....what about painting it? Remember me saying to keep all the pieces you cut out?? Yep, those came in handy! I positioned the leftover pieces back onto the shirt and ironed them on. This time I used some craft acrylic paint and used the leftover pieces as a stencil. A lot of people recommend using a textile medium added to your paint. But I didn't have any and have used this technique in the past and didn't need it. Do what you think will work for you.

Being my own worst critic, I wasn't sure if it liked it or not. So to make the bleached out spot look more like it was on purpose I randomly sprayed outside of the design.

What do you think?

I was nervous for my husband to get home. I wanted it to turn out perfectly, and what happens if I can't get him to trade in his old ratty shirt???? I was not prepared for that..lol.

Well I lucked out. He loves it! He said that it looks like a professionally made shirt. Either he really does like it, he's just trying to be nice, or I have him trained really well. Either way....he agreed to finally let go of  his old one.

A softer place to land

Once upon a time (mid 2006), my husband, daughter and I were living on the Kitsap Peninsula of Washington State. We had been there for a little over 3 and a half years. So naturally it was just about time to move again. But before we were set to move, I begged my husband to buy a new dining room set. The one we had at the time was our first set that was bought at the Navy Exchange and annoyed the bejesus out of me! It was a tile top table with rubber like "grout". Every piece of crumbs or dirt stuck to said "grout".


 Anyway....while doing a little window shopping we came across a table that I instantly fell in love with. It was a pub height table, with a fold out leaf that makes it a 52" square. And it had a 50% sale ticket on it! It was a little more than we had expected to spend, but I knew I just HAD to have it.


Fast forward 4 years and it would be the first piece of furniture that I would sell in a heart beat. It didn't take long after assembling the tall beauty in our home to realize that the chair seats weren't deep enough to comfortably sit in for an extended amount of time. Eating dinner as a family each night wasn't an issue. But when having friends over to play cards.....let's just say that everyone left wishing we hadn't sat in our chairs the whole time.

And because of that I have loathed that table for some time. But I couldn't dare tell my husband that! No way! I had begged him to buy it.

Then my friend Andrea over at Walking in my Socks posted  pictures on Facebook about reupholstering her dining room chairs. Why didn't I think of that? That would be perfect. Almost.

There was still the issue of the seats not being deep enough for comfort. So as luck would have it, one night while playing Phase 10 with friends with our butts killing us, I mentioned that I would love to know how to make new seats for said chairs. And that's when it happened. My great friend, Nick, nonchalantly said that such a task would be easy and that he'd help me. Woah! what?? Awesome!!!!!

So I was on am mission to gather the supplies:

-a sheet of plywood
-batting
-and my chosen material to cover them

We used several tools as well. I had a couple and he brought what we didn't have.
- a jigsaw
- belt sander
- staple gun
- various cutting tools (scissors, scalpel , and trauma shears) *hubby is a corpsman that likes to have various tools of the trade around. I'm sure fabric scissors would have done the job just as well

So let's start with the pictorial tutorial. Ready? (Forgive me, but I didn't get to take any pics of the very beginning. I was being the helpful assistant)

It all started with the piece of plywood my husband picked out at Lowe's that I shared here.
Nick used the current seat as a template to trace onto the plywood. Then together we talked about how much larger we should go with the new seats. Keeping in mind that we shouldn't go too big because the chair bases were made to support the current size and shouldn't push the envelope too far. I believe we agreed on 2 and a half inches for the depth. And we added about 1 inch to each side.

So we used this high tech working station to begin working on.

Bet you're jealous of our ultra fancy work table right about now. We even sat it on top of another table so that we weren't breaking our backs as we worked. But it was also used so that if we accidentally nicked it, I wouldn't mind :)

So we had the seat traced out, and Nick got to work on cutting it out with his jigsaw. Then using the sander in the picture above, sanded the edges smooth. I could start to see that this was going to work!! Yay!!

To show you how much bigger the new seats are ......


 Oh yea, baby! I can't believe that this is actually coming true...lol. And only after 4 years of totally hating these chairs.




















So after we had them all cut.

It took us a little longer than we had expected to get them all cut out and sanded. And Nick still had to go to work that night. So we hurriedly took one of the sanded seats inside to work on upholstering them. Knowing my husband's knack for hording collecting medical supplies, he asked him if he had any scalpels. Yes those kinds of scalpels. The ones surgeons cut human flesh open with. I was actually shocked when he came out of the garage with some. I guess he had them left over from his "stay" in Iraq. We used them to cut the fabric to get it to lay as flat as possible.

Together we stumbled through the process. Almost literally. I watched him first to see if he had any simple solutions to all the rounded corners. As to which he admitted he was just as clueless as I was.

See?

If those aren't hospital corners, I don't know what is....HA!

Once we had gotten to this point, I was pretty sure that I could finish up on my own. I appreciated Nick's help and didn't need to keep any longer than I already had.

Before I go on,  I want to stop to say Thank You Nick for all your help! I would have never been able to come up with this fix. You have saved our butts....literally!! :)

Before going to bed, I came up with the grand idea to paint the bottom of each seat black so that when I did a hack job on the upholstering, that maybe it wouldn't stand out so much. So I painted them and let them dry overnight.

Hey look at that! My fancy work table also doubles as a painting chair. Who knew??


So today I worked on the other million chairs. Ok you got me...I don't REALLY have a million chairs. But isn't 8 pretty dang close? I certainly think so.








The hammer was to pound in any staples that were stubborn

I had to keep reassuring myself that this side normally wouldn't be seen




Ready for install

If you're still with me, you're a real trooper! You deserve that cookie calling your name! Oh wait, those calls are from MY kitchen. Well at least I'll have some comfy seats to sit on while enjoying them ;)

Under Construction

Thanks to a good friend, I'm in the middle of a much needed DIY project.

I can't wait til it's complete.

I've been dreaming of doing this for a long time now!

Til then I leave you with this picture of our very very first step ;)

(sorry about the crappy cell phone pic. I didn't really plan to take any pics)

Something to write about

Or actually I should something to write ON, not about.

I found this odd sized frame at Goodwill. (Boy I've typed that store name a lot in my recent posts) Since I didn't have a tape measure with me at the store, I hoped that it would be a size that would fit a print that I could order online. But of course, not so. It's only 9 3/4" tall and 27 1/4" long.

It didn't even have anything in the frame besides a cardboard backing. Oh and the paint was chipped in several spots.

It sat in my bedroom for a couple weeks, waiting for me to find it's purpose. It's reason for being. And I think I've done just that.

Instead of getting out the big can of black paint that I used to paint our dresser, I simply used a jar of black acrylic paint. Worked like a charm!

As for the contents of the frame. I thought it would make a good size for a custom dry erase board. I did a search for a blank calendar sheet. I found this one......blank calendar. Using photoshop I replaced the days of the week with a different font that I liked a little more. I couldn't really just use it as is right? Oh and added little boxes to write in the dates.

And then using scraps from my canvas wall art that would hanging across the hall from it, I decorated the rest of the background.

I hung it on the wall and then had the idea to attach some $1 wired ribbon from Michael's bargain ribbon bin to make the appearance of it being hung from it.

So what do you think?

In case you are wondering, the letters represent us....Stephen, Amber, and Brianna. My husband couldn't figure out what they were for. No clue! I might go back in and put miniature pics of us beside them. I haven't decided yet.

But for now, I have a fully function dry erase board that is customized to our needs. And can be changed if ever those needs change. I love things that aren't permanent. I have an addiction to changing and tweaking..lol.

With the completion of this project, my hallway isn't a blank slate anymore. Yay!