Homemade Living Room Pillows

Our living room has been a work in progress ever since we built our house and I think it will be still for awhile. I showed you before our new eggplant curtains and want to finally highlight the pillows. My mom and I picked out the fabric for these awhile back and made them. We made a few of them look just like pottery barn pillows :) 

My favorite is the green pintucked pillow. I talked about a brown one we made for my master bedroom here. They are super simple to make.

The only one not homemade is the big eggplant one below with the bow- I got that at Homegoods (you shouldn't expect any where else) for like $12 which is cheaper than I think it really was priced but it had NO TAG so I got it at the price of a "similar" pillow... SWEET!

They go perfectly with the eggplant curtains and the neutral look of the rest of the room... wonderful pops of color! Altho you can't see the eggplant curtains in this pic below but you can in the very last pic. The reading nook area with the purple chair you see is definitely still a work in progress so just ignore that for now.

I want to make some more pillows (and do it all myself once I get a sewing machine). I want to use another pattern, maybe dots or stripes or something much small than the brown/green patterned pillows. If you have seen any fabulous fabric you can suggest for the room PLEASE PLEASE let me know!! A combo of purples and greens in a fabric would be especially awesome since I couldn't find an eggplant and bright green combo the first go round.

One more shot from before we had the rug

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BOO! Dollar Store Ghosts

Halloween is just a month away so here is a fun and super duper thrifty craft... Dollar Store Ghosts! Kudos to my mom who came up with this idea.

You need:
-A clear slightly frosted glass candle holder thingy (I'm sure that must be the official name for it) from the dollar store for you guessed it, $1... mine is from Dollar Tree.
-A fake tealight. These were 2 for $1 at Dollar Tree.
-black paint pen or marker of some sort - most own this already

So now for the incredibly long and complicated directions... haha just kidding. Take black pen and draw a ghost face on your candle holder thing. It slopes down on half of the holder so I made that shorter part the back. Put tealight inside. TA-DA! Was that simple or what?

Now you are ready to display your very scary ghost craft! And it only cost $1.50. I am going to make a few more to have a little family of ghosts :)

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Clemson vs N. Texas and Dip Recipe

As I talked about here, Eric and I went to Clemson for the first game this season vs North Texas (an easy enough team so there is very slim chance of losing the first game). With a 3:30 game time, we could easily go down just for the day. We loaded up the car with tailgating essentials early in the morning and arrived in Clemson a little past 10. We were meeting Brooke and Kevin, friends from college and some of their family. This was the first time we had seen them since our wedding. Brooke is expecting a girl in December so I was excited to spend some time chatting with her. How cute is her baby bump :)

The weather turned out to be wonderful which is rare in SC in early Sept... usually it is extremely hot. We had a wonderful time tailgating and each brought a few things. I think the key to a good tailgate is definitely great food with some of it needing to be filling so you don't feel like all you ate was chips. Speaking of chips... one thing I made was a very simple but yummy ranch salsa dip! I have been making this for years and it is always a favorite at tailgates and parties.

Ranch Salsa Dip
You need 1 packet of ranch dip (it's powder, usually near the dressings), 16 oz. container of sour cream (I use red. fat), and salsa. I mix the the packet with the sour cream and then add salsa until it has the desired salsainess that I want. You could use whatever kind of salsa you preferred. It goes great with any kind of chips, crackers, veggies, etc.

After plenty of tailgating we were off to the stadium. I always enjoy walking through the campus, Clemson has the best college campus (in my opinion so that means it has to be correct, how can you argue with that right?) and brings back tons of memories. I love how it looks when everyone is wearing orange and how loud it gets in death valley! It did get a tad hot during the first half of the game but we won so that was great!

As always we had a fantastic time in Clemson. It's only been a few years since we were going to school there but, we did feel a little old when we saw some of the freshmen guys faces... did they really look that young when we were freshmen?! haha

I can't wait until the next time we get to go to Clemson for a game!! GO TIGERS!

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Name Blocks Tutorial

I've seen these before around blogland and thought I would make my own variation. My friend Katie came over and we got to work on our craft. I also got to use my recently purchases Silhouette for the first time (minus testing a couple things when it first arrived).

You need:
-1 2x4
-1 2x6
-Cardstock
-Craft paint & brushes
-Mod podge
-And a way to cut the wood

Eric cut our wood out for us which he said was not the easiest to do with the saw choices we had and a circular saw would have been better. You would want to tailor the length to your needs but the 2x6 was cut to be about 3 1/2 in. long and the 2x4 was cut to be 9 1/2 in. long. Then some more of the 2x4 was ripped for another skinnier block that was also 9 1/2 in. long so that the 2 2x4's now are about the height of the 2x6. I say about because it doesnt match perfectly and normally I am somewhat of a perfectionist but that's okay and I'm okay with it :)

Next Katie and I painted our blocks. I chose white and she chose green and a mixed blue color. I did my coat kinda thin so you could see the wood through it.

Next we printed off our last names and the other words/numbers on my silhouette. We struggled a bit due to user error (apparently when you import an image you have to do the outline function for it to go through with cutting but a test cut will in fact work) and luckily my personal computer guru was there to help us. We tested out the size of the letters on navy cardstock since I saw myself using it less than the other colors but Katie actually loved the look of the navy so she stuck with that. I printed mine on black. (Note: if you don't have a silhouette you could cut them by hand or not use paper and just paint them on) Then we put a layer of mod podge on the blocks and placed the letters/numbers where we wanted them. We let that dry and then put another 2 layers of mod podge on top.

I decided I didn't want the black to stand out so much so I mixed a little bit of white paint with water and did a layer of that over the top.

I think they turned out great!! It's definitely thrifty since the materials are pretty cheap or you already have them on hand (the wood is enough to make like 5 sets). These would make a wonderful gift too!

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