Upcycled Curtains

When we moved into our house last year, the previous homeowners had left some red, roman shades hanging in our bedroom. I don't have photos of the actual shades, but they looked like this:

I liked them, but they didn't look right with our stuff, so I took them down. They weren't in the best shape, so I knew we'd never hang them again exactly as they were. But they were made of a really nice red, twill fabric, so I tore them apart, laundered the fabric,  which came out looking like new, and stuck it into my craft stash for a rainy day.


Steven recently asked me if I could throw together some curtains for a window in his graphic design studio, and I thought this fabric might work out nicely for that. And here's how they turned out:

We originally bought a cafe rod to hang the curtains on this door, and then we realized that would require us to drill through the door's metal casing. This felt like a pain in the neck, because we're pretty sure all of our drill bits are made of carbon steel, which isn't good for drilling through metal. Steven started wondering if we could create some kind of a rod using magnets, to adhere to the metal door. To my amazement, at my next trip to my new favorite store, I found a magnetic curtain rod for $8 that was the perfect size! Here's a close-up of the rod, sticking to the door:

After living in our house for 16 months, maybe we'll finally get around to putting window treatments on all the windows after all!

Blumenthal Gallery, Post Number 2

Here's another beautiful painting done by a member of my husband's family. This one, which hangs in our dining room, is by his Grandma Bertha:

I love the warm tones in this piece, which match so nicely with the golden light we often get in the room where this hangs. And I'm a huge fan of this kind of folk painting, which Grandma Moses, who began painting in her seventies after a career in embroidery, is famous for.

Sassy

It's been awhile since we've had a look at how handsome Sassy is, right? 


Here he is showing us his best side:

And his other best side:

These shots were actually taken shortly after returning from a check-up at the vet's office. This was our first visit to this office, and we are so thrilled to have found a really wonderful place filled with extremely caring and dedicated personnel. If you're in the Beacon, NY area, we can't recommend Hudson Highlands Veterinary Medical Group highly enough! 

Stitching for Shpilkes

I have a backpack I bought many years ago at Old Navy that I have started using again recently to lug things around when I need more stuff on me than my little purse can carry. Did a little doodle-stitching on it one evening while I was watching TV:

Stitches from top to bottom: blanket, chain, fern, chain. 


I love embroidery because it's something I can do to keep busy when I'm sitting around or watching TV. I get bored if my hands aren't busy with something! I recently learned that in Yiddish, there's a word for someone like me, who always has a lot of nervous energy and can't sit still without doing something: shpilkes. Shelly Shpilkes. It works!

Blumenthal Gallery, Post Number 1

I have been feeling so much more motivated to create and craft since we moved upstate last year, and I can't help wondering if some of my inspiration comes from the gorgeous original artwork that we've hung in our home. Most of the art we have displayed was created by members of my husband's family, and I feel very fortunate to have married into such a talented group of people! 


I thought I'd share some of these beautiful pieces, starting with the first one we put up, an abstract painting that hangs in our living room:

This painting was created by Jack, my father-in-law, and I love its bold colors and striking angles. Keep your eyes here for more work from the Blumenthal Gallery in the coming days!

Prayer Flag WIP

As I mentioned in a recent post, our amazing friends Maureen and Laura are getting married! I'm very excited about their big day, which is coming up in October. 


They have invited all their wedding guests to create/decorate a prayer flag, an idea they are borrowing from the Buddhist faith. As they explain, "A prayer flag is a rectangular cloth often found strung along mountain ridges and peaks high in the Himalayas. When the wind blows through it, it scatters blessings across the surrounding countryside." 


Isn't that a lovely idea?


The fabric for our prayer flag came in the mail recently. Here it is:

(Forgive me for the gratuitous inclusion of my tootsies. They are included for scale and to show off the pedi that I splurged on this weekend!)


Here's a close-up of the fabric:

I'm really excited about what I have in progress for this, and will reveal it here after their big day!

Thanks, Dollar Store Crafts!

I just saw that the chair cushions I recently made out of dollar store placemats made it onto the Dollar Store Crafts website today! 

How exciting! Thanks, Dollar Store Crafts!

Pot Roast Carbonnade

Yesterday I had a day off from work, and since I rarely have time to make a big supper, I decided to do a little cooking. I recently found a really nice recipe for Pot Roast Carbonnade by Melissa D'Arabian. (Any recipe that calls for a bottle of beer has to be good, right?) I think I've only seen Melissa's show on the Food Network once, but I'm looking forward to trying some of her other recipes based on the way this one turned out:

We ate it with some homemade mashed potatoes, red cabbage and a little malbec that one of Steven's lovely clients gave to us -- yum!

By the way, do you see that cute little pumpkin napkin holder in the top photo? Picked that up at the Family Dollar yesterday for $2! I'm starting to develop an unhealthy obsession with that store...

Dollar store placemat, reclaimed!

There's a Family Dollar store just up the street from where we live, and it's so handy when I need to pick up cheapy items for around the house. Shortly after we moved in last year, I bought a bunch of these golden-colored placemats; at $1 each, I couldn't beat the price and they were a perfect match for the color scheme in our dining room.

But after using them for awhile, they started to look a little worse for wear, and I decided to toss them in the washing machine. They came out cleaner, but whatever was inside of them to keep them stiff had disintegrated in the wash and wrecked their original flat shape:

This made them totally unusable as placemats. And even though they only set me back a buck each, I hated to throw them in the garbage, so I stuck them in my craft stash, hoping that some upcycling inspiration would eventually strike.

I've been wanting to buy or make some cushions for our dining room chairs for some time, and I recently started wondering if I might be able to reclaim our ruined placemats for that purpose. This weekend I decided to monkey around with them and see if my idea would work.

First, I stuck some pins in where I thought they should be hemmed to fit our chairs, and I lopped off the extra fabric:

Next, I used my seamripper to take out some stitches so I could turn the fabric in onto itself:

Then I turned the fabric in, and pressed the seam:

Then I stuffed it with polyfill, and pinned it for sewing:

Then I stitched it up, covered up some buttons and sewed them into the middle, attached ribbons for tying it to the chair, and here it is!

There's actually a whole website devoted to crafting with dollar store items; you can check it out right here. Happy (cheap!) crafting!

Pre-Wedding Craft Party!

Years ago when we lived in NYC, my friend Maureen would host craft night at her place in Williamsburg, and we girls would get together once a month with our stitching and our gluing and our take-out to get our craft on.


Last night, Maureen and her fiancée Laura hosted a craft night on steroids, wherein a bunch of their friends got together to make things that will decorate the venue where they're getting married this October. I'm not going to show too many photos of the decorations themselves, lest I take away from the final reveal on their big day. But here are a couple shots from the crafting and general merriment that we enjoyed last night:

This is Aine's phenomenal sewing machine, which stitched up a ridiculous number of pillows last evening. This thing is totally retro and totally diesel -- and it was totally free from a local guy who had it laying around in his garage. Score!

And here's Aine on her machine and Maureen wrestling her Husqvarna into submission.

A preliminary pillow pile.

Of course we had helpers. This is Rudy...

...and brother Henley.

Here's Maureen under the 39 finished pillows at the end of the night.

Aerial view of the pillow pile.

And the couple of honor, Maureen and Laura. 34 days to go, girls!