Box covers

I wrote a post today about all my new responsibilities as the wife of a medical school student but decided to spare my readers (all 4 of you) the anguish. Then I started thinking, I flourish in boredom. I have been a design nut lately. I finished the box covers for my room divider today. Hold on...I'll go take a picture.

Ah, I must love you. Either that, or the novelty of my new phone hasn't worn off yet. The boxes were quite simple. It began as a much more complicated process than it ended up being. I had four cardboard boxes left over from our move that would fit in the squares. I measured the diameter and measured the length from the bottom of the box to the end of the flap (that is folded inside). I cut my fabric accordingly, leaving about an inch for the seam allowance, sewed a straight line, turned the fabric right-side-in, and wrapped it around the box. This is in my dining room, near our bistro table.

That glass container in the top right cube holds a tiny fish, a neon I believe. This fish has outlived every other fish we've ever had and has survived trips from Tennessee to Michigan, back to Tennessee, then onto Kentucky. His name is Crick. He had a brother named Watson, but he died a year ago. If you look closely, you can see my blue sewing machine on the coffee table beyond the TV. There's also a Coke can and Samuel Adams Summer Ale bottle, both empty. Those greenish curtains are the ones I hope to try in my bedroom when I finish recovering my orange rocker. I regret to say that I haven't bought the fabric yet. We're still figuring out our finances, so I'm not sure if I can afford the expense right now.

My pantry

Since we don't have a pantry at the new house, I made one. I bought this storage unit from Ikea. And a couple of these.I spray painted all the slats with a piano black lacquer and put it all together. I cut and finished the edges of some fabric I picked up at Hobby Lobby, and I made a loop for a curtain rod. I had an extra rod, so I hammered in some nails to the top of the unit and hung my curtain. I'm considering adding some black fabric to the sides of the unit for a more finished look. But for some reason, I enjoy sitting in my living room and looking at the contents of my pantry. I think it gives me the illusion of abundance. I have and I lack, but my pantry is full.

The finished (for now) product: I also made these bistro chair cushions with the excess fabric. I may add a covered button and somehow attach them to the chairs, but I haven't thought it through yet.
(Please ignore the mess.)

My bathroom window shade

I finished the fabric shade project in my bathroom. It's so cute! I just reused the fabric panels I had hanging in my bedroom at the last place we lived. Total investment - $3.67. I'm thinking about putting a backing on the shade, but it's not a priority since the window looks out into the backyard. I need to buy the right size mini blinds for the kitchen and think about a fabric. Currently, I have a dark red/brown/coffee theme in the kitchen. I'm tempted to bring the black and white dining room palette into the kitchen, too. That would involve new rugs, though, and I don't want to spend money on those kinds of things right now. The fabric shade project is so cheap and easy that I might not mind redoing them when I can afford to redecorate. I do have some really cute floral black and white fabric, though...

I figured out why Jenny said not to use hot glue - if you touch the gun to the blinds, they will melt. It did the trick as long as I was careful. Another tip - at first I didn't realize that you have to remove ALL of the strings EXCEPT the pully ones. Take off all the strings and blinds, then figure out how many you need. The hardest part is keeping the blinds straight when you glue. The finished product is surprisingly forgiving. Now that I know what I'm doing, I'm guessing the entire project could be completed in 30 minutes. No joke! You can do this. And when you do, I want to see pictures.








I need to fix the bottom corners, but I like it!

It's not just dirt under there.

So I pulled up the grass for my butterfly garden. Then I started to dig. Apparently, there's some kind of concrete foundation extension from our patio. I don't know where it ends. What's most frustrating is that I haven't been able to get my hands on a real shovel. I've been doing all the work with my little hand garden tools. They're great for houseplants, notsomuch for real gardening. My plants need to get in the ground! I've had them nearly two weeks. I have to figure something out soon.

In happier news, my basil is growing like crazy. I haven't had much luck with my lavender, but the thyme is still working its way out of the soil.

Happy birthday to our little Rollo. He's 5 years old today.






The photo's about a year old, but he's still just as cute.

And the winner is...

Blue and brown paisley!! This ended up being Nick's favorite, since he says, "It's the closest to paisley." He doesn't think the curtains will match, but the green is on such a small scale that I think it might work as long as they're close. We'll see. I like that the pattern is BIG (read, forgiving). I also like the detail. The little brown specs remind me of seeds, and the paisley looks like flowers. This print reminds me of springtime. Thanks, Rebecca (who might be my mom?) for the vote. And thanks for all the suggestions, ideas, thoughts, and votes.

I'm just a little bummed that the fabric will likely be gone soon. I have half a mind to refinish our loveseat in the same fabric. It's actually made up of two individual chairs that are not the exact same shade of brown. I just alternate the cushions so that it looks like it's supposed to be that way. I'm not sure if I pull it off or not, but it needs help, for sure. I think the loveseat would be an easier task than the rocker anyway, since it's so modular. The other half of my mind just wants to get rid of it. I'm not sure why I need a loveseat and a rocker in my bedroom. There is no space anywhere else, so they both just ended up there. And, without help, they are both eyesores.

In other news, it's been a productive day. I finally bought a frame for our wedding portrait that we ordered the year we were married - 2006. It was a $12 splurge, but it needed to be done. I don't have framed photos in my home. I'm not sure why, but I never get photos printed. I have countless blank photo albums and a handful of empty frames. I've been working on gathering similar looking plain black frames in various sizes. Now I have to choose and order prints to put in them. They're going in my hallway.

I'm also on the lookout for something very cheap (or free) to hang in Nick's bathroom. His color scheme is black/white/gray with chrome accessories. So I'm looking around here for something to decorate his blank walls.

I need to get pictures up of our new place. Most rooms still have items that haven't found a place yet. I'm working on that this week, and hopefully I can have some finished rooms to show by this weekend!

Picking a fabric for the (currently) orange rocker

I need your help! I'm going to buy the fabric to slipcover our orange rocker online, and I can't decide on the pattern. I've narrowed it to five. The chair will be in our bedroom, which is decorated in light blue and dark brown. The chair will be far enough away from our bed, so the browns and/or blues won't need to match perfectly. I have a lot of brown in the room right now, so I like the idea of bringing in more blue. However, I plan to make some throw pillows, and I can bring in more blue that way. Plus, I would rather have varying shades of brown than varying shades of blue on a large scale. As I mentioned in an earlier post, nearly all of our textiles are solid colored, so I want to add some patterns.

Since there are a lot of pieces to work together for this project, I'm a little concerned about trying to match repeating patterns. I think the stripe would be the most challenging, but I could probably make the others work.

Here is the link to the pattern. (Our chair looks a lot like the chair in the picture, except it's in better shape.)

And here are the contenders:

Small paisley















Blue and brown paisley















Brown scroll















Brown and blue stripe















Leaves
















EDIT::

I found another! This one is just the inverse of my favorite - the brown scroll. I like it because it's darker and would show less puppy dirt.
Inverse brown scroll

Running

I'm going to deviate from the norm and post some workout results. I don't want to make a habit of it, but it's just too easy to use my blog to record my workout progress. My treadmill has a calorie counter. I don't know how it calculates calories burned, but I'm guessing it's set to record the average calories burned for the averaged weight adult. My best guess is that's around 150 or 160 lbs. In other words, I burn fewer calories than it tells me I have. I decided to walk/jog/run until I burned 100 calories, according to the machine. Then I took a break. I repeated this until I burned 300 calories. I think my total distance was around 2.75 miles. And I think it took me slightly more than 30 minutes. In other words, I'm not pushing myself hard enough. Ideally, I should be running 3 10-minute miles. That's my new goal. That means I need to keep my rate up to 6 mph. I'm going to shoot for that tomorrow, taking a break between each mile.

I didn't get much face time with my husband this weekend. He spent most of it in the lab or in the study room. I'm glad he's finding the time to get on top of things. Hopefully, he'll figure out a balance soon. Part of me is slightly jealous that he has things to study. I'm excited to start my classes!!