For the Love of Yarn

It's been a while! Phew! I haven't been doing a lot of repurposing, as of late, but I have been doing a lot of creating!

When I was in third grade, the ladies of our local VFW taught my Girl Scout troop how to crochet. They taught us a couple of basic stitches and we became professional crochet-ers...okay, not really, but we could make a reeeeallly long row of double crochet stitches. I, on occasion, would break out the old crochet hook and yarn and make small blankets, but I was by no stretch of the imagination good at it. Right before my little prince was born, I was looking for a hat that looked like a baseball for him to wear home from the hospital.

I told you we {heart} the Yankees.

Anyway, I found one on Etsy, but when I got it, it was way too big for him to wear home from the hospital. The other issue was that I fell madly in love with a bazillion tiny yarn hats and hubby said, "No," to spending oodles of dollars on them.  It went something like this:

Me: "Ohhhhh...{hubby} look at these little hats!"
Hubby: "No."
Me: "But look at the little giraffe..."
Hubby: "No."
Me: "Fine, I'll just make them."
Hubby: "You don't know how to make a hat." <<< all condescending like
Me: "You don't know what I can do." <<< all irritated and determined like

Okay, so it might not have gone exactly like that, but that's how I remember it. So the story goes on and I find a crochet hook and yarn in a tub in the garage and I started trying to make the hats that I fell in love with online. They got better with time and I started putting pictures of them on Facebook {because my prince is the most handsome feller in all the land}, a couple of people wanted one, and then the owner of a local boutique saw them and wanted some for the store. Long story {not-so} short, I have been crocheting like a mad woman, almost constantly, for the last few weeks and I may never get caught up. Meanwhile, I am helping to make the world a more adorable place, one yarn hat at a time :)

Lamp Makeover

This AMAZING blog, U Create, has a monthly "Create With Me" project that I was overjoyed to participate in during the month of July. During July, the project was a lamp makeover. You send before and after pictures, and she posts them on her blog. There were some awesome makeovers, go check it out!

http://www.u-createcrafts.com/2011/09/create-with-me-lamp-makeover-gallery.html

Here are before and after pictures of the two lamps I repurposed in July.

Bowling Ball Yard Art

Have you ever seen bowling ball yard art? Google it. Seriously. This is some of the most interesting stuff you'll ever see.
Last year sometime, the amazingly talented Jenny D, who also happens to be married to my sweet dad (step-mother sounds like it should imply that she has warts, or something), asked me to keep an eye out for a bowling ball she could have. I thought it an odd request, at the time, but her talent is random, not unlike my own, and I learned a long time ago to trust her instincts :)
The other day, she sent me a picture of the finished product and it's ADORABLE! Sort of makes me want to grow something in my yard on purpose so that I can have one!

Precious, right?

Tip for Holding Those Tiny Nails!

You know those teeny, tiny nails you're supposed to use to nail in the picture hangers? They're even too small to hold with your fingers! I read all over the package, trying to figure out how you were supposed to hold them while you hammer them, but could find anything. After smacking my fingers with the hammer {TWICE}, I decided to figure something else out. Necessity is the mother of invention, right?

Here's what I did. *WARNING* All those with perfectly manicured fingers, avert your eyes!

A bobby pin is perfect! It has those little grooves that are just the right size for holding a nail. Then, just squeeze the open end and your fingers are out of the way of the hammer. Works like a charm!

Happy hammering!

Love Starts With 'M'

It's no secret that I blog stalk. I check dozens of blogs, weekly, to see what kind of cute things I can copy craft. Today, however, I created something that I thought of all on my own. I love when that happens :)

A friend of mine asked me to make something, with her initial, that she could hang on her front door. So, into the garage I went. My garage is a disaster treasure trove. Especially since we've just moved. Stuff is EVERYWHERE, but I managed to find what I needed.

When my husband asked what I wanted for Mother's Day this year, I told him I wanted a scroll saw. Odd request, perhaps, but it's one of my most favorite treasures.

Enough already. Here's what I made today.

I've been wanting to try my hand at distressing, but I'm too chicken to use a piece of furniture, so I thought I'd try it out on this 'M'. I really like how it turned out. I used foam stamps that I got a few years ago to write the words, and I'm really kind of sad that my last name doesn't start with an 'M'. I lurve it :)

Anthropologie Inspired Shower Curtain

This is the greatest thing I've ever made. Hands down. I'm not sure what I was looking for when I stumbled upon a picture of THE shower curtain, but when I saw it, I knew...I needed it. I also knew Hubby would never, I repeat NEVER, approve of a $118 shower curtain transaction {nor would I}. So, what's a girl to do?

Blog-stalk.

I found several tutorials on how to make this little lovely. My favorite, because it required the least amount of sewing, was by Taylor Made. Her's is beauuuuutiful and would brighten anyone's day!

The countertops in our new house are dark green and we were going to have the walls painted grey, so I knew I wanted to use those two colors. JoAnne was having a 50% off sale on some of their solid broadcloth and I got it all for $1.99/yd. I used 6 total yards of fabric. Wowzerz.

Next, I hit up my favorite discount retailer, Maxx de TJ, and found a white, fabric shower curtain for $5.99. Uh huh, your math is correct, that's about $18 for my dream shower curtain.

I {mostly} followed the steps from the Taylor Made tutorial, and I am now the proud owner of an inexpensive version of an expensive shower curtain.

*This is not the bathroom my lovely lives in now. I'm not revealing pictures from the new house yet, it's not picture-ready as of now :)

1,052 Ways to get Hubby Involved in Decor

Hubby really couldn't care less about the details in nursery decor. His philosophy is simple. He wants Yankees, he wants it to look good, and he wants me to spend the least amount of money possible. These are terms I can accept.
In the last post, I talked about my photographer friend that matted the Yankee pictures for the prince's room. His name is Jared and he takes amazing pictures. You can look at some here. Jared knows of my husband's love for all things Yankees and has recently given us some pretty great gifts that I wanted to share!

This is the first one he gave us. Hubby looked at the sign and its creator adoringly and simply said, "That's a long way to Heaven." Jared looked up the distance from our house to Yankee Stadium and it's exactly 1,052 miles. Love <3

He gave us the second happy last night. This one was to commemorate Derek Jeter's 3,000th career hit. This is a particularly tender subject for my husband. We were driving back from the beach and Hubs was watching the play-by-play on his phone when Jeter got the hit. Not only was it his 3,000th hit, but it was a home run...and he went 5 for 5 that day...and Hubs missed it. Needless to say, Hubby liked this gift very much.

Such thoughtful creations. No surprise to us, that's the kind of guy our Jared is.

By the way, the baseball rugs that are serving as the background for our new treasures, were found by my BFF, on clearance for $2.50 each. Here is a better pic.

They're probably 2.5 feet in diameter. Four of them, for the prince's nursery, for $10. Holy Yankee love.

We {heart} Yankees

Meet my prince.

Adorable, right?

By the way, that awesome picture was taken by the lovely Ashley D. Check out her site http://www.ashleydphotos.com/

Anyway...back to my prince. My husband and I both love Yankees baseball. So when we found out we were expecting a boy, we knew we wanted a Yankees themed nursery. I googled 'Yankees nursery' and found this. I love it. Being the DIYer that I am, I thought that I could probably do something similar. And so the quest began.

The small town we live in has exactly one thrift store. It's open on Tuesdays and Thursdays from 8 -11 am. That's it. You have to really plan for a visit to our thrift store. It's not very big either, so the variety is not great, but I always go in with an open mind. On this trip, I walked in and went right to the picture frames (like I usually do). There's always a lot of cheap plastic frames or poorly made wood frames. Rarely do I find a decent wood frame with the glass in tact. This day, I found two!

I know what you're thinking. The tacky, sun-faded mailbox print is a real head-turner. I would tend to agree with you. The nice lady at the thrift store let me leave the building with these for $5. I could have hugged her.

During the same visit, I came across this book:

I wanted this, if for no other reason, to have on a shelf in the prince's room. I realize our son will grow up knowing only of the new Yankee Stadium, and I'd like to be able to show him what it used to look like. The book had pictures of all the other MLB ballparks as well, but I don't really care about that. There was a great panoramic picture of Yankee Stadium. I was sold. And so was the book. For $3.

I primed and painted the frames black, pulled the panoramic pictures from the book, and handed it all over to a photographer and good friend of mine, that wheels and deals in matting and framing all the time. I had to trade a lifetime of servitude (actually just have to crochet a few new photo props for him), but he matted the pictures in the frames for me. He is awesome. No, really...go look.

This is not a very good picture of the finished product. I promise to take better photos for the complete nursery reveal, but this is what my thrift store treasures morphed into.

They are going to look amazing in the prince's room. I can't wait to get it all put together. Stay tuned :)

Mr & Mrs Throw Pillows

Last week I visited one of my favorite places EVER...the thrift store! I'm not sure what it is about thrifting that makes me so happy. It might be the quest to find something someone discarded and make it adorable, or it might be the 'saving money' part that I find so intriguing. Either way, I get super excited about the gems I find at these treasure troves.

On this particular trip, I came across four throw pillows. The covers were burlap {but kind of soft}, and they had zippers! YESSSSSS!

How great are those? No damage at all, I can throw the covers in the wash, AND they're $1.49? Yes, please. So they came home with me.

I added a little WonderUnder, a little felt and fabric, and a regular ol' sewing machine, and VOILA!

 I {heart} them muy mucho.

This is what they look like on our bed <3

Welcome

For months now, I've been toying with the idea of creating a blog. I'm kind of a blog junkie and I get great satisfaction from blog-stalking reading about the goings-on of my friends and family. My FAVORITE blogs, however, are the DIY craft blogs. There are a few blogs that I check, without fail, almost nightly to see what kind of amaaaaazing things they've created. They have inspired me to be the best re-purposer I can be.

Blogging is scary though. What if I'm my only follower? I guess I'll just dive in head first and learn as I go. Happy blog-stalking, folks!

Jeanette