Pillow Casing

Last week I spotted a pair of perfect purple pillows to help transition our living room from spring green and aqua to look cozier for fall and winter.

Purple and chevrons.  Love.

But since we wanted this seasonal switch-out to be as cheap as possible, we opted not to buy any other pillows.  Plus we already loved the shape and size of the four pillows we had in the living room.  They were just the wrong color.  So we got a little creative.

We took inspiration from here:

Knock-off Crate & Barrel Citrine drapes

And here:

From Ashli's blog, Maillardville Manor

And the seemingly ubiquitous JoAnn Fabric coupons that are always crowding our mailbox.  Mix with three hours with my mom in her sewing room (thanks, Mom!) and we ended up with envelope pillow covers for our four existing pillows.

Ta-da!

I am so excited that I found a way to use pretty much every last inch of that Bella Porte Citrine fabric.  I continue to be completely smitten with it.  And Steve actually found the modern floral while we were "casing" (haha) JoAnn fabric.  Tell you what ladies, marry a man whose mother quilted when he was a boy.  Steve's grasp of color and texture are quite impressive.  The yellows are almost an identical match, the gray ties in our couch, and the white continues the pattern from the citrine and looks nice next to the TV stand.

We chose to sew our envelopes so that the seam ran vertically rather than horizontally, so it more closely resembles a pillow sham than an envelope.  It works perfectly.  Our blue pillows are inside them, nice and fluffy with the right proportions for our furniture.  When we're ready to switch colors back for spring, I'll just take the covers off and we'll be done.  My favorite kind of decorating:  THE EASY KIND.

Doing the splits.

Plus, my 95" drapes from Target came in!  Not sure why the picture shows them as having a rod pocket, because they have a very nice grommet top.  I chose these curtains (the "Grayson" if you're interested) because of one major factor: the price.  They were super-cheap for a set of two.  They're not high-quality, and they're not entirely light-blocking, nor are they lined, but they looked nice after a pass with an iron and  color is exactly what I was aiming for (and I didn't have to drive to Ikea to get them).

You can't really see the rich aubergine color in the picture (hello iphone and no photo editing), but it's awesome.  And plenty cozy.

And Star Trek on the TV.  Bonus points if you know which episode!

We are done with the seasonal switch-ups!  Well, until the day after Thanksgiving, and then Christmas will take over our house.  Can't wait!

Invasion!!

At least it's a welcome invasion!

My sister-in-law is tying the knot on December first and needed a place to crash between moving out of the room she rents and moving in with her soon-to-be-hubs.  So Tabi will be staying with us during the last week of November.  This is so great for two reasons.  The most important reason being I love her and will be happy to see her so often, even if it's only for a week.  The other reason is that it's finally getting my butt in gear to finish up some projects I've been stalled on to make sure our guest bedroom and bathroom are as inviting as possible.

Three projects are standing between us and having our guest space ready for Tabi's stay.

The tub in the guest bathroom still needs to be patched.

Holey.

The mirror in the guest bathroom still needs to be framed out (which really isn't super-important, but once we patch the tub it'll be the only guest bathroom project left before we declare the entire room done-zo, so to take a page from John & Sherry's playbook, "Dude, get on that already.").

Alllllmost done.

And, oh yeah, maybe we should find the bed under all the junk we've accumulated in the bedroom.

*Shake My Head*

We've actually already made a little progress on the guest bedroom.  Between some focused organizing/storing, Craigslisting some items and donating some items, things now look like this:

(Slow) Progress.

Okay, so it's not good yet.  At least you can tell there's a bed in the room.  Wish us luck at getting it all done before Tabi arrives!

Adventures in Cleaning Microfiber

Last winter, Steve and I purchased our big gray living room couch from Macy's on super-duper sale.  It was microfiber, which we loved- in addition to being deep and wide, the couch is velvety-soft.  But I wasn't totally sure how to clean it properly.  And as with any item that you love (and/or cost more than a couple of bucks), I want to keep it in as good condition as I can.

Even so, we do live real life around here.  We've got dogs that get up on that couch and as any dog owner can attest, dogs create schmutz (official definition here).  Also, sometimes Steve and I eat food while sitting on that couch watching movies.  And even though we're careful, sometimes we get a little schmutz on the couch too.

So I found this great tutorial on (where else?) Pinterest for cleaning microfiber.  I linked into Chris & Robin's Nest Blog and followed their instructions.  I experienced great results using their cleaning method without harming the microfiber.

One problem.  It took FOR-EV-ER to spot clean all of the schmutz.  And it made my arm tired.  I'm lazy, remember?

So this week, when it was time to clean the schmutz off the couch, I opted to be a risk taker.  I pulled the microfiber cover off one of the throw pillows and threw it in the wash.  I ran it on a delicate wash cycle with minimal detergent and a delicate dry cycle while biting my fingernails and hoping I wouldn't have to sacrifice a pillow because it shrunk or faded due to my recklessness.  Thankfully, it turned out great!  No color change at all, no shrinking, nothing.  And NO sign of the schmutz!  I did a happy dance and threw all of the pillow and cushion covers in the wash, and now we have a nice, clean, non-wrinkly, non-schmutzy microfiber couch again!

Success!

 Well, at least for a few minutes....

Indy the schmutz culprit.