Planting

What was one of the first things I did in the new house? Clean all the floors? Unpack my clothes? Nope, neither of those. (well, I did them, just not before this) I planted flowers and herbs in the kitchen window box we discovered on move-in day. It was such a nice surprise! I love gardening and that was really the only drawback about this apartment–the lack of real outdoor space. But we didn’t really expect to get outdoor space in any apartment we were going to get. Not that a window box is actually outdoor space, but I was thrilled at actually being able to plant some flowers and herbs!

A little sad looking, don’t you think? One side of the box was also a little rickety so Drew put an extra nail or two in it to keep it together and then I got to planting. I guess it is nice that this particular window doesn’t have a screen in it and it is pretty easy to open it to plant things, water the plants, or snip bits of the herbs off to cook with.

The tree next to the other house sort of makes it hard to see my plants. But I planted two hot pink geraniums on either end with six little pink and white flowers spread throughout (I forgot their names–they are the ones that look similar to impatiens but like full sun) and three herb plants–a boxwood basil, oregano, and the other basil plant that we already had in our old house.

You can see them a little better in this one.

The basil plant that we already had is planted in the middle, although you can’t really see him very well. He sort-of didn’t get enough sun in the old house so he has rather wilty stems and they hang over the edge of the planter box.

We have our little kitchen table right under this window, so it is nice that you can see the pretty flowers when you are sitting at the table.

You can even see the flowers out the window from across the kitchen.

They must really be liking their new home. I only planted them on Monday and they’ve already gotten more blooms and the Oregano is about to take over the whole box. Pretty soon it is going to be halfway up the window! (although I didn’t take a good picture of it to show its progress–it must be the moisture rich soil I gave it) 😉

We are also thinking about making planter boxes for the front porch of the house. You can see part of it in the first picture, here. It would be nice to spruce up the curb appeal and also to add some pretty colorful flowers mixed in with a few veggie plants so that we could have some food out of the whole thing. The landlord said it was perfectly fine if we wanted to do it, but we have so many other things that we need to spend money on for the house (we don’t have hardly any furniture!) that I don’t know if we will get around to doing it just yet. Although if we want to plant veggies they should have already been planted. We’ll see how it goes.

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Birthday and Moving Weekend

Oh my goodness. This past weekend was one of the busiest/most hectic/exhausting weekends of my life. Friday was my 20th birthday!! It was the end to my 20 Before Twenty. My mom and uncle came into town from southern Illinois. We also moved out of our old apartment and into our new one! All on Friday alone. Saturday and Sunday were spent moving boxes around/unpacking/cleaning/running to the hardware store/having the landlord’s maintenance guy fix all the little things in the apartment and also spending every second possible running around New Orleans to the Garden District/French Quarter/cemeteries/streetcar/mall/restaurants/French Market and so on, to show my mom and uncle New Orleans in a nutshell. It was a pretty insane weekend. (Saturday was also my niece, Evie’s, birthday–she turned 6!) Most of our stuff is all still in boxes, the house still needs a lot of cleaning, and my entire body aches from all the moving and lifting and scrubbing and walking.

But we are in our new apartment! I really love it already! It seems so much bigger than when we looked at it. The foyer and living room at the front of the new house alone are about the same size as Drew’s entire old apartment. I am LOVING all the windows in here. Especially with this amazing weather we have been having here lately! (in the 70s with no humidity and a cool breeze!) We’ve had the windows open throughout the house and we haven’t had to have the air conditioning on since Friday! They also let in so much sunlight and views of the trees outside, so it feels so much more like home. (I was raised in the country, in a house with lots of windows and trees all around) I absolutely love when the indoors and outdoors are so connected. You can sit in the living room and feel almost as if you are outside. LOVE it! The kitchen also feels so much bigger than our old one and having a pantry and a dishwasher are amazing! So is having a full size fridge! I feel more like an adult now! Having a bigger bathroom and a separate bedroom are amazing too! It is funny how you notice all the little things after living in such a small space!

Overall, it is just so nice to have all our stuff in one place and to be working on making this house our home together. We know that we are going to be here at the very least for two years because that is how much school I have left. Although since Drew is already forming a good little niche in the area he works in, we will probably be here longer than that. It is nice to be able to make changes and feel better about making this place more ours since it is a little more permanent. I’m so happy to have a place that finally feels mine. It is such an amazing feeling! I never moved around as a kid. We always lived in our same house on the land that my family had lived in for generations. So the first time I ever really lived anywhere different was in my dorm rooms at school. I’m a pretty homey person and sorry, but a dorm room just doesn’t cut it. Those rooms never really felt like home. I had a good time and have lots of memories of them, but I always knew that pretty soon I would be leaving them. I’ve spent quite a good amount of time at Drew’s apartment too over the past two years, but it never felt like home really either. I didn’t have my stuff there and it just wasn’t mine. So it is so nice that finally I have a place that can be my first little home.

That isn’t to say that the last few days have been just peachy either. We couldn’t get Drew’s desk up the stairs to the second floor of the new apartment. It was too heavy and we were all exhausted by the time we got to it. So we had to give it away. We also had some issues with the dryer plug being a safety hazard with the cord right on top of the washer and when they tried to fix it they broke our dryer. Drew spent several hours yesterday and a few more today taking the thing apart, cleaning it, checking all the parts, re-wiring the cord they wired incorrectly, and putting all the dryer back together and I think it finally works now. I was taking a shower the first night we moved in and I looked up at the little window in the bathroom and the entire thing was covered in termites. They were crawling and flying everywhere. Up the shower walls, across the shower and on my soap and shampoo bottles. They were flying into the water and drowning and then floating around my feet in the dirty water in the bottom of the tub that takes forever to drain. That was one of the least pleasant experiences of my life, lets just leave it at that. The maintenance guy had to fix the drywall mudding and taping in my office room and his sanding got white dust all over almost everything in the entire house. He, of course, left it all for us to clean.

So anyway, that is what all I’ve been up to. I wanted to post about lots of things going on this weekend but just haven’t had time before now. Tomorrow I’ll try to get up a house tour of the empty house before we moved in and an update of a few little things we’ve already been working on. I also have the new couch to show you and pictures of the lovely window box we discovered in the kitchen window and have already planted full of flowers and herbs. I also need to post the outcome of my 20 Before Twenty. Stay tuned! 🙂

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Packing, Packing, Packing

What have I been up to lately? You guessed it. Trying to get all our stuff ready to move into the new house. I can’t believe it is actually getting down to being able to move for real! It feels like it has been FOREVER since we signed the lease! It has just been a little over a month, but it feels like a long time. Anyway, my mom and uncle will be in town tomorrow to help us get to moving, so we’ve got to get all this stuff in boxes. So far, we have most of it all pretty much ready:

My stuff has already been packed for a week or two now since I had to move out of my dorm room. This is the corner with all my stuff in it. (and a few of Drew’s things)

This is Drew’s corner half of the room. His stuff is still not all packed and he already has like three times as many boxes as I do! I swear the first like 5 boxes he packed were almost all full of electronic/computer parts/equipment, etc…

Oh goodness. The house is such a mess! All this packing madness also has me doing outrageous stunts like this one:

Drew, of course, pushed all his boxes of stuff to the back of this little storage area above the bathroom and couldn’t pull them out with the end of the broom handle. So guess what happened next? Yes, thats right. I was unwillingly hoisted up to the top of the 11+ ft. tall ceilings and into the dirty and crowded little storage area. All while wearing Drew’s clothes (that obviously didn’t fit) over mine because I didn’t have any old clothes that weren’t already packed in boxes and I had just done all my laundry when we were home. I wish I had a picture of me standing on Drew’s shoulders, with him standing in the chair to even be high enough to be able to climb in there. It is a lot higher up than it looks. And was even more treacherous trying to get down from there. Luckily, no one was harmed in the sake of packing. (yet, at least)

Mom and Chris, you better be prepared for this weekend. 😉

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Paris Prints

I’m so excited!!! Remember my post about Rose Windows from last week? Remember how I was talking about the rose window illustration print that I wanted, but that Little Brown Pen’s shop didn’t list it? I had sent them an e-mail about it, but never heard anything back. However, I saw today on one of the blogs that I read, that Little Brown Pen was having a sale through all of April on all their prints and illustrations. So I visited their blog to get the coupon code. (They are offering 20% off through May 1st!) I saw underneath the coupon code that it applied to not only their Etsy shop, but their website as well!! I didn’t know that they had a website, so I hadn’t even thought to check it before! Sure enough, I found the illustration of the rose window on there! It is available in yellow, gray, charcoal, and brown! PLUS they offer free shipping in the US! I ended up getting this one:

So excited!! Not only did I find the print I wanted, but I got free shipping and 20% off!!!  You should definitely check out their prints and illustrations. They are all of scenes around Paris and are so pretty! I talked about more of them in this post a while ago. Get their coupon code at their blog, here.

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Lime and White Gingham Decor

I know, I know, it is after Easter and I’m still going on and on about my Easter tablecloth. As if I hadn’t already talked about it too much in this post. But it just makes me so happy! Every time I glance into the kitchen or walk past it (which is a lot when you are in a studio apartment) I get a big smile across my face. Beyond cheesy, I know. But it is just so bright and cheery, I can’t help myself. It was most definitely worth the grueling hunt for the perfect Easter tablecloth and the $12.99 we paid for it. And in fact, I just so happen to be sitting at the table with said tablecloth on it as I write this post. 🙂

So imagine how delighted I was looking through the current issue of 100 Ideas, Flea Market Style, a Better Homes and Gardens Special Interest Publication that I picked up when we were in Lowe’s last week and I saw several occurrences of lime and white gingham just like my tablecloth! (I’m a sucker for Better Homes and Gardens Special Interest Publications, they are totally amazing and have so many great ideas! I figured this issue would be great since we were just flea market shopping for furniture for the new house!) Anyway, here are some pictures from the magazine of said lime and white gingham and other lime/chartreuse colored rooms:

Of course, I photographed it on the tablecloth, where else?

Love the green color with the camel colored burlap tablecloth and the honey colored wood! 🙂

See, lime and white gingham covered chair!

Just a few pages later, a different house had lime and white gingham pillows! I LOVE that coffee table! That is what I want for our living room in front of our new couch! Love the color of the wood and the simple design!

The rest of these pictures don’t have gingham, but they are other patterns of lime and white:

I absolutely LOVE that French style couch and chair!! So pretty! I love the green glass/ceramic bottles on the table too.

Lime and White Mattelasse and Shams!

Love the almost rose window pattern on these pillows! 🙂

I would also like to wish Trang, over at The Aquamarine Magnolia, a wonderfully delightful 21st birthday today! 🙂

 

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Much Ado over an Easter Tablecloth

When I realized that Drew and I were going to be making/spending Easter lunch/dinner by ourselves in New Orleans this year, my mind immediately starting racing to think of how I could make it special and at least a little different than every other lunch/dinner that we eat here. Thinking of big family meals for holidays at my house, I instantly remembered how we always change the tablecloth/plates/flowers and everything on the dining room table to something very springy and Eastery. The current tablecloth that Drew and I have is a neutral camel color that screams everyday or Thanksgiving before it says Easter. I knew we would need something different. Little did I know how hard of a task that would be.

On Thursday after I got out of class, we had to run some errands and stopped by Target. I found a tablecloth I really, really liked there, but they only had it in a long rectangle and not a round one. 🙁 We then went to Bed, Bath and Beyond to continue our search, where we only found more bland Thanksgiving color tablecloths. We also tried Sears home store. They didn’t have any tablecloths at all. 🙁 We were tired by then and decided to continue our search later.

Yesterday we were back on the search again. We tried T.J. Maxx, but all I found were table runners. We tried World Market, but they only had long rectangle ones. I also tried Pier One, but again they only had table runners and rectangular tablecloths! What is it with these people! Does no one carry ROUND tablecloths! I know we are not the only people in the entire New Orleans area that has a round table! I was quite frustrated. Plus, even if we had a rectangular table, not a one of the tablecloths we had seen were anywhere near springy/Eastery. Apparently everyone has their seasons mixed up around here. Or they don’t care to decorate their tables with an Easter appropriate table-scape.

Finally we decided to look at Macy’s. It wasn’t that I doubted that they would have tablecloths earlier on in our search, but Macy’s is farther away and I figured that they would be more expensive there. By then I was hungry, exhausted and ready to go home. We looked in the tablecloth section, saw they actually had tablecloths and round ones at that, (although really only 2 that could pass for Springy and they were really more on the Summery side) saw that they were on sale from $49 to $24, grabbed the one we liked better, checked out and got out of there.

This is what we ended up with:

But the story doesn’t stop here. We got home and put it on the table. It was bright and said Easter more than our current one did, but I still wasn’t crazy about it. It looked fine in the package, but in person, there was too much of a  harsh black/white contrast for a pastel colored holiday and a lot of blues that we don’t otherwise have in our kitchen color scheme. It also said VERA in black in random places all over it. I thought that was tacky. Overall, it was just too busy. We lived with it until today to see what we thought about it later, but I still didn’t overly love it. It isn’t that it was horrible or anything, but it was just one of those impulse purchases of something you don’t really have to have and you aren’t overly pleased with. I thought about it and decided that for the $27 we ended up spending on it, there were other things I would rather have than this tablecloth, even if that meant that we had our plain old boring tablecloth for Easter dinner.

I really couldn’t get the Target tablecloth out of my head. It was a lime green and white check, which actually reminded me of one of my favorite Easter dresses as a kid. It was one that Mamaw bought on one of the years that my mom didn’t make our Easter dresses and it was lime green and white checked with little flowers and ladybugs all over it. Looking back, it probably wasn’t the classiest for Easter, but I loved it and wore it to church all the time. I wish I had a picture of it here so I could show you.

I thought about it all morning, packed up the first one, and decided that even though Target only had a long one in the lime green check, I could cut it into a round shape and sew up the edges. I was determined. I convinced Drew to go tablecloth shopping again, mainly only because if we got the Target one that was $12 and took the $27 one back, we would save some money as well. 🙂

I was nervous all the way to Target. I just knew they would all be gone. I bolted in the front door and down the aisle. I was almost there. I could see them! You can imagine my utter delightment when this is what I saw:

Did you read that closely? That says 70″ ROUND TABLECLOTH!!!!!!!! Not only did they have the one I wanted, but I wasn’t going to have to cut it up and sew it either!!! I danced and spun around and jumped up and down all the way through the store and to the check-out. (Drew can verify that) I was so ecstatic! I love when you find things that you are looking for and they are perfect and they aren’t breaking the bank. $12.99 for a tablecloth is not bad. Plus, the check-out lady randomly gave me a $5 Target gift card. Plus it is actually something I would like to have on the table for more days than one, unlike the first one we brought home. I love that it is pretty, but also simple. I don’t have to worry as much about it clashing with anything else I would want to decorate the table with.

In addition to all that, I just think it is perfect that we went on this search to find a tablecloth for Easter and this one reminds me of one of my childhood Easter dresses! It doesn’t get better than that!

And if any of you New Orleanians out there have already started your hunt for a Thanksgiving tablecloth, there are quite a few options out there, even though it is only April.

 

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Rose Windows

Today was my last day of my art history class. I’m really going to miss it. I’ve really developed a love for ancient art history, especially the architecture. I’m fascinated by the amazing things that people were able to build without any kind of fancy modern technology or huge machinery to aid them. The intricacy and detail is astounding. I particularly like the patterns and little embellishments that they use. I could go on and on about art history and all that amazes me for days, so I’ll stop here.

The last time period that we discussed in this class was Gothic Art and Architecture. Lately I have really been in love with the Gothic rose window patterns that adorn almost every Gothic cathedral. If you don’t know what I’m talking about, here is an example of the Notre Dame in Paris (with my 17 year old self in front of it):

See the really pretty round window in the middle? I’m in love with these. They are on all kinds of ancient buildings, but this is just one that I happen to already have pictures of. They are even prettier on the inside, because they are completely filled in with stained glass:

Sorry, I had a crappy camera at the time, so these pictures aren’t the best. Here is another one on the other side of the Notre Dame:

In one of my inspiration posts a while back, I wrote about an Etsy Shop that sold these rose window prints. I really, really want one, but there aren’t any in their shop. I e-mailed to ask if I could get one, but I still haven’t heard back from them. This is what I’m talking about:

The other day Drew and I were in Restoration Hardware and I saw this matelasse/quilt/coverlet in AMAZING Belgian Linen in the most perfect brownish grey color with a rose window pattern on it:

I fell in love. Immediately. I pondered and looked and touched and had the salesman get out the packages and almost went to the sales counter with them. They were even on sale. But they were still WAY expensive for my budget. 🙁

I can’t get them out of my head though. I know I can find other, less expensive bedding for the bedroom in the new house, but I really, really love the rose window pattern on this! (and the color and the texture and the grain lines of the linen…Ahhh!)

So there you have it. My obsession with rose window patterns.

 

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Weekend Adventures

How was your weekend? They always go by so fast! This week coming up is my last week of school! Whoop Whoop! Then I have a week off, then finals the next week and then it is all SUMMERTIME for me!

This weekend we spent time working on designs for several websites and graphics we are doing, cooking, looking for new furniture for our new house and starting to pack stuff up in my dorm room that I don’t need in the next two weeks. It was pretty productive!

Here are a few snapshots from our weekend:

Saturday breakfast brunch lunch:

Tomato/Mushroom/Green Bell Pepper/Cheddar/Parmesan Quiche. Totally Yummy! (Image Copyright Drew Rowland–he says)

We of course couch shopped on Saturday after that. Then we stopped by JoAnns because I needed some inspiration for my final in my painting class and I had an idea, but I’m not sure if I’ll do it or not. I love looking at fabric! So pretty! I’m really inspired by graphic prints. I really want some curtains somewhere in our house made out of a print like these:

On Sunday since we were in the house decor/furnishing mood, we drove all the way to Denham Springs, Louisiana to look through their many antique/furniture/flea market stores. We saw a lot of stuff that would really work for the new house and all with prices we could afford, but ultimately we were too scared to buy anything else yet. We want to get everything into the new house first and then see what we need where and measure the spaces to see what size pieces we would need, etc.. We found a pretty wood coffee table, but we want to get the couch first and see how long of a coffee table would work in there. I totally should have taken pictures of things we liked, but I completely forgot. I got home with only one picture of a small side table I saw there. I took it in one of the first stores, and although I wouldn’t buy it because it doesn’t go with the scheme of our house, I thought it was pretty. The entire top is a glass and ceramic mosaic.

I spent the rest of the evening working on packing up some of the stuff from my dorm room. I have a lot of stuff that I know I won’t need to use in the next two weeks, so I’m trying to get it all together so that Drew and I can move a little out at a time. We don’t have anyone down here to help us move out and I live on the second floor and there aren’t any elevators in the building. It was quite an ordeal to get everything moved in and then we had not only Drew and I, but my parents as well. We are on our own for move out, so hopefully if we take it a couple boxes every couple days or every week it won’t be so bad. 🙂

Anyway, I’m sure anyone reading this is completely bored by now from our extremely exciting weekend. Sorry, we’ll try to keep the fun down a little next weekend. We don’t want to get too wild with our cooking and home decorating! 😉

Ohh, and I almost forgot, we just made scones to end our weekend tastefully! When I was in like 5th or 6th grade, my sisters and I would often go over to this lady’s house in my town that had a little gifts and garden place. She hosted tea parties and garden parties for kids and we had signed up for some of her butterfly summer events. We became friends with her and would go over there every so often to run around in her garden, bake bread, and look for and name butterfly species. I had a tea party there one year for my birthday where my friends and I all wore dresses and straw hats and sat in the garden and drank lemonade and tea and ate scones, biscotti, and tea sandwiches and made small flower bouquets from her garden and decorated cupcakes with crushed Oreo cookies and edible flowers.

She made amazing scones and my mom has her recipe and makes them often as well. My mom adds lemon/orange zest and cranberries and walnuts and all sorts of fancy things, and I like them that way, but my favorite are just plain scones. Although I want to think that the garden lady always made some kind of spread that I always put on the plain ones, but I can’t remember what it is now.

For some reason, I really wanted plain classic cream scones tonight. Luckily we had unsalted butter in the freezer and some leftover heavy whipping cream from the Chicken Tetrazzini we made last week. Drew of course wanted something in his, so we split the dough after we mixed it and I made mine plain and he added cinnamon and more sugar to his. I ended up with small, dainty scones and Drew ended up with massive giant glob scones. Regardless of their shapes, they tasted amazing. Mine of course were better, although Drew would disagree.

Hope you all had wonderful weekends!

 

 

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Filling out the House

Now that we’ve picked out a new apartment (we don’t move in until May 15th) it is time for us to pick out some stuff to go in it! We don’t have the funds to buy a bunch of stuff just yet, but we do need a few things considering currently we don’t really have any furniture. The new house is a lot bigger, so we’ll need quite a bit more to fill it out. We are good about saving money and using it to buy quality and also budget friendly pieces. Luckily, we’ve also sold several websites lately, so we had the money to do a little bit of shopping. We plan on filling out the house slowly though, and buying things only that we really, really like and think would work in our house for a long time. We also have a few building projects up our sleeves that hopefully we can tackle sometime soon. 🙂

I’m so excited about getting to design and decorate the house!! Plus I’m going to be working all summer, so I’ll finally have a little extra money to tackle small design projects! I already have several pieces of art just from my painting class and I’ve got ideas for other ones as well! I can’t wait!

Anyway, back to the point. Since Drew currently has a studio apartment, he doesn’t really have a living room area. Therefore he really doesn’t have any living room furniture. So one of the highest priorities for big furniture purchases for the new house was a couch for the living room. We also eventually need to invest in a nice chair, a coffee table, a t.v. stand and maybe an ottoman, but those all can wait. We really need somewhere to sit in there. So today was deemed go-compare-couch-prices-at-furniture-stores day.

We had a list of furniture places with us, but once we got to the first place, the people were really nice, they had a lot to choose from, and the quality and prices were great too. We had a feeling that we weren’t going to have to look anywhere else. Plus, they happened to be having a no tax sale this weekend. We found several things in our price range that would have worked, but we were unsure of little things. We didn’t like the texture of the fabric on a couple of the couches, one had only pillows for the back, two were too white and I was afraid they would get dirty too easily, and so on. After several hours of roaming the store and comparing and re-comparing and sitting and laying and contemplating and calling our families to see what they thought, we finally made our choice. This is what we bought:

We liked the fabric better than most of the other ones we saw, we liked the simple classy lines and the cushions on the back (rather than just pillows for the back), and the size seemed to be perfect–not too big, not too small. It was comfortable–not too hard, but not too soft. Some that we looked at were too squishy and Drew sank into them too far and some others were hard as a rock. We wanted something a little firmer, but not hard or too stiff.

The only problem we had at first sight with this couch was the color. It is hard to tell in the picture, but it really is a pale spring green. We wanted something more neutral so it would go with whatever we decided to put in there, but the more we thought about how much we liked everything else about it, the color seemed like less of an issue. Plus, the more I looked at it, the more sandy/neutral it looked. With all tan/creme/beige/taupe neutral walls of apartment life, we figured it wouldn’t be so bad to have a little color in a couch. Plus, since we’ve never had a living room before, we are starting from scratch, so we can make it fit into whatever decor we choose. Or make whatever decor fit around it. You get the idea.

Here is a picture with the pillows it comes with:

Have you ever walked around a furniture store and noticed how hideously ugly the majority of patterned couch pillows are? I sure noticed. The ones on ours weren’t so bad, but I’m definitely not crazy about the diamond pattern on those two. They look better in this picture actually than they did in real life. It real life, they are bright red and yellow and black and remind me of the circus. The brown ones don’t bother me so much. I can easily sew covers for the diamond ones though, and that saves me from having to buy pillow forms. As I was sitting there testing out the couch and contemplating the pillows, I remembered the fabric that I bought a couple weeks ago to make pillows for Drew’s ugly (and dis-functional) current loveseat (which we will not be keeping). I blogged about them, here. If you don’t remember, here they are:

How perfect! I first thought that the grey and green one would be perfect because the greens are pretty close, but now that I’m thinking about it and seeing the pictures next to each other, I think I might recover the diamond pillows in the creme and brown patterned fabric and then the smaller brown pillows will match as well! Plus we have a creme colored rug for that room already and it would look great with a darker stained wood coffee table! I can then bring in some color through some paintings or artwork above the couch. I’m excited about it! I’ll have to see how they look together in person! Too bad we won’t get to see the couch for another month! (We wanted them to deliver it directly to the new house so we didn’t have to move it up the stairs!) The bad part is that I forgot how much fabric I bought and I don’t remember how big those diamond pillows are. I might need to go get a little more fabric. I hope they still have it then!

If you’ve forgotten from the house tour, here is a picture of the living room where the couch will go:

Yay for house decorating! I only wish we didn’t have to wait a month to get to see it all together!

 

 

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Stitchery Art for Under $10

Remember the stuff I got the other day to make a stitchery wall hanging? Well I made it yesterday while Drew and I were watching a movie. It didn’t take long at all! This is what I ended up with:

I know, it is kind-of hard to see. It was really hard to get a good picture with good lighting and without a glare. I tried to take it outside for better lighting, but still got a glare. Hence, the reflection of someone’s car in my artwork.

You can see the stitching better here. I just wanted a simple, colorful, but slightly rustic look. I used the linen fabric I got the other day for the background, but you could use any fabric really. I like the grain lines and the color of this linen. The heart was made out of some leftover fabric I had in my fabric stash. Along with leftover buttons and some embroidery floss that is like thirty-something cents a thread color. Pretty simple.

If you look closely at the heart, you will notice it looks pretty similar to the heart I use on my blog–on my favicon, header, and signature. Well, that’s because it is! I just made it the size that I wanted for my stitchery and printed it out to use as a template to cut my fabric. You could do that with any image you wanted!

I originally wanted to put a quote on it, but I couldn’t find one that I particularly liked for this. What better to say than simply, I love you? I just lightly wrote out on the fabric what I wanted it to say to get an idea of where to stitch each letter and used a simple backstitch. If you have little kids that are just learning to write, I think it would be cute to have them write out something and then you could stitch it in their handwriting. My mom did that when I was little on my Christmas stocking. She had me write out my name and then stitched it out. I still use that stocking every Christmas with my little 5-year old handwriting. 🙂

If you want a quick and easy idea for artwork, this is it! It only took me an hour or so and cost me less than $10 for the entire ensemble! You only need a small amount of fabric, embroidery floss, buttons, lace or whatever you want to put on it. I got the frame today at Michael’s and I think it accents it perfectly! The frame is a 10×13 matted to an 8×10. The frame came with the matte and it was on sale for $4.99! I love the rustic look of the creme colored frame!

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