13 guest room reveal.

The guest room is finished!  Okay, nothing is ever completely finished, but it's close.

My husband and I were so busy during the week leading up to Thanksgiving redecorating our guest room. We had family staying with us from Wednesday through Sunday, and we didn't start on this room until the Friday before that.  Which gave us five days, only two of which were weekend days.  Here's what it looked like before we started (minus all the boxes, this picture is from when we moved in.  Not much had changed since then).

It's amazing what a little paint can do!  The color is Behr Cloudberry.  There was also lots of wallpaper stripping to get rid of the butterflies, along with a ton of spackle and sanding.  The walls were a mess!  It looked like it had snowed in this room after we finished filling the holes in the walls and sanding them smooth.

The bed in this room is from Adam's grandmother.  We had painted the frame white with a pearl finish in our previous apartment, but it looks great in here.  Eventually we'll be swapping out this full size bed for a queen, and we'll need to find a new white bed then.  I love the way it pops against the wall color!

The blue quilt is also from our old apartment, along with the blue pillows.  I added in the orange and purple pillows to brighten up the room a bit.

The artwork above the bed is really what makes the room I think.  I found it at World Market when I was in Appleton shopping for all the accessories for the room the Sunday before Thanksgiving (yes, I have to drive 2 hours to go shopping in a real mall!).  It was actually the last thing I found for the room, so the fact that it went with everything in the room and tied in the orange from the pillows was really lucky!  

 We added a chair from the living room in our apartment in the corner to make a little reading nook.  All I need now is a little table or ottoman to set in the corner near the window as a second nightstand/reading nook table to set a few books on.  I also need to add some art in the corner above the chair.

The pillow on the chair is from HomeGoods, I love the graphic print on it!  I threw a chenille throw on the chair to make it looked more lived in.

The bookcase is also from our old apartment, and even though it doesn't match the walnut wood of the nightstand and trim, I think it works here.  I love the way the purple curtains frame it within the space!

I styled it with some books, vases, and some extra blankets from around the house. I had found the tree picture on top at a thrift store, and painted the purple around the frame and for the flower petals (they were previously the bronze color of the branches).  I also painted the frame silver to freshen it up a bit.  The only other thing I bought for the room was the silver coral, which is really beautiful in person and gives the shelves the metallic pop that they needed.

This is my favorite vignette in the bookcase.  Who knew all of my sewing books would be the perfect colors for this room?  I love that little West Elm mercury glass vase too!

We used a side table I had found at the Restore as a nightstand in the room, topped with a white lamp I found at HomeGoods and a blue tray from West Elm.  The flower diffuser and flower plate are also from West Elm, and the clock is from Ikea a few years ago.  The milkglass vase was thrifted.

 We added a new chandelier in the room as well to dress up the ceiling a bit.

Here's the whole room one last time!  I think we'll be staining the storage bench the same walnut color as the nightstand eventually and adding in a long dresser on the left wall with a mirror above it, but we're happy with how it looks for now!

1 felt garland stocking tutorial.

Want to learn how to make this felt garland stocking?  It's fully lined and super fun!  I'm guest posting about it over at Purple Panda Quilts.  Here's a link to the tutorial.

Lyanna is hosting a Stockings for Kids drive to give stockings to foster children in her area. There's only a couple days left of the drive (stockings need to be mailed by Dec. 1st) but with so many fun tutorials, you can finish one or two cute stockings by Thursday!

Have you made a stocking for Lyanna's Stockings for Kids drive yet?

9 this week.

This has been kind of an unusual week for me.  My husband is at our camp for the week deer hunting, so I've been left to hold down the fort at home.  My sister Dani is home from school for a little while, so I've been spending a lot of time with my family.  Not much sewing has been done, but I've been doing other fun things like making Christmas decorations with two of my best girlfriends, cooking, and trying to remember how to knit.

I made 5 little trees on Saturday (not the bottle brush trees in the back!), and I really like how they turned out.

I made this little plaid tree by wrapping strips of plaid fabric around a styrofoam cone.  The gray tree was made using paper for the cone and just wrapping gray yarn around it.

The white tree was paper wrapped in burlap fabric, the green and white one is crochet yarn that looks like baker's twine around styrofoam, and the little gray one is crochet thread wrapped around paper.

After a day of holiday crafting, my friend Kate and I enjoyed some wine and cheese...

 roasted some veggies...

 and made bowtie pasta with chicken, cherry tomatoes, and pesto cream sauce for dinner.

 Last night my mom and sisters made homemade pizza with spinach, artichokes, olives and tomatoes.

I've been practicing my knitting with this simple scarf, but I really want to make one of these!

My little sisters are kind of crazy, as proven by this picture.

 Here we are all together.  I love these two girls so much!

It's been a pretty good week so far!

8 more minis!

Happy Friday!  I have a few things to talk about today.  First, today marks two years since I started this blog.  I think that warrants some kind of a giveaway, don't you?  Stay tuned for more on that next week, because I'll admit I don't have my act together on it yet.  But I do want to take a second to say thank you all for reading this little blog of mine!  It wouldn't be nearly as much fun to post if you weren't here.  Your friendship, comments, and support mean the world to me!  You're all the best! xoxoxo

Second, did you know that Amy is having a mini quilt party today as part of her Sew & Tell Friday series?


Write a new post about a mini quilt you've made, link up to her blog, and enter to win lots of great prizes!  I'm linking up with the mini I made for my Pretty {little} Pouch partner this week.  I had high hopes of finishing a new mini in time to link up today, but it's taking a bit longer than I anticipated.  Here's a little taste of what it looks like though!  Let's just say that my free motion foot and I are becoming fast friends.

Also on the topic of minis, I started a new flickr group this week called Modern Mini Quilts.

It seems that there's been a ton of fantastic minis popping up in our community since Amanda's class on them at Sewing Summit (sadly I wasn't in the class, but I heard it was excellent!), so I figured it would be nice to have a place to share them all!  There's already lots of pretty minis in the group, so it's a great place to go if you're looking for some small quilting project inspiration.  If you're a mini maker, be sure to add pictures of your mini quilts to the group!  Don't forget to add a button to your sidebar while you're at it!

Lastly, I just wanted to say Happy Veteran's Day.  For all of you who have served our country, thank you for all that you've done for us!  I made this banner for The White House recently, and this quote wouldn't be true if it wasn't for your service.

That's it for today.  Have a great weekend!

10 side projects.

I thought I'd share a few things I've been working on that aren't fabric related.  First off, baby shower invitations for my cousin.  She asked for a Winnie the Pooh theme, so I came up with these simple invites based off of a quote I found on Pinterest.

I've also been working on a few blog headers, including one for my friend Megan

and one for my friend Amy

I put together this button for my new Modern Mini Quilt flickr group too, but you'll hear more about that tomorrow!

I've really been enjoying working in Illustrator lately.  It's nice to be able to create something without having to sew every now and then!

13 hello winter.

Well, fall lasted until November 9th this year.  That's actually pretty long to go without snow in the UP, so I'll take it.  Here's what our front yard looked like around 9:00 this morning.  No snow on the ground, a few leaves left on the trees.

Here's what it looked at around 1:30 this afternoon (still the front yard, just a different angle).

Thank goodness for peppermint mocha and chicken noodle soup!

I'm actually kind of excited that it's snowing outside, but I know I'll be sick of it as soon as I need to shovel off my windshield.  I'm embracing winter here today, listening to Christmas music, cuddled up on the couch, and baking the first batches of cookies with a few girlfriends tonight.

10 a pretty little pouch for me.

As soon as I got back from mailing my PLP swap package yesterday, I found my own pretty little pouch in my mailbox from ambernoel!

Isn't it beautiful?  I love the gorgeous star she made, the fabric choices (herringbone!  FMF seeds!), the background fabric she chose, the colors, everything!  I also love the green zipper she chose.  I'd never put all of these colors together on my own, but they look so pretty here!

Here's a closeup of the star on the front, isn't it the prettiest?  I love that she made one of the points in the middle out of a different (but similar) fabric.

 She put some scraps inside of the pouch for me too.  How cute are those little matryoshka dolls?!

Thank you so much for the gorgeous pouch Amber!  I can't wait to fill it with some embroidery supplies for stitching on the go!

9 mini making.

I made a little mini quilt for my partner in the Pretty {little} Pouch swap last night.  Nothing like waiting until the last minute (the last day to ship is today).

I used a Premier Prints home dec print for the backing since my partner said she likes linen and this print has sort of a linen look to it.

I quilted it with straight lines on the diagnonal.  I've been practicing adding my logo with free motion quilting, it's still not perfect but it's getting better!

I'm linking this little mini up to Amy's Mini Quilt Party!

Here's the whole swap package together.  I used the backside of the denim that was used for the pouch as the sashing for the mini so they kind of coordinate without matching perfectly.

I added in some vintage trims, fabric scraps and zippers, and it's headed off to my partner today!