Day 17: Creative with Coasters

Looking for some inexpensive hostess gifts for the holidays? Or may small gifts for teachers, neighbors, and friends? My suggestion is to get creative with coasters! Everybody needs coasters but especially if you entertain or have a busy house full of kids.

All you need is some fabric swatches and some cotton or polyfil batting. I like to use 5 inch by 5 inch squares.

Place right sides of the fabric together. Place on top of same size piece of batting. Pin together and sew along the edges leaving about a 1 inch section open.

After sewing, turn right side out using the small 1 inch opening. Gently work the corners fully out using a pin or (very gently) seem ripper.

Sew closely around the seams of the coaster to close the opening and give a uniform look. If giving as a gift, I like to tie up the set with a cute coordinating ribbon.

Looking for more ideas? Check out the coaster section of my shop.

31 Days: Day 3 Pinterest

I am so slow and late to the Pinterest bandwagon, but I have arrived people!

Add one more addictive online social media outlet to my list. But this one has a really useful purpose. We are moving sometime in the next year (loud sigh), god willing, and I need somewhere to put all these thoughts of how I want to decorate. I mean a new house really is just a blank canvas waiting for me to virtually dress it up! I don't know if this counts as created with my own two hands but it definitely takes a creative vision to decorate a house that doesn't exist yet, don't you agree?

So today I am going to focus on the Master Suite of my imagined not yet mine house:

http://pinterest.com/blueleafdecor/dream-master-suite

What do you think? Love it, hate it? Suggestions?

Benefits of Nature

Nothing like a little Mother Nature to inspire you to revamp your basement. And by revamp I mean: gut. And by inspire I mean: flood with water and require you and your husband to break out into hysteria.

All things in my household have taken a back seat due to the unrelenting rain we got here in Central Pennsylvania. The ground was saturated and after a few more storms than it could handle our basement filled up like a soup pot waiting for the dinner bell.

My husband and I scrambled at 10:00 at night with wet-vac and buckets in tow but eventually the battle was lost. The next several days were a blur of ripping up carpet and tearing down drywall. We were left with a completely blank slate and an insurance check. Not necessarily a bad thing!

We installed some faux hardwood flooring that is actually WATERPROOF. No buckling, bending,or mold. It's made from some type of magic rubber. Your basement floods and you just yank it out, let it dry, clean it off, and reinstall. Still some work but none of the cost of new flooring and it looks great!

I painted the walls a slate blue and added wainscotting along the bottom to brighten up the space. We got some new wool area rugs from a bargain store and some new throw pillows for good measure. I finally convinced my husband to rid ourselves of some old school college posters (this was his man-cave before kids) and added some Mediteranean art that I did. I added a houseplant onto one of the small window ledges to give the basement some life.

All in all I like it better than what we started with.

The Daily Pic - Spring Sensation

I love my house this time of year. What is usually a modest suburban house becomes a showstopper thanks to Mother Nature. She is like the nerdy girl at school that doesn't get a second glance...and then wow. All of a sudden she puts on that red dress and nobody recognizes her.

Look out neighborhood, my house might just steal your boyfriend.

White Out

I have been really been inspired by the white rooms I've been seeing lately. So I took the plunge and started painting my office/craft/painting room white. This is not an easy task. This particular room is an extension off the side of the house. Three walls of the four are almost all windows surrounded by wood paneling.

The other wall is brick that includes the back of the fireplace from my living room. This leaves the room with lots of different textures as well as colors. We painted the brick wall white a few years back and now it is time to tackle the other walls. With the great light I get from the windows I think the space will be an amazing fresh bright space. When the painting is done I plan to get some white sheers to soften the windows and replace the ugly green ones that came with the house. It is still a work in progress and since my one year old has come down with a fever it will take a few days longer than expected. Stay tuned for the finished look!

Thanks for the Mention!

6th Street Design School: Blue Leaf Boutique