Luv Birds

I am totally and completely obsessed with pinterest.  Oh, the hours that I have wasted....
However, I also have actually pinned and then made/carried out/done many of the things on there.

One project that I completed about two weeks ago in honor of valentine's day was a little love bird pillow.  It is actually sold on etsy and looks gorgeous, with all the birds being hand stitched, but at $55, it was well out of my price range.

Plus, I enjoy crafting so took a couple evenings and one nap time putting two of these bad boys together for Valentine's Day!
I started off by picking up some linen material from the bargain room at Fabric Depot for just $3.50 a yard (compared to $10.50+ normally), washed and ironed it.  Next, I measured the two pillows and free cut (too lazy to bring out the rotary cutter that I typically use) out fabric to fit.  I made the back pieces 6" longer on one side and then cut it in half.  This allowed me to form a pocket that the pillow could come in and out out of when the pillow was all sewed up and saved me the extra work of putting in velcro or a zipper.  Easy Peasy.

I then made a little template (~1"x1") for the bird using a piece of cardstock I had lying around, cut it out and traced about a million birds onto several different colors of felt.  I then cut those out, flipped them over and drew eyes with a sharpie.  To make the "wings", I used a white paint marker.  However, next time I would nix the paint marker and just use some fabric paint and a small paint brush.  The fabric marker tip got destroyed and ran out of ink while using it on felt.

After all of that, I stuck some cardboard in between the front and back of the pillow fabric pieces to protect from bleed thrus.  Then I just started playing around with layouts (using the picture I found on etsy for most of my inspiration) and color on the square pillow.  On the rectangular pillow, I used a tape measure to make lines with my trusty sharpie and thought it would be cute to add "love" in the lines as well as "est. 2006" because that is the year we got married.  I then used craft glue to spread glue and stick on all the birds.  I love them, especially when I only spent about $6 for 2 pillows!  not sure how they will hold up but should store easily and work well enough being that I will only use them about 1 month per year. 

Wrap it up

Happy 2012!  

getting serious over his first candy cane

While we were pretty darn lazy over our almost 10 days total of no work/time to together, we did manage a great trip to Los Angeles to visit my fam for x-mas as well a bit o' clean up around the casa.  Steve decided to take on vacuuming out the entire attic area just after I finished packing up the Christmas decor.  and boy did it need it! 

gorgeous sunny LA

And of course, he then tackled the other two attic spaces we have.  Which of course set me off on realizing what a beautiful disaster of stuff we had stuffed in the attic. 

We pulled out some old crap that is not even worthy of Goodwill, 9 GIANT file boxes of Steve's dad's old files that now can be shredded since it's been 10 years (he was an attorney for people with disabilities so we had to keep 'em but are so glad to see them go-we started off with probably over 30 file boxes 4 years ago), and, of course, don't forget the worthless box of baseball cards from Steve's childhood that Steve is finally ready to give over to Goodwill.  Next, working on him giving up his Garfield collection.  I told him he could keep one.  He already let me sell all the Garfield books to Powells-and we made enough to buy him a couple pairs of socks from there (naturally, I put them in his stocking).  I parted with all but four (of 13-I know, excessive) of my Cabbage Patch Kids and found out that Oxy Clean is awesome at removing 25 year old dirt stains.

But I did come across my baby memory box and pulled out a cool plush carrot.  Inside, there is a  plush bunny family that my grandma made for me almost 30 years ago-still in perfect condition and Ben loves it!  Also, found a picture (the kind that looks metal-ish-can't think of what they are called right now) from 1925 of my grandma and her family that I hope to frame soon.

Anywho, onto the real project...organizing the two tons of wrapping paper, ribbon and tissue that we had.

yup, that's allll wrapping supplies

I have been meaning to do this for awhile but saved it for when Steve was traveling.  I wanted to be able to organize while catching up on juicy trash shows on TLC and avoid having Steve make fun of my episode choice the whole time. 

an old theatre trunk

My friend Sarah told me that she used a storage trunk to organize all of her wrapping supplies. 
Steve and I picked up the beauty to use as our coffee table (now used as our side table) several years back at an estate sale for $50.  And I love it. 

all decorated & personalized; it also has that old musty smell, not bad, just old

I think it belonged to John, a dancing comedian!

So after several hours of rotting my brain while catching up on Hoarders and the Kardashians, I was all set and ready to load up the trunk with all of my non-Christmas supplies.  I even color coded the tissue into one ziplock! 

the top portion has the ribbon & boxes & some super cool old fabric

the bottom section holds the tissue (note that color coding-boo-ya), bags and wrap paper

It feels so great to be getting organized and more cleared out in prep for the kitchen/stair remodel.
Tonight I wrangled all the Christmas supplies into one big box and plan to leave that in the attic. 

And this is funny because I think that the pic below is the best we got of the three of us while we were at my parents, cross your fingers my sister got some better ones with her nice camera.

Merry Christmas!

Hope that you are having a lovely holiday with the ones you love

May you have a very retro Christmas

via

I had a little fun browsing some old Christmas images on google today and wanted to share a few with you.  Some fun Christmas tree inspiration...guess I need to track down some icicles for next year!

Window shopping-if only displays were still so cool  via

A Victorian Christmas via

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I just love the little dresses via

there are tons of mid century Christmas photos on this site via

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how fun would that be?  all warm and cozy in an airstream while watching the snow fall  via

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And if you're really inspired & now want to get retro crafty....some free retro Christmas downloadable fonts....

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O Christmas Tree!

I love Christmas trees.  The way they smell and the warm fuzzy childhood memories they bring back.  I remember decorating our tree each year as a child and rocking out together as a family with the kiddos in their jammies and with Christmas music & snacks.  We each had our own box of Ornaments that we got to put up.

While Ben didn't really show much interest in doing ornaments this year, he surely enjoys looking at our tree (lucky for us, it is only looking and he understands not to touch it). 

Since we've been married and in our home, we have pretty much gotten an ornament each year to help us remember something big that has happened in our lives in that year

2006-a pine cone marks are move to Oregon, along with the purchase of our home & getting married!  A big year!

2007-we got our beagle Porter

2008-a little Penguin to mark the crazy snow storm in Portland (this was nothing for any town that is used to snow but 18" shut down Portland for almost 2 weeks) that led to our flight to Los Angeles being cancelled and us deciding to pack up the car late at night and drive to Los Angeles in order to make it home for Christmas

2009-we don't have an ornament yet for 2009 but in '09 we found out that we were expecting a little man and we also took an amazing adventure to Peru

2010-Ben's arrival; a little owl as his room is decorated with owls

2011- [entire satire] a mouse to hallmark our battle to get them outta our house; not funny now & even kinda creeps me out but I hope I will look at this next year and be able to laugh

Next year I would love to figure out some fun, inexpensive ways to spice up our tree!  I bet Ben will be creating all sorts of fun craft items to put on the tree by then :)

It's the holiday season

doop dee do, dip-er-y dot.....

We're in full holiday swing over here at our casa. 

I love the holidays, especially the tree, decorations and time to just chill with family.  Had fun decorating again this year and using all the pass me down decorations that we have gotten between our two families.  Also added a few vintage Christmas ornament balls to the mix this year.

Dining Room

I took a hurricane from our wedding and a few cups/serving pieces to make our buffet decor

this cute little ceramic light was made by my friend Jason-he sells them too & now has multiple sizes

 

 

sweet Christmas luv birds

 Isn't this little elf gnome the cutest little guy?

above our mantel is this awesome vintage jewerly tree-it lights up too!-got it for $3 at an estate sale and then embellished it with more jewels I found at another estate sale for $1....not bad for $4


And a cute little penguin in the kitchen

Zoo Lights
so many lights turn your pix allllll crazy like

this one's for you

and of course you gotta attend the winter ale fest in Portland...we always take free pictures at the lottery booth and this year's theme for the lottery is ugly sweaters-way too much fun dressin' up after a couple beers :)