Almost Finished!

These curtains are really driving me crazy. They aren't difficult to do but because I am being so particular in how I want them - they are taking forever.

Somehow, I ended up with enough fabric to do 3.5 panels instead of the 2 that I wanted. I am so very confused about how this happened. I calculated it and then had the lady at the fabric store help me to make sure I did it right and she came to the same number of yards. Oh well - good thing it was clearance fabric with an additional 50% off. Seriously, I paid only $3 a yard for this cute upholstery fabric - I was so excited!

Besides the thin stripes (I wanted them a bit thicker), it was pretty much what I was looking for and the colors look great against the wall color!

Almost finished...

Fireflies

AKA - Lightening Bugs.

Every night, we can look outside and see the magical flickering of these little bugs and it makes us so giddy. John and I feel like kids again while we look around (probably with huge eyes and opened mouths) at these thousands and thousands of Christmas-lights in the fields around our house. That is really what they remind us of - flickering Christmas lights!

Tonight, I tried to capture some on film and they wouldn't show up on the camera from my phone. Bummer. However, I thought some of the images turned out very pretty anyway. Here is a view from our front porch looking northwest.

I really love this "country" living!

Sewing Station

I have been working on making curtains for the big window in our living room but my craft space is not set up yet. I finally located the cords that go to both of my machines and have set them up on this table that is in our living room. It works just fine except that sewing can be a little bit of a mess (okay, a LOT) and it might drive me a little bit crazy.

When can I get my crafting/sewing area set up??

Color Pop

I have decided that I want to add more color to our home - but where to start? The paint color in our living room is a greenish/greyish color and I want to compliment it but not make it too boring.

I decided to finally use this painting that I did for a final project back in college.

A little back story: The assignment was to pick a painting from a set of pre-chosen artists and duplicate the painting - brush stroke for brush stroke with exact color matches. Then, we had to do our own variation of it for the second painting. The one on the left is my "copy" of the original - the right is my own version.

My brother really like them so I let him hold onto them for awhile but I got them back around the time that John and I got married and they've been sitting in storage ever since. I just haven't been able to figure out where to put them.

Fast forward to now - I need color in our living room - what a great "inspiration" piece! I decided to have them professionally framed - finally! (They've been in a side by side matted rectangle this whole time but no protective glass.)

I see that a certain craft store is having a 55% off custom framing orders so I go get a quote - and WOW! Basically, it was going to be around $150 to get it framed. Seriously?! I told the lady that I'd have to discuss it with my husband (knowing exactly how that discussion would go - haha) and decided to just look around at the regular frames they had. Coincidentally, they had their frames 50% off too. Each piece was a 12x12 square so I decided to just remove the matte and get 2 12x12 frames. I was a little sad to do this but it was the cheapest way. I ended up saving around $120 doing it this way - and I love how they look!

Now I need to figure out how I want them to be placed in my work-in-progress gallery wall....

Popsicles

The girls and I went grocery shopping today and Riya asked, ever so cutely, if we could get popsicles. Of course we can! She patiently (as patient as a 3 year old can be) waited for John to get home and she ate ALL of her dinner so we went outside and licked and chomped away.
This was Emma's first real experience with a popsicle and it was stinkin' cute - especially when the cold would hit her teeth just right. :) She loved them!!
I love that we have a porch that we get to hang out on now to enjoy these simply pleasures!

Curly Sue

This is one of my favorite pictures at the moment. I love how it turned out! No editing here - just a setting on my phone.
The girls and I went outside so they could play in their new water toy and I took some pics of them playing. At this point, Emma was only in a swim diaper but standing on the steps of our deck. She was staring at something and wasn't moving. I love everything about this picture - especially how it shows her pretty little curls!

Cool Shades

Riya was given some new sunglasses from a girl in John's lab. She wanted to try them out yesterday to see how cute they were....
What do you think?!
You can't tell from the picture but she was lifting them up to look at the camera with her eyes showing. She saw this picture and asked, "Where are my eyes?"