quick flower tutorial project

I recently made these lovely flowers for my sister in law's birthday.  They are super easy to do, fairly quick, and involve supplies you most likely already have.  

You will need:

*yarn of any color you want for your flowers

*scissors

*glue gun and glue sticks

*small twigs, dowel rods, or other type of "stem" for your flowers

Choose your yarn and wrap the strand around two of your fingers as shown.  You can use three fingers if you'd like - this will make the flower head bigger.  I used two fingers for all of mine.  

Continue wrapping the yarn around your fingers, but not too tightly!  You don't want to lose feeling in your fingers.  I wrapped the yarn about 50 to 75 times around.  Experiment with what outcome you like best.

After wrapping the yarn around your fingers the number of times you want, slide the whole thing off.

Cut off a piece of yarn from the skein that is somewhere between 5 to 8 inches long.  Place the piece of yarn directly under the wrapped yarn pile.  Try to center it the best you can.

Next, tie the piece of yarn tightly around the wrapped yarn pile.  I double knotted it.  

This will pull the yarn together and you will see all these little loops.  Take your scissors and cut through all the loops.

Cut, cut, cut.

You will be left with this crazy looking pom pom.  Take your scissors and keep trimming off pieces of the yarn, making it even all the way around.  You can make it as long or short as you want.  Although, you won't want to cut too much off because you might show the center piece of yarn you knotted. 

Here's a finished example.  

Now you're ready to attach the flower head to the stem.  Twigs, dowel rods, whatever you want.  I used twigs for mine because that's what I had and I liked the idea of mixing the soft yarn with the rustic sticks from nature.  

Here's the finished set.  I displayed them in a glass Ball jar with pieces of brown felt for "dirt".  I wanted the arrangement to look like it was still growing in the ground, although the flowers would look just as good without the felt base.  I just tossed scraps in the bottom and arranged the flowers.  Finally, I  found two vintage buttons and tied a piece of ribbon around the top.  

Perfect, easy, and looks great!  

Now of course, I need to make some for me!

really? that easy?

Switching from living in an apartment to a house comes with a lot of changes.  When we bought our house (way) back in 2009, we knew we needed to get a mower.  

We don't have a huge yard, although compared to the usual yard size where we live, it is a good sized smaller yard.  Obviously, we wanted some sort of push mower...we'd look ridiculous on a riding mower and have no idea how we'd get it in and store it in our yard.  Plus, on backyard is on a slope. 

We also didn't want to worry about getting gas or plugging in a cord.  So we opted for a reel mower. 

We bought a used one from my mom's one co-worker.  It was cheap and we thought this was the answering to our mowing needs.  

It did work...however you had to go over the same section 3 or 4 or 5 times.  And it didn't really cut the grass completely.  It mostly flatten the grass down.  We naively thought that's how it was with reel mowers.  Oh and the plastic adjuster had broken off so the wheels we uneven and wouldn't stay straight.   We knew the blades should be sharpen, but we just didn't get around to doing it.  

Fast forward 2.5 years later:  We have learned the error of our old thinking.  

Driving in the car one afternoon, we passed a guy rapidly mowing his grass using a reel mower.   Grass was flying and he didn't seem to be exerting much effort.  What kind of fantastic mower did he have?

We were near a home improvement store and decided to go in and check out the reel mowers.  We looked at the small selection they had and picked out a 16 inch model for $99.  

We took it home and assembled it.  We were still unsure about how, if any, better it would cut the grass.  We took a quick push and......grass went flying!  

The picture above still amazes me to think that it's that easy.  It's super sharp and so easy to maneuver through the yard and up our hill.  We're in love!

Could we have just sharpen our old mower and saved a little money?  Yes, probably.  But the knob that adjusted the wheels had snapped off and it was a little rusty.  

Could we have just bought a brand new one in the beginning and experienced how easy the reel mower could be from the very start?  Yes, definitely.  Lesson learned!

living room in with the new and out with the old (table, that is)

We're in the process of rearranging our living room (more on that later!) and needed a new end table for one side of the Klobo (our Ikea loveseat, incase you have no idea what we're talking about...see this post for our re-do of the Klobo slipcover.)

We decided to visit one of our favorite local vintage housewares stores to see what they had to offer. 

We found this little side table with really nice detail.

Here's a close up of the detailing.  

We purchased it for the mere price of $22.  The table itself was painted a really light pink color which didn't quite fit too well in our living room.  So we knew we'd have to paint it.  I was leaning towards a super bright color, but didn't want to overpower the orange wall which it would be in front of.  So I looked around at what leftover paint we had and found a sample color we got for the kitchen.  (Which didn't quite look as we thought it would in that room.  It's actually still on a patch of the wall...we're still figuring out what color we want.  Another work in progress.)  Anyway, the color is called Carolina Inn Club Aqua and is a blue/green color.  

Here's a process shot.  I'm still deciding in this picture if I like the color or not for the table.  

In the end, we ended up really pleased with the overall table and color.   It adds just enough color to not be overwhelming and fits in to the colors of the room well.  Actually the color is pretty close to our lining set of curtains.  

Here's looking down.

I don't think I've talked about our new lamps we got a few months ago, but here's a close up.  They're by Thomas O'Brein for Target.  I love the crackled glass circle shape of the lamps.  I've been looking for lamps similar to these for a while, but never found anything really affordable.  I actually saw a very, very similar style of lamp, only blue glass, in a recent issue of County Living magazine for over $300!  Needless to say, these were much, much less than that!

One of the major things we wanted in end tables were a shelf or drawer to put things on/in.  Often drawers can seem a bit heavy, so this shelf is really nice and open.  The side detail is really interesting here, too.  Just big enough to hold things in place, but not too boxy.  

This is the hot mess that used to be our living room.  Actually it usually wasn't such a mess.  We were in the process of moving things around when I took this quick shot.  The table to the right of the Klobo is the one we replaced.  I love the table (Kinsey actually made this table in high school!), but it's destination in life isn't to be used as a side table.  It's much too big and as you can see, it was often used as a dumping ground for mail and other non important things when we came in the door.  This picture looks so crazy now that we rearranged everything.  (More on that soon!)

New Shower Part II...The Finale

If you've ever tiled before, then you've probably have grouted (or at least should have).  Our night of grouting fell on a Wednesday evening (Day 4 of the Renovation) beginning at 7:30pm.  We knew that this step may take a little time.  

If you've never been acquainted with process, essentially you mix up the grout and using the grout float, spread the sandy mixture into the spaces between the tiles.  You leave this set for a few minutes and then the fun begins.  The grout leaves behind a white film that you need to wipe off with a clean, damp sponge.  You keep doing this until the white film stops reappearing.  

We figured on maybe needing to wipe over the area three times.  Foolish thinking?  Yes, most definitely.  I honestly don't know how many times we wiped the tile, but I do know we started around 8:30pm and ended finally just before midnight.  Yes, midnight.  Almost three and a half hours of this.  

I don't know why exactly it took this long or even if this is normal, but I do know this:  If you're grouting, after wiping the tiles a few times with the sponge, use an old T-shirt and rub over the tiles.  The white film fades away and you aren't a slave to the shower for the entire night.   

So after we successfully got the film off, it was time to wait for 48 hours to seal the shower.  We sealed after work on Day 6 and this was by far one of the most simplest tasks.  Just brush the sealer over and wipe off the excess. 

 Great!  Done!  After waiting another 24 hours, we could finally shower (at home)!  (Please note-we were showering during this time!)

Welcome to Day 7.  The expectant finish the shower day (well, night that is).  We were all set and ready to go when we realized.....the shower handle valve and diverter pipe were too short.  And the lower faucet pipe was too long.  By a lot.  This was going to need replaced before we could hook the fixtures up.  Obviously, this was not going to be as easy as we thought.  

 Luckily, Kinsey's uncle knows about plumbing and pipes.  Unfortunately, he was out of town until Tuesday.  

Day 10- Kinsey's uncle comes and replaces our lower faucet pipe and attaches the fixture.  He also uses his mighty tools to pry off the old shower handle valve setting that wouldn't budge for us.  At this point we were getting pretty excited and felt the end was in sight.

I'll spare all the minor details of "why doesn't this pipe fit?", "the pipe isn't long enough", "do we need a plumber" "various trips to local home improvement stores and plumbing specialist" scenarios we encountered in the last few days.
Let's just say we were beyond thrilled when we had attached the new fixtures and turned the water back on for a test run.

This was all that remaining of our old shower. 

And the finished product: 

 

 We picked up a new shower curtain, hooks, rug, and various other accessories at Target.

I love our new shower head.

We didn't raise the plumbing at all in the shower, but the new head is probably a good 18 inches or so higher than the old one.  The old head was just a stationary one that sloped down sharply.  The new hand held one is high enough that I almost think it's like this one that I've always wanted.

These shower hooks were purchased as well.  I love the little glass ball on the end of the hook.  Our old shower hooks were the circle kind that snapped closed.  It was always a hassle to un click each one and then re click each one to change the curtain.  Does this sound lazy?  Probably.  Does it look a whole lot better? Yes.

And another shot of the shower curtain because I love it so:

Shower all done, now it's time to move on to the sink/vanity and the floor.