.weekend.

Weekends are everyone's favorite, but they are even more than that for me. Weekends cause so much excitement I wouldn't be able to sleep even if I wanted to go to bed. Weekends are full of dreaming, scheming, and planning. Decorating, fixing, hanging, painting, shopping, creating. Junking, photographing, organizing, studying.

I think you get the point. I like weekends.

Today I hit up a disappointing estate sale and a few semi-good yard sales. I browsed through the same antique mall that I manage to visit at least once a week. I even made it into a new resale clothing shop that I just discovered and tried on lots of pretty clothes but left with nothing. But just when I thought the whole day was going to be one big bust, something great happened. I found "the" clock I thought only existed in my dreams. Oh, and even better -- it rang up cheaper than it was priced. That's all I will say about "the" clock for now. I like to keep my readers in suspense. But no worries, I'm sure it will be featured in an upcoming post. ;-)

In the meantime, I will be so antsy tonight I may not be able to sleep. I'm planning on going to a favorite antique mall tomorrow and maybe even an outdoor concert. Maybe the farmers market... Tomorrow will be good, even if it's still storming.

Thank you, Lord, for the weekend. :-)

.emily's gift.

So in my last post, I showcased a simple pillowcase dress and said it was for a baby girl named Emily.

I lied.

That dress just wasn't good enough. This is the first pillowcase dress I've made for a paying customer, and I want to represent myself and my new business venture the best way possible. So I "upgraded" Emily's dress (which, yes, involved making a whole new dress from scratch), placed it in a customized package and included a cute little vintage card, on which I wrote a note of gratitude to Emily's mom for purchasing one of my dresses.

I've had a lot of fun focusing on this one little project, and in the meantime, the wheels in my brain have been turning.

Let's just say, I have a little trick up my sleeve, but I'll wait on sharing the details for when I get them all figured out for myself. ;-)

In the meantime, here is Emily's gift:

.pillowcase dress deuce.

I made another one! This one is for a baby girl named Emily. I think it's going to be too big for her, but thankfully she'll be able to grow into it!

.quiet evening rambles.

It's not very often anymore that I just blog for the sake of simply typing about things on my mind or the happenings of the day. I guess I always feel like I have to have pictures to go along with my story or nobody will care to know what I'm jabbering about. Here lately, the only things I've been posting about have been my house, decor, or DIY projects. My life consists of so much more than that, and if you're following my blog, you deserve to know more about me.

First of all, I am so BLESSED. Sometimes it will just hit me how blessed I am, and I'll get mad at myself at how often I take these blessings for granted. I remember months on end a few years ago that I was looking for a job. Not just any job, but something I was passionate about. I have had some pretty bad experiences with past jobs. One only lasted 3 weeks. One only lasted 3 days. Yes, it was that bad. When a job is not right for you, it's so stressful. But NOW, I have two awesome part-time jobs that I absolutely love! God blessed me with both these jobs at right about the same time. I am a teacher for a mother's day out program at a local church. My class is the younger 3 year olds. I love this job because kids are so sweet and absolutely hilarious at the most random times. Yes, it gets hectic and most days are pretty crazy, but I love my kids, and I wouldn't trade the crazy days for anything. Who wants a boring job anyway, right?! I've also been blessed with my DREAM job, and I've been working at it for about a year-and-a-half. I am honored to be the assistant editor of a local family magazine called Peekaboo. I got my Bachelor's degree in Creative Writing, with a minor in English. Honestly, after I started working with kids, I didn't think I would ever get a job where I actually got to utilize my degree. Thankfully, Kim, the editor of the magazine, took a chance on me. Not only have both of these jobs been a financial help to my husband and me; it is because of these jobs that I have gained so many great girlfriends.

Speaking of these girlfriends, we have plans to go watch a roller derby match this Saturday. Never been to one of these before, but I'm expecting an all-out brawl between beefy women. Should be a blast and supply us all with lots of laughs!

I know this post was pretty wordy, and I feel bad that I don't have any interesting pictures to post. Sometimes you just wanna type, you know?

And the hubs is over at a friend's house watching the NFL draft, so what better to do with my quiet evening then blog?

One more thing. I took my pug, Simon, to the doggie park this evening, and he is pooped. He splashed around in a creek and frolicked with all different breeds and sizes of dogs. I'm so glad I have a friendly dog. Even when a cranky old chihuahua tried to bite at him, Simon still wanted to be his friend. Now he is down by my feet snoozing away. An outing such as the dog park usually keeps him down for a good 24 hours afterwards. LOL - poor thing, he's so out of shape.

If you've made it this far, thank you for reading. I feel special. :-)

.painting advice needed.

I worked most of the day yesterday on a dresser I am re-doing. I found it at a flea market for only $15, ready to take on the challenge of an outdated piece of furniture with paneling on the sides. Yes, paneling. And brassy gold handles on the drawers. All-around ugly is what it was. Anyway, to make it fit into our office, (It will be great for extra storage) I chose to paint it red. First, I primed it, then I spray painted it using Krylon Cherry Red.

Here's where I need your advice. I don't have any experience painting furniture at all. I wish the dresser was more of a barn red and less of a bright, shiny red. How would you suggest I - 1) dull the finish a bit so it's not so shiny and 2) darken the shade a bit if possible.

Any advice would be greatly appreciated! Thank you!

I promise to post before and after pics!

.my photography friend.

My friend Loren just got hired on as the new staff photographer for the magazine I am the assistant editor of! It's called Peekaboo, and it's a free local magazine. Loren is beyond ecstatic to say the least, especially when she found out her picture would be on the inside cover. She was generous enough to take my photos when I reached the same achievement, so I returned the favor! I am by no means a photographer, but I do love to take pictures and actually really enjoyed being behind the camera. I also had way too much fun with the whole editing process afterwards!

So here are few of my favorites from our photoshoot! Isn't she a gorgeous model?!

I told her she looked like Audrey Hepburn in this one!!!

.simple pillowcase dress.

Today I completed my first pillowcase dress. I'm so excited! I wish it was more elaborate, but I'm going to have to ease myself into this whole sewing clothes thing. It's a lot different than sewing squares together for a quilt!

But I finally found a nice simple pattern that works for me and my old machine. You can check it out here.


Does anyone know a good way to keep the ends of the ribbons from fraying?

We have a neighborhood garage sale coming up in a couple of weekends. I'm thinking about making as many of these pillowcase dresses as I can before then and trying to sell them to the locals at a reasonable price. Hopefully, all the practice will lead me to more creative ways to make the dresses more fun and unique!

My Pottery Barn "Nest" Pillow

I am so excited! I literally just finished making my very own copycat version of Pottery Barn's nest pillow slipcover. I fell in love with this pillow as soon as I set eyes on it in the catalog, but definitely could not afford it. I've had it planned to attempt to recreate it for a long time, and today I finally did. Obviously, it's not perfect and the original is so much better, but I'm happy with how similar they are, especially since the material I used cost me $2 and the iron-on transfer paper that I printed the words out on was only a couple of bucks.

The Inspiration:

My handmade version:

It bugs me that the transfer paper left a shine around the letters, especially noticeable around the definition because I couldn't cut close to those letters. I also had it planned to print the words out in a brown font like the orginal, but my printer is running out of color ink (and of course I couldn't wait to get new ink before I made this) so I had to print the words out in black. I'm still super excited about it! My husband came in from work, and I was jumping and down saying, "Look what I made!" I had to pull out the Pottery Barn catalog and show him the original then make him look at mine again.

I think a lot of you out there understand how exciting an accomplishment like this is! :-)

.easter weekend.

This was the best Easter weekend I've had in a long time! The weather was absolutely gorgeous! We grilled out Saturday with my side of the family and had an Easter egg hunt for the doggies. Hubbie's parents went to church with us on Sunday, then the grandmas and hub's brothers came over. We grilled out again then all watched The Blind Side together.

Nothing big. Just family, laughter, food, dogs and church. Lots of love and blessings. And a celebration of our risen Savior who lives!