Pinterest Challenge: Napkins to Pillows

Posted on March 3, 2013 by vanessawyler

I have a few obsessions. Target, pillows, pinterest, and the blog Young House Love. Put them all together in a nice sandwich and you get a YHL Winter Pinterest Challenge where I take four napkins from Target and make two pillows.

It all started when I was working on transforming our lower level guest room and figuring out a color palette. I went to Target and since they had a million decor pieces in one of the hottest colors right now, coral, I decided coral and gray was my palette. I found lots of pillows with coral, but so much of it was geometric and so harsh. I was really wanting to add some floral when I found this Target floral print (below). However they didn’t have this print in pillows which I wanted, so what did I do… bought a pack of four napkins (20″x20″ each) for $9.99 and said I’d make pillows out of them… real funny since I haven’t touched my sewing machine in over 2 years.

So then I hopped on Pinterest and began searching for tutorials on how to make pillows from napkins… and I found many different methods. You can sew the pillow mostly with a machine and then the methods to close the pillow after the stuffing include hand sewing, velcro or putting in a zipper.

I was ambitious and thought a zipper would be the best way to close it, while making it still look nice. Here is the pillow tutorial I followed to a T… besides the fact that she didn’t use napkins, but napkins in my case just equaled a piece of fabric. PS I also learned that for zippers you use a “zipper footer” which so nicely came with my sewing machine.

I was crazy surprised how easy it was… even my mom (who is like a pro sewer) was impressed! So once that part was done, the rest was easy, just sew it shut. And I just used the existing hem as my guide which helped keep things pretty straight.

Then I just stuffed them full of soft stuffing that I picked up for about $3 and zippered them shut. Presto. I magically turned 4 napkins into 2 pillows.

And look who came to watch as I finished this project… his eyes were on the pieces of thread the entire time, he has eyes like a ninja. I’m thankful for a pet who loves craft time too!

House Tour – February 2013

Posted on February 28, 2013 by vanessawyler

Soo every other Friday night we get to host a bunch of fun people our age over at our home to play games and hang out – what our church calls a lifegroup. Our last one was a blast, and Drew and I are looking forward to next Friday. However having 15-20 people over every other week has made me obviously clean a bit more.

I’d like to say we’re just keeping things neat and tidy so that we don’t have to do a huge clean each week, but so far we aren’t there yet. And because I have my house super picked up and everything put away every other week now, I’ll be trying to take more update photos of how our house is coming along.

So last Saturday morning since everything was clean still, I went around with the camera real quick and snapped these – enjoy! PS this totally makes me see all the spots I missed cleaning… oh well, too late now. Like check out the dust on the window in the kitchen. Woops!

As you can see, a lot is a work in progress. This summer we’ll do our big kitchen reno (think white cabinets, gray countertop, wood floor, penny tile backsplash). The living room needs things put in those frame and then the family room needs some good design thought into it. It has basically just received all of our leftovers for furniture and decor – hopefully some day I will get to that space to improve it. Just looking at it now in these photos I cringe and debated including them.

But a house is all about making it a home, so I included them…

New Fave: Coral

Posted on February 25, 2013 by vanessawyler

If you’ve been to our new home, you’ll quickly realize I have a love for grey and yellow hues. While I could decorate each room to scream out my love for that color duo, I wanted to stretch the color palette of our home.

One of the only two rooms left to be painted was the downstairs spare bedroom and the bathroom down there. And after Drew recently professed his desire to have a space for a computer set up, he convinced me to start working on our next project: operation finish the downstairs bedroom.

First set of business was to find some inspiration and create a color palette. I browsed thru my some hundred pins on my “home style” pinterest board to remind myself of what things I’ve been loving lately over there. I settled on the palette of Coral & Gray (plus tiny bits of yellow and a light blue, think: this moodboard, that I made for myself to hopefully re-do my portfolio site this year). But then I also had to convince Drew that this color is definitely not pink! Here are a few images that inspired my game plan for this room…

Next, a trip to Target to score all the coral decor possible made this room start to come together very nicely and easily. And if you follow my instagram, you probably saw all the things I found there…

And now to today… Drew and I were able to finally say goodbye to the flesh colored walls (gross) and painted up a fresh coat of a medium gray color Martha Stewart Bedford Gray to be exact. Here’s a quick image of how it was coming along.

Now that the paint is dry, the next step is to clean up the room and put it back together – also to make the bed with all the things I found! A few other things on the list to do before it is more finish are…

Create a striped upholstered headboard
Hang some white/floral curtains
Get a white Parsons style desk
Re-do/paint the Mid Century Modern dressers in there
Spray paint a round mirror to go above the headboard
Add more decor/storage elements
And probably much more…

Getting in the Valentine Mood

Posted on February 13, 2013 by vanessawyler

I love Valentine’s day – why not love a day that’s all about love, especially when you have someone to love and someone that loves you. I hear Drew’s got a pretty super plan/surprise for me to celebrate (eek can’t wait!) up his sleeve, but while I was waiting, I figured I might as well take down our Christmas decor and sprinkle Valentine love throughout our home.

I updated our chalkboard wall and added some felt heart garland that I found at Target. PS isn’t Target the best, it’s such a trap!

Winter from our Window

Posted on February 10, 2013 by vanessawyler

Winter is seriously my least favorite season. 1. It’s cold 2. Everything outside is dead 3. Driving in snow and ice is scary stuff 4. It’s really cold 5. Our garage door opener doesn’t like to open when it’s below 32 degrees F.

Despite my hatred for the season, you can’t deny how beautiful a new snow can make everything look. Especially the one where it sticks to everything. The other day we had just that type of snow storm – it was terrible to drive home from work in, but the next day it made up for it. My favorite – driving through our tree-lined streets. To document my once a season love for snow, here are these photos I took from inside our cozy warm home.

Minted Goal Complete

Posted on January 24, 2013 by vanessawyler

Another goal for 2013 smashed by me, Vanessa!

It’s been on my list of things to do for about 3 years or so… submit a design for a Minted.com challenge. I’ve loved the idea, but the actually sitting down and looking at the current design challenge, thinking of an idea and creating the said idea, just never came about. Until yesterday, I just sat down and started sketching on the ipad’s paper53 app and my new bamboo stylus from my parents for Christmas.

The challenge this time is an art print, versus their standard more invitation/greeting card theme. From yesterday, I have a full sketchbook of ideas, but the one I created for my first submission was the most solid design, one that I could see it in a lot of little nurseries. Here is what I created…

Now I need all my lovely family and friends to go check it out and vote for me – yes please! I’m hopefully going to try to submit a few more ideas before the deadline on January 31, then voting begins. Critique, comment and when voting begins, vote! Here is the link to my design “Bowtie Essential“

Striped Walls

Posted on January 19, 2013 by vanessawyler

So a few weeks ago, four to be exact, on a Saturday I finally took it upon myself to paint our striped walls with my mom’s help.

This was a fun little project that only took 4 hours total and didn’t create a huge mess like our other recent projects. I’ve seen this effect done numerous times on blogs, pinterest and in magazines – so I read up on a few tips to help.

Basically, first you measure the wall and calculate how many stripes you can do, or how many you want. We decided to also keep our stripes all the same height (so you have to account for this with taping). We used a ruler and a level to make sure our spacing was equal and straight, it got tricky as you turn corners or have a big door to compensate for. We only taped for the areas where we were going to paint white, so the areas where the grey is staying looks smaller, but you have to account for the space hidden by the tape. We also marked those areas that were staying gray, just to avoid any possible mistake with the paint!

Three coats of Behr Paint + Primer in their Ultra Pure White in Eggshell covered it well enough and luckily the Frog Tape held up to it’s promise and came off smooth. I’m now a fan of that green stuff! Check out the photos I took during the process and shortly after with my iphone.

Once I removed the tape I noticed there was a slight raised edge on the painted areas. I had to laugh because that was exactly the problem we dealt with in our spare bedroom. I texted a photo to show my dad, his reply…Do unto others as you would have them do to you! So true… so true.

And because I actually cleaned the other day, here are a few photos I snapped to show you the stripes in their full glory. Love ’em.

And when I said I cleaned in order to take these photos… I lied. I only cleaned up that tiny area, as you can see from this more wide-angle photo, and I wanted to show you all the other patterns in the room. I heart mixing patterns.

Favorite Reads (aka blogs)

Posted on January 13, 2013 by vanessawyler

Not sure if it’s just our generation or what, but Drew and I are huge blog readers, obviously different genres of blogs though. Drew tends to read the tech blogs regarding everything from phone software, video games and computer things. While I’m a techy person, my blogs tend to be those related to design, design as in graphic design, home design, diy, and fashion blogs.

I’m assuming you are a blog reader hence why you are reading this, so I thought we’d share a few of our favorites and hopefully you can find a new favorite to follow along with this year…

Moodboard | 2013 Goal Progress

Posted on January 12, 2013 by vanessawyler

I’m happy to report I’m making progress on a few of my goals for 2013.

I really want do a completely new site for myself to drum up more freelance projects. Part of that involved a new mac, yay! However, that also meant a new Adobe Creative Suite to purchase, boo. So instead of buying the software up front (over $2000), I’m trying out their Creative Cloud ($29/month) which gives me access to ALL adobe programs. While in the past I’ve only bought what I needed to complete my work, I now have access to brand new programs, which I’m hoping inspires me to learn a few and expand my knowledge. One of them being Muse – while I know how to design websites in Dreamweaver, Muse promises to do the same yet in a InDesign styled application and eliminates knowing code.

While I need to play around with Muse a bit before I can master it, I figured I might as well try to re-do my site by using Muse. Before getting full fledged into Muse, I need to come up with 1. A mood board, so that I know the design direction this site will go, and 2. I want to mock it up all in photoshop first and then recreate in Muse. I know this might seem backwards, but since I know Photoshop way better, I can quickly get my dream site laid out before heading over to Muse and am completely lost for a bit while I learn.

So step 1 is complete, introducing my mood board (above). A moodboard really helps set the tone for the site, I felt really lost until I had it clearly laid out and how it would look together. If you compare it to my current site, you will see the similarities. I feel like this is completely my style still. What I did to confirm my design and style is, I headed on over to my pinterest account. In there I took a look at trends in home style, design, and fashion that I’ve pinned… stripes, floral, primary colors, etc. From there I could tell my style was still dead on, so I embraced the color scheme and patterns.

Next up, my site designed in photoshop, then translated to Muse! I’m hoping as part of my etsy shop launched, I have options for people to have me customize their blogs similar to this. I’d come up with a moodboard for them, and then translate that to their blog.

The In-Between / Work-In-Progress

Posted on January 10, 2013 by vanessawyler

It’s a mix of cra-cra at our casa at right now, and is literally driving me nuts.

Exhibit numero uno: Re-grouting our main shower. The original grout was very cracked (and missing in some places) and was begging for some TLC. So while that is underway, I’m trying to embrace it the best I can, but having to shower in our spare bathroom… means I zombie walk down two flights of stares upon waking up. This morning I totally tripped over some old trim while making my way to the shower – I was this close to lodging a nail in my foot.

Exhibit numero dos: Our family room, aka Drew’s chill space, is torn up because we are adding board and batten to the lower portion of the walls. And when I say “we” I mean my dad, but I did help paint the majority of those boards, I have the calluses on my hands to prove it. So even Drew’s precious Xbox is unplugged and has a barney blanket over it (gotta protect those precious electronics)! That also means I have to share my chill space (the living room) with him. Please make fun of me for this, but I even have him rotate around our couch, in fear of massive saggy butt marks in the fabric and on the cushions. Hey, I’m protective of my space, especially because everything in that room is brand spankin’ new.

And here are the photos to prove it, though not sure why anyone wants to look at the mess we call home… so if you don’t want to see them, just scroll down 🙂

In addition to projects that we’re in-between on, is some decorating things that I need to finish up. For instance, I had Drew hang a few things like this mailbox, photo frame, and to make & mount a mason jar to the wall for flowers. So literally the frame is hung without a photo in it yet. And I have yet to make this mason jar contraption.

Also, these awesome bookshelves I got for Christmas from my parents are now assembled in our living room, however I realized I have to now accessorize them with things that match throughout the room. I did some digging and didn’t come up with much from existing decor. My goal is to hit up goodwill looking for things I can spraypaint to match the color scheme and tie in the yellows and whites. But we all know you can’t spraypaint outside in Wisconsin in the winter, so that will probably have to wait 🙁

And what about this trim painting that I started doing, say in October? Yea I have zero motivation for that now, but if you take a look back at my 2013 goals, it’s on there. So I’ve got to tackle that at some point! (And I realize I need to update our “before & in-progress” photos).

The goal is to have a lot of our projects wrapped up by February 1st (minus the major projects we haven’t started, like the kitchen) because we’ll be hosting a life group every other week. So I’m using that as motivation, I’m totally using that as a way to keep the house clean too. This shall be fun….

Drew & Vanessa

Life's Adventures – Together