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La joie c'est le partage
{ the joy is in the sharing }

Saturday, April 10, 2010

Spring Cleaning and Gettin' My Craft On!

I hope everyone had a blessed Easter and enjoyed the day!
For me, it's officially springtime now and while doing some spring cleaning and rearranging, I've also been working on a few little projects. Since I've horribly neglected my blog and my wonderful blogging friends lately, I thought I'd share...
~~~
As I mentioned in my previous post, I love blue and have decided to incorporate more if it in our home. I also love red with my blue, so there's more of that too. We have a red kitchen and a red dining room so I've added touches of red here and there in the other rooms to bring it out more. I love the all white/cream color scheme that I had before but I was ready for a little color shake up!
So... I made some pillows in blue, trimmed with red pom pom fringe and I made some in red toile. I'm all about French decor so I had to include my all time favorite - toile!
and...speaking of toile, I kind of went all out with it! I made some lampshades and I made some curtains - do you detect a theme here?
;)
I wish I had remembered to take before photos of these lamps. They were nasty old things that had been banished to the basement storage about a year ago. When I decided on this family room re-do, I thought they would be perfect painted white with new lampshades!
I took two standard white lampshades(which I already had) and made little skirts for them from fabric. I added a flirty little ruffle to the bottom edge and some elastic to the top. The elastic made it much easier to fit the fabric to the top of the lampshade.

Then for the curtains...

I made "dummy panels" because it was much cheaper that way! I wanted to simply "dress" the windows more than I wanted to cover them. So, I purchased the yardage that I needed and then opened up the fabric and cut it on the fold. This results in panels that are only as wide as the fabric bolt, but they serve the intended purpose of dressing up the windows and saved me the cost of 6 extra yards of fabric! Instead of having to buy four pieces of fabric that were each 3 yards long, I only had to buy 2 because I cut each 3 yard piece in half and got double the fabric out of it!
Okay, pillows sewn, lamps painted, shades made, curtains hung...certainly not all in one day, I might add...now I needed some fun end tables! I had this one pictured above in our bathroom. I moved it downstairs to use as an end table. It's actually an old night stand that I had found at a flea market a couple of years ago and painted.

For the other side of the love seat, I had this old night stand stored in the garage. I found it last fall at a yard sale and it was the ugliest shade of brown you ever saw - totally 70's style! I painted it white and antiqued it though, and now it's MUCH better!

There you have it...family room re-do on the cheap. I just reused things that were alreay in the house. That's my kind of makeover.
Okay, I think that's enough for one day! I have some bar stools that I'm going to make little toppers for, but I'll save that for another post.
I think I'll go and eat a Cadbury Creme Egg! I have this terrible weakness for Easter candy and there is an Easter basket sitting on the counter here just begging for me to get into it...
Enjoy the day!
~~~
God Bless,
Kathleen

18 comments:

Kathy's Red Door Welcome said...

I love your red toile, in fact my dining room has red toile drapes. Your blog is really so lovely...I always enjoy my visits.

DisturbedAngel said...

Don't know why I didn't think of mixing red with my blues before but, seeing yours, I LOVE IT! Now I'm itching to get to the fabric store so I can go buy some toile! ;o)

Anonymous said...

What a perfect lampshade to go with such a lovely home!

Marty@A Stroll Thru Life said...

Love your pillows, curtains, lampshade and the end tables. Isn't it fun to use what you already have and discover a whole new room. Great job. Hugs, Marty

Chrissy...The Apothecary Shop said...

Kathleen....how pretty! It all looks so fresh,just perfect for spring! Hope all is well,x0x0

Parisienne Farmgirl said...

Hey babe - where are you finding that fabric - years ago I got dish towels that I use as curtains in the blue toile just like what you are showing from Anthropolgie and I have always wanted to do more with it...
Looks really, really good! Hows that baby!

Parisienne Farmgirl
Parisienne Farmhouse

Anonymous said...

Everything is so beautiful especially since I love, love , love toile! Loved it! Hope you are having a great weekend.

http://jsimplylive.blogspot.com/

Amy Kinser said...

I love your peice of furniture. So pretty. It's all lovely.

Anonymous said...

I love toile AND Cadbury eggs! ;-)
You have so much sewing energy and everything looks beautiful. My sewing to-do list is getting longer and my daughter has asked me to make pillows for her. So hard for me to put down my paper and glue and go into the dank basement sewing room...
Diane

Linda @ Itsy Bits And Pieces said...

Kathleen, it's just beautiful! Love the red toile and I especially love the pillows!

Cheryl said...

Love the pillow with the pom pom fringe.
I have always loved toile. It's so classic and timeless. Love your new curtains.

One Cheap B*tch said...

Thank you for stopping by my blog - so glad you did! How on earth have I missed your's?! I'm loving your curtains and lampshade and going to check out your other posts. So happy and a new follower!

Jeanine

{oc cottage} said...

Love this!

m ^..^

Lady Katherine said...

Your red toile looks wonderful on the lamp and the windows! Such a lovely Frenchy make over!

Seawashed said...

looks perfect! very french countryside cottagey. How's your sweet baby girl...growing fast I bet!

Redesign Diva said...

"like" your dumpy panels...

Victoria Bellow said...

very creative design,simple yet impressive idea, nice work.

Unknown said...

love that toile shade u made!