Living Room Updates

We bought a new couch this week and it totally transformed the look of our living room! We've been working on things bit by bit, (painting, adding curtains and such), but a new couch really pulled it all together! Here is what our living room looked like when we moved in last summer:

And now:

 Lots of freebies/ cheapies involved: the lily poster is another science building save from my dad, and I thrifted the coffee table.

 I'm warning you, this chaise lounge is sooo comfortable. I'm on it right now and I'm about to fall asleep.

 I made the curtains and they were super easy! The curtain fabric was really the inspiration for everything else in the room, and it will be  so easy to pull colors from it for accessories later on.

 My talented father made this bench for me years ago, and it just happened to look perfect under this window!

I just snuck this picture of tulips in because they're so pretty(:

We still need a lot of things like lamps and bookshelves, but I'm so happy to have a cohesive room!

Almost Spring

It's almost spring! My husband noticed daffodils blooming in our yard this morning. I enjoyed the recent snow days immensely, but now that the snow is gone I myself feel like a spring flower about to poke its head through the earth, escaping winter hibernation.

 It's been a while since I've posted, and even longer since I've done an outfit post. I'm wearing a top I made, and the skirt is part of a play suit I bought from Q's Daydream. She is a super talented girl!

1940s Kitchen Apron

I just finished sewing a kitchen apron from a real vintage pattern my grandma gave me. This was my first experience using a REAL vintage pattern- usually I use reproduction patterns that have been updated for modern sewing. There are definitely some major differences between vintage and modern patterns!

For one thing, the instructions are much more concise (half a  page as opposed to 3-4 full pages). Here is a modern pattern on the left compared to the vintage one on the right:



It's a good thing I already have a good bit of sewing experience, or I think I would have been totally confused about the instructions. Another difference between vintage and modern is that older patterns do not have any markings printed on them, only punch holes. Here's another comparison of modern(left) to vintage(right):

Some of the terminology was different as well, and I had to remember to sew 1/2" seam allowances instead of 5/8". I was a little intimidated at first but once I got started it really wasn't too difficult. Here is my finished product:

I had some leftover chevron fabric from the kitchen shade I made, so I used it as an accent fabric on the apron. After all the time I spent sewing it, I'm almost too afraid of staining it to use it though! Haha. I'm such a form over functionist.

Origami Ornaments

Every year at Christmas I try to add a few new ornaments to our collection. This year I decided to make some origami doves. These are pretty easy to make and inexpensive too. The paper I used was $5 for 20 sheets; add $1 worth of ribbon and you have 20 ornaments for $6. I found the pattern for the dove in a book I checked out from the library(free!)

Another Christmas "ornament" showed up at our house around the time we put up our tree. Meet Claude (Monet), our neighborhood stray cat. He's a perfect little orange tabby, and perfect for us because he is a(mostly) outdoor cat and requires very little care(:

Kitchen Makeover

I haven't blogged in quite a while- I've been really busy with music gigs, but my husband and I have also had some time to do projects around the house, and I'm so excited to have finished decorating one room of the house exactly the way I want it! Here is our kitchen the way it looked when we moved in:

Nice, but a little boring for my taste, so we painted it a beautiful dollhouse blue/green color.

I made a roman shade for the window- roman shades are quite a bit of work to make and it didn't save me money by making it, but if you want a custom print one, sewing your own is the way to go!

I bought this desk from a thrift store when I lived in my first apartment and originally painted it light green and distressed it, but it didn't really go with our kitchen so I painted it again! The framed floral print is a BJU science building clean out save from my dad. He knows what I like(:

Fall Happenings

As usual, fall has been a busy season for me, so I haven't posted in quite some time. I played in 3 orchestra concerts in September and have another one tomorrow night. In the midst of all that, I made a somewhat insane decision and accepted a last minute offer to play with the Asheville Lyric Opera. (I say insane because I received an 80+ page stack of music two days before rehearsals started.) Learning that much music in that amount of time was really challenging and a lot of hard work but very rewarding. We played Leoncavallo's Pagliacci and Puccini's Suor Angelica. If you haven't heard it, Suor Angelica is absolutely gorgeous! Anyways, things are finally slowing down a bit, and my husband and I found time last week to go on our annual apple picking adventure.

I think the cows thought we had some sort of treat for them...they all mosied over to the fence to see us when I waved at them...

It's really nice having a man to carry the apples for you...

My husband sneeked this shot in...maybe I should be carrying an apple basket instead of a camera??