DIY Project: Baby Quilt

I've been inspired by a lot of quilts lately, which I found rather odd, since I've never made a quilt in my life. A few weekends ago, I finally took the plunge, and made my very first ever quilt, as a gift for my friend's baby. I waited until now to post it, as I didn't want to ruin the surprise for my friend. I'm gifting it today, so finally it is safe to post.

I drew the design for each side myself, and improvised the process while I went along, which really were the easy bits. Then came the actual quilting, the process of joining the layers together. Instead of a simple square, or fancy pattern, I chose to quilt the layers together in small, evenly spaced stitches, to keep the quilt fluffy. Keeping all layers wrinkle free proved to be quite the challenge, but it worked out in the end. For the binding I used one of the fabrics in the quilt, ironed into a long, double-folded strip. Both the quilting & the binding were the biggest PITA of the whole project, and neither turned out perfectly.

I didn't bother taking photos during the process, since I figured a quilt tutorial from me to anyone else would be the equivalent of the blind leading the blind. Luckily, if improvised crafting is not your thing, there are a lot of great quilting tutorials out there, from people who actually do know what they are doing.

Here is my finished quilt:

I never knew quilts were so tricky to photograph.

I think it turned out pretty cute, and I'm happy with it, especially for it being my first try. I really love the bunting design side, (I'm so glad I added it, since I had originally planned on using just a patterned fabric on that side), and the random patchwork turned out pretty well, although I will definitely try a more precise pattern next time.

Is it weird giving an imperfect quilt that you cluelessly made?

DIY Project: Double Row of Hooks

While redoing my office, I realized that the tufted leather storage bench I used to keep under my window no longer had a home. So I decided to move it to this awkward little corner of our house that is between the front door, the kitchen, and the hallway to the back of the house, and finally make this area into an entry.

The tufted bench, a pretty rug, and an umbrella stand later, I was well on my way to completing the entry (I'll post the completed entry makeover in a few days when it's done). But the coat rack I already had didn't work for this space, so while hunting for other hanging options, I came across this Row of 6 Hooks at Pottery Barn. It was perfect. However, I wanted 2, and the cost of the over priced store version really started to add up. $200 for a few hooks?!? That is ridiculous. Then I remembered the wood I still had left after building my own trundle. Surely I could make something similar myself.

Looking through my supplies I realized I also had the paint needed, and after a quick trip to Home Depot for the double hooks I was ready to begin.

DIY Project: Double Row of Hooks

What you'll need:

• 2 pieces of wood, or composite board, cut into two long rectangles - adjust length to fit your space. My pieces were 32" long, and 5 1/2" wide
• 8-12 hooks - I used 5 double hooks per piece, but it depends on the length on your boards and the size of your hooks
• hardware - both to attach the hooks (mine came with screws), and to secure boards to your wall
• fine sandpaper
• paint of choice - I used 2 colors
• painter's tape
• paintbrush - I used foam brushes, for a thin, even application, which also cut down on drying time
• electric drill
• tape measure
• pencil
• Level

What to do:

1. Start by sanding your wood pieces, to remove any splinters and rough edges. Wipe off dust with moist cloth, and let dry.

2. Prime (if applicable - I didn't since I used a paint with primer included) and then coat wood with a thin coat of your base color, in my case, white. Let dry completely, and add another thin coat (image 1).

3. When the paint is completely dry, sand lightly to remove brush marks and touch spots. Wipe off any sanding dust, and let dry.

4. Determine your pattern, and start taping. I lightly traced a grid on each board, and used the grid as guidelines for taping my chevron pattern.

5. Cover tape with one more thin coat of your base color. This will prevent your sharp edges from being ruined if paint should bleed under the tape (image 2).

6. When the last coat is completely dry, add thin coat of your top color, and let dry. Add a second coat, if needed.

7. When paint is completely dry, remove the tape (image 3), and lightly sand the paint to remove any marks or rough edges. Scuff edges for a slightly worn look.

8. Mark where your hooks will go - Since my boards were slightly shorter than the Pottery Barn version, I decided to only use 5 hooks on each board, instead of 6. Measure to make sure your hooks are evenly spaced (image 4).

9. Predrill holes for both the hooks and the wall installation. Attach hooks.

10. Install completed Row of Hooks - I put one above the other, using a lever to ensure they are straight. Make sure to use appropriate screws for your walls, and for the weight of the hooks.

11. Done! Step back & admire your work. P.s. You might want to cover the screw heads with a small dab of paint.

Here are my finished hooks:

This picture is a bit deceiving. Both rows really are the same size, and they are both hanging straight.

This project took a couple of hours, including paint drying time, and I really like the splash of color my hooks add to this otherwise pretty dark corner. I'm happy with this project, it is the perfect addition to my new entry. What made me even happier with it? This.

Price Comparison:

Pottery Barn Version: $237.07 ($99 ea x 2 + $39.07 shipping/tax)

DIY Version: $42.50 ($4.25 ea hook x 10 including tax, & all other supplies used were leftovers from another project).

I shaved almost $200 off the price by doing it myself! So much more reasonable a price for a few hooks.

I can't wait to show you my completed entry!

Swedish Easter.

Glad Påsk & Happy Easter!

I know for a lot of people Easter is a very import, religious holiday. It is an important holiday for me too, but for other reasons. Lately, I've come across some people seemingly unaware of the fact that Easter is celebrated in different ways in different places, and that it's meaning vary as well. I figured I would share my Easter traditions, to offer a different view on this Easter holiday. Påsk, which is what Easter is called in Sweden, was always one of my favorites as a kid. I haven't lived in Sweden for a decade, but I still love celebrating Påsk, and I guess I always will.

So, what is Swedish Easter?

It's a celebration of Spring, that involves heaps of candy (Swedes LOVE candy, on average 18Kg of candy are consumed per person each year - a large portion of which gets eaten during Påsk celebrations), big bonfires in fields all over the countryside, witches, a variation of trick-or-treat-ing, and a Spring Feast. AND you get time off from school. As a kid, it was AWESOME! As an adult, it is still pretty awesome.

Before Easter week, Swedes decorate their homes for Påsk with large vases filled with Spring branches and twigs, still covered with Spring buds, and colorful feathers are added to the branches. Painted eggs, Videung (pussy willow) branches, and big bouquets of Daffodils are also a must.

A traditional Swedish Påsk ris

According to Swedish folklore, on skärtorsdagen (Maundy Thursday) all the witches in the land would fly across the night sky on their brooms, all converging on Blåkulla (Blue Hill) for their annual Witches' Meeting. So, on this same day, Swedish kids dress up as witches, in aprons, and freckles, and brooms, and walk around the neighborhood knocking on doors, much like Halloween's trick-or-treating here in the US.

Instead of "trick or treat", we would give each person an Easter Letter, a homemade Spring-themed drawing, folded up in a triangle, and in return we would get candy or money. I remember many evenings leading up to Påsk spent sprawled on the family room floor with my friends, drawing little yellow chicks, daffodils, trees with tiny breaking-out leaves, eggs, broom-flying witches, and bunnies. Everything that means Spring.

Swedish Påskbrev from early 1900's

Image Source: Sagomuseet

By Thursday I'd have a big basket full of completed letters. All decked out in my witch's outfit, I'd carry that basket, exchanging letters for candy, until my arm fell off, or the all my letters were gone, which ever came first. Lucky for me, it was always the letters. Either way, we always had such a fun time! As a kid growing up in Sweden, skärtorsdagen was one of the most epic days of the year, and I have very fond childhood memories of this day.

Swedish kids dressed up as Easter Witches

Image Source: Lena Granefelt

As if all of that wasn't enough, the festivities of skärtorsdagen are followed by a Påsk feast on Saturday, which is Påskafton, (the Eve of Easter). Traditionally a smorgåsbord of Spring-themed foods are served, including lots of egg dishes, lamb, and other tasty things, representing the rebirth of the year after the long winter. Everything is washed down with Påskmust (a special soda only available during Easter), Påsköl (Easter beer), snaps, & drinking songs. That evening, to deter the witches from stopping to cause trouble in your neck of the woods on their way home from Blue Hill, large bonfires are lit in the fields all around [some parts of] the country. The firewood for these Påsk fires have been collected for months, and include everything from Christmas trees to branches blown down in winter storms.

Påskbrasa, Swedish Easter fire

In the evening, my family would always go to one of these bonfires nearby. It is cold still in Sweden at that time of year, and dark too. But there were always lots of people around the fire, and someone brought hot cocoa, another brought mugs, and all the children would get to stay up late, running around the fire and the dark fields. It was magical.

On Sunday, we would get our highly anticipated Påskägg, a large paper mache egg, filled with candy (as a Swede, there is no such thing as too much candy). In my family, our eggs would be hidden, usually indoors, but outside as well weather permitting, and we would have to find them, which was very fun. However, this tradition varies, as some of my friends were given their egg sans the hunt. We would then snack on candy & leftover Easter foods all day.

My husband's Påskägg this year.

No matter what your Easter traditions are, I wish you a very Happy Easter.

Glad Påsk, everyone!

DIY Project: Framed Quote Print

This morning, a friend of mine posted this Voltaire quote on Pinterest, which really resonated with me. It linked to an Etsy shop, selling among other things, ceramic plaques with famous quotes.

Image Source: mbartsudios Etsy shop via Pinterst

A plaque like this wouldn't really work in my office, but I had the idea to print & frame it, in colors that would coordinate nicely with the rest of my decor. I made the print in Pages, and then printed it on photo paper, using my Canon photo printer for a saturated, professional look.

The shine on the glass makes the first line hard to see in this photo (it's easy to see in person), so I've added this closeup, which looks all dark & drab, but that is just so the lighter text will show up in the picture.

This was such an easy project, perfect for some quick DIY satisfaction, as a boost between finishing larger projects. And as it turns out, it fits perfectly in my new office, I'm so happy with it.

Image from my Instagram:

DIY Project: Stenciled Pillow

So, who knew finding rad pillows where such a nightmare? I sure did not.

For example, I just got these pillows, which arrived in the mail this morning. I got them on sale, at a killer price, but they were not returnable. When I ordered them, what was described on the website as "sequins" looked all kinds of gorgeous. I LOVED the look, and was literary squealing with happiness at my incredible "score". On arrived, it turned out what some people call "sequins" should have been called "sea shell buttons", and I was not pleased, to say the least. Sequins would go perfectly in my new office. Shell-button-covered pillows? Not so much.

However, the pillows are obviously very photogenic, since even my pictures make them look pretty cool, and a lot prettier than they are in person. But if you squint and look at the picture, with a little bit of imagination, you might be able to discern what I though they would actually look like, if they would have been made with actual sequins.

But there is no fooling anyone that these are "sequins" when you see them up close.

So, what's a girl to do with two pillows who scream "sea cottage" instead of "fabulous"?

Well... burning them did come to mind, but only for a second. Then I raided my craft supplies for 1 letter stencil, 1 black fabric marker, & 1 sharp blade.

First, I had to cut off all the buttons, and remove the thread left behind. It didn't take long, and I was left with a really nice, high quality linen pillow, complete with a hidden zipper.

The sea-shell pillows looks crazy good in pictures, and you can't event tell it's not sequins.

Here they look just like they did on the website, deceptively GORGEOUS & perfect for my room.

I started filling in my letters with my marker right away. I didn't work too meticulously, since I wanted a stamped, kind of rough look. Just as I thought "I better not have any typos" I quickly printed a typo. Le sigh. In the end, my repeated "it" got covered by a heart, and I'm ok with it as it is. Clearly, it's handmade, but it looks pretty good & offers nice contrast with the rest of my pillow population. I even kept one of the pillows in it's original, button-covered state. On it's own, it looks less cottage-y, and with a bit of squinting it looks almost half as pretty as it's picture.

The quote is from a David Gray song that my Husband & I listened to a lot when we met.

What do you think? An improvement, or best left as it was?

DIY Project: Trundle Guest Bed

As I've mentioned before, I'm currently redoing my office. My old office was a pretty boring space, built for studying, and studying alone. Since I'm not in school anymore, I've wanted to evolve my space to better suit my current needs. One of them being the need for a guest bed (or, preferably, two). We're having a lot of overseas guests coming to stay this year (yay!), the first set of which are scheduled to arrive in a couple of weeks. The air mattress we usually squeeze into my office to accommodate overnight house guests basically renders the entire room useless for anything besides sleeping on said mattress, and I'm so sick of it. So, spurred on by the shrinking window of time before soon-decending guests, I started making plans for my new office.

I decided upon adding a daybed, and I really wanted a trundle for it as well, to get two twin-sized guest beds. I found tons of daybeds with trundles online, none of which I wanted in my office. Then I found this daybed at World Market, and absolutely loved it.

It was just the thing I was looking for; nice quality, solid wood, sturdy, it fits a twin mattress, and it's gorgeous. To make it even better, it was on sale, and half the price of the other daybeds I'd seen online, and those had been made of cheap composite board. While it does fits a twin mattress, it didn't come with a trundle. But I got it anyways.

Then I started hunting for a freestanding trundle, to fit underneath the daybed. Yeah... that proved to be quite the challenge. They were all either too long, too high, too short, too ugly, or too expensive. Exasperated with my Goldilocks dilemma, I though 'why not make one?'. I mean, how hard can it really be? Well, as it turns out, not very.

I used Ana White's 'Trundle for Bed or Storage' plans to build my trundle, which made the whole project ridiculously easy, since her plans include a comprehensive list of supplies needed, the tools to use, where & how to measure for a correct fit, and a complete cut-list. Perfect! One lengthy trip to my local home improvement store for supplies, and I was ready to begin.

The build was super quick and easy, and quickly followed by sanding, priming, and painting. And then the worst part, waiting. My daybed is a blueish-gray tone, which I doubted I could recreate very well, so I decided not to try. Instead I painted the trundle in this white & gray striped pattern. Then all that was left was adding the hardware. Piece of cake!

Here is my newly finished trundle:

I'm still waiting for a lot more pillows to be delivered, as well as the new mattress for the trundle (trundle is pictured with a placeholder). I got the new mattress for the daybed at Target. It's a 10" memory foam mattress, and the quality actually exceeded my expectations. It's SO COMFORTABLE, and for $200, a total steal! The mattress that will go in the trundle is another memory foam, also from Target, but it's only 6" due to the lesser clearance. It will go all the way up to the bottom of the daybed, and not leave that gap that is there now. These pictures are a bit awkwardly angled, I know. I'm trying to keep the rest of the room, which isn't done yet, under wraps still. Better pictures will come with the full office reveal.

Total Cost (not incl. mattress):

$150

It could have been made much cheaper, using cheaper wood than what I did, for somewhere between $50-$100 according to Ana White's calculations. Still, it was several hundred dollars cheaper than the cheapest store-version. So, by making this trundle myself, I got a trundle with a mattress for the same price as a store-bought, lesser quality trundle without a mattress, with very little work. Not bad.

All things considered, I am really happy with the outcome of this project. It was cheap, super quick, and really easy. I was a bit worried the trundle would look flimsy & obviously homemade, but it looks really good, and fits perfectly under my daybed. Even though it's a couple of inches shorter than the standard twin, it still fits a twin mattress with ease. Although, I'm thinking any tall friends hoping to be future house guests should call shotgun for the daybed asap.

Thanks Ana, for the excellent plans!

EDITED TO ADD:

We have gotten so much use out of this daybed/trundle combo, but the one negative I wanted to mention is that the trundle bed can't be raised, to make a double bed. It's probably not a big deal if you're using it for your kids, but a few couples that have slept over have mentioned that having their partner sleep down on the floor, out of sight, was strange, and I wish there was a way to add folding legs that would allow us to raise the trundle when in use, like some models I've seen at several furniture stores. Just something to keep in mind for anyone coming by this post in the hunt for a daybed/trundle combo. The option to raise the trundle is a great feature. 

DIY Disaster: Touch-Up Paint Fail.

I'm currently in the midst of redoing my office, and figured I'd repair all the old nail holes and touch-up any scuff marks on the walls while I'm at it. Great plan!

So, very late last night (I had planned to do it in the morning, but since I hate waiting, I figured it would be much better to do it right then, and have it dry while I slept), I started filling all the holes with spackle, and the Husband retrieved the paint from storage in the garage. While I waited for the goo to dry, I started touching up the rest of the house as well. Before long, both the Husband & I were walking around the house, paintbrush in hand, determined to erase years of wear & tear off the walls. As we stumbled to bed several hours later than planned, I noticed that the areas that had already dried didn't look better at all, they looked worse! As if instead of erasing the flaws, we had sprinkled glitter on them to make them stand out. Oh hell, what now?

Yeah... So, as it turns out, ass-u-me-ing that you're working with the correct paint is not better than making 100% sure you're working with the correct paint. Who knew? (Really wish I had a sarcastic font right about now...)

Just typing that, I want to slap myself in the face.

The full scale of this DIY Disaster is hard to fully appreciate in the photos, but I've included this anyways. For laughs. (I'll be the first to admit, I find this particular snafu rather hilarious. Annoying, but hilarious nonetheless.)

If you've every wondered what glosse-white-on-matte-white chickenpox would looks like, now you know.

You're welcome.

And if you will ever need to touch-up your walls, now you won't forget to make sure the paints match.

You're double welcome.

Wow. I'm so glad we did every. single. room. instead of just my office. (Yeah, I'm really going to need that sarcasm font...)