Fall Beach Day

Happy Monday all! This weekend was our first full weekend where it actually felt like fall. The sun was warm but there was that very distinct cool breeze that you just know means its fall. It kind of has a crispness to it, and a scent. Anyone know what I mean? Or do I sound like I am losing my mind?

On Saturday the hubs and I took advantage of the cooler weather by getting some MAJOR work done on two outstanding projects: the DIY headboard and our Craigslist dining table and chairs. This was the first time I wasn't sweating gumbballs while doing work in the garage, so I was basically out there all day. By dinner time my entire body ached and I just felt old.

If you follow me in Instagram, you already got a sneak peak at the chalk paint dining table and chairs. I'm going to share more of the before and after later but in case you missed it...

This thing was a beast. Even though you don't have to prep for chalk paint, this needed lots of TLC. When I took this photo I still needed to wax everything, which is why the seats weren't attached yet. Stay tuned for the final product this week!

Another sneak peak, this time of the headboard... its coming along!

I am beyond excited to share the final product with you but I never got around to the nailhead trim this weekend so we'll all have to wait a couple days! If only we had a 3-day weekend!

Another highlight of our weekend was a Sunday morning trip to the beach on Isle of Palms. We brought Ruby with us and she had the absolute time of her life. No joke, the pup was loving it, which is funny because the last time we took her to the beach she wanted nothing to do with it. Her happiness was infectious and we all thoroughly enjoyed our hour-long walk. Here are a few snapshots...

 

 

 

Ruby isn't a big fan of the waves but the longer we were there, the more brave she got and she started running through the water. Right after I told the hubs how surprised I was that she wasn't that dirty, she took the liberty to roll in the sand near the walkway to the car. I totally jinxed it. Ugh!

I hope you all had a fantastic weekend like we did! P.S. Can you even believe tomorrow is OCTOBER?!

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Another dose of Friday Favorites!

Happy Friday all! This week went by so fast, the hubs and I didn't really do much, which was exactly what we needed! Do you ever have one of those weeks? We're looking forward to the weekend though, which will include lots of DIY-ing (headboard, dining table and chairs, finish decorating outside with a few Halloween touches, etc!) as well as the obligatory pumpkin beer drinking. I'm also on the hunt for the ingredients for my favorite cocktail.. Liquid Apple Pie! You'll hear more about that soon!

I'm linking up against with Christina and Darci for Five on Friday.. so here goes!

ONE: More garland, of course!

{Via}

So I have seen this garland a lot on Little Baby Garvin and I have been hoping to get my hands on it since last Christmas, so what did I do when I saw it this week? Buy it in both colors with a 10% off coupon. Hells yes. You know I have a problem when it comes to garland. I love both colors though because you can use them for decorating during other times of the year, like Valentine's Day!

TWO: Dunkin Donuts Pumpkin Coffee K-Cups

Ummmm these are amazeballs. The hubs picked them up yesterday for me and I couldn't wait to try them this morning. I usually just put some pumpkin spice in my vanilla coffee if I can't make a trip to Starbucks, but these are a better at-home option!

THREE: Speaking of pumpkin coffee.. Pumpkin coffee desserts?

Cupcakes | Pound Cake

Have you seen these recipes on Pinterest? I think making one of these might be on the agenda this weekend, I am really curious to see if they are as good as they sound!

FOUR: Chalk Paint Monogram Pumpkin

I painted this pumpkin this week for our outside decor with some of my leftover "Old White" Chalk Paint. I'm loving it and it was so easy! I did one coat of paint and then made a stencil of the M to trace and paint. Done!

FIVE: Furball play date

This is Ruby's "please don't make me go outside" look. She was being super lazy after we had a friend and her pup over yesterday. Her doggie friend didn't really run around with her too much, but Ruby took the liberty to sprint multiple time in giant circles and run enough for the both of them.

That's all that happened here this week folks! I hope you all have a great weekend and enjoy this cooler weather! :)

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DIY Halloween Pillows

Get ready for some more Fall goodness today! If you remember this post, I mentioned that stenciled Halloween pillows were on my project list this year. I like to share these kinds of projects because I'm clearly a beginner at them (did you see the floppy pillow I made here?!) and I think there are a lot of others out there who are new to this. So basically I'm your guinea pig :)

Being the overachiever that I am, I couldn't just leave it at a stenciled Halloween silhouette on an easy envelope pillow. I had to take it a few steps further with the felt and a zipper. Why the zipper? Because I want to use the pillow forms for other holiday pillows later!

We're in desperate need of new living room pillows, so until I get around to making or buying those, we'll actually be using these Halloween pillows on the couch. To make them softer, I decided to make these pillows out of duck cloth instead of burlap and to use felt instead of paint. Little did I know what my borrowed sewing machine had in order for me! 

As always, I urge you to have a glass of wine on hand for projects like this. Especially if your sewing machine is out to get you and keeps jamming. Needless to say, there were lots of swear words said during this process. And if you're like me and a total nerd music lover, you put the Rat Pack station on Pandora and get to sewing. I feel like old school John Mayer would be good for this project too.

Anyways, these pillows are not perfect but by the time I made the 2nd one I was getting pretty quick with it and the zipper definitely looked better. I used tutorials from Less Than Perfect Life of Bliss and Casa Brasi, both of which were a huge help for making the zippered pillows and honestly have much better tutorials than I'm about to share! I followed the advice from Casa Brasi in cutting my fabric the same size as my pillow form so it wouldn't look as floppy as my "Happy Fall" pillow.

What you will need:

Cost Breakdown:
1 1/2 yards of Natural Duck Cloth: $9 (With 40% off coupon from Hobby Lobby)
Felt: 50 cents for two at Hobby Lobby
16" zipper: $1.20 each (With 40% off coupon on Joann's)
Hem Tape (optional): $1.80 (With 40% off coupon on Joann's)
Scissors, Straight Pins, and Measuring Tape: Owned

Total:  $14.90 for 3 zippered pillows

Note: 1 1/2 yards of fabric makes three 18x18 pillows so you can get less fabric if you want!

I started by cutting my duck cloth to 18 inches, which I mentioned earlier is the same size as my pillow form. It was cheap so it isn't the most fluffy pillow and this worked better than when I used the 19 inch fabric for the Fall pillow.

Next I searched Google for a free silhouette that I liked and enlarged it in Word. I would recommend searching for pumpkin carving templates because there are a lot of free ones available and they are easy to use for this project! If you have cardstock paper, its best to print your image on that, but I didn't have any this time around. You can either pin it to the felt like I showed you at the bottom of this post or trace it with chalk paper. For the "Boo" pillow, I just cut that randomly without any stencil.

This next step is optional, but I used hem tape to make sure that the felt was really secure. I just followed the instructions on the hem tape package and if you haven't used this before, its really easy! I used it to hem our living room curtains before I had access to a sewing machine and they are holding up great!

I may have overdid it on the hem tape, but better safe than sorry!

Next you're going to stitch the felt onto the front piece of the pillow. I used a basic stitch and just followed along the edge of the felt. Take your time with this step, especially if you have a stencil like mine where you have to turn the fabric a lot.

Remember to take a few sips of your wine too...

Now you'll finally be making your pillow! Using the tutorials from Casi Brasi and Less Than Perfect Life of Bliss (which have much better pictures and instructions than me!), I started with the zipper.  Face the right sides of your pillows toward each other, then lay the opened zipper face down on the front piece of your pillow and pin it in place.

Using a basic stitch, sew down as closely to the teeth of the zipper as you can. I used a zipper foot for one pillow and the regular presser foot for the other pillow and it didn't seem to make much of a difference for me. Maybe if I wasn't 2 glasses of wine down at this point it would have... ha! Make sure to back stitch at the beginning and end.

You can see the zipper pull is behind the presser foot where I've already sewed. I had it in front until it got in the way. To move it without messing up the stitch, I kept the needle lowered, lifted the presser foot, and moved the zipper to where I needed it, then lowered the presser foot again before sewing.

Once the first side of the zipper is stitched into place, place the back side of the pillow directly on top and pin the zipper in place. This was definitely the trickiest part of the zipper. Also, make sure to keep the zipper open.

Now stitch this side of the zipper into place.

Once both sides of the zipper are sewn, make sure it works! Keep the pillow inside out and sew the remaining 3 sides of the pillow with about a 1/2 inch seam allowance.

For the final corners on the zippered side, keep the pillow inside out and measure about 2 inches  from the end of your pillow directly below the zipper. Sew from the edge of the fabric to the 2 inch mark, making sure to sew back and forth a few times since this area will get a lot of use.

This is how mine looked. Kind of a hot mess, right? Well its secure and no one will see the inside so I didn't really care at the time. ha! And yes I used black thread... I was too lazy to change the bobbin and you can't see the thread once the pillow is complete anyway.

Finally, cut the corners of your pillow to get rid of the bulk.

Flip your pillow to right side out.. you're almost done! At this point I ironed my pillows but it might not be necessary for everyone.

 Then stuff your pillows and admire your work!

What my zipper looks like.. not terrible at least! ha!

So what do you think? Not too shabby, right? If you don't have a sewing machine, borrow one from your mom or grandma and give this project a try!
 

My plan is to make some orange chevron pillows too so I'll share what they look like our on couch with the rest of our Halloween decor!

Oh and by the way, there are only 5 days until October! How the heck did this month go so fast?!

Linking up with The Lettered Cottage, The Shabby Creek Cottage, and 52 Mantels!

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Fall Mantel & Felt Foliage Garland

Now that it's officially Fall I thought I'd finally share some of the spaces in our house that I've been decking out in Fall colors! First up on the Fall house tour: our fireplace mantel.

I'm such a traditionalist when it comes to decorating for the holidays, so it's hard for me break from the pretty Fall colors and natural accents. You'll notice I'm the same way with Christmas decorations in a couple months! Also, in case you're new here, I'm waiting on Santa for my big girl camera so I have to work with crappy morning lighting and iPhone pictures for now!

Ruby's toys photobombed this pic! ha!

When we were looking for a house to rent, I was really pulling for something with a fireplace so that I could have a mantel to decorate for the holidays. It makes it feel more like home to me. My husband didn't really get it at first, but now he feels the same way. At least he says he does... in which case I've trained him well.

Of course I had to have a monogram... this one was purchased from Life's a Stitch on Etsy. You can't really tell in these photos but the monogram came cracked in the middle of the M. Luckily the tape held this one together long enough for me to hang it and take some photos until the replacement comes!

The candlesticks are from Ikea and were already a part of our mantel decor. The battery operated candles are from Hobby Lobby and the orange vase is from TJ Maxx. I already had the branches in a different arrangement, so I just re-purposed them in the vase.

After sharing this Halloween bunting tutorial and tissue paper garland, I'm sure you can all tell by now that I love bunting or basically any kind of garland. I've seen a lot of adorable felt foliage garlands popping up on Etsy and considering felt is so cheap, I thought I could make it myself. See the end of this post for details on how I made it!

This basket is from Target. We keep a couple blankets in there as well as our Pittsburgh Steelers Terrible Towel. We've been throwing that one at the TV a lot lately...

This pillow is my first attempt at making a pillow since that same 7th grade home economics class I mentioned here. By no means is this pillow perfect, which is why I didn't do a tutorial. I was too lazy to change the bobbin so I handstitched the felt leaves on. Its acceptable enough for the fireplace decor as long as you don't look too close...

All in all, just adding a few fall touches to the fireplace cost me about $25, including the pumpkins. I didn't count the monogram since I'll be using that for other holiday decor...I think it would look perfect in the center of a Christmas wreath with a big plaid bow!

I mentioned earlier that I'm pretty new to the sewing machine and I actually couldn't find a good tutorial on how to make the felt foliage garland so I just had to wing it! This is a classic case of do as a say, not as I do :)

I bought 2 pieces of felt per color, each at 34 cents (plus a 15% off coupon) and since I only used one piece of felt per color this ended up costing me a little over $1! I googled "fall leaves" and found a free printable with various leaf shapes so I pinned those onto the felt and started cutting. That was probably the most annoying part of this project!

After your leaves are cut, pick a neutral color of thread and start sewing! I used a standard stitch (not even sure if that is the right wording.. see how new I am at this? ha!) and backstitched on the first and last leaves to keep the thread in place.

The major lesson I learned doing this without a tutorial was to stitch towards the top of your leaves. I sewed in the middle and because some of the leaves are top heavy, they flip over even though I wanted them facing the other way. I also wasn't entirely consistent with the space in between each leaf so just keep that in mind. Other than that, its super simple and cheap which is perfect in my book!

If you're new to Home Sweet Ruby, don't forget to check out my 5 favorite Fall DIY projects and my $16 Fall wreath!

Anyone else decorating with the traditional Fall colors or are you mixing it up a bit?!

Linking up with Thrifty Decor Chick

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Weekend Snapshots

I hope you all had a great first weekend of Fall!

This weekend my family headed home so its been very quiet here. After they left, a nap was in order, and then the hubs and I got to work on some of the 54356 projects I've got going on simultaneously. Maybe I should finish one of them so I can finally show you all... there's a thought!

This weekend we spent some time by the water at Shem Creek, its so gorgeous there! I love watching all of the boats come in and the dolphins swimming by their sides!

On Saturday we went to the farmer's market and then headed off to a few oh so cute antique stores. I probably could have spent another hour in the store on the left, there were so many rooms packed with so many unique items. I picked up some more chalk paint since I need more for our dining table, which will hopefully be done this week!

I also picked up a J. Crew Factory skirt and sweater with 40% off plus another 20% off. Score!

Finally, a sneak peak at our Halloween decor project we're working on. Thanks to my Dad for trusting us to use his jigsaw... surprisingly nothing broke! Maybe we are finally getting the hang of this DIY thing...

And if you follow me on Instagram, you saw that I finally got my hands on some real pumpkins.

Y'all are probably happy about that so I'll finally stop talking about it.. haha! But look how pretty the colors are!!

Stay tuned for some of our fall decor on the blog tomorrow! Also many of you are excited like I am about our DIY headboard, I will definitely share a tutorial and all the details ASAP! Thank you times a million for all of the sweet and encouraging comments :) 

Did any of you do some good Fall clothing shopping this weekend or add some more fall decor to your house? When is it acceptable to bust out the Halloween decor? I've been holding off until October 1st for Hocus Pocus!

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Five on Friday!

Hello Friday :) As usual I'm linking up with the fabulous ladies of Carolina Charm and The Good Life for another Five on Friday!

Normally I would be excited for another weekend but this week it just means our visitors are heading home and it will be quiet around here again. Well, it won't be quiet because we have about a million things on our to-do list and lots coming up the next 2 weeks on the blog! I'm so sad my family is leaving but looking forward to seeing them for Thanksgiving in T minus 2 months or so. Yay!

Speaking of how fast the time is going...

ONE: Less than 100 days until Christmas

I'm trying not to get ahead of myself because we have lots of fun planned for this Fall, but I saw this the other day and got so excited about the holidays!

TWO: Pumpkin spice pancakes

This week I made breakfast for my parents using this recipe. It was SO yummy, especially topped with cool whip and cinnamon! I used pumpkin pie spice and cinnamon instead of the other spices and would probably double the recipe for more than 3 people but it was so.darn.good.

THREE: DIY headboard progress 

Here is a sneak peak at the shape we are making our headboard! I'm so excited to share how it turns out so keep an eye out for the full tutorial and master bedroom progress! You can see my fabric choices in the photo too. The grey will be the headboard and I can't decide if I want the geometric print for the euro pillows or the floral. Whichever I don't use for the euro shams will be used for a throw pillow. What do you think?

FOUR: Fall decor complete!

I'm finally done putting the finishing touches in our fall decor, although I still need some damn real pumpkins! Our pumpkin patches don't open until October so I guess I'll have to keep my pants on until then. Boo. All of the fall details around our house will be on the blog next week!

FIVE: Target Halloween decor

We're thinking of having a Halloween party and let me tell you Target has some really cute decor and food serving items on the cheap! I'm talking nice platters, skeleton arm food servers, cheap skull decor, and creepy baking supplies. I'm totally adding candy eyeballs to my Halloween cupcakes this year. 

Thanks for sticking around this week while I was busy entertaining family and being a tourist with them! It was weird only posting 3 times, I'm loving this blogosphere and my wonderful readers! I hope you all have a great weekend! Xoxo

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