love my couch

It is true. We now actually own a piece of furniture to sit on!! Goodbye beach chairs, I shall not miss you one little bit. Ahhh to be able to put your feet up on something more than cardboard. Life is good. 

Here is our couch: his name is Kivik. & this is our coffee table Lack (not our names, thank Ikea).

step 1: hold your breath while 2 very sweet guys brought in some SUPER LARGE boxes. so so SO close to touching the walls. [apartment living - & paying deposits -  has made me overly paranoid about wall scratches & marks]

kivik & lack - in box

 step 2: assembly

my chaise!!

heck yes I assembled that much all by myself!! but then it got a bit hairy so I waited until some back up came home from work…

reinforcement

notice that horrible interesting playoff beard. yeah that puppy is GONE!! I am quite thankful. he looked handsome with a beard, but I prefer him with just a little scruff, not a forest of it. we decided there are 2 times a year (totally 4 months) that a beard is allowed: May & June (hockey playoffs) & November & December (winter). 

Oh yeah, the cats were a big help too:

.... it is best not to ask

cushion durability tester

But after a few creative interpretations about what the heck Ikea was trying to tell us in the pictures….

step 3: a living room!!

step 4: enjoy it

                                                              

my boys

Ben’s face is priceless. But that is sort of how we felt. Needless to say, we have spent an awful lot of time on mister Kivik since we entered our lives thanks to an extra long weekend. 

& that chaise. oh how I love MY chaise. 

&& I plan on making some giant cuddly pillows with this stripe blue Ikea fabric I bought. But that will have to wait until the sewing machine arrives, which should be Thursday. So now it is off to find some blogs to teach me how to make a pillow cover/ pillow case. Hmmm, where to go first?

&&& I started applying for jobs today. I had forgotten how much of a pain filling out online applications are. I miss the days of just bringing people a resume & letting them judge you based on that. Hopefully I will not need to fill out too many of those.

have become an Amazonian.

Back a few post ago, I mentioned that I would review the mattress we purchased from Amazon. So thar she blows (we went & saw the newest pirates movie- I heart Johnny Depp):

It is no secret that sleeping on an air mattress is not the most amazing sleep experience a person can have. How you judge how much worse sleeping on an air mattress is is a direct comparison to your base (the mattress you sleep on every night) – at least that is how I see it. The problem is that when we were living in Knoxville, we had a EXTREMELY AWESOME mattress. We purchased it at Brother’s Bedding. If you live anywhere near Knoxville & want an amazing mattress, that is the place to go. 100%. Save yourself the time of going to big stores who claim fancy smancy deals – trust me, we went their first. 

The problem is, we no longer live in Knoxville & were not in the market to haul our wonderful bed 1000 miles. (Some of us…. me…. did debate it though). Again, we really really did not want to go to a mattress store. (They are like the car dealerships of beds.) So first, we went to Ikea. Some people rave about the mattresses there, but I thought there were a bit flimsy. Not to say they are bad. It just was not what we really wanted. For about the same price, we were hoping to get a bit…. more. 

Leave it to Ben to find us a mattress on Amazon. The boy buys EVERYTHING on Amazon & I must say I have caught the bug. WOAH buddy they have everything!! Including mattresses. I will admit I was mondo nervous about getting a mattress I have never ever laid on. Paranoid like what the heck are we going to do with this sucker if we hate it sorta dealie. 

But I sucked it up & we decided to just get it & see what happens.This is what we ended up getting:  Queen 12″ thick memory foam mattress from Dynasty Mattress for $529.00 with free shipping!! Added bonus: no need for a box spring!! woooo

After sleeping on it for about a week now I must say, I am happy with it. Probably a bit more than happy. It seriously is just a slab of memory foam, but it provides just the right amount of support but still has the “eating you” feeling. It is sort of wonderful how that works. I am still in awe we bought a mattress without ever sitting on it — & we like it!!

If Brother’s Bedding was a 5 star mattress I would give this one *****. As long as it holds up as well as the other one, we should be very happy campers for the next 10 years. 

But thank god we are NOT camping, because then we would probably be on that blasted air mattress. 

be full of craft

I know I said my next couple of posts would be moving/Austin related. But let us be honest here for a second. No one really wants to read post after post about that. Yeah, I will get to them in time, but today I was so over moving it is not one little bit funny.

For starters, our alarm system is possessed. I am not sure if I hit a button on it moving things or if it truly just has a mind of it’s own or what. But when I left to go get the mail all was well & good. When I opened the door to come back inside it was as if I had done the worst crime in the history of the universe & every living being on the face of the Earth needed to hear about it. I am not even slightly exaggerating the extent of noise that little evil box was making. I had a headache before that happened. After, I felt as if I might slip into a coma of pain (ie- a migraine). How I got that stupid thing to shut up will forever be a mystery because I was pressing every button on the thing in a very random & sporadic motion.

So I called Ben asking if he knew where the manual to the thing was. Somehow that has disappeared from existence – of course. I also warned him when he came home that it might go off again.

Would you believe it if I told you that thing did not make a single beep when Ben came in? As in before everything became all alarming (bahaha I love terrible puns) it use to make a little beep beep when any of the doors were opened. I really liked that because you cannot see the front door from upstairs so I could hear Ben & others come in before they got to a point where I could actually see them. Plus is seemed like an awesome security feature. Sure maybe 2 little beeps will not stop a robber, but maybe it would make them change their mind. Whatever. It no longer does that, it makes me sad, but if I never have to hear it exploding with sound I will be a happy camper.

Now on to the good stuff…

I must send out a giant thank you to Midwestern Sewing Girl (blog post: {another} fabric flower tutorial) & Creation Corner (blog post: pointed flower tutorial). They are the genius behind what you are about to see. I have been reading Creation Corner for awhile now, but Midwestern was new to me- consider yourself officially google reader-ed!!

So remember when I said I was going to have some embroidered work shirts that I wanted to convert into shirts I could actually wear all the time (since I am no longer employed at my previous job due to moving)? Well, I actually did!!

gray work shirt

gray shirt i can actually wear!!

had that button just laying around, i love it

It took a bit of fanagling to get the flower just right so it would cover up all the white in the symbol, but I thought it turned out awesome!! I have never been huge on flowers. They always seemed far too girlie & young (people ALWAYS say how young I look or guess my age to be about 5 years younger than I am). That being said, I really love how this came out. Not to mention the gray material does not really even match the shirt & was just an old t-shirt I was going to throw away.

I was so impressed with that one I tried another:

blue work shirt

omg did I just make that?!

white flowers made from another work shirt

The material of the white flowers was a little bit more rigid than the extra gray fabric from the other one. I think it worked MUCH better. As you can see the texture makes it look very different. So I guess it would depend on what you were going for, but my preference is the thicker stuff.

& a close up - because I love that pointed flower

I had the idea to use the bottom cuff (hem?) of the shirt to make the inside of that pointed flower. It was a huge pain in the butt to roll it up making sure I stitched every once & awhile so it would not come apart, but I LOVE how it looks.

I am VERY proud of myself. If I actually start wearing them (which I should because they are awesome) I will be even more proud.

My success was probably due to my awesome helper:

Cid boy

Also, his ability to maintain composure in stressful situations:

very serious

He found that paint brush & loved it dearly so I did not have the heart to take it away. He is good practice for having children. The big old pain in the butt : )

But seriously, if I could make those & have them turn out like that, anyone can. YOU should try!!