My first attempt at sewing pillows with zippers!

Recently, I created an addition to my living room decor.  I made a few decorative pillows for the couches.  I've made several pillows before for my classroom, but I just stitched the hole closed.  I wanted these to be nicer, so I bought invisible zippers at Hobby Lobby.  After watching a quick tutorial online, I was ready to go.  Here's how I made my pillow covers with zippers.

First, Check the measurements of the pillow insert.  Mine was 14 x 28.  You'll want to buy zippers as close to your measurement as possible.  

Measure 1 inch past the pillow insert measurements.  I measured 15 x 29.

Pin the zipper to the "good side" of your fabric.

Next, you'll need to put your zipper foot on.  It's the one that has a skinnier foot.

Get the needle as close to the zipper as possible without actually sewing on top of the zipper.  I made that mistake, and pulling out stitches is not fun.

When going over the hardware, I kinda pulled it back to get the stitches as close as I could.

Next, pin the other side (good side) to the fabric, and repeat the above steps.  You should get this result.

Unzip the zipper, and then finish stitching up the other three sides.  It's important to unzip it first, because you will have no way to get inside it if you don't.  Insert your pillow insert, and you're done!  Here's my finished result:

They become so much more meaningful when you know you made them!

First projects in the new home - The Living Room

I've been so excited for weeks and weeks to put our first touches on our new house.  Since we decided on colors and ordered the fabric for the curtains, it was time to tackle the paint color.  When I did my design board, I thought I knew that I wanted a pale blue on the walls, it's a lot different when you actually see it ON the walls though.
We went with Home Depot for our Behr Paint.  They sell the little sample for like 2 bucks, so we got four colors to try.

The color Eric's working on there is the one I thought I wanted - the pale blue.  Only it looked more like white.  So we tried the next darker one we picked and Eric painted over the light color, but it still looked white, and I didn't want the dark colors, so we went back to Home Depot and got the next color - to the right of the big white strip.

I really thought that would be it, but the more we contemplated it, the more we decided it was still too light, and ended up going with the darkest of the five - go figure.  

We were waiting for my parents to come to paint, so while waiting, I redesigned my shelves.  I had been reading other blogs and watching DIY shows and kept seeing people decorating shelves with books without their jackets.  I have a TON of books with jackets, and never bothered to check to see the colors, when I did, I ended up taking ALL the jackets off of my books!  I had quite a few blues, reds, and grays, and they look so good on a shelf!  Here are a few of my favorites from the living room:

I also bought this cute blue mirror on sale at Target for like $5!  I also bought the three frames in the background for cheap.  You'll see how I used them.  Brinkley wanted to show how he matches with the theme as well. :)

Before painting the entire room, I really wanted to paint the fireplace white.  I always hated how it blended into the wall - I don't know what those builders were thinking.

Here's the before:

And here's the after:

Ahhh, So much better!   Now it was time to PAINT!!  Mom and Dad came in for the fourth of July weekend and helped us out.  We got the whole room done in about two hours.  The boys painted, and mom and I sewed the curtains.  We also spray painted my vintage dresser mirror and the three white frames red.  It was a lot of fun, and here is the finished product:

I love this mirror!

I used fabric from the curtains and pillows in the frames.

Next up for this room:  

1. Hang the TV on the wall.  It bothers me how there's so much empty space above it.

2. Build a cubby storage bench to add extra seating below the three red frames.

It is now two weeks into the summer of my third year of teaching, and and I'm filling each day with curriculum writing.  The good thing is I get to work from home, in my PJs, and I get paid for it! WooHoo!
But in my down time, when I just need a break, I've been searcing the internet for design elements and making design boards  for each room in our house - Eric's so excited (all he sees when he looks at them are dollar signs).  I promised him I'd pace myself, and that this summer, I really wanted to get the living room and our bedroom done.  After lots of pleading, he gave in, and I began the search for the living room of my dreams - at a quarter of the price.
As I was searching, I decided that I needed two romantic bedside lamps for the bedroom first.

I found this at target for cheap:

I love it.  Eventually I want to get candlesticks that match.

For the living room, I decided I just didn't like the style we had.  These are the pictures we based our design around before:

We had a rug that matched and for a while I thought I'd take the green out of it and use that in the room, but I felt like I was settling.  It's too artsie fartsie for my style.  So I went on a search for curtain fabric at fabric.com, and decided to design the room around them.

This is a case in which the third try's a charm.  I found one I really thought I liked and designed a whole room around it, and when Eric saw it, he told me it looked like a kids room fabric.  I just liked the bright colors, but as I looked at it more, I realized he was right on the Richloom Cornwall Cadmium:

So, back to square one.  I knew I wanted red in the room since it's open to my red kitchen, but 

I LOVE blue rooms!   I went on a search for something that would coordinate with my kitchen, and found this Suzani Autumn/Natural.  I liked the pattern and decided it would work.

Eric really liked it, and I did too, but I felt like I was settling again, I still wanted blue, but wasn't sure if it would look good with red.  So I went on a search for red and blue rooms and found this:

I. LOVED. IT.  I began to search fabric.com for blue fabric, and finally found the one that speaks to me!

Dwell Studio Bella Porte Twilight:

With these fabrics for pillows:

Some Red Frames with fabric artwork:

A round red mirror on the coffee table with light blue woodwick on top:

My antique dresser mirror on the mantle painted red...here's what it looks like now:

I think I'll use a pale blue paint color on the walls to finish it off!!

I love it, and I can't wait to put it all together!!  I'm so glad I didn't settle!