Loving this

I just love the ideas on Better Homes and Gardens Site. Tutorial here

P.S. You still have time to enter the giveaway

New Shower Curtain

Remember this photo?

Just in case you didn't read the wordy post from yesterday some repeat photos :) .....

I started cutting out circles by hand and then decided to speed things up and bought this.

Had Brett fix my already cut circles while adding the steam-a-seam

Then we, mainly Brett, cut out the rest. I just laid the fabric on top of the square adhesive sheets and cut them both out at the same time.

We did various sized circles with 5 different fabrics. I laid the shower curtain out flat on the living room floor and flung the circles like frisbees hoping for a random layout. I liked how it looked so I pined them in place and then got to work attaching them to the curtain. First with the iron (for the steam-a-seam) then with the embroidery floss.

I love it and so does Colin. Brett is a little concerned about the goldfish named Robert looking at him while he uses the facility :)

Painting Problems

First off let me apologize for the pictures and the wordy post. The lighting in the bathroom is terrible (there is no natural light at all). Not only does this make for awful pictures but it is frustrating to paint.

The paint color never ends up being what you think it will. This will be the third paint job in this bathroom since we bought the house 5 years ago. The first time we painted it I was hoping for a whitewash with a hint of blue. It ended up being to blue for me (see above photo-paint is inside the fixture) and we repainted it when I got a new shower curtain. The green that was on the wall did not go with the Gold Fish shower curtain at all. We picked out a "whitewash" earth brown/grey/blue paint that we thought looked good in the bathroom lighting (blueish color around fixture). I swear it was the exact blue color as the first time we painted it. How is that even possible?? It was an entirely different paint line.

Needless to say I was not very happy. We took the paint back to the store (third trip to Home Depot that day) and asked them to help me change the color. I was happy with the whitish color they got it to, but who knows what it would have looked like in the bathroom and Brett didn't want white. So he picked out another swatch. A dark brown/grey. Very pretty but a bit dark for the bathroom. We went with it, they added the other colors to our already mixed paint. I left HD with a mind full of wishful thinking and a belly full of doubt.

We put the new paint up, mainly Brett did, I was not feeling well. And then decided it was the lighting the was ruining the paint so we went in search of a new fixture and ended up with new light bulbs. They made a big difference in the paint color.

Do I love it??  I don't know yet but I do love it compared to the ice blue color :) Has it left me scared to repaint the kitchen? Yes.

Towel Rug

  I used only scraps I had including the super soft velour terry cloth. I didn't use steam-a-seam on here (big surprise, I know) I didn't want it to loose any of the softness. So I just stitched the circles down with an appliqué stitch and embroidery floss, I figure if it doesn't hold up I will sew it with the machine. I got the idea from this book...

Brett got it for me for Valentines Day. Well I wanted it and didn't want to feel guilty about it so I told him he got it for me :) I was ordering other stuff from Amazon so I figured I may as well get with the free shipping. I got it without ever seeing it in person. There are some great ideas in it but I was hoping for more tips on how to clean vintage fabrics so you could reuse them.

The books Towel Rug: it used a towel for the entire backside. I decided since my piece of towel was new and super soft I would just put trim around it to finish it off.

(I hope it's okay I showed the picture from the book)

I have yet to but it in the bathroom as we are still waiting for the paint to dry. For now Colin is enjoying it as a play mat.