Here’s Mum sewing a pillow closed for me, with a smashing hot pink manicure.

Here’s Mum beautifully side-lit while she continues to sew a pillow closed for me.

And here are the finished products, that I swear I worked on, too.

See? I’m holding them. Proof that I contributed. I did.

And here’s Mum holding the baby whose room the pillows are now in.

Here’s Evelynne laughing at the joke she just told Mum.

Here’s me holding Evy (my niece) whose room the pillows are now in. Aren’t babies fun? Evy’s going to love her Aunt Amy.

(She has lots of this to look forward to.)

Oh! And the pillows. I think they turned out pretty fun, too. For the small one, I cut the front off a favorite tee I ruined with a snag. And for the petal pillow, I followed this tutorial from Cluck. Cluck. Sew.

That’s my story and I’m stickin’ to it.

As my husband and I were prepping for our move, I asked around for travel advice. One of the sweetest ideas I gathered was to pack little things from home for our new apartment. I took it literally, and brought little things from home. Here’s what made the cut:

Original art from some kiddos at our church. A pretty rockin’ portrait there on the right, if you ask me.

Beloved vintage apron. To guard against splatters during all the cooking I’m going to do. Because Prague is magical… you lose weight easily, you become the perfect housekeeper, you drop your procrastination habit….

Button magnets. If only they could decode the oven dial pictures for me.

Handmade flower cozy. So that every week I can look like a dork at a street-side flower market buying one flower at a time. (I don’t think people here do that.)

And my tiny art. To complement our tiny apartment. Actually, I’m pretty proud of how perfectly it matches our red front door and red closet doors. So stylish.

So far, our apartment is indeed so stylish, and we’ve only been here a week, that I’m not homesick to the point of lying on the floor below the oven pouting, staring up at my magnets, and longing for home. That probably won’t happen till next week.

Interestingly, the most frequent visitor was (and still is) my cat, Heidi.

But wait, I digress. Back to the blue birdbath. It’s color made me want MORE dark marine blue in my yard. So I painted a neat old wrought iron table I found in an antique garden shop that was painted a bland white and showing it’s years. I love the way it provides a contrast to my brown patio chairs.

Then I painted a piece of garden art – a hoop with a bird perched on it, only painting the bird. I have a lot of pink and white flowers so the blue accents compliment the flowers (and weeds) quite nicely.

Maybe your accent color will be purple or yellow or orange! Paint a flower pot or a watering can. Once my husband even painted a long-handled lug wrench and stuck it in the ground.

(Note from Amy: I’m pretty sure you can’t go overboard with this one, Mom. Need more cobalt! And Dad’s lug wrench is pretty cute… particularly because only a man could turn a car tool into yard art. I’m pretty sure it’s his version of a yard art flower.)

Wait. That’s not going to work.

In your mind’s eye, picture a wall. It has a door, or window, or light switch at one end. Now hang some art on it. Where’d you put it?

If you hung it in the middle, prepare to be un-borified*.

I’ve recently discovered the joy of hanging art on unexpected wall space, like my in-a-line arrangement where I lined five pieces up along the corner of a wall.

I have my friend, Kim, to blame. She has masterfully decorated wall space the rest of us would overlook. Namely, Kim has perfected light switch candy. (Though I take credit for coining the term. I’m sure it will make waves in the interior design world.)

She has also perfected framing the most adorable piece of an Anthropologie bag as art. Looove it! (And the adorable pic of her and her man, taken right after Kim’s skydiving adventure.)

And I have tried to mimic her by hanging a hot air balloon print above a light switch on an otherwise bare wall. I rather love the asymmetry of it.

You should try it, too… with that art you don’t think you have anywhere to hang, and that little section by the light switch you’ve never seen as a possible spot for a nail and some art. Let me know how it goes.

(*The process of becoming un-boring. ~Amy’s English Standard Made-up Words Dictionary)

Remodelaholic is a great compilation of DIY ideas, and one of my favorite places to get inspiration. Here are three of my recent fav’s (click the photos to go to the full post):

Jewelry box makeover, by Charity’s at All Things Beautiful

Patterned animal trophy, by Autumn at Design*Dump

DIY reupholstered chair, by Autumn at The Fickle Hobbyist

Cool stuff, eh? Thanks, Cassity, for creating Inspiration Station.

Case in point: world’s biggest moustache pillow in the Fuzzy Ink booth at the Renegade Craft Fair.

So when I came across The Count of Luxembourg it was love at first sight. A moustache AND a sword?! For a dollar?? Even the husband agreed he should come home with us.I propped him on a nightstand until I found a proper home, which required some work.

If found these plastic lattice panels at Goodwill for $6.99.

A coat of teal spray paint, and they were worthy of The Count’s company.

I present you…

…the latest addition to our remodeled half-bath.

The Count and his royal plastic lattice, perfectly situated for all our guests to esteem… from the toilet.

We think he looks great anywhere.

First there was the quad-burning curtain rod install.

And the drill bit I got stuck in the wall.

Then there was my magic act of turning one piece of fabric into two (cutting it), then turning it back into one (sewing it right back together). Sewing straight lines is easy. Measuring is mind boggling.

At least I had my “Concentrating” face on.

It’s very akin to my “Stop sketching so we can go eat dinner” face. I perfected that one on the husband when we were in England.

All worth it had this:

…turned out better than this:

Puny, flimsy curtains. Great fabric (recognize it?); stupid curtains.

They don’t have much weight because I just used a light-weight quilting cotton, plus I was too lazy to line them. So I don’t like the way they hang.

And the ones above the sink look cuntry (I’m picky about curtains and pretty much only like to-the-floor panels). And they’re narrow (full would look better), because I only had so much fabric. Stupid curtains.

Next time, Mom, will you make them for me?

Here’s da rules:

• Don’t spend more than $2 per person.
• Buy something for everyone.
• Wrap them haphazardly (which took training… I really wanted to put everything in nice neat boxes with decorative bows).
• Jam them in the appropriate stockings when no one is looking.

Then on Christmas morning we take turns opening our two-dollar treasures, and trying to guess who they’re from.

Well, this one was easy. Last Christmas the aforementioned super-swell husband gave me the world’s tiniest canvases, and I knew right away they were from him. Okay, actually, I can’t remember if I guessed him right away. I may have guessed my sister-in-law. But the canvases were from my husband because he’s swell. They’re so tiny, I just want to pinch them and hug them and love them and keep them forever. So cute! Now what the heck do you do with two-inch canvases?

I saw this design on the tag of a shirt and thought it would make perfect tiny art. So during a painting date with my painting buddy, Naomi, I daintily brushed on the flowers.

Then I created a background to pull them all together by wrapping fabric around cardboard from a box of Honey Bunches of Oats (Love that stuff. With almonds.).

Then I just hot-glued the little suckers straight to the background.

I used plain straight pins to tack the whole thing to the wall above our trusty key hooks (using my trusty girl-hammer).

Something sweet and small like this would also be great above a light switch, but since that’s my new favorite place to hang things, I’ve pretty much used up all that real estate around here.

For a while now, I’ve needed more space on my walls surrounding my desk for notes, inspirations, and photos that have been piled up for ages. I had a lovely Decoder Ring print hanging in the space above my desk since I moved into my house, but I recently acquired a much-needed drafting lamp that covered about half of the print, so it officially became time to move the artwork and create a practical, yet visually appealing version of a bulletin board. Corkboards are great, but I wanted something that would add a bit of color and would fit well into the wall space left by my monstrous lamp.

I decided to create a series of panels out of paper that would allow me to attach items to it via paperclips.

Here’s what you’ll need:

1. Thick paper (watercolor or cardstock)

2. Watercolors, paints, markers, etc (optional)

3. Exacto knife and cutting board (optional)

4. Flat push pins

5. Jumbo paper clips

6. Your photos, notes, postcards, magazine clippings, etc – whatever you need to post on your wall!

First, I painted a plaid pattern with watercolors. I knew I was going to cut the paper into strips, and most of the paper would be hidden with my notes and pictures, so I didn’t worry too much about what it looked like. I just wanted pops of color. You could also buy colored cardstock or color thick paper with markers or map pencils – it’s completely up to you!

After the paper dried, cut the paper lengthwise into 8 strips. I made 4 rows on my wall connecting 2 strips to give it a bit more length.

I bought flat, white pushpins to mount it to the wall. I also found some jumbo paper clips at the grocery store (these were seriously the biggest paper clips I’ve ever seen!). I thought the oversized clips added a bit of visual interest up close, and are so thin that they almost go unnoticed from a distance. They also don’t seem to bend the photos (or put holes in them like those pesky push pins!). I also used an exacto knife to cut some of my clippings, because I can never cut straight with the scissors.

I then hung my photos, magazine clippings and (in my case) some vintage typography to the paper panels. I liked that the vintage type clippings added some consistency to the “bulletin board” so it didn’t look like an overwhelming mish mash of unrelated items. This is just a suggestion, and I say make it as mish-mashed as you like.

The final product created a clothesline effect on the wall. I think it works well with the space, and finally gives me a place to display important items that were piled up on my desk. The pictures and papers are also easy to change out, adding to the functionality. Hooray for an organizational victory!

Okay, there’s a tiny bit more to it. It’s helpful, and more fun, if you pick a color scheme to work around. Yellow and gray are a personal fave. Of course, seeing it again long after the “install” for my client, I’d love if that yellow bowl were full of gray feather balls. And I’d have kept my eyes peeled for another small gray vase to round out the collection. But you get the idea. Total spent: about four Starbucks coffees ($15.16… and that includes tax).

I also whipped up the table runner using complicated, professional tools: scissors, fusible tape, and an iron. It was hard work.

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45 minutes later

I thought the feather ball reference up there deserved a link, but evidently decorative feather balls are hard to come by. (Tho easy to make, I’m quite sure. I smell a craft day.)

But 45 (very productive) minutes of searching for decorative feather balls was enough courting for me to declare my new love: decorative balls. So here, for my pleasure more than yours, probably, is a decorative ball round-up (with links to sources below).

Mini Wood-Peel Balls

Ornate Yellow Balls

Assorted Natural Balls

Bronze Metallic Ball

Pine-Coney Balls

Silver Metallic Balls

Stone Ball

DIY Twine Balls