Anniversary Creativity

My husband and I are coming up on our 2nd anniversary in October.  This year, I have been inspired by so many sentimental DIY art projects on Pinterest and I wanted to try my hand at one to give my special hubby on October 10th.  Well, that didn't work out.  I hid it under my side of the bed because I didn't have time to wrap it before he got home.  Of course, that was the first day he has ever looked under the bed.  I wasn't quick enough to distract him, so he found it, lifted it up, and asked "What is this?"  Can't surprise that boy for nothin', I swear.  BUT it did have the effect I wanted, so it all worked out. :)  Now I just need to figure out something else to do so that he can have a special surprise to open on our anniversary.

Anyways, here was my inspiration:

Source: Pinterest

Source: Pinterest

And this is my end result:

I love how it turned out.  I used a reading from our wedding called "Blessing of the Hands."  I absolutely love everything about that passage and thought it would be the perfect thing to use for this sentimental piece.

To do it, I typed out the whole passage in Microsoft Word line by line and copied and pasted it until it filled the whole page.  You don't want to have any line breaks that are common in most poems and readings.  Instead, you'll want to type everything out consecutively so it looks like run-on sentences.  I printed it out on some white cardstock I had lying around.  Then I used my heart craft punch to punch across the page in rows.  I lucked out because a lot of my favorite words ended up being in the center of the hearts, but you could always target your favorite words.  Then I took it away with Cozy.Cottage.Cute's tutorial, minus the grid she mentioned.  I just eyed the hearts and they ended up lining up nicely.  You could also use a ruler to keep it level and spaced perfectly if you don't have the grid. 

This was a fun and easy project that brings so much meaning to our home.  We haven't decided where we're going to hang it yet, but we know we want to showcase it in our bedroom.  It's the perfect reminder of one of the most important days of our lives and one of our favorite passages.

Your butt crack is showing

Please don't take offense to the title of today's post (and please don't look behind you to double check).  It has nothing to do with you.  It has to do with pillows.  No sew pillows, to be exact.  Today I decided to finally take on a no sew project.  A few things led to this:  First, Centsational Girl inspired me with her tutorial.  Second, I fell in love with the cloth napkins at Target.  Third, Pinterest reminded me of the tutorial.  Fourth, I needed a break from reading and writing papers for grad school. :)

Let's go back for a second.  My husband and I bought all dark brown furniture for our living room.  We thought it was a good idea at the time... You know, the dark color would hide stains (we have 3 nephews and 3 honorary nieces, so the baby stain potential is pretty large) and hide Bailey's fur (black fur does NOT work on light colored furniture).  When the brown furniture combined with our beige walls, I immediately got overwhelmed by a feeling of "blah."  We won't be painting our walls any time soon because they connect to our foyer (we have a catwalk type upstairs thing going on) and that would be a ridiculous project.  So the beige and brown combo are here to stay.  In order to bring some color to the room, we bought some fancy blue and brown pillows from Ross before we even moved in.  I like them, but don't LOVE them and sometimes I feel like they are too fancy for our style.  They have an elegant floral design on them and are made out of a shiny material.  This no sew tutorial gave me an opportunity to bring in some fun color on the cheap.

I'm not going to go through the tutorial because Centsational Girl does an excellent job, but I will show you my results.  Here's my final product (and yes, our couches look green at night.  It's the weirdest thing.  I promise they are chocolate brown.):

I absolutely love the patterns and the colors.  It's a similar blue to what we had, but on a cotton-based fabric instead of that shiny stuff.  And I like the addition of a playful yellow.

The one thing I'm not so sure about is the giant butt crack showing in the back:

Nobody likes a showing butt crack.

Centsational Girl warned everyone in her tutorial that the insert may pop out a bit in the back, depending on how big the insert is.  She recommended using a safety pin or two to secure it.  I'm not a big fan of that idea, simply because we are huge pillow users.  They're not just for show in this house.  We're always squishing them in some way or another, so I wouldn't want the cold hard safety pins to be up against anyone's face or skin.  My husband loves the pillows, which I am super excited about, so I need to find a way to make them work.  My crafty friend suggested using Velcro.  I may give that option a try to take care of the pesky problem or I may just put the crack against the couch and try my best to pretend it's not there. :) We will see!

Cost breakdown:
4 cloth napkins from Target (yellow) $9.99
4 cloth napkins from Target (blue) $9.99
Heat n Bond Hem Regular Strength from Hobby Lobby $1.99

All in all, I spent under $25.00 for 4 "new" pillows!  This is huge, considering one pillow is usually $10.00 minimum if you find a stinkin' great deal at Ross.  Most decorative pillows are much more.  So I'm feeling pretty good about it.

Hope everyone is having a great weekend!