It seems a little show off-y to have a tour of my own home, but really what are blogs for but to be show off-y? You’ve seen bits and pieces already: too many pictures of my kids’ room and my bathroom even! So why not show you the rest? I get a little annoyed when other sites have home tours and then all you get are photos of little vinettes. I tried to take pictures of the big picture, well really the small picture: our house is only about 900 square feet (85 sq meters). It will be changing in new and exciting ways soon, but for now it suits our little family of five quite well.

If you came over to my house, this is where you would come in–just to the right of the mantel. My dog would probably try to eat your feet (she is old and weird).

If you’d been playing in the mud before you came over, you’d probably have to sit down and take off your shoes.

Oops I got a little vignettey. Well, that’s what mantels are for anyway.  On ours are some doily cover rocks, fake grass, beautiful candles I was given, a bit of art, and my straw garland.

Hey, I am sitting on this couch right this very minute! Yes, we have two green couches in our living room. After the couch I bought in college hit the dust a few years back I went a little crazy on craigslist trying to find the perfect couch. Many months went by and finally I found that vinyl beauty (in the first picture of the post) for not too much. Two days later this lean, green mamajamma was listed for 50 bucks. I snatched it up. They not only delivered it, but threw in a matching chair (which is in the basement because seriously, we can’t have any more green furniture in here)!

Our living room opens up to the dining room slash library slash office slash play room.  No, actually every room is the playroom with three kids in a little house.

Most of our toys are stored in the credenza in the living room, but I also carved out a little play area under the windows in the dining room. The photo of Maya’s play room inspired this space.  Remember the rolling toy boxes I made a while back? This is where they live.

The dining room is also our art gallery, which at the moment is overflowing with end of the year school work. It is a little more edited in this shot. We converted the linen closet into a tiny office that you can see in this post. And the other door leads to our bedroom…

…which is very green.

We updated our kitchen a little this year and hot damn! I love it now. It needs a coat of paint, but it is still pretty.

That’s all! It’s not always so tidy, but we live in it for goodness sake! And we do live in every little bit of our house. And love it too. I hope you enjoyed the tour of our home!

When I am frustrated with a project, but not frustrated enough to pour a big glass of wine and watch some trashy tv, I make pillows. We have a lot of pillows. Tell me I am not the only one who does this. Do you turn to simple projects to make you feel better when you are failing miserably?

The fabric for the new ones are, from right to left: some ikea fabric left over from the crib bumper, plain old random blue fabric (some of which is half way to being shorts for my son), and this awesome drop cloth print by Jay McCarroll.

One more too, because that Wiksten tank I’m trying to fix is looking pretty Becky HomeEcy. This print is by Geninne who did a lovely line of organic fabric for Cloud 9.  I fell for it when Erin made this top (it seems the wiksten tank is haunting me).

Here is a little project to spring up your home.  I made this pillow in springy greens, but any colors would of course work. Ticking would look very nice, with the stripes going opposite ways. The pillow is based on a simple quilt square (does it have a name?) and comes together super fast.  Happy Spring!

color block pillow

materials:

• two squares of fabric slightly larger than your pillow
• square pillow form
• zipper slightly smaller than your pillow

directions:

1.  Cut your fabric 2 inches larger than your pillow. For example: my pillow was 13in square, so I cut my fabric into 15in squares.

2. Put the squares together, right sides facing. Using a straight edge, draw a line diagonally across the fabric. No one will see the line, so you can use a regular pencil or pen.

3. Sew 1/4in from the line. First sew on one side of the line, and then on the other. You will have two seams, one on each side of the line. This is shown more clearly in the photo below.

4. Cut directly on the line you drew.

5. Ta Da! You now have two squares. Open them up and press the seam to one side–the side with the darker colored fabric.

6. Now you have a choice. You can line the squares up, right sides facing, with the seams also alined like I did in the photo above. Or you can arrange it so the triangles are oriented differently on each side–the seams will not line up, but will make an X. Play around with it and see what you like. But unless you have a clear fiberglass couch no one is going to see both sides at once.

7. I am not going to explain how to do the zipper, because there is a good tutorial that does it already–Sewing 101: Zippered Throw Pillows. This is the method I use for putting zippers in pillows and it is dead easy. There are other ways that look a bit nicer, but this one is super fast and hard to screw up. I encourage you to try it if you haven’t used zippers before–you will succeed, I know it!

8. Try the pillow on your pillow form. It might need some taking in. I had to take mine off and sew it a bit smaller to make it fit. Hey look, you’re done! And you made a super chic, color block, geometric, trendy as all get out pillow. Your couch will thank you.

That last potholder grew out of a need for mindfulness in my life. This one, on the other hand, was sewn out of jealously. If you follow the lovely Kayanna on instagram (@junecraft) you already know about the amazing quilt she’s making. Every other day or so another quilt square sewn in bold colors and milky pastels would pop up on my feed and I would freak out. I mean look at this!

Quilting is not my strong suit, but the block was too pretty to pass up. Freshly Pieced has a fantastic tutorial on how to put this block together. She also has a template to print out that you sew directly onto so everything comes out perfectly. I did not print it out (as you probably can tell). The finished quilt square was much too big for a potholder, so I cut the pieces much smaller. Why I didn’t just shrink the template too is beyond me. The lazy man works twice as hard–and stays up sewing late into the night.

This kind of quilt square is incredibly fiddly, but also immensely satisfying when it comes together. In the future I might even have the urge–and possibly the patience–to make a whole quilt. My scrap pile would like that time to come sooner rather than later. Or maybe I could go into the potholder business, because–just so you know–it’s pretty much potholders from here on out.

yay! so glad you guys are going to think up all the good ideas for me, because I’m running low. Mostly I want the room to look big, even though it’s small. And be able to be full of kid’s stuff, while still looking sparse.

Sounds totally impossible, right? But I think these first two rooms do it well.

This room is a little too much on the minimal side of things, but there are three kids in a small room and it doesn’t feel in the least bit crowded.

Super simple and super white, but the natural wood bits make it extra good. I’m not very good with the whole mood board thing (mostly because saying it makes me throw up in my mouth a little) but I guess a little vision is good, rather than doing random shit here and there and hoping it comes together–my usual m.o.

As for stuff: I’d like a record display rack for the books and a little house shelf please.