A Busy Memorial Day Weekend

Before I begin this post, let me just say thank you to all of the men and women who serve in the armed forces and risk their lives for my freedom.

      I hope you all had a fantastic Memorial Day weekend!  Mine was very busy, so I am making this post a photo blog of my busy weekend.  Beware ~ there are a lot of photos.  I sort of stalked Matt with the camera all weekend, because I didn't know what I was going to blog about:)  We had planned to have a weekend getaway this weekend, but we had a wedding and a graduation we wanted to go to, so the getaway has been postponed.  In between the wedding and graduation we managed to get a lot of work done around the house while enjoying some much needed quality time together.  Here's how I spent my Memorial Day weekend.

THURSDAY

      My long weekend started Thursday night with a good book.  I can't remember the last time I had enough time to read a book front to cover in one night....it was simply marvelous!  I knew I didn't have to get up early Friday, so I let myself get lost in the words of Safe Haven by Nicholas Sparks.  I love his novels, and this one didn't disappoint.

FRIDAY

        It was a typical Friday morning off of work for me.  Same old, same old ~ bank, grocery store, laundry, clean house and so on.  The only thing out of the ordinary about Friday was that Matt and I had plans to drive two hours south for the wedding of a good family friend.  It was good to see friends that I haven't seen awhile.  Congratuations Hannah and Darren!  Hope you are enjoying every bit of your Hawaiian honeymoon!



SATURDAY

      

          After a late night at the wedding, we woke up and went to opening day at one of my favorite farmer's markets ~ Fishers Farmer's Market.   I know you're probably getting sick of hearing me talk about the farmer's market, but it really is one of my favorite things to do in the summer.  This market has nearly thirty vendors selling everything from a morning cup of coffee to bouquets of flowers.  Fresh vegetables and fruits, baked bread, all sorts of pastries, kettle corn, fudge, candles, organic cleaning supplies, herbs, and a variety of plants are just a few of the vendors at the market.  We ended up getting our weekly produce, some fresh baked bread from Cornerstone Bakery and a bouquet of fresh flowers from Cate's Cottage! Ahh, there is just something about the freshness of the outdoor market that I love!  In fact, if I didn't have to work Saturday mornings, I would start every Saturday off at this farmer's market followed by some leisurely Saturday morning reading at the library :)

      After the Farmer's Market, we went home and made lunch with all of our fresh food before heading off to a graduation.  It was the first ever graduation for the school that I used to teach at, and Matt and I made plans to attend.  The school began in 1999 as a preschool, and they have added grades every year.  This year they completed the high school by graduating the class of 2011.  Congratulations CBA graduates! 

     

     Graduation was over by early afternoon, so our next stop for the day was Lowes where we needed to buy paint and flowers for the front porch.  We finished our day by going to dinner at one of our favorite pizza places, Puccini's ~ yum!

   

       

SUNDAY 

     Every fifth Sunday, our church has a meal after the morning service.  The meal is followed by the evening service, so everyone gets a Sunday afternoon/evening to enjoy family time.  Matt and I took advantage of the early evening by working on the house.  When we got home we mowed the lawn and pulled a jungle of weeds that were nearly as tall as the bushes.  Matt also taped all the walls in the living room and kitchen and prepped the rooms for paint while I worked on refinishing the dining room chairs.

MONDAY

         Although we slept in, by 7:30 we were up and at 'em!  We had much to get accomplished on our day off.  Matt painted ALL day!  He did a great job even though it took him over twelve hours to do both rooms;)  I washed all twenty-seven windows inside and out and gave the house a much needed spring cleaning.  After all of that work, we rewarded ourselves by grilling teriyaki steak and chicken kabobs with grilled vegitable and grilled pineapple!  It was delicious! What a great way to end the long weekend.  After all we got accomplished this weekend, we are going to be so tired when we go back to work tomorrow ~ but at least it's a short week ;)

HAPPY MEMORIAL DAY EVERYONE!

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No-Sew Seat Cushions

       

       A few months ago, we ordered a bistro set for the deck from Amazon, but we ordered the table and the chairs from separate sellers to get the best price.  The chairs arrived in timely fashion, but a few short days after ordering the table, I received an email saying that the table was sold out.  I eventually found the table from another seller....or so I thought.  I ordered the table, but to my surprise it arrived much smaller than I imagined.  That's because I didn't clearly read what I ordered.  The table that I ended up ordering was a matching coffee table to the bistro set ~ oops!  Soooooo, I had to return the small table and begin my search all over again.  After a two month wait,  I eventually settled on a table from Target.  I say all of that to say this ~ the table and chairs have arrived and are on the deck, which means I got to make cushions for the chairs last week!  Here's how I spent my afternoon this past Wednesday :)

I bought two of these foam cushions for $2.99 a piece at Hobby Lobby.

I already had the ribbon, but I bought one yard of outdoor fabric at JoAnn's for $9.00 after the 40% discount.  I also bought one packet of heat-n-bond for $1.99. 



After measuring and cutting two pieces of fabric to fit the foam padding, I applied the heat-n- bond to the backside edge of one of my pieces of fabric.



I placed the second piece of fabric directly on top of the first piece of fabric backside up, and then I apply the heat to the heat-n-bond.  I repeated this process for three of the four sides.

Once the heat-n-bond was applied to three of the sides, I turned the fabric outside-in.  On the fourth side, I created a hem on the top and bottom pieces of fabric using the heat-n-bond

I stuffed the foam in the fabric and cut four small holes in the edges of the fabric (left, right, top and bottom).  Then, I tied ribbon to the fabric using the holes.

 I hot glued the two hem lines together to seal the fourth side of the fabric shut.

The finished project......

.....fits perfectly!

I secured it to the chair by tying the ribbon to the chair.

This project was less than $20 ~ Love it!

The cushions definitely make the bistro set look better! 

And of course, we broke in the new table and chairs by having dinner on the deck.


Tilapia, shrimp scampi and peas....yummo ;)

This week I'll be linking up at The Thrify Home (http://www.thethriftyhome.com/2011/05/88th-penny-pinching-party.html) and all of the other link parties on my link page.

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A Tornadic Family Night

         So it's been a family night in our unfinished basement tonight.  Not the kind of family night that involves popcorn and monopoly, but the kind that involves tornado warnings and sirens.  I've been glued to the TV since late afternoon as Indiana has been under a PDS (particularly dangerous situation).....which is apparently extremely rare for our region.  Matt had a late night at work, and didn't get home till after 8:00, so when the several different tornado warnings started popping up this evening, I took the pets, the computer and the camping chairs to the basement.  And while I'm thankful that we have a safe place to go when we have storms, I found myself wishing that we had the extra funds to refinish the basement this year, so I could hunker down from the storm on a couch with a TV rather than a computer and a camping chair....and then I had to remind myself that there was a TORNADO OUTBREAK and I should be happy to have a home when so many people have lost their homes and so much more in this year's storm season.  While there have been several different tornadoes today, I feel very fortunate that we haven't had anything too severe in our area even though we've had multiple tornado warnings.  So far, all is well in our small town...although we're not out of the clear yet.  As I'm writing this post, another round of storms is getting ready to come through, so we will probably head back down to the basement for some more "family time" really soon.  It's likely to be a late night in our home......

Waiting for the storm to pass.

We have one outlet in our unfinished basement, so we brought the computer down and gathered our camping chairs around as we watched the radar and waited for the storms to pass. 

Chloe didn't mind the storm at all.  She was more than content rolling around on the cold cement floor.



And as for Molly.....well, she was really nervous until Matt got home.  Once the whole family was together, she napped in her crate until the storms passed.



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Placemats or Napkins?

   

        A few weeks ago, I ordered some fabric from fabric.com.  I LOVE fabric.com.  They have a fantastic selection of quality fabric for a fraction of the retail price.  I ordered fabric for a few throw pillows, some napkins for the dining room table and some fabric to redo my Craigslist dining room chairs.  Without measuring (not the smartest thing to do), I ordered one yard of this fabric thinking that it would be enough for eight napkins.  When the fabric arrived, I was really happy with the purchase.  The look and feel of the fabric was great, but when I divided the fabric into eight pieces, I realized that my little project was not going turn into eight standard sized napkins.  There was nothing I could do about the incorrect amount of fabric that I ordered.  I just had to work with what I had.  You know what they say though ~ when life gives you lemons, make lemonade. 

Here's how I made my unintentional placemats/napkins.



First, I ripped the fabric into eight even pieces.



Then, I heated up the iron and brought out my secret weapon ~ heat-n-bond.   If you've read my blog, you probably know that I do a lot of no-sew projects, because I have yet to invest in a sewing machine.  For the little bit of sewing that I do, the inexpensive no-sew adhesives work great! 

Once the iron was hot, I folded the fabric 1/2 in. on all sides and applied the heat-n-bond.

When I was finished, this was the result.  The lack of measuring appropriately gave me eight perfectly sized placemats.....

........but it also gave me eight beautifully folded napkins.

placemats or napkins?

For now, I think I'll stick with the napkins, but it's nice to know I have options :)

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