DIYing 'Til the Cows Come Home

We are *this close* to being done with the kitchen.   The trim is painted after discovering some miracle paint that I will be telling you about later.  All that's left is the big art piece I'm working on for the wall and then getting everything hung on the walls.  Be on the edge of your seats: the reveal will knock your socks off.  Or be only mildly interesting.  It will be one of those. 

I sewed some new curtains for the kitchen and while at it, made a few new pillowcases for the living room.   This tutorial is great for an easy pillowcase cover, should you be needing to make yourself some pillowcases anytime soon.

I really love the look of old grain sack fabric, especially when stripes are involved, but what's with the crazy expensive, people?  So I went all crafty and sewed my pillowcases with utility fabric 40% off from Joann's and painted on my own stripes.  The discovery made here is that painting stripes is so fun. 

These days there are a lot of pillows with cute sayings stenciled on them and I knew that was something that would be fun in the living room. But of all the words in the entire world, deciding which few to use on a pillow proved to be quite difficult.  Then I ran across a little saying somewhere or other (sorry I have no where to link a source to) and knew I had found my match:

It's not deep or thought provoking but it makes me smile and it explains why I can't keep the living room magazine-perfectly clean and why the kids always come in from the backyard covered in dirt.  It also opens us up to the possibility that they eat bugs when I'm not looking.

Besides all this kitchen painting and pillow sewing, I came home from BSF the other day to David stripping wallpaper out of the stairwell.  So happy!  We've been wanting to spruce up the stairwell for years but haven't wanted to undertake the wallpaper stripping.  One thousand points to my go-getter of a husband. 

helping daddy

Now the stairwell is almost finished being painted with the same color as the kitchen and next week we'll pick out new carpet for the stairs.  Then it's trim painting in the living room!!!!  (I say with with  a lot of !!! because I'm trying to trick myself into being excited about it.)

All of a sudden I want to go take a nap.