Wash, Dry, Press, Fold, and Repeat

Ok...well, I (Merribeth) don't know about ya'll, but laundry is not my favorite household chore. :) Don't mind vacuuming, washing dishes, scrubbing toilets, or any other house work. But for some silly reason I hate to fold clothes! :) Putting the clothes and soap in...fine. Putting them in the dryer...easy. But when it comes to folding all that laundry... I hate it!! There ya have it, folks! Yup! Least favorite household chore is folding clothes!! Anyway, that was all free. :) So our laundry room had a lot of empty wall space. It needed something to make going into the laundry room a little more fun. :) This is what I came up with!

 I bought some frames at the dollar store and spray painted them white. I used cute scrapbook paper for the backgrounds, printed the words off the computer, and hot-glued the buttons and...things on. :) I tore the edges of the paper and rubbed them with brown stamping ink to give them a distressed look. Love anything that looks old and distressed!! :) I tore strips of fabric to hang the pictures.

"Fold" Ugh! :)

I  also wanted to do some kind of wreath! Surprise, Surprise! :) I'm a little obsessed with wreaths right now. ha! Anyway, I came up with a clothespin wreath.  

I rubbed these old clothespins with brown stampin ink to give them a little character, hot-glued the clothespins on, and used the strips of fabric to make the bows.

"Singing as we fetch the detergent box for the smelly shirts and the stinky socks! Sing along!" :) Yes, Monica and I like that movie. :)

Happy Cleaning!

Snow, Sledding, and Some Sweet Days out of School

Well, this past week has pretty much been
the greatest week of all time.

It started out with the threat of a little snow.
Now, here in the ATL,

we have been known to close school for cold weather!
Not kidding!

(The poor babies can't stand out at the bus stop if it's too cold. Really.)

So if we hear snow is within 150 miles of us, we run to the store, clear out the shelves,

and hole up in our little houses until the sun peeks back out.

Well, come to find out, we got INCHES (actual inches!) of snow!
But, more importantly, we got ice.

I (Monica) have actually never seen it quite so bad...except for maybe the blizzard of '93.

Anyway, we went sledding with some friends on Monday
and had the time of our lives.

It was great until...we went sledding on ice after church Wednesday night.

We were some speeding bullets going down those hills!



Our friends, Erica and Hope, with Merri





Merri and me stopping for pictures



Here's one of our church! The prettiest view ever. :)

Well, we were out of school all week. For the first two or three days, we couldn't leave the house.

Then, we started filling our days with shopping trips!
 Not a good thing.

The manager at Hobby Lobby actually saw us in the store and told us we should have our pictures up as preferred customers. I told him we should be getting discounts for all the business we've been giving them. Not a bad idea, but he didn't take the bait. :)

"The Prayer Bench"

I was feeling ambitious and decided to recover my sister's loveseat ( which she said I could keep for a while). It belonged to my mother, then given to Rachel, and now I have it. :) Monica and I went shopping this past weekend and picked out fabric for the loveseat and to make pillows (which we will post more pics of later). Ok...are you ready for the before and after pictures?! Ooh! I'm excited too!



Before

After!
(Please ignore the picture frame I had hidden under the loveseat. Oops!) :)

I thought this was going to be a big, long ordeal to recover this thing. But I started this in the evening and was finished in no time! The trim was probably the hardest part, and even that wasn't bad. Doesn't it look like it is out of the movie "Emma" or something? I love that old Victorian design on the fabric. And who doesn't like a lot of pillows?!

One of my New Year resolutions was to kneel at my bench and pray every night before I go to bed. It has become my new prayer spot. :) My sister Rachel was such an encouragement in this and I am so thankful for her. It may sound silly, but there really is something to kneeling when you pray. I think it is humbling. :)

I used some of the extra material to make matching pillows. Here are a couple. 

Now...on to my next big project!! :)

Baby Blankets

Well, I (Monica) happen to have one niece, and she is an absolute doll. Merri has ten gorgeous little nieces and nephews with one on the way! What in the bunch of crazies?! I told my sister she needed to get me caught up. :) Well, I decided to make my niece a blanket for her very first Christmas this year. I'll show you a pic of my niece so you can think she's super cute, too. :)

When I first decided to make this blanket, I didn't really have a design in my mind. The project just kept growing. Merri made one at the same time, and we just loved it! First of all, if you've never heard of the Celtic Women, you need to look them up this very instant. They are fabulous. They sing a lullaby called "Goodnight, My Angel." And, believe it or not, Aven finds their voices quite soothing and likes to listen to them herself. They were the blanket inspiration.

Instead of using a pattern, I drew super-straight X's onto the fabric and just stitched over it. For the bottom, I found a picture I liked and went from there. My sister said she isn't planning to let the baby use it, which I am not-so-secretly glad about, because that thing took some work! So...once I was done and had sewn the pink satin binding around the edges, I looped pretty ivory satin ribbon topped with pink-on-pink striped ribbon around the back to hang it. All of the materials were bought at Hobby Lobby...favorite store ever! Hope you like it!

Happy Reading!

Book Wreath

This is one of our faves. I bought a styrofoam wreath at Hobby Lobby for about $5 and just used an old book that I already had. I rubbed the pages with brown stamping ink to give the paper more of a distressed look. I shaped each page like an S and "went to town" with my hot glue gun. We have a love-hate relationship. :) But when it was finished, it was well worth the burns. Love it! 

P.S. You can still read the words on the pages so you might want to pick a respectable book. :)

And one more thing, we'll tell you about our seasonal picture frames later. :)

Brainstorming

Well, hi there, folks, here we are with so much to say and not sure where to begin! First, allow us to introduce ourselves to you. Our names are Monica and Merribeth. We are two friends who met a couple years ago and realized, after a very short amount of time, that we have a million things in common.

As you can see, we have named our blog after the song "Favorite Things," made extra famous in the movie The Sound of Music. Just so you know, we are listening to Julie Andrews sing at this very moment. (We're watching the movie to get some inspiration. We're weird...we know.) :)

We'll show you a picture of us so you can put faces with the names. Merribeth is the one with red hair; Monica has the dark. In this picture, we were all dressed up to go to downtown Atlanta to the Fox Theatre...pretty much the most amazing place!  

We both work at the best school ever, and we had a snow day today with another one tomorrow! For any of you who live north of Atlanta, it probably sounds crazy to you...so little snow, as in less than three inches, and all. We have what they call French Toast Fever down here. Mention snow and we run out to get bread and eggs.  Well, we went sledding down a driveway, right into the street. Probably not the brightest idea we've ever had but it was pretty great.



Well, now that the awkward introductions are out of the way, we'll tell you about our very favorite things! We absolutely love, love, love anything to do with decorating, design, or .... (I can't come up with another d word.)  Well, anyway, we have gotten so many of our ideas and so much of our inspiration from Shelley at House of Smiths. She is pretty much a-mazing, no doubt about it.

Feel free to ask us questions or leave your comments. We would l-o-v-e to hear from you!