Still In The Living Room, This Time With Ikea End Tables...

So we set off for Ikea without the list, thinking, surely when I see it, I will remember which end table to get....not necessarily so...

Here is the table I bought:

Got home, pressured Ryan to put together the table immediately, and wham - it was huge! 5 1/2 inches above the arm of the sofa...wow, so did not look great.

We had to make an unexpected trip to the in-laws so we took the legs of the tables with us so my miracle worker FIL and MIL could advise us to cut or not to cut.... As I am showing my MIL the design board so she can see what the whole table looks like and make an informed decision, I notice that I BOUGHT THE WRONG TABLES!! And the tables I was supposed to get, were shorter, more narrow, and just the perfect size! So - take the table apart, back to Ikea, and back home to put the new table together.

Here is the table I was supposed to get:

Ahhh much better.....

What do you think?

I am loving this Edland collection from Ikea - I could use these pieces in every room. And every time I walk downstairs, the smell is so good! Like lemony new wood...

This desk is so pretty, for $199. I could use this in my guest room, but some people don't like not having drawers for their drawers...

This dresser is $299, not bad after looking at Ethan Allen dressers for over $2,000! What? Does a maid come to dust it every week for 5 years?

Linking to:

Shower Curtain

In this post I talked about deciding what to do about a shower curtain in my downstairs guest bathroom, I loved this one from Ballard Designs:



but doesn't the monogram look tee-inescee?

Then I found this one from Target:

And it is similar, so I went with it, took it in hand to find a monogrammer that could give me a substantial sized letter!

And much to my dismay, no one could embroider a letter much bigger than 6-10 inches.

After seeing this post by Trisha at Sweet Survival:




Where she made a monogram out of felt for her pillows, I was hopeful that one creative sewer in my life (insert Whitney here) could help me figure it out/do it for me. Only one problem...she lives over 1,000 miles away in a land of rock and heat. Ah-ha, but she was coming my way!

When I explained the project to Whitney she let me in on the closely held secret that they sell felt by the yard, not just the cheap felt squares in the craft area - whew! That makes it a lot easier. (Did everyone else know that they sell nice felt by the yard?)

So...

• I picked out a letter in the font I liked, Renaissance, and printed it out on several pieces of paper - the letter is about 19 inches tall.
• Then I taped them all together, so they made a complete "L" template. It was much easier to tape them together exactly with Whitney's suggestion of taping them up over the window, which made the paper transparent and easy to overlap where the design lines matched up.
• I taped it onto the curtain to make sure it didn't look ridiculously large:

(Notice the drywall patching where I ripped the towel bar off the wall? Nice.)
• After taping the dickens out of the paper layers, I cut out the letter pattern.
• (We tried using Wonder Under to adhere the letter to the curtain to make it easier to sew - but the weave of the curtain prohibited stickage and did not work for us.)
• We/Whitney pinned the letter to the curtain, and she sewed and turned, and sewed and turned, and sewed and turned, and asked, "Are you sure YOU don't want to try this?". No thank you.

I LOVE how it turned out!

I really should get that iron back out, I know...

And now still trying to decide if I will paint these stripes onto the wall...

The DIY Showoff

What do you think?

Linking to:

Under the Table and Dreaming - Sunday Showcase Party
I Heart Naptime - Sundae Scoop
Petite Hermine - Sunday Linky Party
The DIY Showoff - Project Parade
Tatertots and Jello - Weekend Wrap Up Party
Dittle Dattle - Amaze Me Monday
My Uncommon Slice of Suburbia - Tuesday's Treasures
DIY by Design - Sizzle into Summer
The Blackberry Vine - Tuesday To Do