Handmade Fleece Throw

Whew!  I finally found a moment to share my latest project with you.  I'm pretty happy I finished it just in time to share it with your for

 Metamorphosis Monday.

Do you remember the hint I gave you about the project I was working on?  No?  Well, let me refresh your memory, here is what I said;

"Here's a hint!  It's very easy to do and you've seen them a thousand times already I'm sure!  It's warm and cozy but the combination that I am using is probably new to some of you."  

Did you guess what's warm and Cozy?

If you guessed a blanket you would be correct!  More accurately, if you guessed a fleece blanket,  you would have been dead on!

We all know how much we love our plaid here in blog land right?  So, I'm sure you can imagine how excited I was when I came across this beautiful brown plaid fleece fabric on my lunch hour at the fabric store. My head started swimming with ideas!

  I have been wanting to make one of those knotted throws for several years now.  So when, I came across this plaid fleece fabric that I absolutely loved and it was on sale for 50% off, I decided I was going to make a blanket for our den.

  To make a knotted throw you need two pieces of fabric.  I decided to make a reversible blanket instead of making it the same on both sides.  You will understand why perfectly when you see what I chose for the opposite side.

The next thing I did was to lay the two pieces on top of each other and pinned them together with the front sides of the fabric facing out.  Then after determining my size, I cut out the corners on each end of the blanket and then trimmed off my sides equally.

Then it was time to go around all the edges and cut my tassels.

The next step was to to knot both of the pieces of fabric together.  This is what finishes the blanket.

I made this blanket using the knotting method called the "half hitch" knot.  It's where you just take the two tassel pieces that are stacked on top of each other, wrap them around your finger, loop them both through the hole and slide the knot up towards the blanket.   I've made the knotted fleece scarves before using this method but with only one piece of fabric.

  Now you get a peek at the fabric I chose for the reverse side.

How do you like my choices?  Who doesn't love houndstooth and plaid?  

I know I sure do!  

And...OMG!!!  I think the two of them together is just so comforting and gorgeous!  

My family obviously feels the same way because both my husband and son have been enjoying using our new blanket already.  The best part of it is, I love how beautifully it looks in our den!

We're getting some cooler temperatures here now and it's prime snuggling time!

This is a very easy project for those of you who have never made one yet.  I highly recommend it!  The fleece fabric choices seem to get better every year too.

Thanks for visiting today!

I hope you enjoyed your visit!

Have a great week everyone!

Hoping you all stay warm and cozy!

Thanksgiving/Fall Wreath Part Three

Hi Ladies!  How are you?  I am doing great!  I am so excited to finally be able to show you part three of my fall wreath.  For those of you who don't know what I'm talking about let me fill you in.   I decided to create an interchangeable fall wreath this year.  It's quite simple really and includes a base,shown here, and two additional wreaths that simply hang over the base.  There is one for Halloween, shown here, and the one I made for Thanksgiving.

I actually created this Thanksgiving wreath long before I made the Halloween wreath.  It's been hanging around in my kitchen ever since.

It all started when I found the little checked wooden sign at Michael's earlier in August.  It was in the $1.00 bin and I just knew I had to make something with it.  Then after deciding to make 3 wreaths in one I knew this would be part of my Thanksgiving wreath. 

I already had this small straw wreath in my crafts box and the plaid fabric as well.  First I cut the fabric into long strips and wrapped it around the wreath securing them with pins.  Then I hot glued the Family sign on the wreath. 

Next, I added the fabric bow by simply wrapping it around the wreath and tying into a bow.  I did the same thing for the loop to hang it with using the plaid fabric to match and wedged in a small touch of fall greenery.

And now, I am ready to add it to my fall wreath on the door.

I love how well it fits right into the middle of the fall wreath!

There you have it!  The third and final part of my interchangeable fall wreath.  I am joining 

BNOTP for Metamorphosis Monday today

to share my project.

Thank you all so much for stopping by!

Have a great Monday and I hope each of you has a wonderful week too!

We are all Fenced In Now!

We've been very busy the last few weekends installing the fence around the pool.  This is one of the final steps that we have really needed to finish before we could slow down with the whole pool project.  Landscaping will be an ongoing thing, but for now at least all of the must do's are done. 

  Our insurance requires us to have a fence and quite frankly I am very happy about it.  Besides being a human deterrent,  I am thrilled to finally be shutting out the deer from a portion of my yard.  Now, maybe I can finally grow some things that I have been trying to grow for so long.  I saw Mama and the babies a few weeks ago on the right side of the yard in between the wood fence and the pool and about freaked out.  I really have been very worried that I would find a deer in my pool y'all.  Not something I ever want to see!   

We decided to add the fence on the high side of the slope around the left side and the back of the pool.  It then connects with the wooden fence on the right side of the yard.  This gives me more of an open yard area around the pool on one side but closes off the side with the slope which was not very usable space anyway.  We went with a black vinyl coated chain link to save money and because I know I will be landscaping so much that honestly the fence will not be the focus, nor did I want it to be back here.

The Mr. installed the fence himself and I helped a little...very little!  Here's another view after you pass through the gates from the walkway.

Over on the other side of the yard where the wooden fence is we installed another smaller fence and gate just beyond the deck steps to the side yard.  Now we are closed up securely all around.

We also added a gate on the back side of the fence so we can still access the rest of our back yard.  We have a total of four gates, one double and two singles.

Here is a sneak peek at my next project.  I purchased (9) 1 gallon containers of dwarf gardenias to add in the space between the deck and the pool wall.  

It's going to smell so wonderful! I know because 

my car smelled so good all the way home!

I can't remember if I've showed you these yet or not. But, I wanted to show you some of my mums I got from Walmart a few weeks ago when they first came out.  These are the ones they are selling for $4.44.  Can you believe the size of them?  They are amazingly big!

I just love the color of them too!  I had to snap a few pictures for you this evening because it just finished raining again and they were literally just glowing!

I also wanted to show you this plant that is still hanging in there beautifully.  This was one of the first flowers I bought this spring.  I can't believe how it just keeps blooming!  

It's still such a pretty hot pink!

I've been experimenting with watermarking my photos in Picasa but am getting a double mark.  I'm not sure why but for some reason it's adding one in addition to the decorative one I chose.  I guess there must be something further I am supposed to do or unclick?  IDK?  

Well that's what we've been up to outside lately.

Sharing this with BNOTP for

Metamorphosis Monday.

Thanks for visiting with me today!

I hope you all have a great week!

 It's going to be quite a change for me going back to work this week, but one I'm looking forward to.  I'll be sure and check in as soon as I can with updates.

Take Care!

Fall Wreath Redo

Hey Again!  I'm going to be bombarding y'all with my fall decor this week.   I feel like I'm working blogging on borrowed time, so I hope you'll bare with me.  I explained why on yesterday's post if your interested you can read all about it here.

  Today I want to share my fall wreath redo along with a few photos of the front porch.

This was last years fall wreath.  It's one I've had for a while but had added a new bow.  

Well, this year I decided to stream line it, just like most of the other fall decor I've been doing this year.  I am very into simplicity this year!

And here's the new look!

I took everything off and kept my vine wreath to use again.  

Then I added all my fall leaves back on.  I stopped using glue on my wreaths years ago because I like to reuse them so much.  It's so much easier using wire!

And then, I simply added the new fall acorn picks I purchased recently from Michael's.

I know it's pretty simple and yes, I've seen similar ones available for purchase.  But I can assure you it cost me a lot less to redo this one then start all over.

  I love it, because I plan to use this as my base for my Halloween wreath addition and my Thanksgiving wreath addition.  I have an idea I am trying this year that will basically make this a three in one wreath with interchangeable parts for Fall, Halloween and Thanksgiving.  But you'll have to come back to see that later closer to Halloween.

Before we get on to the rest of the porch decor, I want to show you a far out shot of our yard.  Do you see the grass?  Woohoo!  I have grass again!  Earlier this spring I showed a picture of our yard almost completely dead.  We previously had St. Augustine, which is a shade grass in our front yard. When we bought the house we had quite a bit of trees. We have since cut down many of the trees and the grass was dying off.

  Since we built the pool and knew we would be sodding, we decided to roll out the front and side yard with Centipede too.  I am so happy to have grass again, even if it is going to turn brown with winter soon.  Please excuse the  shots of our fancy sprinkler system, that's going to be next years project, another one I am really looking forward too.

My pumpkins are back out, see!

I picked up a few Mums from Walmart...

...and from Lowe's.

My potato vine is still hanging in there and I don't have the heart to pull them up yet.

This is as far as I've gotten with this area.  I need to get more ribbon to work on the topiary's?  I would love any ideas you have for these!

And on the other side a few repeats from last year.

Except, I changed it up a little bit!

Well, that's the end of today's fall front porch tour!

I am joining BNOTP for 

Metamorphosis Monday

And the 

It's Fall Y'all Party

because things are changing quick around here.

Hope you'll come back again to see more soon!

Have a great day!

To Distress or Not to Distress?

That is the question!  Well, I finally completed a project I have been wanting to do for about a year now.  I finally painted the lower half of our TV armoire.  I have been using the bottom half for a TV console ever since we purchased our new flat screen last year.

  I love this piece of furniture but did not like that it was a basic brown wood color in between my two beige chairs.  I wrestled for the longest time with the idea of redoing the chair cushions or making slip covers for them and even bought new fabric for them as well.  However, I ultimately knew what I really wanted to do was paint the cabinet.

Here is the latest picture I had of the TV cabinet before I painted it.  As you can see, there was a lot of gold and wood brown on that wall.

And now, here it is all black!  Ta daaaa!  

I left the top brown because I like that look and it was so much easier to not have to move the TV too.  LOL!  I'm so excited because, I just love how this turned out.  I love black furniture!

 I think I need to distress it a bit, but am having such a hard time doing so.  Ya'll know I have such a problem with doing that after I've painted something even though I love the look.

So here's the question.  What would you do?  Leave it as is, or do a little distressing?  I would really like to know your opinions please.  I am linking this to;

 Metamorhosis Monday

 today in hopes of getting more perspective.     

Oh, and yes, the comment bar is turned back on for those of you who noticed.  I had it turned off so I could take a break for a bit so no, you were not loosing your minds.  LOL!  Yall are so funny!

Let me know what you think, okay?

TIA!

Mary