Snowed In

Shooey! This winter has been ridiculous! I've never seen this much snow in my life.

Daniel spent nearly 36 hours straight at work on Friday and Saturday "battling" the snow and piled on another 7 hours on Sunday. As for me, I spent a quiet, lazy weekend at home with the cats (a precursor to my impending days as a crazy cat lady, I'm sure).

This was taken shortly after Dan came home from work on Saturday night.. sadly, one of only 4 photos that I actually took of the snow. I'll do a better job on Wednesday with Snowpocalypse: the Sequel!

Unfortunately, I am huge wimp when it comes to the cold and you'll be hard pressed to find me out playing in the snow (although, I do think it is lovely). So, I stayed in, nice and toasty in my zebra-print snuggie, as the flakes fell and the snowpocalypse took hold of the tri-state area and beyond.

Between watching episodes of Flight of the Conchords and Full House, as well various movies (mainly the Disney special features DVD's because that's the kind of dork that I am), I did manage to get some crafting done - despite having a scare when I couldn't find my glue gun! (go figure, it was right where I left it last time I hot glued something. Who'd of thought?).

Here's a sneak peek at my el-cheap-o wall art that I began working on on Friday night. I'll devote a full post this after it's all finished:
I've had this collection on vintage valentine's for a couple of years now and had yet to do anything with them. It just so happened that I found some empty frames laying around as well as some heart-shaped doilies.

So I made these to hang around the apartment for some V-day flair:

The hardest part about this project was trying decide which ones to use! I'm thinking about picking up some cheapie dollar store frames so I can make a few more. I just love vintage Valentine's.

As you can see, my record art completely took over the dining room table (it's actually looked like this since mid-last week... and still looks like this, if not worse - oops!).

I'm planning on turning the painted records into clocks. Hopefully, I'll be picking up some clock parts at Michael's on Friday. Here's one of the finished paintings. I was trying to go for a design that looked kind of folky, yet modern... not sure if I succeeded, but I'm fairly pleased with the resulting abstract flowers:

I completed a second one this weekend as well that came out great! But, since it's a gift for someone who may or may not read my blog, I'll have to wait to post it... just in case!

This record is still in the works until I can perfect how I want to sketch out the Matroyshka dolls:

I also got the apartment cleaned (minus the dining room table, obviously) and did a load of laundry. All in all, even though it felt like I didn't do much of anything, it was a pretty productive snowed-in weekend.

I'm keeping my fingers crossed that the Tuesday-Wednesday storm that's being predicted will lead to a *real* snow day. Really, what's the fun of winter when all the snow happens on days that you're already off?

<3Brittany

Pillows

My sewing skills are slowly improving! I've been working on covering our icky throw pillows that the cats have been shredding to pieces. Pillows are such a quick, satisfying little project and an easy way to experiment.

Here is the one that I made this weekend, flanked by two that Madre made me a few months ago. I just love yellow and purple together.

I used the left over fabric from the yellow and gray pillows along with some inexpensive, sturdy plum fabric from JoAnn's ($5.99/yd, plus a 50% off coupon - score!).

I made this other wonky looking plum pillow last week. It's the first pillow I've ever sewn, and due to my propensity to start projects without actually thinking them through it turned out less than stellar.

But, it's definitely better than the "before" product - i.e. The shredded, brown fleece pillows. I'm hoping to have them done within the next week. I still have a bit of yellow and gray fabric left, so I'll incorporate it somehow.

I have a few other apartment-improving projects in the works, too (mostly fun and cheap ways to make my un-paintable white walls and icky cream colored carpet look less... bleak). Check back soon to see my super thrifty wall-art.

<3 Brittany