Pillows Pillows Pillows

I'm always making new slip covers for my pillows aren't I? How do you other people handle your boredom? The best pillow is a new slip cover that cost zero dollars.
If I bought all my pillows I think my husband would ban them from my budget.

We redid our living room floors, and so I needed new pillows.

 I went with traditional pillow covers this time, mostly because they were the texture I wanted and the colors. I don't love the floral but the colors were right!
(You know how magazines and pinterest have their couches filled with pillows, well they do look great that way, but they annoy my husband to the high heavens, for a while I didn't care, then I decided it was his house too.)
My pillows actually weren't free I spent $5 on WAY too much floral fabric for a different craft I never did. Then I spent $1.50 on trim to make my home pillow. At first I wanted to make a "be nice" because I tell my children that all day long, before they go to school, while they are at home with their family, etc etc, but be nice was too many characters.

 I also added a deer to the front of my polka dot pillow. I guess I should have a close up of it... My brain is out to lunch. It never came home from vacation in Spain.

I was hesitant about the deer, because I didn't want it to be christmasy, but I don't think it is, its rustic, and with as much oak as my house has that I'm not replacing, I feel like my house is rustic, since we live so close to the mountains.
(Best part of that picture, I'm always keeping it real, ideally I would have hidden my broken laundry basket full of fleece blankets. Didn't even realize.)

The end of Christmas in July

I finished my stocking board and I'm so very proud of it.  I can't wait until December, but mostly because my baby will be four months, and so life will be easier, and he will be more fun than he will be say in September.

 Need another shot?  The board looks really pink in the pictures, but it is red.  Remember how I like my finished wood project variegated. If you scroll through my painted wood label at least half are variegated paint.  Its just so much fun to only sand off half the paint off, and the do a wash with the paint.

 Once again no cricket, so I did the lettering the old fashion way.  Traced a print out, like this tutorial, then re-wrote over the tracing with a silver sharpie.  Then it wasn't thick enough for my taste, so I cut off the tip of the sharpie, to make it wider.

I love my holly.  I made the same flower rosette as I've in the past, except for smaller and wider, so they look more berry like and less flower like.  Then cut out leaves and put batting inside.  I'm really quite pleased with my free motion sewing leaf veins.

Mermaidens

My husband is a stellar man and suggested we visit my parents a few weeks ago, so five days later we were in the car.  While I was at my mom's we of course did a bit of sewing.  One of our projects was these mermaidens: 

It is easy to let my mom do all the creative work when doing a craft with her, but I was determined to pull my share of the weight.  I thought these little girls were intensive to make, my mom said as far as dolls go these were fairly easy.  Phew, good to know, for future reference.  Also I should point out I'm terrible at symmetrical free motion sewing, but I already knew this.  Also one of their fins got terrible messed up and my mom had to finish it for me, after me unpicking it three times, and a attempting it twice.
They are cute fun dolls, I'm glad I made them for my daughter, but even gladder my mom helped me.
And please no one look at my free motion sewing.