More Pillow Talk

I am broke, but inspired...bad combo if you don't have resourcefulness and creativity. While I can't boast in my own creativity, I can credit many beautiful blogs (check out my sites to see) for idea after idea, and inspiration heaped upon inspiration.
Sadly, I cannot credit any one blog for today's craft -although I gleaned ideas from many. I have a couple of painters-cloth covered pillows that are rich in texture, but not rich in design. With some brown acrylic paint and an old paintbrush, I gave the little bits of fluff some charm.
Here's the end result:
Pretty nice, huh? funny... the cat looks just like my kitty Obi, although I didn't use him for my model at all. The "C" is for our last name. And it was a practically free craft -gotta love that!

To Porch or Not to Porch.

In this neck of the woods, Summers can be quite warm. Thus, having a zero shade, west facing backyard was perhaps, an oversight of our home's builders. In order to enjoy our yard (something Mr. Chrisman and I were both eager to do after living in a condo with no yard), we improvised a little.Our shady, semi-private front yard is 90% landscaped, with just a patch of concrete in front of the living room window.
When we purchased our house, we thought that the little porch, with it's rancher style fence, was adorable. However, after purchasing two wooden chairs to enjoy on our little porch, we quickly realized how small it really was. The cute fence prevented comfortable sitting and stretching out of legs.
So what to do? tear down the fence, naturally! it came down quite easily, and resulted in a more welcoming house-front, and a bit more space.
We weren't quite done though. The next step was to tear out a big ungainly bush that hid the porch in a menacing way. Menacing because it was infested with spiders.


After adding a few flower pots and using a bit of creativity with some candle holders, we had a great place to sip our hot tea in the morning, or chillax with a glass of wine at night.

The entire porch redo cost $119 from start to finish, and here's the price breakdown:

Chairs, $80, Yard Furniture Liquidator
Flower Pots, $17, Ikea and Walmart
Plants, FREE! clippings from my Mr. Chrisman's mom
Candle lanterns, $5, Target
Wire and hooks (to hang lanterns), $5, hardware store
Paint to revamp light fixture, $3.50, Home Depot
Side table, $5 for 3, at neighbor's garage sale
Paint for side table (originally black and roughed up), $3.50, Home Depot