Meg vs. Father's Day: Necktie Cookies

This is ridiculously late, but for Father's Day we wanted to make a gift for the men that teach in our primary classes at church. We couldn't think of anything good that we could make on our very small budget, so we just decided to go with sugar cookies. I made ties, and our primary president made cute little circles that said "Thank you," and then we packaged them up in plastic bags with paper toppers.

Here was my part:

Piped in white

All decorated and drying

As always, I used my favorite sugar cookie and royal icing recipes from the amazing Sue at Munchkin Munchies. They seem to have been a hit with the men, and my boys were more than pleased with the broken and leftovers.

Meg vs. Decor: My new pillow!

It has been a long week. The kind where I meant to get lots of things done, but the house just got worse instead of better (thus no posting this week). And I think I might have some kind of sinus infection.

But then I got a sweet package from by BFF Emily, and it made my day! Look what she sent me!

I love this print, it matches my living room perfectly, and it makes me happy every time I see it! Not to mention that it is a super sturdy pillow cover, which should stand up well to all the abuse my little guys are all-too-quick to inflict upon anything I place in their reach. Check out this and other designs at Emily's Etsy store, Little Boston Print Shoppe. She is going to be listing some Christmas prints soon, and I am thinking I may just treat one of you lovely people to a set, so stay tuned for that.

Thanks, Emily!

Meg vs. Decor: Customizable Bunting Round-Up!

Bunting and garland is so in right now, and I am loving it. After making our Thankful Tree today (more on that to come), I thought the wall needed a little something to finish it off. A Thanksgiving message on garland? Just the thing. So I headed over to Pinterest to see what there was to see.

I wasn't sold on any of the Thanksgiving-specific printables I found, so I started looking for alphabet sets that I could customize myself. There are some really cute, free, printable alphabet sets available! So I thought I would put them all together and share what I found to save you (and me in the future) the scouring.

First up, good old Martha Stewart came through, as usual:

Found here.

Found here.

Found here.

Found here.

I love this one from Ruffled:

Such fun patterns and colors!

And Flights of Fancy put this one together with two different font types:

You can find this fun set at Wild Olive. Wouldn't it be super cute for a kids' party?

And if you like a vintage feel, try this one from Rook No. 17:

Here's a cutie from Jolly Allsorts:

Here's a simple set from Small Types:

Another from Shanty 2 Chic:

And one in miniature from The Tomkat Studio!

There you have them--have fun! I'll share my finished tree and banner tomorrow.

Meg vs. Decor: Upcycled Flower Pillows

I got extra crafty this year for Christmas (meaning I did some crafts, since I usually do none). In my family we draw names for Christmas presents, and John and I got my mom and her cousin. So they both got flower pillows. I fell in love with them when I saw these on Pinterest:

They are sold here.

Mine don't look nearly this good, but maybe someday I'll get there.

Here are two of the three that I made:

For both pillows, I purchased sweaters at the thrift store and gave them a good washing. I sewed a straight line from one armpit to the other to create the rectangle pillowcase, then cut off the arms/neck area above the line to use for the flowers. The purple sweater already had a zipper, so I just sewed up the bottom of the sweater and made the side with the zipper the back of the pillow. The green sweater had no zipper, so I purchased a matching one and installed it in the bottom of the sweater (you can see it hanging down).

Obviously I used different techniques for the flowers. The purple sweater was conceptually simpler, but not really much faster to execute. I simply took the arms/neck area, twisted and rolled it to look like a flower, and (rather haphazardly) sewed it down. It had a hood, so I sewed that down to look like a leaf. Because the sweater was pretty heavy, I had to go around all of the rolled edges pretty thoroughly to get the flower to stay down. Some of you who actually know how to sew will probably be able to do this much faster than I did.

For the green pillow, I cut off one of the sleeve cuffs and rolled it up to create the middle of the flower, then cut the rest of the sweater up into petals of various sizes. On the pillow I made for my mom (not shown), I threaded all of the petals onto one thread to hold them together before I sewed them down, but I didn't feel like that made the process any easier, so I don't really think it's worth doing. On this green pillow, I took each petal, scrunched up the bottom, and sewed it onto the pillow, starting with the smallest petals in the middle and working out.

I have some more sweater pillows planned (sans flowers) that I'll share later. All-in-all, I was excited at how these came out for my first attempt.

And if you'd like to see some more pretties, check these out:

Felt flower pillows
Fleece flower pillows
More felt
Even more felt
Fun pom poms

Swoon... sigh... add to checklist under "someday" category.