I'm A Copycat!

Wow! I feel like I'm on a blogging marathon lately! Guess I'm on a roll so ya'll please bear with me!

I saw this pretty shower curtain in the Ballards catalog Saturday night and thought how pretty it would be in hubby's bathroom. His bathroom is done in cremes and chocolate brown....he loves it. I started to order the shower curtain but just before I did, a light bulb went off in my head! The curtain in there now is a white quilted one like in Ballards, it just didn't have that strip added to the bottom. Why order the $46.00 shower curtain when I could just add a piece to the edge of my existing curtain for my own Ballards look-alike shower curtain! So Sunday afternoon I went off to Wally world to see if I could find anything. They did not have anything in the fabric department at all but on my way out I strolled through the home section. There I found the perfect chocolate brown color in a drapery panel and it was out of the same waffle weave material as my shower curtain. The price was not bad, $15.00, but when the clerk rang it up, it was only $11.88!

My sewing skills are a little rusty and it took me a couple of hours but I think it turned out just as good as the one from Ballards, and a whole lot cheaper. I'm a happy girl!

Here's the Ballards shower curtain

Up close....the brown trim is done in a twill ...

....and here's my copycat shower curtain

I see that I need to iron my shower curtain but I'm really pleased at how it turned out

It's hard to get a full shot of the bathroom but I think you get the idea.

It just goes to show that if you see something you'd like for your home, it's possible to re-create the look for far less....but I don't have to tell you ladies out there that.....all of you amaze me at how wonderfully talented you are!

I'm Lovin' Slipcovers!

Please tell me I'm not the only one that decides to make a few "little changes" and it ends up being practically a whole house makeover ! Let me give ya'll a little background. For sometime now, I've been craving a makeover of my kitchen. Hubby wants all new cabinets but that will have to wait until next year. So we decided to just paint the cabinets and walls. Right now my kitchen is red with a lot of rooster stuff going on....and while it has been a great look, I'm ready to retire those roosters! Don't be surprised if some of my stuff doesn't end up for sale on this blog!


The first thing that needed to be done was to get the tile and grout cleaned. Okay, I called this company to come out this week for an "estimate". Whoa, daddy...they wanted $700+ just to clean the grout and tile plus another $175 per year to "maintain" it! Does that mean they would be here every week to mop and drop by when the grandkids have been here to clean up that mess? I doubt it. So I called another company.....they came in at $200 so I said go ahead. But wait, they said that I had the only grout they'd ever come across that could not be cleaned because the installers had mixed two colors together and some grit that makes it impossible to get them cleaned. They said they put 1,500 pounds of pressure on the tile/grout and still could not clean it. So I spent 3 hours yesterday on my hands and knees scrubbing and guess what? I sure didn't put 1,500 pounds of pressure on those tiles but they looked better than when company "b" left. I called hubby crying and whining and so now looks like I'll be getting a new kitchen floor (yay!).


Next is the wall and cabinet colors. I am still undecided but I do have an idea of where I'm going with that. The table and chairs in there will be changed out too (I have a nice pedestal and glass top I'll be using with some slipcovered parsons chairs).

Just so happens my dining room is right next to the soon-to-be spruced up kitchen and the chairs were in desperate need of recovering. Flipping through the good ol' Ballards catalog I came across these darling slipcovers so I ordered some to see how I liked them. Kinda gives the room a coastal feel. They look great with my seagrass rug. If I keep them, I will have them monogrammed in black since the border on the rug is black. They are a little big so I tucked in the top portion. I will have to cut out the top part and sew it to fit my chairs a little more snug. I really like the natural linen color of them.

I ironed the heck out of these babies, but being linen, they are supposed to look wrinkled

Cute little flounced skirt....see how good they look with the rug?

Big generous bow in the back

You can see where I've tucked in the top here...

...and here

View from kitchen into dining room. I'm sure that I will "have" to eventually change out the wall color which is a soft gold glazed with brown . I love my drapes but not sure if I'll keep them up. I may do another type of drape in here in keeping with the linen slipcovers. I think I will just cover the other 3 chair seats in a matching linen and not slipcover them. Sometimes you can overdo it.

The brown slipcovered parsons chairs with the initial you see I got at Target. These will be the chairs I will use in the kitchen. I am ordering another set of slipcovers in a natural or off-white color with monogram for the kitchen so I'll have two sets.

Just for the heck of it, what do ya'll think of these dining slips?