I’m going to let you in on a little secret – I’m a bad blogger. I start all sorts of projects (sometimes I even finish them) and then don’t blog about them until months later. Here’s one such project which I first mentioned in March.

You may remember last year I asked for a little help in figuring out how much fabric I needed to makes drapes for my living room. I was planning on buying some lovely fabric and wanted to make sure I bought enough given there was a pattern, and the window is rather large. I bought the fabric and then had a bit of a nervous breakdown at the thought of trying to actually makes drapes as I’d never attempted them before. Adding to the panic – I wanted to make pinch-pleated drapes – not the easier tab or rod pocket style, and I wanted them to be fully lined. I decided a trial run was needed to assure myself that a complete novice could do it.

My bedroom windows were elected for my first foray into sewing drapes, and I collected my supplies. I decided to keep it as simple at possible and stuck with a plain white fabric (I think it was this, and this was the lining). While it wouldn’t allow me to practice matching a pattern, the plain white best suits the design plan I have for my bedroom. I also wanted simple drapery hardware so I chose this rod and finials from Ikea because they were simple and inexpensive.

Having an Irish mother meant that growing up I spent a bit of time in Europe visiting relatives. On one such trip I was introduced to Zara, and I was amazed by the store filled with lovely clothing, and very pleased to be able to buy some clothes that nobody had at home.

Zara eventually opened stores in Canada, and it remains one of my favorites for fun, fairly inexpensive clothing. A few years ago I discovered that Zara had a housewares division and from time to time would browse the European web stores to see what they had. When I was in Ireland last fall I even checked to see if there was a retail store so I could finally go shopping, but was disappointed to discover there wasn't one.

This past spring I heard some Internet rumblings that Zara Home would finally be opening an online store in Canada, and unbelievably a retail location as well. I tried not to get my hopes up, and refrained from perusing their wares online. This past Tuesday I heard that the first Canadian retail location would open at Yorkdale shopping center on August 22nd, and that the online store would open that day as well (a second retail location in Laval, QC will open on Aug 29th). After hearing the news I  jumped right online and picked out a few favourites.

I'm going to try something new. On Monday mornings I thought I'd post something pretty I've found while exploring the internet. Most of what I'll post is stuff I've pinned - I'm rather hoping this will encourage me to go back and explore what I've pinned and see if the same images still resonate with me weeks or even months later.

On Monday I told you about the fall decorating challenge that has been organised by Jeanette at This Dusty House, and how I was a bad blogger and didn’t get my shopping and planning done on the weekend. Well, yesterday after work (because while I planned on going to the dollar store at lunch I had to go to a meeting instead – drat) I made a mad dash to the dollar store and tried to figure out what I was going to use to decorate my mantel/bookcase. It was HARD!!! It might be because Dollarama had a lot more Halloween items than ‘Fall’, but it’s more likely that I’m not great at trying to decorate on a deadline – I like to think and rethink my decor choices before making a decision (ahem - exhibit A, the chairs I bought over a year and a half ago and haven't touched yet).

Anyways, I picked up a few things at Dollarama, and a few things at my local mom and pop grocer. The rest were items I had at home. Here are the items I used (and yes that's a stuffed bear - I'm a kid at heart, and he's cute):

Don’t forget to see what the other bloggers participating in the challenge were able to do – click on the links below to visit their blogs.

Fall to me means some good things - Thanksgiving, Halloween, turkey, Pumpkin pie, and some bad - cold, rain and, even though it no longer applies to me, back to school (And no, it hasn’t escaped me that all the things I like about fall are food related). Fall is not my favourite season – that honour goes to spring, so it’s not one I really celebrate which means it’s very interesting to me to see fall being celebrated with such gusto all over the blogospere. Some people take their fall decorating quite seriously.

At my old apartment I used to hang wreaths (or other decorative stuff) on my door to mark different seasons, but that can’t be done in my current building, so I’ve kind of lost my seasonal decorating mojo. That’s about to change.

Last week the lovely Jeannette from This Dusty House put a call out on Twitter for some blog friends to join her in a little challenge. The challenge (if we chose to accept) was to decorate a space within our homes for fall with $15 of items we found from dollarstores, thrift stores, or other store where fall decor items are widely available for a few dollars. A lovely group of bloggers bravely took up Jeannette’s challenge, and here they are:

When I bought my condo way back March 2010 I didn't really have any direction as to how my home would be decorated as I moved from a space of just 330 sq. feet and had the bare minimum  of furnishings and other pretty things to guide me. When I decided to paint the walls in the bedroom and living room when I moved in I had no starting point so I went with plain ol' white. I wish I could say that the shade at least had some sort of cute name like 'Snowflake', 'Puffy Cloud' or even 'Milk, but it was straight off the shelf 'white'.

Yes, white is boring, but I worried that if I picked a fun hue to paint my walls right after I moved in, that choice would taint or colour (Ha!) any decisions I made later surrounding the space itself. I wanted any choices to happen naturally - as I found pieces I loved. Over the past two plus years I've accumulated a few more pieces of furniture and a number of dare-I admit-it knickknacks, and I have a better understanding of how I'd like my space to look. When I look back on what I believed my future space would look like when I moved in (very modern and cool, with an arc lamp and other chrome accents), to what I want it to be now (more transitional, with some warm wood and small gold accents) I'm surprised at the almost 180 degree change in my decorating direction, and I'm really thankful that I decided to resist the new-homeowner temptation to rush out and buy stuff to fill the space so it wasn't so barren and unloved looking.

I'll be attending BlogPodium next weekend, and the title sponsor is Para Paints. Para is offering 5 bloggers who are attending BlogPodium the chance to become part of their blog crew, and giving them 15 free gallons of paint to play with. With the decor direction for my condo more firmly laid out, and the enticement of the contest I've started to think about adding some colour to my space in the form of paint.

This is my kitchen, which in over a year of blogging I haven't yet shown you. It's quite a small space, with not much opportunity for major change without spending quite a bit of money. BTW - those are the counters that were installed when my condo was in an episode of `Home to Go`on HGTV way back in 2002. They were reused when the current cabinets were installed a couple of owners ago.

When I first moved into my apartment I didn't have a single piece of living room furniture other than my desk, and the media console I inherited from the previous owner. I'm coming up on my two-year anniversary and I've managed to accumulate a bit more furniture since move-in day, but it's all been placed in the room in a rather unimaginative way - up against the walls. I've tried to imagine different room layouts, but the idea of moving all my big furniture around only to realise what worked in my head doesn't in reality has stopped me from testing my out my wonder woman powers.

While trolling the internet one day looking for some more lighting for my living room I spotted something intriguing on the Urban Barn website. It's an application called 'The Make room' planner and it allows you to try different configurations until you find the best layout for your space - all with barely lifting a finger! The application, which is online, allows you to create your own layout, and then add all you furniture and lighting elements. The  application comes pre-loaded with all of Urban Barn's products, but because most homeowners buy from various sources you can add custom sized elements to represent furniture you already own. I don't own any furniture from Urban Barn so I measured and created all my furniture on the program. Once you've got all your items gathered you can move them around and save different layouts for viewing again later.

I played around with it for a while, and I came up with some layouts that could work, but I need some help deciding which I should risk straining a muscle to recreate in my living room, and I'm hoping you might help (BTW - Urban Barn has no idea I'm writing this post. I found the tool and though it was neat so I'm sharing it).

Here are the furnishings I'm dreaming of moving around:

Here are the layouts I created online. They are in no particular order.

What do you think? Would any of the options above work better than my current furniture placement? Are there any I haven't thought of?

Way back in another lifetime I built my headboard out of MDF and 2"x2" pieces of wood and then covered it with a couple of layers of cotton batting, and a piece of inexpensive white fabric. Fast forward quite a few years, and I was no longer thrilled with my headboard. The fabric had gotten rather dull looking, and I wished every time I saw it that I had something just a little more sophisticated.

You may recall that I have a serious love for the Collete Bed at Crate&Barrel. A while ago when I was at King Textiles looking for some velvet for my mirror framing project, I spotted some fabric in their clearance section that sparked an idea. After quickly Googling on my phone the dimensions of a double bed I purchased several yards.

I put off this project for a couple of weeks as I was a little worried about pulling out all the staples that attached the original fabric to the headboard. Even though it was years ago, I still remember how cramped my hand got from using the staple gun, and I had visions of pulling staples for days. I needn't have worried - the staples came out quite easily with a pair of needle-nosed pliers.

As I wasn't going to replace the batting, my next step was to lay out the new fabric, and make the necessary cuts to remove the extra. Next I started stapling.  My method was simple - a couple of staples in the top in the middle, and then pulled the fabric tight and stapled at the bottom in the middle. I then did the middle on each side. This ensured that fabric was tight in both directions before I stapled the rest of the top, bottom and sides. The top corners gave me a little trouble as I wanted to make them as smooth as possible. After some trial and error I ended up cutting out a triangle of fabric at each corner before folding it over and stapling. This would probably have been easier if my fabric wasn't so thick, but as it's a woven wool it got quite bulky in the corners.

Once the stapling was complete I flipped the headboard over, and started on the next phase of the project.

I had seen individual nail head tacks at Home Depot on several occasions, but the thought of having to nail in several hundred tacks kept me from recovering my headboard a long time ago. While perusing the Lee Valley Tools website one day I saw these nail head strips, and they were what I used. The beauty of this product is you only have to nail in every 5th nail - the rest are fake.

Here's the finished product:

Mine doesn't have the fancy curved detail that the one at Crate&Barrel does, but given how much it cost to make I can overlook that little detail. What do you think? Is it almost as nice as the original?

I'm going to let you in on a little secret - I'm having a little trouble getting into the holiday spirit this year. I'm not sure what it is, but I just can't seem to get really excited about the holiday that is fast approaching. I own a little fake Christmas tree and a selection of ornaments and I fully intended to leave them in my storage locker for the holiday season until last week.

I was flipping through the November issue of Style At Home Magazine when I spotted this:

Once I spotted it, I knew I could make something similar, and all thoughts of being a complete Scrooge this Christmas went out the window. While they were a little time-consuming, they are very easy to make.

Here's what I used:

My first step was to find a pattern for a dove. that was easy enough using Google, and with it on my screen I free-handed the shape I wanted. There are three parts to the dove - the body, the wings, and the bottom.

Once the pieces were cut out I sewed the body together using a blanket stitch and then I stuffed the dove a little with some off cuts from the felt I was using to make my dove more three-dimensional.

Once the bodies were put together I added the wings. I decided to add the piece of tulle over my felt wing to dress it up a little, but you could do it without. The wings are attached to the body with a couple of stitches at the top - this allows them to stand out from the body which I think looks more natural.

I sewed on two pearl beads to make eyes, but I'm sure you could just use a little dab of glue.

Next, I took the craft feathers and decided on what length I wanted the tail to be. Once that was done I cut them, and then removed a little of the down from the quill to allow me to insert it easily into the dove. I used a little dab of glue to hold the feather in place.

My last step was to add the silver string. It turned out my string was too fat for my regular needle, but luckily I happened to have an upholstery needle with a big enough eye. All I did was use the needle to pull the string thought the top of the dove's body, and then tie a knot in the sting.

Here is the finished product:

Here is what this project cost (everything came from dollar stores):

I was going to just hang the doves, but I thought there should be something else on my tree, so I came up with what was the easiest project ever - it took about 5 minutes to make 15 ornaments.

What you'll need:

Cost:

I was going to put all my new ornaments on my regular tree, but on the way home from work today I found a tree branch, so decided to try to replicate my inspiration image a little more.