The Raz

Nesters, meet my nephew, Lucca Parker Alterio... {AKA The Raz....}

He was born yesterday at 10:38 AM with a full head of hair, bright blue eyes and is the most adorable thing I have ever seen in my life.  I will have to travel to NYC to meet him face to tiny little face over the weekend but I'm already in love.  How could you not with those chubby cheeks!! 

DIY Projects: Happily Leather After

Heya Nesters!  A few months back I showed you my bookcase makeover from girlie pink to modern white. And I'm happy to say I have finally taken one step closer to being totally done with it.

DIY Project: The Plight of the Stockings

Heya Nesters!  As mentioned before, I had many DIY projects underway for Christmas gifts and couldn't show you until after the wrapping-paper-ripping was over.  I couldn't ruin the surprise! After all, occasionally family members do stop by the ol' Nest. Anyhoo, one day in November, I got an email from Pottery Barn advertising their Christmas stockings.

via Pottery Barn

Since I had already been hemming and hawing over what homemade gifts to churn out I thought, "What a better gift for a new family {Joe, Molly and the Raz} than a family of matching homemade stockings!"  HA! How wrong was I?!

DIY Project: Advent Calendar & Cans for Comments Update!

Welcome back from the holidays, Nesters! I hope Santa was good to you and that no of the family members were strangled after a wee too much egg nog. With Christmas over and done with, as promised, I am going to embark upon showing you a plethora of DIYs.  Here is number uno.  

Felt Advent Calendar

Baking Bonanza!

Good Morning Nesters!  I found myself in a seriously productive mood this weekend. Saturday morning, I got to hang with Mom a little and started sewing a dress I'm making for a wedding we're  going to in November.  Then Matt and I went to scare our own pants off by going to see the movie Devil.  After a good nights sleep {thankfully without any nightmares! That movie was scary!} we got up bright and early and headed out to Stow to Honey Pot Hill apple orchards. 

 

DIY Project: Pretty Little Dish Towels

Heya Nesters!  Today I'm bringing you a new DIY project to spruce up that kitchen of yours. Remember way back when I wanted to flank my LOVE poster with this lemon printed fabric?  Well I chose to go with a different accent for that piece and saved the fabric to use to make my dish towels look much more "Gina."

DIY Project: Nils Stool Ikea Hack

Heya Nesters! Lately, I've been working hard to prepare for today, Matt's 26th birthday, and what do you get for the man that has everything? Ikea stools. Yep! You read right!  You see, he collects Japanese arcade machines that require the player to sit {as opposed to American where you stand generally} and has longed for some replacement stools for the wooden Ikea ones he has now: 

DIY Project: Jewelry Hoop

 

Heya Nesters!  I've been working on fixing up my bedroom for the last couple of weeks. I've desperately been looking for a new system in which to keep my jewelry.  After some brainstorming, I came up with going a little "crafty" and made my way to my local craft store to pick up a needlepoint hoop and fabric.

Dress Form Decor

For the last few years I've been so totally ahead of myself in home decor and I didn't even know it!  I was saddled with a dress form out of necessity for my creative side. Its not pretty, cotton muslin with pins and markings all over. Little did I know, this was such a wonderful addition to my decor. 

Click READ MORE to see these creative spaces...

Remnants

Hi there Nesters!  I was feeling so lackadaisical yesterday evening I almost let it get the best of me and surpass posting for today. Maybe its the heat or maybe its the restless sleep I got last night. {I had nightmares about my rent check being lost in the mail! Yikes!} Either way, after a catnap on the couch immediately following work, I was feeling less than inspired. I had no quick projects to whip up, or new purchases to share.  What's a blogger to do?  The answer was right under my nose, literally!  My new throw pillow that I had been napping on, inspired me to take a peek at all my old fabrics that live with the monsters under my bed. 

After digging through it, it looks like its own monster!

Hit READ MORE to check out the rest of it after the page break... 

DIY Project: Pillow Sham

Hey Nesters! A few of you may have seen my "tweet" that I made a very successful trip to the fabric store on Saturday. I was anxious to put at least one project into action!  I decided to tackle my currently bland couch by adding a new throw pillow. 

Click read on to see the step by step instructions after the jump!

Dish Towel Dilemma

To me, a kitchen is a work den. Its not a place that's going to be pristine all the time. It's bound to be covered in flour when baking cookies, or tomato sauce splatter when its been simmering for hours. That's just the way it goes. And the same goes for all my kitchen towels. Most of them are bruised and beat up and have been through the ringer and back.  Like a boxer... only for cleaning. They have accidental bleach marks and gunk encrusted in them so far that no matter how many times you wash, you'll still find a trace of it. Ratz! In my prolific interwebs prowling, I started searching for new kitchen towels. I want them to be cute but not too cute, have good absorbency, but not anything crazy scientific and to either be yellow, orange or a hint of red. Despite the plethora of dish towels on the World Wide Web, I have come up empty handed!  How disappointing!

In the meantime I did see some awfully cute ones on Etsy.

Since I came up short, I've decided that I'm going to try my hand at making my own kitchen towels. It should be as simple as sewing a plain terrycloth towel to a cute piece of cotton calico. That way, I will have the absorbency of the terrycloth and the cuteness of the cotton print.

Stay tuned to see how this project unravels!