The Mother Load

Warning: I'm not a crafty person, nor am I a talented photographer. I'm sharing this post because I'm proud of my achievement AND my half-assery. No promises of quality work here, but feel free to do what I did a lot better than I did it. (It'll be a backwards "Nailed it!")

Okay, so like all things trendy and popular, I jumped on the bandwagon of Pinterest kind of late and I hardly ever do anything with it because it scares me. (It was the same with capri pants. No lie.)  I know how to use Pinterest and have even done a craft I found on it (badly). Most of the time, though, I stay far away and cock my head at the occasional emails that tell me someone is following my non-activity there.

Today, though, I made something completely on my own. And it is GOING on my Pinterest page! Oh, it is GOING, BUT GOOD!

A couple of weekends ago, we were cleaning out the garage and headed down to the dump to get rid of some dumpy stuff. The landfill in our town has a little covered section where people can leave/take items like electronics or furniture or plumbing fixtures that are still in good condition. We check it out every time we're there in case we find something useful (because we're cheap).

While we were there this time, a man kindly offered us his barely used sun room couch, direct from the back of his truck to the back of our van. It took us a few minutes to decide we wanted it, but once we remembered a) our current family room couch is about 150 years old, b) free couch, we decided to snap it up.

Only problem was it didn't match our dark brown toned decor.

At all.

We bought a solid blue rug to match the trimming and moved the brown stuff upstairs (where it actually looks better..), but that was all the decorating I'd done thus far.

New (to us) front room

I've been itching to put together some kind of flower arrangement for the family room that would tie in the red elements from the couch and add another accent color to the room, but silk flowers and pretty vases are pricey (and I'm cheap). So I decided I would only do it if everything came from the dollar store (did I mention I'm cheap?).

Finding the right flowers wasn't hard at all. It's like they were waiting just for me.

Or the other lady eyeing them. Snooze, you lose, sister.

Finding a container to act as my vase was another story. I needed something tall and somewhat narrow. Regular stores have lovely tall ceramic vases for $40-$90, but NO (see also: cheap). I knew I could find something that would work to hold the flowers and something else that could make it pretty. My faith was rewarded pretty quickly.

Behold, thy vase.

Behold, they vase cover.

I bought some raffia for good measure without any real idea what I'd be doing with it. (Raffia frightens me.)

Spooooooooooky, no?

Once it was time to assemble my flower arrangement, I realized very quickly that gallon size plastic storage containers are not so much built for holding tall plastic flowers. My "vase" toppled over a few times until I could spread the flowers out for balance. This wouldn't do, of course, because I have children, cats, and a family that breathes regularly, so I improvised on my improvised vase and added some weight to the bottom.

I'll make hummus some other time.

Now, all I had to do was put the thing together. The pillow cover went on easily, though it was over-sized. If you go to a real store, you could get one of those cylindrical pillow covers and avoid this problem. Of course, if you go to a real store, you could also just get a real vase.

But where's the fun in that?

Here's where my major half-assery comes into play. My logic has always been, "If no one's going to see the back, it doesn't have to be perfect."  (Or even well put together.)  I used safety pins to tighten up the top and bottom of the pillow cover and secured the flaps of leftover fabric with hot glue.

This is how Sarah sews.

Because it works!

Thank goodness Cate owns a glue gun. I'll ask her permission later.

And that's what we call "good enough!"

Kitten approved and everything. (Oh...and meet Claude, our kitten.)

Because I didn't want an ugly zipper showing at the top of the fabric, I knew it was time to face the raffia. I realized the blue raffia would tie the flowers to the rug and the couch lining, so blue it was.

Not that I knew what to do with it.

Claude did. (Why do I think he's going to leave these flowers alone? Because I'm dumb.)

I ended up just wrapping the whole skein or ribbon egg or kit n caboodle or whatever it's called around the neck of my vase.  When it came time to tie a bow, I had my usual reaction.

Tears and indigestion.

So I Good-Enoughed it.  And lo, it was good enough.

Yea, verily.

The whole project cost between $20 and $22 (counting the beans).





I added some dollar store art to the walls to the tune of another $4.  And the family room, she is beautigorgimous and budgetlicious.

If nothing else, the family room is cheap.

And that's good enough for me!