No sew Burlap Flower Pillow

OK, this pillow is so cute and I don't have a decent camera so please forgive this crappy photo. First of all, mea culpa, I cannot sew, although I have tried. So any projects that I do need to be no-sew or quick hand sew. If you can sew god bless you and you'll have a prettier end result than I will.

OK, so a few months ago I went bananas for burlap and bought 10 yards of it. I made table runners, pillows, a skirt for my weird entertainment system (that's a whole other entry), and much much more! Anyway, for a while I had these plain burlap pillows on a trunk in my family room, making me snore every time I walked by them. Then, Friday morning, I picked up a magazine off the floor. It was opened to a page that had this cute wool felt pillow with a huge flower on the front. I looked at it and thought heck I can do that! So while the baby licked jam off his toast in his high chair and Only Daughter and #2 Son waited for the bus, I cut out about 10 burlap flowers freehand, getting smaller each time I cut. then I glued them on, biggest first in descending order. Here's what I got (excuse the picture, again). Oh, I added a little fabric button that came with a blazer I got years ago.

 You could do this with a store bought pillow and embellish with a large or small flower, or try it in felt.

I am going to try this with the wool felt, as soon as I can get some on sale. I love projects I can do while still in my bathrobe.

Thankful branch

I am once again totally ripping off stuff from my BFF in order to make things cute around here. She is super clever and is always inspiring me; this time I am giving an actual photo of her fabulous-ness. How fabulously shabby chic is she?

When she and I recently visited for a much needed BFF weekend, we stopped into Pottery Barn and picked up a few cute little things, including the mercury glass vase you see. I brought my vases home and plonked them on the mantle in the family room. BFF went home and made a Thankful Branch. She went outside, plucked a nice branch off a tree, used her little mini alphabet stamp, some white blank tags and some pretty sheer ribbon and made this darling fall decor. It's simple and sweet and chic and natural. So off course I went totally Single White Female and ripped her idea off pronto. BFF suggested I do this for the baby shower I had a couple of weeks ago. Instead of Thankful words, I used baby words, like "snips and snails" "puppydog tails" "ten Fingers" "Ten Toes" "Snuggles" "First Steps" "First Words" "Love" "Baby Kisses" etc.. and the baby's name. After the shower, I gave it to the mom to be, and she is putting it in the baby's room!



This would also be great as a Thanksgiving craft with the kids; have them choose things they are thankful for and help them stamp out (or write) the words and hang them on a branch. Cute!

 Enjoy, and be safe during this holiday!

Lauren

The Flavor Part, again

sorry this pic is so lame

Tis the season for open houses, buffets, luncheons, family dinners, etc... I'm full just thinking about the feeding frenzy we have at Thanksgiving. There will be a lot of cooking, prepping, cleaning up. Every once in a while it sure is nice to find a recipe so easy and yet so tasty I almost feel guilty about it. Almost. Anyway, I had a baby shower for a friend last weekend and this Fruit Dip is about the easiest thing going. It was definitely the simplest thing on the table (any of the fancy food I can take absolutely zero credit for: my friend Cindy is a Genius with food).
I can't give credit to the original author of this recipe because I tested the recipe for a cookbook and it was annonymous. If I find out the source I will amend this post.
But for now, here it is:
Fruit Dip:
1 container marshmallow fluff
1 container strawberry cream cheese.
Blend well. Serve with fruit.
Done.
It's so good you can spread it on bagels, muffins, scones, you name it. I would even say it would make a mighty fine cream cheese frosting. Go crazy.