Anne on Tap

Tuesday, February 19, 2013

Goodbye Parties and Welcome Brunches

We had a great weekend last weekend. Valentine's day was great. I came into work to a few pleasant surprises from a coworker. She loves to bake so she brought in some delicious treats for everyone. She also has been trying to get rid of a few of her grandmother's items that are no longer in use, and one of them was a pin cushion. With my new found obsession of sewing, my ears perked up to this. A vintage pin cushion WITH pins!

Flowers from Tom :) They are so pretty!

Tom's Valentine's cupcakes from Molly's

Saturday night we met up with our friend Jess and a bunch of her friends at Brownstone Tavern. Sadly Jess is moving to New York this week. It's a great opportunity for her, but we're going to miss her a lot!

Bye Jess! We'll miss you!

Sunday we met up with my cousin Laurel and my Aunt Shirley. We are so excited to be welcoming Laurel to Chicago!! She found a great apartment in the South Loop with a killer view. We met up for brunch at The Bongo Room, where initially they told us the wait was going to be 60-90 minutes! We walked around to a few other nearby brunch hot spots, put our names in, and eventually walked back to the Bongo Room. Good thing, too, since they called our names soon after. I would definitely recommend checking out the red velvet pancakes here if you are ever in the area for breakfast. And since pancakes are a breakfast food, I'm sure they are healthy ;)

Laurel's killer view of the lake!!

Thursday, February 14, 2013

Happy Valentine's Day!

Here are a few pics of our simple Vday decorations! Hope everyone has a great day!

Sunday, February 10, 2013

AW! I did it again! (More pillows)

I made another pillow! Two to be exact! Well, technically I made pillow covers. They are amazing and I love them. I can't wait until it gets warm outside because they're going to be part of my new outdoor oasis.

I had my eye on some fabric that I had seen at JoAnn's last month, but was waiting until I had a good coupon to get it for 50% off. I figured out how much fabric I would need (or so I thought) and went to buy it. I was disappointed when she unraveled the bolt and it was 6" short of what I thought I needed. She checked in the back for me, but they didn't have anymore. I asked if they were going to get some soon and so she checked the warehouse, out of stock there too. While I was contemplating what to do, she offered to give me the "end of bolt" discount, which would basically be 50% off (the same as my coupon). Except for some reason, it was only ringing up at $10, so the total price came to $5!!! I was so excited that I figured I would just make smaller pillows than I had originally intended. (And later I looked it up online and saw that it is priced at $40/yard! Holy cow!)

Anyways it turns out I had exactly as much fabric as I needed, because for covers you are supposed to make them 2" smaller than the pillow insert size (who knew?) I pretty much followed the tutorial from this website. Here are a few pics of my progress along with the final product!!

Wednesday, February 06, 2013

Wordless Wednesday: Bailey's hats edition

Rope

Beaver

Half eaten tennis ball

Sunday, February 03, 2013

AW! I made a pillow!

I *Big Puffy Heart* my sewing machine!!! Why have I waited this long to get (back) into sewing? I sewed non-stop all weekend. I made our rags all fancy, fixed a few dish cloths, and made a pillow for our future outdoor sanctuary! I'm most proud of the pillow. And surprisingly, it only took like 20 minutes to make! And cost about $4.50. And is made of "outdoor" fabric so it will stand up to the elements!
It's actually my starter pillow, or practice pillow. I have my eye on some sweet outdoor fabric at Joann and I plan on making big, comfy pillows with that fabric. With zippers! Of course I'll let you know how that turns out!

I think it's all kinda frumpy because it hasn't been "used" yet. I'm hoping it will look more uniform over time

Saturday, January 26, 2013

On A New Obsession

So, I've had my eye on this bad boy for a while now, and finally decided to make the splurge. (It's a kick-ass sewing machine for those of you too lazy to click the link. Don't worry, I'm a little lazy too).

A little backstory:
So I'm not very crafty. Or rather, I don't really have the patience for crafts. Every once in a blue moon I make something crafty I'm pretty proud of. But then my patience runs out and I don't craft again for 6 months at least. So I was afraid that I would buy this sewing machine, get overwhelmed, and then it would just sit and collect dust in the closet. In order to prevent this from happening, and also proving that I am beyond excited to start sewing stuff, I started looking up different things online and watched a few you tube videos on sewing. The basics from my 7th grade Home Ec class came trickling back!!! (I did make an awesome apron and a pair of boxers back in the day).

So I think first up is surging the edges on some old cut up t-shirts to make our rags all fancy. Yeah, yeah, that's not really "crafty" but it will give me some practice on the machine and it won't matter if I mess up. Plus it will let me try (a few of the 60) different stitches and make our rags all fancy looking. After I get the hang of it, I have some big plans for some pretty amazing throw pillows. I'll post pics as soon as they're done! (But don't hold your breath, I'm holding out for a sale on the fabric).

And speaking of pics, I think my posts are always a little better with a pic of Bailey in them.