confessions of a color lover

I posted a similar picture from the fair in Boise a long while ago, but I still love it!

It's true - I am a lover of color - big time. Color is something I have always been drawn to, way back to learning the order of the colors in the rainbow and the complimentary colors. I even remember contemplating colors combinations as early as second grade (as a child I determined that pink/gray, pink/green, and purple/turquoise were good ones).
 
The love of color continues today. One of the most fantastic features of our SLC and Maryland apartments are/were the wall colors (LOVE the taupe, blues and yellow). And I have been known to organize my closet, bookshelf, fabric, even DVDs by color. And I admit to not being able to get over the first color issue of the General Conference Ensign issue - epic!

So it looks like I'm not the only one to confess a stronger than average affinity for color. Aarean is dedicating a whole new blog to it (with an awesome giveaway, too). Don't you adore the beautiful items she paired together above? Lovely. I believe I shall be making some more color posts myself one of these days.

project: seat covers

 

A little something about me: I enjoy a nice, bold, graphic print. Lately I've been quite drawn to chevrons. I knew I wanted to incorporate this print into our decor somehow, so I decided chair-pad covers for our dining table would be just the place.

Exhibit A: Boring Before.

We bought a 5 piece dining set when we were first married (7 years ago!) from Walmart. The whole set was $100, which I do think was a steal of a deal (especially considering the Provo D.I. is ridiculously overpriced when it comes to furniture). We've had to replace some parts, but overall the chair frames have held up well. However, the boring tan fabric on the chair pads was in definite need of replacement from years of use and abuse. So, I figured the perfect time for this project was when we first arrived in Salt Lake, seeing as how the chairs had already been dissembled for the move. After lots of time in the fabric store (which, PS, can I tell you how wonderful it is to be so close to JoAnn's once again?!) looking for pretty yellow fabric for a decent price, I finally decided to just make my own yellow print with some white and yellow duck cloth that was on sale for 50% off. So, about $15 and a lot of work later...

Exhibit B: The Awesome After!

 

It took some long, hard thinking, experimentation, failure, seam ripping, and frustration with the staple gun, but I finally figured out how to make my own chevron print chair pad covers (I suppose I could have just googled "chevron design" and found instructions on how to make the print here, but that would have been much too easy). The seams aren't perfect and it took a lot longer than I would have liked, but I LOVE the result! The bright pop of color these add to our home is so fun, and I feel a great sense of accomplishment when I look over and think, "Hey, I made those covers!"

hello there

Hello there, friends. I'm alive and planning to post. I just need to get up the stamina to do some of the massive updating that lies before me. I can do this - I just gotta take baby steps. And my first baby step is this little post. Not much substance, but posting this picture of a pretty daisy-like flower from a hike up in Cottonwood Canyon back in August is a start, right?

Okay, that wasn't too hard. Let's see if I can keep this going...