Decorating Inspiration

One of the challenges of renting an apartment is decorating. Since getting a part-time job at a Michael's Craft store, I have had to fight strong urges to buy everything. It's all so cute! And I get a discount! But back to complaining about renting... I'm afraid to do anything to the walls. We tried putting some 3M hooks up in the closet for our coats, and they fell off after a week. Not good.

So I've been trying to think of ways to decorate without heavy things. We don't have a headboard, and the blank wall above the bed is bothering the heck out of me! So I decided to mix the popular bunting idea with my Michael's supplies. Here's the inspiration:

The template (and top photograph) comes from Antibromide. I plan to make my bunting much larger, to fit the scale of my bedroom. I would have never thought of adding tabs to the top to fold over and attach to the twine! Before I found this tutorial, I was planning to punch small holes in the top corners, and thread the twine through. Now I have options to play with...

The bottom photograph comes from Design Seed. I saw a few color palettes on Pinterest, and thought it would be a great place to find a color scheme for my bunting. At first I wanted something with walnut brown and light teal, to match my duvet cover and sheets. The schemes just didn't feel right, and when I saw this relaxing palette, I knew I had a winner!

Below are a few more inspiration photos for the bunting. To see more (and more palettes), check out my pinterest page.

Source, source via this site.

Chicken Soup Weather

This weekend made it impossible to ignore fall any longer. It's cooled down a lot, and I turned on the heat for the first time today. I decided it would be the perfect time to try a chicken soup recipe I found on Pinterest. The recipe can be found here.

To make chicken soup, you will need:
• 5 cups chicken broth
• 1 can cream of chicken soup (10.75 oz.)
• 1/2 cup chopped onion
• 1/2 cup chopped celery
• 1/2 cup chopped carrots
• 1/2 cup chopped green onions
• 1 can corn (15 oz.), drained
• 1 package egg noodles
• 2 cups chicken, cooked and shredded
• seasonings to taste

DIY: Giant Bead

This week, I found a great tutorial to make a giant bead out of smaller beads. This craft is right up my ally! I was obsessed with seed beads when I was younger. Remember those animals you could make out of pony beads and string? Yea, I made those out of seed beads... I must have been unusually patient in elementary school! From there, I moved onto a bead loom, and created some cool bracelets and necklaces. After that I must have gotten distracted with knitting! Luckily, I kept all of my beads. Here's the inspiration (via Craft Gawker):

The tutorial can be found here. It is based off of another tutorial for rings.

For my first giant bead, I used these gorgeous matte beads that I had. I didn't have enough to make the giant bead as long as the pattern in the tutorial, so I shortened it.

Claws and Paws: Triangle Tips

I have seen triangle tips a few places, but this recent pin on Pinterest inspired me to give it a try:

I knew that you could use Scotch tape to outline the triangles, so I found some tape and settled down to paint. The results were... frustrating.