Spring Dreamin'

For the last couple of weeks I have been completely over winter and ready for spring to come along! I'm typically excited for winter before Christmas and then once Christmas is over, I'm done with winter and the cold weather. Thank goodness I live in the south where spring comes relatively quickly! But even down here in Birmingham it's still cold and I'm getting cabin fever!!

I recently moved into a studio apartment and the only downside is not having an outdoor space. All of my homes until now have had porches or yards where I can keep plants, have gardens, etc. I LOVE flowers, plants, growing veggies, and I am going to struggle a little this year without a space of my own to do that.

So due to my love for plants and my desire to force spring along, I decided to start bringing the outside in to my place this weekend and visited my local nurseries (Hanna's Garden Shop particularly) to find some ways to do that!

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I had this beautiful gold bowl/planter that really could be used for many things. I really wanted to use it as a planter though because I thought the gold would look amazing with some green contrast.

 

 

 

Paperwhites (Narcissus papyraceus)

 

 

My first thought was to put paperwhites (Narcissus bulbs) in it because I love long green stalks and the white flowers. I thought it would look so clean and pretty in the gold container. Paperwhites are really more of a winter/Christmastime flower and wouldn't last as long as I'd want at this point. So I changed gears a bit.

 

 

Hyacinths

 

 

My other thought was planting some hyacinths in it because the green stalks with beautiful flowers would look great. Plus, hyacinths are some of my favorite flowers and they smell heavenly! Unfortunately, because I'm ahead of Mother Nature's schedule though, hyacinths have been harder to find.

 

Alas, thanks to one of my awesome local nurseries, Hanna's Garden Shop, I found all these awesome plants and put them together in this pot for this amazing mini forest!!  I absolutely LOVE the way it turned out and it's already brightening up my kitchen!

 

The back left plant is a Fern Maidenhair. The back center is a Fern Lemon Button. The back right is a Fern Plumosa. The front center is Selaginella. And the green and white leafed one on the sides is Fittonia.

I'll keep you updated with all the other greenery and flowers I bring into my home :)

Pillow Party Part 2

I've been continuing with my pillows out of old clothing and used pillows. Part 1 (found here) has the beginning of my adventures into pillows. I've been finding old clothing with really cool fabrics but less than attractive fashion designs. Then I make pillows and fill them with the stuffing from old, torn, or otherwise unusable pillows to recreate new pillows for my Worldly Cottage!!

Here's the continuation of my Pillow Party! (sorry for the grainy pics!)

 

 

 

I made this navy blue pillow with the shirt from below. I added this beautiful trim with gold detailing as well. Now I know what you're thinking. Meghan, how did you not want to wear that beautiful navy shirt with shoulder pads??? As horrible as this shirt was before, the fabric was really nice and I knew it would make a great pillow.

 

Here's one of the corners in my studio apartment. The front pillow is another one I worked on made out of a long, denim skirt. The skirt was really nice (I got too excited and forgot to take a picture before cutting it up!!). I tried it on but it was a weird shape unfortunately. But the pattern was an amazing Southwestern design. So here is one of the pillows I made out of it.



Here's a close-up of the chair in the corner and the pillows.







This is the other pillow - a closer view of the Southwestern design. 

Here's my bed with all my pillows :) I love this stack of pillows and all the colors and patterns!!



More pillows!!!!!



 

Here's a close up of the pillows I made out of a dashiki. I used the fabric for other pillows. This one I utilized the gold embroidery that was on the front of the dashiki. It is an absolutely stunning fabric and I knew it had to be used for something. I could not bring myself to throw out the embroidery piece so I made this pillow, which I LOVE. 

 



 

 

Thanks for tuning in to another Pillow Party with Meghan....  ;)

Baked Apple Chips...Mmmmm

This weekend I made baked apple chips to eat with my granola and snack on during the day. I am a big snacker so I have got to find some healthier alternatives to snacking than what I usually find. They turned out so well and are delicious! Here's how it went!

 

 

 

 

You can core the apples before slicing them if you want but it really doesn't matter. Plus if you don't core them the center is a really cool star shape that looks neat when you bake it!

 

 

 

 

Slice the apples thinly for baking. I put them in a bath of water and lemon juice after slicing in order to prevent some browning. Then you pat them dry before putting them on the baking sheet.

 

 

 

 

Place them on a baking pan (parchment paper is a better option than tin foil because they don't stick as much to the parchment paper). The oven should be heated to WARM or around 200 degrees. The apples bake at a low temperature for a long time - it dehydrates them and slightly bakes them.

 

Sprinkle the slices with cinnamon if you want (tastes perfectly fine without anything, too). Bake for about 1 hour (2 hours if the slices are thicker). Remove the slices, flip over, and bake again for another 1-2 hours. Turn off the oven and let the chips stay in and fully cool. They will be crisp only once fully cooled.

 

Here's the finished product!! Delicious!! Perfect as a snack alone, with yogurt, cereals, and granolas!!

 

 

 

 

 Enjoy!!

 



Pillow Party!!

I've dubbed my interior style "Worldly Cottage" and have recently been working on achieving that feel in my new studio apartment. I found some old clothing that was either donated or I had been saving up to do something cool with it and turned them into pillows for an awesome pillow corner that fits perfectly with my Worldly Cottage feel :)

This was an old pillow I had that had ripped corners and was in bad shape - so I recycled the stuffing for my new pillows! 

I gave new life to an old button up shirt and the old ripped pillow and this is how it turned out!



 

I reused the gold buttons from the shirt.

 This mustard yellow shirt became a new pillow, too! I also had a dashiki that I made into a pillow and used a strip of it on the yellow pillow.

 

 

 

 

 

I found these cream, linen shorts that are not very attractive but are made from an attractive fabric!! Perfect for an upcycled pillow!!!

 

Once again, this cream, linen blazer (complete with shoulder pads), with an embroidered green, tropical plant pattern was not a very attractive fashion item anymore, but I knew would certainly make an attractive pillow that would fit perfectly into my Worldly Cottage!!

 

So snip, snip, sew, sew, and here we are!! 

 

 

 Stay tuned, folks! More to come.....!

Day Trip in Prattville, Alabama

Prattville, Alabama is a cute little town about 15 minutes outside of Montgomery, Alabama's historic state capital. It's an old, beautiful Southern town founded in the 1830s with a main street of shops that look upon an old, abandoned cotton gin mill.

I was helping friends move in Montgomery area this weekend and on the way home back to Birmingham we were able to stop through this beautiful old town. Here are my shots from that day!

 

 

Beautiful, huh!?!

My Own Curtain Installation

Yesterday I wrote a post about How to Choose the Right Curtains for Your Space and outlined things to consider when choosing curtains. The post was born out of my curtain search for my new studio apartment.

 

I have these three beautiful windows in the main room of my studio. They let in some great light and I want to have the option to have the curtains for privacy when needed, but I want to still be able to open them up and let in the full power of the sun and day!

 

 

The challenge was considering what the best option for such a long span of windows would be.  

Curtain rods can be so expensive and an almost 10 foot long curtain rod would be very expensive!

 

My friend, Brenda, had done this in her house and I loved the look of it.

 

 

 

This definitely goes along with my worldly cottage feel! It's a wooden dowel rod with wood brackets. She spray painted them black and they look so great and pretty expensive considering how easy and inexpensive they are to purchase!!

 

So I set out to do my own version that would work with these Ikea curtains that I had chosen for my space.

 

 

 

 

I love this pattern and thought it would work great with my style. It's a light enough background color, with a really cool pattern that is bold, but not so bold that it takes over the space. I am not afraid of some pattern, though, and thought this had an amazing worldly feel to it!

 

The nice thing about Ikea curtains also is that they come in a great length that's really easy to work with! My windows span 113" and I wanted my curtain rod to sit in between the top of the window and the ceiling, which is about 91" off the floor.  These Ikea curtains are 57" wide (each panel - so 114" total) and are 118" long. They are the perfect width and I can hem them just a bit to get them to be 91" tall. Standard US made curtains are around 84", which was too short.

 

So once I had the curtains figured out, I wanted to figure out my options for curtain rods. There are great options at Lowes, Home Depot, Home Goods, TJ Maxx, Wayfair, Overstock, etc. They can get pretty expensive and especially a 10' option! I think some of them can look really nice (usually the more expensive ones), but oftentimes the more affordable ones are cheaper looking.

 

I wanted to try my own version of the wooden curtain rods and I think that's a great option for my curtains. I think the design and style totally match what I am going for with my curtains.

 

I found a 10' wooden curtain rod from Lowes, 2 wooden side brackets and one wooden center bracket from Hobby Lobby, and two finials from Lowes.

 

The rod and finials came in bare wood, while the brackets were pre-stained, although they didn't quite match the color stain I was going for, so I sanded them down to prep them for staining.

 

 

 

 

Here's the Rustoleum stain in Kona, which is the perfect dark colored stain for what I wanted.

 

 

 

 

So I stained the curtain rod, finials, and brackets to all match in the Kona color.

 

Then came install time - you have to be really precise when installing. You have to make sure that the brackets are perfectly level so that the rod sits level. You also have to make sure that you screw the brackets into a stud or at least use the plastic drywall screws so the rod doesn't get ripped out of your wall when opening the curtains one day!!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 Here's the installed curtain rod!!

 

 

 

 

 It looks so amazing and is desperately awaiting the curtains!!!

Got the curtains in! Hemmed to the right height and looking beautiful!!!!

 

 



 

 

 

I LOVE the way it turned out!!! I'm so happy with it!

 

Let me know your thoughts!