Pintrest Challenge: Gussying Up the Sectional

It's my first time participating in the YHL/Bower Power Pintrest Challenge- woo hoo! And now that we have a whole blog dedicated to stalking following along with the Petersiks, it's the perfect place to show you my teeny tiny project.
You see, I'm a procrastinator to the core, I leave things to the last minute ALL. THE. TIME. So I came up with this idea yesterday. :) It all started with our new sectional (so excited about this purchase!! See cute video of my daughter Evie's excitement about it here). Right now, the color scheme in our family room is brown, brown, brown- with blue accents. I have a hard time committing to color, and throwing different patterns into the same room freaks me out. I seriously considered buying more of the curtains hanging in the family room, and just making a bunch of pillow covers out of it so everything matched. But then I pinned this from Centsational Girl- whom I also love- about how to style a sofa with pillows. And she gave these great tips about mixing and matching patterns, colors, etc. And so, my mom helped me choose another color to accent with (apple green!) and I shopped Target and went to JoAnn's. I decided to do a mix of store bought pillows and homemade pillow covers, since I had some I could reuse.
Here are the fabrics I came home with from JoAnn's:

Pillow number one: have you guys seen this pin?

Well I'm not much of a sewer, so I decided to do this one first. :) Note to those of you recreating this- I recommend getting more than a yard of fabric. I got a yard, wrapped it around a 16x16 pillow, and the tails were too short to actually tie a square knot. I ended up tying it once, then wrapping one of the tails around and securing it with a safety pin. Here it is.

I might take it apart and iron the fabric.... or I might not. But I wanted to get it done for today so I was rushing!! The other two fabrics I'm just going to sew plain pillow covers for, one 18x18 and one 14x14. I haven't done them yet bc I don't have a sewing machine (borrowing mom's this weekend), so I just wrapped them around pillows to get the effect for now. ;) 

The blue with the brown button is a pillow cover from Lowe's, and the bright blue long pillow was on clearance at Target. It has beading, it's really pretty but not comfortable at all. I think I want two more... probably these:

I looked everywhere at JoAnn's for an Ikat similar to this and found not one single ikat!!! So I'll probably buy it because it's perfect. :) So that's my half done Pintrest Challenge. I'm starting slow here... no judging!

Here are the completed projects from Young House Love, Bower Power, The Remodeled Life, and Decor and the Dog- these lovely ladies were our hosts for this round. Board and batten is a dream of mine down the road for our dining/sitting room, and I LOVE Katie's ruler, I've been wanting to do one of those too. Maybe by the time Evie turns two we can get to it. Michelle's wall buttons are super duper cute!! I love buttons, I'd definitely consider hanging them on my wall. :)  And I would like some of the fabric Megan covered her ottoman with, please and thank you.

Thrift Shop Challenge

So John and Sherry made up this hilarious thrift store challenge based on this ridiculously silly song. For more info, see here, and for everyone's awesome thrift finds see here. But it's basically a challenge to spend $20/scavenger hunt to find funny things. We did both, and we had a blast! Seriously, by the end we were laughing so hard mom had tears rolling down her face. We probably looked like crazies, but it was worth it!! Here is our adventure, documented in photos.

Here we are outside our chosen thrift shop- Savers. Note the $20.

First awesome find- the little sister to Sherry's big a$$ coat. It's almost the same color and everything!!

Pajamas with feet, the biggest ones we could find in the store. They were girls XL.

This is our "all pink outfit." Do we get extra points for the fact that it's also a one-piece?? 

House slippers and MOCCASINS. We laughed at the thought of actually finding moccasins.... and then we did!

A close-up of our legit moccasins- they even said moccasin inside!!

Okay this wasn't on the list, but we had to document the fact that our thrift store had a RACK of snuggie/slankets!!! A rack of them. We were cracking up :)

Luggage, modeled ala Vanna White

This find was our pride and joy- and the item that had us in the fitting room laughing till we cried. :) I was determined to find a fringe jacket, so we searched the coat racks high and low and didn't find any. So we moved on, found some other stuff, and then as we headed back up the coat aisle- I saw them. Not one, but TWO awesomely hideous, matching fringe jackets!!!! Mom swears they weren't there the first time, so I'm pretty sure they magically appeared just for us. We headed to the fitting room to model in front of the mirror. Here we are in our fringe-y giggly glory. :) I may have like 5 more photos of us in these jackets because we thought they were so hilarious...

And finally, here's what we spent our $20 on! Mom bought three plates with grapes on them for  the plate rack in her kitchen, and I bought two little trucks and a pair of brown shoes for Evie. I think our total bill was $17 and change. Thanks for the laughs John and Sherry- we had so much fun!!

We met John and Sherry!!

So when John and Sherry released the locations for their book tour, and we saw that they were coming to Toronto- we knew we had to go!! Toronto is less than two hours over the border from us, so we made a little trip out of it and headed to West Elm in Toronto, CA.

Enjoying the complimentary beverages and showing off our book!

Posing for a photo with better lighting than the above- because it's all about lighting! Note the insane crowd behind us, there were so many people!!

We're finally meeting!! This is Sherry's reaction to seeing a photo of my daughter Evie- we were commenting on how much hair she has compared to Clara. Evie definitely wins in the hair category- but she loves to watch videos of Clara singing and dancing. :)

The official photo!