What was your weekend like? Was it as horrible as ours here in Michigan? We had an ice storm, snow, rain, and then the sun. If you’re like we Michiganders, you are ready for spring. By the end of this week, it is supposed to finally arrive.
We are about three weeks behind in opening the cabin. We are hoping to do that this Friday. Yea!!!! Up north,
the cabin,
(Our bedroom addition.)
the bunkhouse (this is an older picture)
the reading (This is my “library” at the bunkhouse.)
the napping outside
Oh, my!
I digress, (I was daydreaming about next week). Back on topic:
Remember last week, I told you I went to the grand opening of a new store, called Ollies? I promised to show you what I bought.
First of all, here’s wonderful wood tray.
This is the front side. It has a small lip. Have no idea what I will be using it for. It might even end up on the wall. 
These are silver plastic placemats. I love the delicate design. Again, they may end up being used in other ways. I’ll be sure to show you.
I love plaid. Again, these are just plastic. But I find I like plastic placemats, especially cheap ones. And these are the colors I use for Christmas so they have been put up with the Christmas decorations for now. Unless I take them to the cabin which has a red and black theme. 
But these placemats you see next are the pièce de ré·sis·tance. They were $1.5o each.
Ta, da!!!!! All I did was sew the wrong sides together. I stitched along the seam and left flanges. This pillow cost $3.oo. Does it get any better than this? The fabric is really thick and heavy, very much like a painter’s canvas. They are great, aren’t they?
I read a blog the other day where the host was mentioning she generally paid between $50.00-$150.00 for a pillow. Not this woman! Besides, I like to change things around a lot. You can do that with a $3.00 pillow.
I keep all my old pillows and keep recovering them. I’ll bet some of them have been covered five or six times at least. But I can’t see no reusing them. If you don’t sew, then it’s a different story.
I also made the black and white checked ones in the background. For those, I ordered the fabric online for $8.00 a yard and sewed two pillows out of it. This pillow creation ended up this way simply because I had a lot of material left over. I wasn’t sure exactly how long I was going to make it. Then I realized I already had the perfect pillow in my stash but it was quite a bit shorter. I almost cut off the excess but then I thought of this. I mean, really. Isn’t it cute?
I sewed the end seam together and added these great buttons. I love to find unusual and very large buttons at garage and estate sales. Buttons are not cheap these days and I can almost always find something to do with large ones especially. Then I merely turned it over and hand sewed the flap with a kind of invisible seam. Voila’
I left this part open.
I’m a stickler for details and I noticed from this picture that it looks like the top button is not lined up with the other two. But it could be the check itself. I will, of course, measure, and if it isn’t I will reposition it. (Don’t remind me about this post. I’m still working on this area in my life. 🙂 ) Thank goodness my position in Christ is never-changing. 
Anyway, keep your eyes open when you find inexpensive placemats. They can be great pillows.
Can’t wait to show you my finished coffee table later this week. It was one of those, “Will I never get it done?” kind of projects. I actually ended up refinishing twice.
Anyway, God bless and I hope you enjoy your day.
