Samurai Shower, follow up

I know it's been quiet over here. Like, cricket quiet. And I'm sorry. If it's any comfort, I have thought of you every day, fondly and guiltily, all at once. I cannot decide if I've been productive or not, but I know that I have been busy. At least, my hands have been.

This past Sunday was my sister's baby shower that I had mentioned in the last post. I thought I'd share with you some of what I got together for the party decorations and favors. I won't go into tons of details, but I had a great time brainstorming all the ways I could make a cohesive presentation for a samurai baby shower. Paper lanterns and parasols with cherry blossoms, branches with cherry blossom accents, and a parasol for folks to sign their well-wishes on for the wee little warrior that we're welcoming (yay! alliteration!).

The only things that I feel I need to explain are some details: the favors were fans, origami, and mini paper lanterns that folks could decorate if they wanted to. (I never brought out the paint, but there were colored markers all around.) Each favor had a tag on it that had one of the core principles of bushido, or the samurai code of honor, with my niece's name on the other side. 

We sisters are not the best at running showers with the typical shower games of diapers with candy bars or what-do-you-know-about-so-and-so or what-flavor-baby-food-is-this? We just don't really coordinate folks all that well, and I just don't like those games. But we did have prizes. I like an excuse to give things to folks. So we just drew names. And I gave away parasols with the bushido principles painted on them. Even if my Japanese calligraphy skills are comparable to a first grader's. Either way, on the sunny, hot day that we had the party, these proved to be quite useful.

All in all, I think that the project turned out pretty well, though I could think of a number of areas in which I would have liked to have done better. The best part, though, is doing these kinds of things for other folks (unlike sewing for other folks, I've decided, which just feels tedious) and getting to see how much they like it.

Also, as a plug, this last photo is of the cupcakes my sister, Sturdy Mama Knits, made for the party. I'm hoping she'll also post on her blog the completed gifts that she's made for our niece. Super cute!!!

I have been sewing, though nothing to completion, as I keep on hitting snags that just deflate my sails. But I'm still hoping to complete some pieces for the Summer Essentials Sew-Along before the fall comes around. What I have noticed while procrastinating is just how many clothes I actually own, too, so perhaps this is a good time to reassess my needs and my refashioning options.  Stay tuned!

Spring Cleaning

Okay, this is less about cleaning, and more about renewing one's take on one's surroundings. In other words: time to rearrange the furniture!

I have to be honest and give credit to my husband, who made a push for rearranging our living room. At a friend's recommendation, and armed with some extra money from some side work, he recently went and bought us a flat screen TV and Apple TV.

I feel like it's worth noting here that before now, this was our TV:

It's analog, and we don't have cable. So, TV time (which I don't often find, as I'm on the computer too much) is limited to XBox Netflix streaming or DVDs.

I think that buying Apple TV and a larger, higher quality display opened up worlds for the husband and kicked him into inspired mode.




We live on the top floor of an old house, so we have interesting ceilings/gables. It gives us a couple really cute alcoves, which we really haven't taken advantage of. Until now (thanks husband!). He had wanted to lift our futon chair to be level with our radiator, which meant we needed to lift the frame about a foot or so off the ground. Just this week, he had brought home free shelves from his work to help me redeem the mess that is my craft room. These shelves aren't pretty, but they are deep and heavy duty plastic. And they're the perfect size to be the mount for a futon chair frame. (Not to mention that they just gave us additional storage space in a closet space deficient apartment.)

The result

It should be said that I absolutely love alcoves. I would have fantasies in middle school of having just such an alcove in which to read all day and hide from the world. Teeny Ass Apartment agrees with me: alcoves rock!

Because our old TV was so heavy and big (it's like a foot and a half deep), we had a coffee table to hold it. With the flat screen TV, we were able to mount it on the wall, giving us back a coffee table. Yay! We needed a place to put all the tech-mo-logical apparati though, so we did an IKEA run, and got one of these:

It's nice and basic, and does the job. Except the back panel complicates the wiring issue with all of these boxes that plug into the wall and tv (Apple TV, XBox, DVD player, speakers). We took out the paneling, but the visual result was, well, horrendous. I didn't take a picture, but trust me on this. Or look at the back of your TV, and you'll know what I'm talking about.

Once again, husband has a clear idea of what he's looking for: Japanese print backing to the shelf. This time, I get to be the inspired one and actually make use of my slightly ridiculous stash of craft supplies. Using a simple Japanesque print wrapping paper, we were able to panel the back of each shelf. Not only is it inexpensive, it also is a lot easier to cut holes into a piece of paper to account for random wires popping out of an upright XBox.

I feel like there is a great DIY tutorial in this technique, but I really don't think I need to tell you how to do it. You cut out paper you like, and adhere/pin it to the back of each shelf, giving a nice space for the wires to exit the back. Do you really need pictures? So, instead of telling you what you likely already know, let's call it a DIY inspiration!