V-Day decor, a tutorial, and you can call me Kate (if you want to)

The Christmas decor is gone and it's still winter. It's so.....blah. I decided to pretty things up (despite the fact that I am outnumbered by boys) for Valentines Day. Fortunately for me, Indy thinks V-day is still cool and loves everything I do. I love that kid. So, I mostly shopped the house (thanks Nester) and the 1 Euro store (like the dollar store in the States) and my beloved IKEA.

We have a chair in our entry way (for M to take off his combat boots before trekking mud through the house). It needed....something. I used Kimba's idea for a no sew pillow and made this cutie pie pillow from some scraps.



An apothecary jar filled with cinnamon imperials (I could eat every one of those yummy red hearts!), a scrap of pink ribbon, red books and an old lantern are on the entry shelf.


The entry table. The pink candle is sitting on a (red) copy of Romeo and Juliette.


More apothecary jars. The rose petals come from IKEA. The twine balls came from the 1 Euro store (3 for 1 Euro) and the porcelain flower under the cloche was a gift from M several years ago. He actually had a friend fly it in from Italy on his private plane.


Willow branches with red ribbon tied on and hung with paper hearts I cut out while watching TV. I'm cool like that. More twine balls and rose petals in the bird cage and a little piece of art I made on top of another red book.


Now, onto the tutorial for how I made the little piece of art in the above photo.

I printed off a bunch of lovey-dovey quotes on a regular piece of white paper with a fancy script.


A piece of red paper (left over from the hearts on the tree), and a photo frame (isn't Indy cute in this photo? He was 2).


I thought the white paper was too white, so I took my tea strainer (it had dried a lot from my morning tea, but was still damp) and tapped it all over the paper. Don't do this too much or it will smear the ink. I then patted it with a paper towel.


I cut it to fit the frame, put 2 cut out hearts in front of it and voila!

It was so easy and took all of about 10 minutes. Actually, gathering the supplies took longer than making it.

I got an email from Sweet Rue jokingly saying that I needed to give some kind of name so she didn't have to call me 'Mom.' I laughed and realized she was probably right. I don't want to use my real name because it is so unusual and I've only ever met 2 others with the same name. Also, my parents spelled it weird. Those of you who know me IRL know what I'm talking about. So, I thought and thought and thought (I didn't hurt myself, don't worry) and then it hit me: my bar name! When you were in college did you ever have an alias that you gave guys you met at parties/bars/the library/the caf that you weren't really interested in? No? Well, my friends and I did. The main reason I did it was because of the unusualness of my name, but all my friends had aliases and we had to know them, so if a guy asked we gave them the right (incorrect name). My alias was Kate MacNamara. I just liked the way it sounded. Say it. Kate MacNamara. Doesn't it sound awesome? I think so. It was given out (along with the wrong digits) to many a weird guy during my college years. If you feel that you have to call me something, feel free to call me Kate. I'm not giving you my digits though.