Can't Get Enough Orange Necklace Tutorial

Hey Miss Lovie readers! Today I'm back over at Thirty Handmade Days with another jewelry tutorial, my Can't Get Enough Orange Necklace! 

 I am LOVING this one. Maybe it's because I'm obsessed with orange right now. 

Click on over for the full tutorial! 

DIY Fabric Heart Fall Bunting with Free Template

I know. Fall is over, I guess. But it's really not, people. I know the department stores, your neighbors' house strung with lights, Pinterest, and all the bloggers ever are insisting it's Christmas already, but it's actually not winter yet. We haven't even had Thanksgiving!! Believe me, I'm tempted, just like you, to stay up until 1 am decorating the Christmas tree almost every night of the week these days, but I refrain. Why? Because I love pumpkins. I can't bear to throw them away yet. They're not even rotting. Also because of Thanksgiving. 

I thought for just a minute I might be hosting Thanksgiving this year for my family, and even though I'm not now, I decided to decorate my mantel for the holiday. More on that in this post! I knew I needed a cute flag bunting to hang. Luckily I had already made this sweet fabric heart one for our rehearsal dinner before our wedding a couple weeks ago! I love it when I can reuse decorations for different occasions.  

Here it is on our Thanksgiving Mantel. 

Sadly I don't have any quality pictures of it on the mantel at the Rehearsal Dinner. It was pretty cute there, too. 

Want to make a sweet fabric heart bunting for your house, too? 

Of course you do, this could be used for ANY holiday or season- not just Fall or Thanksgiving. Think pink and red patterned fabrics for Valentine's Day, plaids and reds and greens for Christmas, or your child's favorite colors for their birthday! Bam. Most versatile bunting tutorial ever. 

Let's go. 

Gather Materials:

 Glitter scrapbook paper, Kraft card stock, twine, fabric, hole punch, scissors, a pen glue and 

these templates.

Create the Flags.

 Print the templates onto card stock and cut out. Use templates to trace and cut the flags onto the paper and then glue. I made 12 flags and this made my bunting about 5 feet long. 

 Trace and cut the hearts into the fabrics.

 Sew the hearts onto the flags. I didn't pin these or anything because it's difficult to do through the paper so the fabric will shift on you some. I found it easy to sew one side of the heart and then turn the paper while the needle was still down, sew back over the side I had just sewn and then sew the other side. After a little trial and error, I found that this decreased the amount of bubbles in the fabric. It may not be totally flat, but that's okay. I then sewed around the heart another time or two to create a kind of sketchy outline as you can see in the photo below. 

You finished a flag! Repeat however long your hear desires.

String the Flags.

 Use a hole punch at the top of the flags as shown and thread the twine through, starting at the back, allowing the twine to sit on top of the flag and then threading it to the back again. 

 Hot glue some bows onto each side if you like and you're done! If you like, you could put a tiny dot of hot glue on the back of each flag and press the twine into it once you have it placed where you want so the flags don't slide around. I didn't do this in case I want to use the bunting somewhere else and space the flags out a little more. They don't really move too much once you've got them hung. 

If you loved this tutorial, be sure to go check out my Thanksgiving Mantel as well! 

Thanks for reading. It's good to be back. I hope to post a little more regularly now that the wedding is over. More diy wedding tutorials are definitely in this little blog's horizon as well. 

Happy Holidays!

Thanksgiving Mantel and Fabric Heart Bunting

Hello, Miss Lovie family! 

My wedding was a couple weeks ago so now I am back to blogging as usual,  I hope! Today I have my Thanksgiving Mantel for you! I know a lot of you are already decorating for Christmas, but bypassing Thanksgiving is just so sad! And so is throwing away pumpkins before they're done. I love pumpkins and mine are still kicking so a Thanksgiving mantel it is. My tree can wait a few more weeks before it goes up! 

I hope you enjoy my mantel. We started renting this old home in a historical district back in May of this year. We've been so busy since that I'm just now getting the chance to decorate this beautiful fireplace for real. The mantel itself is very narrow so that brought a bit of difficulty finding pieces that would fit up there, but I found a few things just around the house that worked well. 

If you love the Fabric Heart Bunting, go here for the full tutorial and templates! 

 Mr. Lovie and I bought the old windows off Craigslist and got a crazy awesome deal for them along with a few others. They were originally intended for wedding decor, but I'm so excited they double as decorations for our home! 

These awesome Reader's Digest books came from a yard sale. I love the colors in them so much. They tend to be the item that ends up in every room when I move items around to decorate because I love them so much. 

The chalkboard frame came from Home Goods and I think the frame was originally blue? I spray painted it gold and used it in wedding decorations as well. I used this chalkboard art tutorial. It is so easy. Those who know me well know I cannot do pretty lettering on anything! 

Fonts used: Amatic Bold, Return to Sender, and Janda Stylish

Everything in this mantel design was done with things I already had so that was really exciting. I love saving money. 

Love my fabric heart bunting? Find the tutorial and free template here! 

Pumpkins! These were left over from our wedding as well. 

Thank you so much for reading! 

I am definitely thankful for you!!

Again, you can find the tutorial and template for the heart banner here! 

I hope you have a very Happy Thanksgiving and a fantastic holiday season!

Getting Hitched...Sharing A Few Engagement Pictures

So in less than a week I get to marry this cutie. 

I thought in honor of that I would share a few of our engagement pictures taken by the wonderful Mary and Gabe of Honey Heart Photography (Lexington, KY). 

Aren't we just the cutest? Ha. I love us and I can't wait to be married. It's going to be so fun. 

While I knew planning a wedding would be tough, I had no idea I'd be as busy as I have been nonstop for as long as I have. Ha! Throw a pretty demanding job on top of that and you've got a girl with absolutely no time left to blog. But don't worry- I haven't stopped creating. This wedding will have handmade (almost) everything! It has been seriously fun... and seriously time consuming. :) I wouldn't have changed it for anything, though. I can't tell you how many times I told Matt or a friend about my idea for something and they would look at me like I was crazy and would try to tell me to do something easier, and I, of course, wouldn't listen. Almost everything has turned out how I had imagined or better than I'd imagined, and that has been so fun. 

I hope to share it all with you after the wedding. Stay tuned friends.

If you loved these pictures, you should so check out Mary and Gabe of Honey Heart. They're kinda great. Excited to spend some more time with them on Saturday. 

Baubles and Bead Caps Necklace DIY

Today I'm over at 30 Days Handmade sharing my Baubles and Bead Caps Necklace Tutorial! 

Be sure to go check it out! 

Just Chains Earrings Tutorial

When writing the post for tomorrow's jewelry post I'm contributing to 30 Days' Blog, I realized I never shared last month's! Oops! 

Go check out my Just Chains Earrings Tutorial! 

Bluffton, South Carolina and Hilton Head

I know I haven't been around much this summer, despite my hopes to post a lot. I can't even say what I've been doing really-not because it's secret, but because I don't even know where the time has gone! I just know I haven't been blogging. It's been a busy summer full of teaching summer school, wedding planning, visiting with friends, celebrating expecting mothers, cooking, and trying to support Mr. Lovie as he studied for the Ohio State Bar Exam. Matt and I were lucky enough to ended our summer and celebrate him being finished with studying with a visit to his mom's house near Hilton Head. We had a great little family vacation. I enjoyed practicing using my camera on manual mode while we were there and I had such a great time with it. I'm not a professional by any stretch and there are so many things I want to get better at and learn more about, but I thought I'd share.

This cutie is Matt's niece. That winky smile is my favorite. This may have been the only time she was halfway still, but I enjoyed chasing her up and down the beach.

Splash, splash splash!

You guys! This ocean is just so funny!

"Do it!" is what she'd yell as soon as her dad would stop spinning her.

No hands! 

Brothers.

Gotcha. Another rare still moment in between chasing the water in the fountains. 

When the water would go down, she'd say "oh nooooo" so sweetly.

And then the water would scare her. Hahaha. 

Splash splash splash.

Squinty girl.

Last ones at the pool.

My cutie and me at our day trip to Beaufort, SC.

These will become the most awesome peach cobbler. 

Sunrise magic.

I hope you have all been having a wonderful summer. Thanks for checking in every now and then and/or continuing to subscribe to my blog. I love you guys for not jumping ship since I haven't been posting often!

I've got a school themed idea coming up soon... does anyone love Pete the Cat as much as I do? Probably not (unless you count my kinder kids)-more on that soon! 

My first day with kids was Thursday. It's hard to believe I just started my 7th year of teaching!