I was sick of the stupid bathroom towel always ending up on the floor. So I whipped up this bad boy in the spirit of those awesome old fashioned public bathroom continuous towel thing-a-ma-jigs (which I can seem to find on the internet; have they ceased to exist?).  All it took was a little patchwork bias tape to cover the raw edges and velcro to join the ends.  You could use buttons or snaps, but I could not because my monkey of a son would then use it as his personal bathroom swing.

The towel fabric is a waffle weave muslin that I found when I was looking for fabric for the kids’ summer towels or summer robes. I only bought a quarter of a yard so I could see if it would soften when I washed it. And it did, nicely too. Then I went to get some more, only this time I went to Joann’s instead of the fancy fabric shop, and when I washed the three yards of it I got, it came out super thick and shrunk up (see above).  Does Joann’s just carry inferior everything, or did I wash it wrong? Has anyone worked with waffle weave muslin before and have some insight?  Because I really like how the bathroom towel turned out and had visions of making kitchen towels for everyone for christmas out of this stuff

Wouldn’t it be great in the kitchen? I suppose linen or terry cloth would work just as well.  I’m going to have to use the shrunk up stuff to make the kids’ robes; I just hope they don’t make them look like little sumo wrestlers.

We’ve had jute rugs for a couple of years now (you can see one here) and they were getting ratty as hell. Not to mention totally beige and boring.  They hide every stain though and with two dirty dogs and two toddlers that is pretty huge.  But the boringness was outweighing their usefulness when the spring came, so I sprung for some new ones. Rugs are really expensive (if you didn’t know) and I would like to tell all the shelter magazines and design blogs to stop telling everyone that 1000 bucks for a rug (or a couch or anything really) is cheap, because it is not. 10 bucks is cheap. And that’s what I paid for one of these yellow stripey runners at Ikea.  I duct taped them together–classy I know–and now I have a rug that I is far from beige and cost less then take out.  I got two more for the living room and it like we live in a whole new house (granted one where I have to vacuum a lot more, but still they look pretty good).

Recently, I’ve been lucky enough to be featured on some fantastic websites and blogs.  This might look like I’m tooting my own horn (and I might be, a little) but I want to thank them all for choosing to showcase my work and my home.  A few days ago, a magazine called Artful Blogging came in the mail and I had never heard of the magazine much less subscribed to it, but when I open it up there was a picture of my plush diggers!  Next to some amazing artist work no less–Heidi Kenney and Ann Wood, two women I greatly admire.  This picture is in an article about the website whipup.  A great website and one I’m happy to be associated with. The Plush You! exhibit at Schmancy (a store in Seattle) was what started my toy making desire in the first place, so I was super excited to see some of my toys on their blog.  And not only did Cookie magazine highlight my home in their blog, nesting (thanks joanna) but today my kids’ room is pictured on the Apartment therapy blog Ohdeeoh! Then last night after putting the kids to bed I looked on Etsy and there were my felt rocks on the front page. I have thoroughly exhausted my fifteen minutes of fame and will probably be totally uncool tomorrow, oh well.  Thank you to everyone, you made my week.

This is my 99th post, so tomorrow will be my 100th. duh. And I’ll be hosting a little giveaway!  So check back tomorrow.