Lucky Winner of the Silhouette Products!

It's time to find out who the lucky, lucky winner of the Silhouette Product Bundle is!


The winner is....

"This is on my Christmas wish list this year! It'd be so awesome to win it! I would use it for some awesome vinyl action to dress up the walls of our new place."

Ashley and I must have the same Christmas list :)

CONTRATS ASHLEY D.!! 

Send me an email and we'll get you your fun Silhouette package! :)

If you didn't win -- don't fret! You can still use the 25% off coupon just for The Hand Me Down House readers!  But use it soon -- it expires on 11/13/2010.  

Just use the code: MEDOWN when you check out  at Silhouette's website and get 25% off!!

 

Village Boutique Giveaway!!

That's right -- it's time for another AWESOME giveaway today!   Today's giveaway is from the absolutely FANTASTIC Village Boutique.  They are my wonderful sponsors -- and they have THE most gorgeous jewelry -- I'm SO in love with these bracelets, you guys!  I have my own and I wear it EVERYWHERE!

Today she's been SO generous, and offered to give one of you a fantastic silverware bracelet!  AAAAH!  Are you SO excited!?!  I'm so excited for you!  I LOVE this jewelery!  It's completely unique and amazing! 

Here's what's up for the winning:  A Tiger Lilly pattern, circa 1901.  And she will make another one identical to this so that it fits the winner.

And do you remember her blog I've told you about before -- it has interesting facts about each year of her spoon jewelry?  Well she shared with me some interesting facts about these spoons, too:

- Alabama, Mississippi, Iowa, and Tennessee were each more heavily populated than California. With a mere 1.4 million residents, California was only the 21st most populous state in the Union!

- Sugar cost four cents a pound. Eggs were fourteen cents a dozen.
Coffee cost fifteen cents a pound.

- Life expectancy at birth for U.S. white males is 48.23 years, for white females, 51.08 years (few people die at those ages, but so many die before age 5 that they balance those who live into their 70s and 80s).

- The five leading causes of death in the U.S. were:
1. Pneumonia and influenza
2. Tuberculosis
3. Diarrhea
4. Heart disease
5. Stroke

- There was no Mother's Day or Father's Day.

- One in ten U.S. adults couldn't read or write.

- Only 6 percent of all Americans had graduated from high school.

- The Nordstrom retail chain has its beginnings in a Seattle shoe shop opened by Swedish immigrant John W. Nordstrom, 30, and a partner. Nordstrom arrived at New York in 1887 with $5 and has made $13,000 mining gold in Alaska and the Klondike.

- Detroit automaker Ransom E. Olds moves his assembly plant to his hometown of Lansing, Mich. Copper and lumber baron Samuel L. Smith has financed the Olds Motor Works, and Olds markets 425 curved-dash "Oldsmobile" runabouts, a number that he will increase to 5,000 by 1904 as he produces the first commercially successful U.S.-made motorcar

- New York City streetcars and elevated trains convert to electric power, but horsecars continue to move up and down Fifth Avenue, and commuter trains still run on steam

- Texas ranch owner Anna Edson Taylor, 43, goes over Niagara's Horseshoe Falls in a barrel October 24. She wears a leather harness inside the barrel, which is four-and-a-half feet long, three feet in diameter, and cushioned inside. The former Bay City, Mich., schoolteacher suffers only shock and minor cuts in the 167-foot drop, wins a reward that helps pay an installment on her ranch loan, and is the first person to go over the falls and survive.

- Washing machines are introduced by the 2-year-old German company Miele that began by making cream separators

- After observing a machine that blows dust away, English engineer Hubert Cecil Booth [b. Gloucester, England, 1871, d. 1955] develops the first successful vacuum cleaner, a complex and unwieldy machine driven by a 5-hp engine and mounted on a horse-drawn cart. Booth's Vacuum Cleaner Company begins advertising in February 1902. Its success is ensured after it is used to clean up from the rehearsal for the coronation of Edward VII, leading to the purchase of the first two models, one for Buckingham Palace and one for Windsor Castle. Well, now you ran the vacuum – who cleans up after the horses?

And this spoon bracelet was through all of that!

Aren't those cool facts!?!

SO, here's the deets on this week's fantastic giveaway:

WHAT:   

A Tiger Lilly pattern, circa 1901.  (She will make another one identical to this so that it fits the winner)

UNTIL WHEN:   

Giveaway is open until 11/15/2010 at Noon (central time)

HOW: 

1.  For your first entry, visit Village Boutique and tell me what your favorite bracelet is

2.  For your second entry become a follower -- and make sure to leave a comment telling me that you are!

3.  And for an extra entry, leave a comment telling me what your favorite fact was :)

4.  If you want ONE more entry, you can do one of the following and comment one time that you did: blog/twitter/facebook about the giveaway

A HUGE thanks to Village Boutique for this beautiful giveaway!

Heat Transfer Pillows

Today is the last day to enter the awesome giveaway from Silhouette -- and to celebrate I'm going to be showing you one last project I did with their fantastic product.  

I've been wanting some Christmas-y (yes....Christmas....I know kind of early, but I couldn't help myself!) pillows for out on our bench in the entry way.  Usually, I have these pillows there:

But I LOVE decorating the house for the different seasons and some pillows seemed like they were just the thing to add to our entryway. 

I had some pillows left over from our last house that weren't really being used, so I decided to use them as my Christmas pillows.  I found a remnant piece of fabric at Joanne's for $2.50-ish.  It was a lovely grey piece of fabric and it had enough for my two pillows I was recovering. And then I this packet of red buttons at an Antique store I visited this weekend for $2.00.  That means these two pillows only cost me $4.50 -- I'll take it!!

I took my heat transfer material from Silhouette and cut out some white, bare, branches.  I decided it was WAY too much work to trace out some branches I found and then cut around everything; so I ended up drawing out my own branches and cutting them with my scissors.  They were supposed to look kind of like these branches I found online:

After my pillows were sewed together; I ironed the heat transfer on.  (You can see my exact instructions for ironing the heat transfer on here).  

Once the branches were on the pillows, it was time to put the buttons on.

I know I probably should have sewed these buttons on  -- but that's really a LOT of sewing, so I decided to glue them on.  I placed them all out on the fabric first; then I went to town gluing those little buttons down.

Then I put the pillows back into the cases and sewed the bottom edge.  

And now my entry is kind of ready for Christmas!  Don't worry -- I'll put these away until I get all the Christmas decor out. :)

Don't forget -- you can still enter the Silhouette Product giveaway here -- or you can order your own products with the special code just for Hand Me Down House readers until 11/13/2010:  MEDOWN

 

Linking up to:

Mondays:Between Naps on the Porch ; C.R.A.F.T; Craft-O-Maniac; Keeping it Simple; Mad in Crafts; Making the World Cuter; The DIY Showoff; The Girl Creative Tuesdays:  All Thingz Related; House of Grace; I'm Topsy Turvy; Lucky Star Lane; Sugar Bee Craft Edition; The CSI Project; These Creative Juices; Today's Creative Blog Wednesdays:  Blue Cricket Design; Creations by Kara; Debbiedoos; Domestically Speaking; My Backyard Eden; Night Owl Crafting; Seven Thirty Three; Someday Crafts; The Thrifty Home; Trendy Treehouse Thursdays: Beyond the Picket Fence; Craftastical!; Fireflies & Jellybeans; House of Hepworths; Life as Lori; Somewhat Simple; The Shabby Chic Cottage Fridays:  Chic on a Shoestring; Finding Fabulous; Fingerprints on the Fridge; Frou Frou Decor; Frugal & Fabulous Design; It's a Hodge Podge Life; It's Fun to Craft!: Just a Girl; Remodelaholic; Simply Designing; The Shabby Nest; Tatertots & Jello Weekend:  A  Little Lovely; Be Different Act Normal; Funky Junk Interiors; House of Thrifty Decor; I Heart Naptime; Kuzak's Closet; Under the Table & Dreaming

More Silhouette Projects!

I hope you're not getting bored with all this silhouette madness; but I just LOVE using their materials -- so I have to show you another project from the fun package they sent me. :)

This one is not all that creative -- but it was SO fast and simple that I couldn't pass it up!

Included in the giveaway package (you can enter here) is a package of printable magnet sheets -- and they are just awesome!!  I had been trying to decide what magnets I wanted to make and design for the fridge when literally as I was trying to decide my husband told me he never knew if the dishwasher was full of clean or dirty dishes. Hmmmmm.  Someone else loading and unloading the dishwasher?  YES please! :)  He had a good point though -- there is no way to tell if the dishes are clean or dirty unless you open the dishwasher and inspect them.  That completely settled it -- we needed a dishwasher magnet to tell us the status of our dishes.

This is another project where you can use the Silhouette materials without actually having a coveted Silhouette Machine (although we all know everyone should have one, right?).    Are you ready to see just how easy this was?! 

I already had the Printable Magnet Paper that Silhouette had sent me:

I created this design on my computer:

If you want to use this design yourself just click on it and it opens in a new page for you to print

Then I took my scissors and cut it out of the magnet paper

and then I put it on the dishwasher for all to see! :)

At first I didn't think I would love this magnetic paper so much -- but oh my gosh!  I love it!  The magnets look really good just being printed out of a regular printer -- imagine all the things you could make!

And don't forget if  you want your own you can enter our giveaway here; or

you can use the special coupon just for The Hand Me Down House readers for 25% off any materials on Silhouette's Website!  Just enter the code: MEDOWN at check out!

 

Linking up to:

Mondays:Between Naps on the Porch ; C.R.A.F.T; Craft-O-Maniac; Keeping it Simple; Mad in Crafts; Making the World Cuter; The DIY Showoff; The Girl Creative Tuesdays:  All Thingz Related; House of Grace; I'm Topsy Turvy; Lucky Star Lane; Sugar Bee Craft Edition; The CSI Project; These Creative Juices; Today's Creative Blog Wednesdays:  Blue Cricket Design; Creations by Kara; Debbiedoos; Domestically Speaking; My Backyard Eden; Night Owl Crafting; Seven Thirty Three; Someday Crafts; The Thrifty Home; Trendy Treehouse Thursdays: Beyond the Picket Fence; Craftastical!; Fireflies & Jellybeans; House of Hepworths; Life as Lori; Somewhat Simple; The Shabby Chic Cottage Fridays:  Chic on a Shoestring; Finding Fabulous; Fingerprints on the Fridge; Frou Frou Decor; Frugal & Fabulous Design; It's a Hodge Podge Life; It's Fun to Craft!: Just a Girl; Remodelaholic; Simply Designing; The Shabby Nest; Tatertots & Jello Weekend:  A  Little Lovely; Be Different Act Normal; Funky Junk Interiors; House of Thrifty Decor; I Heart Naptime; Kuzak's Closet; Under the Table & Dreaming