My designer client wanted to have me slipcover this couch for her clients master bedroom. She wanted a tan linen couch and chair done. It was a chocolate velour fabric and had finials screwed in on the top back corners. We removed the fancy finials and filled holes with batting. She also wanted batting to cover the nailhead trim on the arms. I simply staple gunned batting in those areas before putting slipcover on.

Couch–BEFORE

Couch–AFTER! She chose a heavyweight linen look fabric that had a backing on it. She wanted to add some extra detail, hence the extra skirt pleat. We also made all the pillows with pleat ruffle detail. The pillow in the very center was a double flange mitered pillow–she saw a pic of one at some fancy hotel and took a pic of it to show me. I thought about it for a few days and figured out how to make one.

Here’s a close up of the double flange mitered pillow! I love the way it turned out! Definitely time consuming, but kind of fun to do something different that I hadn’t done before. I am thinking of possibly doing a video tutorial for it, if I have enough interest to warrant the effort. Let me know if you are interested.

In the same master bedroom my client wanted to slipcover this traditional dark chenille fancy chair to make it more casual. We used the same cream linen as the pillows on the couch. She wanted to make it super feminine with ties closures and a box pleat skirt.

 

SIDE NOTES— I took the second half of December off with my family. We skied a few times and spent a few nights at the cabin for Christmas. The kids were so excited—it finally snowed on Christmas day, so they had some fresh powder on the driveway to snowboard down. Then the day after Christmas we drove from Utah to LA to catch flights to Oahu!

Carter helped me make a homemade gift for his auntie Sarah out of his Great Grandmas old table cloth linens. It was super easy. Curved out the top by the arm pits, added ties and a pocket out of ticking stripe fabric.

 

Luke was all about getting a tree set up at the cabin and had it decorated in 3 min. flat before anyone else could help him! I love spending Christmas at the cabin! It’s a bit of an adventure hiking up the driveway with sleds of food and snow clothes, and it was 20 degrees inside when we got there. It takes a few hours to get the fire going and warm the place up. Then it took another day to get the kitchen sink to work (space heaters trying to warm up the pipes). No worries I just filled pots of water from the shower to dump in the sink to wash dishes. I love an adventure and a good story!

My sisters came up Christmas eve for some driveway sledding! The cousins loved it!

Next we headed to OAHU!! or as Luke says it…AWAHOO!

This pic was taken on the top of Chinaman’s hat!

We boogie boarded/waded to Chinaman’s hat (small island right of the coast) then hiked to the top! That was my favorite adventure for the trip. It took us 25 minutes to paddle over.

We found a turtle as big as Luke!

We also love our beach time!

Here’s how we kept our trip affordable—cause you know I am all about traveling for cheap!

1.Bought tickets on Allegiant Air for $440 roundtrip out of LAX and only paid for 1 checked bag.

Allegiant charges for carry on bags –but personal items are free. All the boys packed in a drawstring backpack (personal item) saving us $240! Tickets out of SLC, UT (where we live) were $900 each! We decided to drive to LAX to catch flights and save $2250. Since gas prices took a huge drop in the past month it only cost us $100 in gas to get to LA and back. We drove Hebers subaru impreza instead of my pilot. Less space, but better gas mileage.

2.Used Chase Sapphire credit card miles to book our rental car in Oahu–saving us $200!

3. Used Chase Sapphire credit card miles to pay for our Condo stay–saving us $750!

I had just gotten a new credit card offer in the mail 4months before our trip offering me 70,000 miles if I spent $5,000 in the first 3 months. WE put all our expenses on this card for 3 months, then used the cash back option and paid for the condo we f0und on VRBO.

4. Used Chase Sapphire credit card miles to book one hotel night in Barstow, Ca for the way home–saving us $100

Our flight came in at 8pm and we knew we wouldn’t want to drive 10 hours to get home that night. We opted for a 2 hour drive, and a quick hotel stay that included free breakfast.

5. I packed food for the drive to LA and made sandwiches for the plane ride. No way I wanted to pay $12/sandwich for 5 of us! Heber thought my hard vintage suitcase packed to the brim with bread, PB, honey, crackers, oranges, etc for the drive was hilarious–but he put up with my crazy idea anyhow! What a great man!

6. We shopped at Costco in Oahu for our groceries. We spent $200 for the week. We made all our meals in the condo, except for the buffet dinner we had at the Polynesian Cultural Center (which ended up being free–our friends parents volunteer there and hooked us up!)

7.We got discount tickets to the Polynesian cultural center from our friends parents that work there one night a week. —saving us $425!

8. We borrowed boogie boards and snorkeling gear from my friends parents in Oahu–saving us $150 in rentals

8. I shopped around for airport parking before we left and paid online–saving us $50! Parking our car for the week only cost $52 instead of over $100!

9. We made an approximate spending budget before we left and brought cash in an envelope–that way we could monitor more easily where we were at. From the time we left our house to the time we returned we spent $800 total! This included gas to LA, groceries, food, activities, souvenirs, etc.), which was way less than I thought we would. I had brought $1200.

10. Total for trip to Oahu for a family of five was $3,100!