Pillow Forms and Throw Pillows, And a new Living Room

This is mostly a note for me, but I also thought I'd share it with anyone else who may find this blog. :)

We are redoing our living room quite a bit. We have/had a huge 36" Sony CRT that weighs 280lbs and equally huge speakers [4' tall - like you'd see at a rock concert] taking up a decent amount of space in our living room and now had a 55" Samsung LCD LED that is up on the wall above our fireplace and will have a much smaller 5.1 speaker setup. In order to mount the new TV on our wall, we had to take down the floor-to-ceiling mirrors that covered that wall and then paint it. We painted it Glidden's Soft Sapphire, a medium blue.

We're also getting a new sofa that will be a dark Royal microsuede blue that will go into the corner and open the room up considerably.

We currently have some grayish-blue throw pillows (to accent our medium-gray microfiber sofa & love seat) which will go with our new sofa, but I want some gray (our other walls will be Glidden's Polished Pewter and our carpet is a dark gray), silver and black and maybe some dark blue throw pillows. I picked some black ones up at Target ($9.99 each - yay!).

As this blog is, of course, a crochet projects blog, I'll get to the crochet project part! I'm making a small (12x16) pillow for my friend's daughter and bought a pillow form from Joann Fabric & Crafts last week while they were half off and that inspired me to crochet us some new throw pillows! I'll likely use Caron's Simply Soft and Red Heart's Soft yarns and am eyeing this Zig Zag pillow on Michaels.com.

Naturally, I don't want to spend a whole lot on these pillows (I'm cheap, remember?), so I've been trying to figure out where else to get cheap pillow form. I've been on the lookout for throw pillows at thrift stores (no luck), but and here is where I get to the point!: I found a good-sized pillow form at Target for $4.99!! It's part of their "cover your own throw pillow" thing, which is great. I'd say it's probably 18x18.

GlassEyesOnline and Hello Kitty

My order from GEO was shipped 8 hours after I ordered and arrived a couple of days after that! I think I've found myself a new place to buy from. :)

Upon receiving my eyes and noses, I made a little 3.5" Hello Kitty using this pattern (that's a ravelry link, just fyi).

Buying Bulk (or Not!) Safety Eyes - Harvey's Hobby Hut or Glass Eyes Online?

Upon getting a request for Hello Kitty, I started looking into the best way to make her eyes (as she has slightly oval eyes that are bigger than the 8mm round safety eyes I have). I was thisclose to ordering from Harvey's Hobby Hut when I happened upon Glass Eyes Online. You can buy eyes by the pair there and they give bulk discounts depending on how many you buy. The nice thing is that you can get a variety of eye colors of the same size and get a discount. They also have yellow Hello Kitty noses, oval noses (or eyes) in a few different sizes and colors, pink heart noses (I have no clue what I'll put them on, but I got quite a few 'cause they're cute), triangular noses, "sparkle" eyes, and all sorts of other things. And if you spend more than $25, you get free shipping!

I still like Harvey's and will have to write a proper review when I receive the order I sent to Glass Eyes, but it was nice to not have to pay $5.35 for s&h.
GSO's eyes are a bit pricier for the amount you get at HHH:
Price per 25 pairs of 9mm safety eyes:
GSO = 19 cents per pair of 9mm safety eyes
HHH = 12 cents per pair for 25 pairs
But not when you consider s&h:
GSO = $8.35
HHH = $9.25
AND the fact that you could have 3 pairs of blue, 5 pairs of black, 7 pairs of green, 2 pairs of red and 3 pairs of orange for GSO's price rather than just 25 pairs of black.

HHH is in Idaho while GSO is in South Carolina, so it will be interesting to see how quickly I get my order! HHH got them out to me in a couple of days and they arrived a couple of days after that.

P.S. Naturally, I've made 3 cupcakes since I last posted and gave them away before photographing them! I had every intention of doing it this time, but didn't even finish sewing and stuffing the last two until literally a minute before arriving at my friend's surprise party! (10 minutes late, but thankfully 10 minutes before she arrived! And no, I wasn't driving :P) I made a tan/light blue one, a red/white one and a brown/pink one with embroidered faces on them.