Hauls Galore! Featuring A Rose Necklace, Dollar Store, School, and a Carousel!

Hello everyone! Sorry for not blogging lately, but I had been taking Driving School for the past week to obviously learn how to drive. Up until now, I never really had a need for a car since almost any place I wanted to go to was accessible by transit. But I figured that learning how to drive is not really a bad thing. Plus, persuasion can be a very powerful tool. :/ Hopefully I will be able to do well on my driving test once the courses are all up.

Now with that done, I have a couple of hauls to show you! ^^ I had been waiting eagerly for my last purchase of the month to arrive and now that it is here, I can finally do the haul post!

Sparkly Black Shoes and A Hime Birdhouse Wall Decor Tutorial

Hello everyone! It has been a while since I had made a post, and my apologies for that! For the past few days, I had been, for all intents and purposes, busy with work while at the same time diligently working on yet another craft project. Since the upcoming school term is approaching very quickly, I only have a couple of weeks left to get some major projects done as well as prepare myself. I had finally finished my latest craft project, but before I get straight to it, let me show you my latest haul from Spring! Though to be honest, it isn't much of a haul as it is a gift from my mother! <3

Beep Beep! Hello Kitty Wants You to Wake Up!

As you may all be aware of, it is that time of the year where everyone would start heading back to school. I will be taking early classes, so it is pretty much important that I have a good alarm clock that will do the job and will keep waking me up throughout the year. I already had an alarm clock in the beginning, as shown in the deco post here. However, I had been noticing that I did not wake up during the set alarm time. With this in mind, I decided to buy a new alarm clock.

First, I decided to go look through eBay and changed the listings to show "prices + shipping: low to high" so I do not have to pay too much for an alarm clock. I quickly noticed that the ones that were cheap did not look very nice, which was to be expected, so I decided to skip a few pages. Eventually I had found and saved a couple for the "considerations pile". I did not just look through only eBay however, as I usually sometimes check my local stores and Chinatown to see if there is any possible way that I could get one for cheaper. What I had quickly found out was that the ones in Chinatown were too expensive (I saw one that went for $40+!) and that the ones in my local stores did not look cute at ALL. After finding this out, I went back to eBay to decide between a heart shaped My Melody one and a classy looking Hello Kitty one.

During what seems to be eons of deciding, I decided to take a break from the whole thing. Deep down, I had already made a decision and wanted to get the My Melody one. I was a bit hesitant on actually buying it though since it runs on AA batteries. Batteries aren't cheap nowadays, and it might cost me a lot more in the long run if I keep it in operation for a long time. After being practically late to work one day and getting panicky, I decided to just buy a HK alarm clock from my local Toys R Us for $35 for convenience sake.

 Front

Basic Hime Pillowcase Tutorial

Before I had started Lavender and Roses, I had came across one of Himehood's videos on how to sew a basic princess pillowcase. (For those interested, the video can be found here) The video is already a few years old now, but I find that Himehood's videos still do a decent job of inspiring those interested in creating a couple of Hime-styled items, as it had done for me. At the time, as often as I had watched the video over and over, I could not replicate the style or even create my own style because 1) I did not have a sewing machine, 2) My sewing skills were pretty much non-existent, and 3) I did not know how to properly create an actual pillowcase without having some sort of nervous breakdown on the progress. I had given up as a result and ended up not doing it.

Fast forward to after I had started up the blog. I used to have a plain purple bed set before my tastes changed and I eventually gotten the Hello Kitty bed set. At the time, I had found and bought a purple cushion at Sears that had undergone a dramatic price cut from $50 to $9. Since I had switched out my purple bed set for a pink one, the cushion does not exactly match the bed set anymore so I decided to change that by trying to make a new frillier one! Despite it being my very first time trying to sew a pillowcase, I decided to go ahead with it anyway. Hence, a new tutorial was born!

Warning: This tutorial can be long or short depending on how you approach this tutorial. I had actually sewn this pillowcase by hand (since I still didn't have a sewing machine), so it took me quite some time to finish it. I imagine that you could possibly finish it within a day with a sewing machine, so it is recommended that you use a sewing machine. That of course doesn't mean that you cannot sew it by hand since I had just done it myself, but it means that this could take you a while to complete. Please keep this in mind when trying out the tutorial and only attempt this when you have a lot of spare time on your hands. ^^; Sorry.

For the purpose of this tutorial, I will be assuming that you are going to make a pillowcase for your cushion and hence the usage of the term "square". Also, I will be assuming that you are going to be hand sewing the pillowcase.  

 The end results

Everything is Better with Roses! and H&M Haul!

Remember a while back when I had made that review on Wild Orchid Crafts? Well I had basically put some of the flowers in action with two of my mirrors. Not sure what I'm talking about? Well let me elaborate...

Previously, my mirrors were still just mirrors. Plain old mirrors that you could find just about anywhere in any general store, even though one of the mirrors was given to me as a gift. Eventually, I started up a major project to have my room completely renovated to match my Hime tastes, and in turn deco-ed two of my existing mirrors, as shown here and here. At the time, I did not really have a lot of roses on me and I did not have much luck trying to find regular fabric roses or even foam roses! I did not know how you all did it, since I had already seen a couple of tutorials incorporating rose heads. So for the sake of this blog, I am just going to assume that you all had (have) better luck than I do. Due to the lack of roses therefore, I do not have much artistic liberty when it comes to decorating the mirrors.

This is where the WOC review comes in. Luck turned my way once I had discovered the website and ever since, had basically gone crazy with the things. I had been crazily gluing roses onto everything that I can set my eyes on and the mirrors are no exception. Here are the before and after shots of each mirror, and the detail shots.

Before and After (Desk mirror)

 

Details

 

 

Before and After (Full length mirror)

 Can you play "spot the difference"?

Details

  NOTE: First five pictures are details from before, next couple are details from after

 

What do you think? I think the roses had greatly improved the look of both mirrors, especially with the blue one. I thought it was too plain with only the blue butterflies and lace. 

On another note, I had made a small purchase at my local H&M after watching the Dark Knight Rises! By the way, it is a very good movie and definitely something movie-goers should check out if they had already checked out Dark Knight!

Anyway, H&M had a few pink tops on clearance for $5 and after trying the bigger size on and finding out that it fitted perfectly, I just HAD to get one! It is in the shade of pink that I love too and has a lot of Hime deco potential!