Reduce, reuse, recycle!

How many times did I hear the "three Rs" growing up in school?? I think we should add "repurpose" to that little slogan! :)

We all know that my mom is the queen of repurposing right? I like to think I inherited some of her repurposing skill too. :) While I don't build benches out of headboards, I try not to be wasteful and I love to thrift and save money and use what I have!

For example, when I told friends & family that I wanted to wear a pair of shoes I already owned to the wedding, they all balked! Everyone exclaimed, "but it's your wedding! You have to buy new shoes!" That pressure led me to spend hours googling and searching for pink flats... even though I already had pink flats in my closet! I ended up making an executive decision and took my flats to a shoe repairman and had him clean my shoes up and by golly, I wore my own shoes to my wedding.. and guess what... no one saw them! I am so glad I didn't spend $80 on new shoes - it would have been such a waste!

So, in that same vein, it didn't feel authentic to me to buy a frilly ring bearer pillow that would never be used again. Luckily, my friend June is a great seamstress and crafter and she has made the ring bearer pillows for many of our friends. We were visiting in Indianapolis in January and went to Joann's where I found adorable an adorable fabric remnant that I thought would be perfect for a ring bearer pillow that could later be used as a decorative pillow in our house! June agreed to make it and it was SOOOOO cute.

I finally snipped the yellow ribbon that held the rings (how cute is it that our ringbearer wanted to take home our faux rings that were attached to the pillow??) last week and decided where the pillow could live in our home - drumroll please.....!!!!

The dining room!

My mom sneakily got me this church pew I had been eyeing on Craigslist years ago and it has been living in my dining room ever since. I was on a design show years ago and they did my guest room, which is how I got the green pillows. I have been slowly "undoing" the room they did over the years (it is almost COMPLETELY undone now, since that room is Andy's office!) and awhile ago I brought the pillows into the dining room to use on the pew. The little birdie pillow fits right in with the green pillows and it's so special that it was used in our wedding!

On a side note - over email, June did try to convince me to make it bigger but I for some reason thought it would be too big if we went bigger... in retrospect, I do wish I had listened to her advice!! :)

On another note - I want to re-do the decor above the pew. My style used to be very "pottery barn" but now it's definitely mid-century modern. All in due time!