Hello. My name is Tonya and I am an addict.

It's not drugs or alcohol or even chocolate. It's Pinterest. I cannot stop.

Wait. You don't know what Pinterest is? I don't know whether or not to gush about it and encourage you to sign up, or yell "Run! Run away and don't read on!" So proceed at your own risk and know that Pinterest is wonderful but it will steal hours and hours of your life.

In their own words, "Pinterest is a virtual pinboard. Pinterest allows you to organize and share all the beautiful things you find on the web. You can browse pinboards created by other people to discover new things and get inspiration from people who share your interests."

It's a personalized, virtual bulletin board with beautiful pictures of food, clothing, home decor and anything else your little heart desires. You can categorize everything onto different boards. The best part is that it all links back to the original source, i.e. the webpage with the recipe, tutorial, online store, etc. I love that I can look at all my recipes at once.

I have been LOVING Pinterest for fashion and sewing ideas too. However this seems to have lead to a bad habit of clothing and shoe shopping online. Which makes my PayPal account sad but me squeal in delight when brown paper packages show up on the doorstep.

So what else besides recipe and fashion am I pinning? My 301 (yikes!) pins are on 20 boards including sewing inspirations, crocheting, tattoos and henna, travel, home decor, color combinations, graphic design, Halloween, gift ideas and products I want. Check them all out on my Pinterest page.

It also has a fun element where you can follow boards and people so your homepage has a cornucopia of ideas handpicked by like minded people you've chosen to follow. Pinterest will send you an email (if you want it to) to let you know when people repin your pins. I get a silly amount of pleasure when I get one of these with a huge list.

It's an ego boost. "They like me. They really like me!" Or at least my pins... But whatever. I enjoy it! Joining Pinterest is by invitation only, so if you're interested, let me know and I'll email you an invite. But remember - don't say I didn't warn you about the hours, days and weeks of your life that will suddenly go missing.

Hang your hat on that

I've been looking for some unique vintage hooks to put in our kitchen to hang purses, keys, etc. on so that our kitchen table can stop being a catchall. I was just going hang them right on the wall until I found Kate's pretty paper coat rack via Pinterest.

Photo from Design Sponge

Oooo. Pretty! I use fabric instead of paper. The board is a piece of a drawer that never made it into our entertainment center. Under $10 and this is what I ended up with:

And now the table is clear and purses and keys are easily found!

Leafy, scrappy pillows

My best friend and her husband recently bought a very nice new couch. Once they got it in the living room, it quickly became apparent that she was in desperate need of new pillows to put on her new couch. Much discussion and google image searching later, we decided to make these leafy pillows out of scraps, since she'd already spent a good chunk of cash on the couch. I, of course, decided I wanted some too!

The only fabric we bought is the unbleached cotton for the front. Everything else is scraps. Even the back fabric was free!

She is making hers closed all the way around since she didn't using pillow forms, but I did so I made the backs of mine overlapping flaps for easy removal and washing. (Last fall I lost my favorite throw pillows to a washing machine accident that I do not want to repeat!)

For just a bit of added whimsey and fun, we put a owl in each tree. Almost unnoticeable, but a great detail. Did you notice the owls before I mentioned them?

These were fun to make. You should make some too! If you do, I have one tip to offer. Use Heat'n Bond to make the leaves into iron-on appliques. You can buy it by the yard for super cheap at most fabric stores. This helped a lot for two reasons. First, it made tracing and cutting out the leaves super fast. Second, it perfectly held them nicely in place, without having to mess with pinning, while stitching the tight zig zag around the edges.

We had a few leftover leaves, so I sewed them onto a onesie for my nephew.

Sticky Style

I have been loving vinyl wall decals now for a while. I have had great luck (as have a couple of friends and my mom) with Byrdie Graphics on Etsy. That's where I bought my winter tree branch. They are SUPER fast with responding to convos (Etsy emails) and very quick shipping. The instructions and tools they provide are great too!

I'm also still obsessing with the colors gray and yellow together. Marry those two loves and I have new vinyl decals in my kitchen! (My TINY kitchen is very hard to photograph!)

I really like them with my gray and yellow curtains made with Mood fabric!

The 18 gray scroll damask graphics are sold in a set.

Photo from Byrdie Graphics

The two yellows were purchased individually. Minus my being too impatient to wait for a level, application went smoothly.

Vinyl decals are a great idea for rental places. I wish they were popular a few years ago. I would have had much cooler apartment walls in college! My roommate and I did starch fabric polka dots onto a wall once. It was cute, but the red fabric ended up leaving pink circles that we had to paint over anyway.

Tattered Halloween Curtains

After I put up the Halloween decor, my cheery yellow kitchen curtains were looking a little out of place. I was going to sew some tattered curtains but I don't have a lot of extra time these days, so I opted for the no-sew version.

I made them out of crepe paper - although Martha recommends black trash bags. These babies cost about $1.50 for two medium windows! Tear off strips in varying lengths. Wrap around your curtain rod, forming a loop, and Scotch tape on the backside. Then stretch out the sides of the paper, alternating sides and spacing. Be careful not to tear them completely in half, but I just left any smaller tears because I think it makes them look more worn and creepy.

For the birds

The new Halloween decoration showed up in the mail this week! It's a vinyl wall decal.

I apologize for the horrendous photos. My camera sucks.

I bought this one from Byrdie Graphics on Etsy. I cannot say enough nice things about them or this graphic. The shipping was super fast. The directions were clear and the application took only a few minutes. The result is great! I'm so happy with it!

I leaned my decorative ladder against the branch and added a couple of feathered crows to the rungs. I think the whole thing looks fun together and goes great with my Edgar Allan Poe display.

The cats, however, are not that impressed with the fake birds. Alven has been swatting at them since they went up. They have already been moved once because of him and I imagine Winston will be even worse once he notices them. Ah well.

Little House of Horrors

It's no secret that Halloween is my favorite holiday because it's all about fun with no obligations or pressure, until you become known as the Halloween Queen in your circle of friends. Then the pressure is on to have the best decor and costume, but I still love it.

When getting out your holiday decor takes the same amount of time as watching two and a half Halloween movies, it can be a daunting task. With the help of The Nightmare Before Christmas, Hocus Pocus and about half of Bram Stoker's Dracula, we got them all out last night. It's official, we need a bigger house or less Halloween decor. Since a bigger house isn't in the cards for a while, I made a bag for Good Will. It's sad, but past time.

The newest display of Halloween fun came without a single new purchase! It's Edgar Allan Poe's writing desk. I got the idea from a magazine and ended up having everything I needed.

The clock normally hangs in the living room and the framed "chalkboard" is actually a frame I had with black fabric inside and the "chalk" is white paint right on the glass that will easily come off after Halloween. The candelabra is from Good Will a few years ago.

The Complete Works of Edgar Allan Poe (with dust jacket removed), plus a couple of antique English  literature textbooks and a pair of unused glasses set the stage. The skull just adds a bit more creepiness.

The recently acquired typewritter was my grandparents' and the old photos are actual relatives - great, great grandparents I think. I was going to start typing The Raven, but Terra had a better idea and suggested using The Shining instead. Now the paper says "All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy," over and over again. What do you think? I really love it.

One more display to show you quick. Most of the items pictured are from Good Will or the Salvation Army including all the candlestick holders and candelabra, the lanterns on the top of the two shorter bookcases and the pedestal bowls. One can of black spray paint later, they fit right into the Halloween display. The books are all books I own and have read with titles like Murder, Entombed and Shadows. Remove the dust jackets and you've got a creepy library going.

I've ordered one new decoration from Etsy this year and I'll post pictures once it arrives along with a few of the other displays in the house and yard. Happy Haunting!

Homestyler

Have you discovered HomeStyler.com yet? If you don't have time to get completely sucked in, I suggest you avoid it because it is engrossing! I am a total nerd when it comes to home decor and especially rearranging furniture. I am embarrassed to admit that I bust out the graph paper, draw a room to scale, then cut out scaled versions of all the furniture. Then I spend hours positioning and repositioning the scraps of paper until I find a suitable arrangement before I so much as move a rug.

Now there is HomeStyler.com. Start with a room, which you can make completely to scale. Add doorways, windows and closets. It is literally as simple as clicking and dragging elements into place. Now add flooring from the hundreds of choices, paint the walls and start adding furniture. Here's my current living room setup:

Why did I create my living room, more or less exactly as it is now? Who knows? But it was fun.

Then, with the click of a single button, you can make a 3D rendering of the room. It's magical. Spin it around, get a feel for it, take a look from every angle.

The only complaint I have is that there is limited control on things like furniture coloring, but you can just your imagination on that. I don't really have a black leather chair with a red velvet ottoman, but I do have a brown leather chair with a matching ottoman. The versions available work just fine as placeholders.

The usefulness does not end at creating your current rooms and rearranging furniture. You can connect rooms to build an entire house, restaurant or office. Add a yard with landscaping and everything. The possibilities are endless!

I did a little dreaming and made a master bedroom complete with enormous walk-in closet, raised claw foot tub, shower with multiple wall-mounted jets and reading area with fireplace.