"The details are not the details."

Oy me, what a day.  Tax day.  Uuuggghhh, I feel sick from those two words this year.  Vet bill arrival day.  Bills in the mail day.  It's darn cold outside.  There's still SNOW on the ground from yesterday.  Mike thought I was silly for not liking his theme for a fantastic fundraiser he's setting up at work.  Some days are just like this sometimes.

I will say I'd much rather have vet bills than not have Hailey with us.  She was so cute and sweet and waggy when I came back from my hugely depressing but quick post office jaunt today -- that made me smile.  It's fun to see her doing things she used to do before all this crummy cancer stuff.

So, with my bank account on vapors, I need to get yet even more creative about my projects around the house. Oh my gosh, I'm already going into Menards withdrawal, I can feel it.  I'm shaking.  And I've got this nervous tick going.  Or I suppose I could work on stuff that I have supplies for and haven't gotten to.  Sometimes my motivation level for those small things can get a little low.

One of those lingering little projects is recovering two sausage shaped pillows I've got.  I already have the fabric.  I think.  I keep changing my mind.  I recovered all the other pillows on the couch.  I must say, if you need a quick update, a speedy inexpensive change, a refresher in a room, change the covers on some pillows.  Or, if you're not the crafty sewy type, pick up a few new ones.  It can be surprising how much of a difference it makes.

These pillows I've had, I've had forever and I just keep changing the fabric on them.  It's been a while since I've done it and since we moved and I painted the living room, the old fabric was looking even more sad and unrelated to anything in the room.  I don't have any before photos it seems.  Just as well; in thinking back to what they looked like, I'm kinda embarrassed.

Last summer I purchased a Groupon for the ridiculously ginormous fabric store in the Pilsen neighborhood with three or four different names, LZ Fabrics, Textile Discount Center, Mega Fabrics is a new one to me.  It's hard to keep track of what it's called.  All I know is they have more fabric on God's green Earth than is possible to imagine.  Take your local fabric store and multiply it by one thousand.  I am not kidding.  Normally I don't buy Groupons as I hear more about the trouble people have with them but when someone told me they had one for the fabric store, $20 gets you $40 worth of fabric, I was on it like flies on you know what.

All told I got a quite a bit back in February.  My tab was $44, so in all I spent $24 for a hefty quantity.  Turns out one fabric choice wasn't the best if you have dog and husband.  It's the one on the left below.  Snags all over.  Boo.  Sad face.  I'll have to see what else is in the magic bag of fabric to recover it again.

I do love that fabric on the big pillow in the back though.

And I like the fabric on these two pillows much more, which is why they're on "my side" of the couch.

So I guess in a way round about way, my point today is that small things can make a very big difference.  As Charles Eames once said, "The details are not the details.  They make the design."  Very true, Mr. Eames, very true indeed.

With that line of reasoning and a bit of a spin, the details of my day make up only a small part of a greater whole that is decidedly finer than the sum of its parts.  See, design is far more multifaceted than one might suspect.  Frown upside down.