Craft Room Redo

I've said this before and I'll say it again: my husband is AWESOME! While I was visiting my parents this summer, he repainted my craft room.  And let me tell you, this was no nagging and begging him to do it, he volunteered for this project.  And then, THEN! when it was all beautifully painted, he organized it.  I am a collector, and an unorganized one at that.  I love my craft room, but even I was a little overwhelemed by all the materials it contained.  Now, there is a place for everything and everything in its place.  I love it so much, it makes me so happy to spend time in there.  Here is what it looked like before.

(Man, my old camera took crummy pictures.)  I didn't think I minded the yellow walls, but once they were repainted I realized how fantastico it could really look in there.

Ta-da!

That bookshelf on the right used to be dark brown, which Michael painted white.  I also love that I have a bulletin board now, and a quilt design wall. (The design wall is a re-purposed baby blanket that a quiltie friend of mine made.)

 This is my happy place.  

Now, who wants to get crafty?

Landscaping -- Karen Style

I have mentioned before that I have a handy husband.  This spring he took some bricks and lined our flower beds in the backyard.  They look so much better than the haphazard dirt areas that they were before.  I was so excited envisioning all the lovely things that would grow in those flower beds. 

Here is the problem, though.  Neither my husband nor I have a green thumb.  We both love the outdoors and love nature, but we never really seem to cultivate that on our own. 

So sadly, our beautifully outlined flowerbeds stayed dirt areas all summer long (with the occasional weeds, of course). 

So I was thinking to myself that it would probably look better if we at least filled them in with woodchips.  I like woodchips, but unless you have a shredder and can make your own, they cost money (and I don't really like spending money). 

Then I had a brilliant idea.  Peach pits! We have been eating peaches like crazy lately and we don't usually compost the pits because they take so long to decompose.  So we were just throwing them away (which I hate doing).  I thought, what if I filled the flower beds with peach pits?  This is a good idea, but it would take forever to fill the space, so I expanded my brain-storming. 

Pine cones! Yes! They are everywhere.  They are all over our backyard and around our neighborhood.  So I started gathering them.  One of the neighbor kids saw me and actually joined in on the fun. I have filled one flower bed and I'm working on another.  I decided to throw the peach pits in with the mix because they are just so colorful and a fun addition.  The round balls are avocado pits. 

I am very happy with the way my flowerbeds are looking now.  I may not be a great gardener, but I am an excellent scavenger and collector.  Let's hear it for free landscaping.  Yay!

The Bedroom Redo Redo

While I was in Michigan, my husband was a handy guy and painted our bedroom.  He is a super great husband because this is actually the second time that he's painted the same room.

When we first moved in the back wall was a really, really dark brown.  It looked nice with the previous owner's decor, but it really was not our style.

Mr. Paws was wishing we would paint in there.

So Michael did paint the room.  We both agreed on the color of blue, and then I left for the weekend while he painted. 

It was definitely an improvement from the brown, but it was just a little too blue.  You can't see it in the pictures but the ceiling was also painted blue.  It felt very closed in a lot of the time, especially later in the day.  And the color, as pretty as it is, didn't quite jive with the rest of the house.  It was supposed to feel serene and peaceful, and instead it felt like living in an aquarium.   

I was really happy with the new curtains, though.  So that was a step forward. 

So, Michael painted the bedroom again and I LOVE IT!  He did the walls the same color as our daughter's nursery and painted the back a wall a more slate grey blue.

It is so refreshing.  I'm so happy (finally) with the way it looks.  What a good husband to give it a second go.

Now I just need to hang some fun things on the wall and make a new quilt for the bed. Yay for the bedroom redo redo.

Emily's House

I have been at my sister Emily's house in Michigan for the past week.  There are so many things I love about being here, but one of my favorites is just being inside Emily's beautiful home.  She has it decorated in such a fun and artful way, with all kinds of personal touches.  I took a few pictures of some of my favorite things, and I asked her to tell the stories behind them.  Here are her thoughts.

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Even as a kid, I've always loved setting up and displaying things in my rooms.  One of my first home decorating projects was maybe in 4th grade when I recovered an old jewelery box with leftover pieces of the wallpaper border from my room.  I didn't know why I felt compelled to do it, but I loved how it looked and how it made me feel about my room.  I think that pulling something together from the things that you already have has more appeal to me than just going out and buying something off the shelf.  Many of the things in my home have stories; they have sentimental value or I have somehow adapted them to fit how I want them to.

This is the wall in our playroom.  The framed letter photographs were a gift from my in-laws.  The large piece on the left was a project from my high school art class.  Our art teacher had a massive supply of metal tiles that were from a car dealership to show color samples.  We cut the tiles to make mosaics.  I decided to recreate a favorite Van Gogh painting, Cafe Terrace at Night.  (My love of Van Gogh is also seen here in the book, which was a birthday gift when I was a teenager.)  I spent almost half a semester working on that project.  From all my high school projects, this was my favorite.  While I can't imagine anyone would ever want to buy a car in mustard yellow or 70's gold, I loved having so many colors and shades to work with.

On the shelf are some metal stars that I bought when we lived in St. Louis.  You'll see them on the sides of the older buildings there and I love the charm of that.  The tile on the shelf came off a building in Sevilla, Spain, where I spent a semester in college.  In Sevilla, ceramic tiles are an architectural staple and whenever I was walking around the city and saw construction on a building, I'd check the dumpster.  I found several patterns of tiles in trash piles but this was my favorite.

Here's a wall from my living room.  The poster was from Sevilla and purchased for 3 Euros.  It was the first thing my husband and I had framed when we were engaged and even though it's a cheap reproduction poster, I've always valued how it looks in the frame. 

The books on the cabinet are a way of showing my love for literature.  The books are (top to bottom) Pride and Prejudice, Little Women, and some collected works of Shakespeare.  The little vintage box was recently rescued from my parents' basement.  It was an old lunch box that had been re-purposed into a purse and belonged to my great Grandma.  The wooden bowl was turned by my Father-in-law.  I love having a crafty family!

This is the landing by our stairwell.  I repainted the little wooden bird that came from a thrift store and also painted the pot of the small tree, which you can't really see because of the picture frame.  I'm always repainting things, and it blew my mind when I went to visit Karen that she didn't have any paints in her crafty arsenal.  A few months later I was looking online at a pattern to sew a small elephant and it needed a yarn tail.  I didn't have a single piece in the house.  I thought that would amuse Karen in the same way that not having paints was amusing to me, since Karen has bookshelves full of yarn. The flowers were all cut from my yard.  Our landscaping is not too spectacular but I love to make little arrangements from what we do grow.

For many years I had a lot of things in my house that I had repainted but no actual paintings.  This piece was also re-purposed.  When my husband and I moved to South Dakota for his one year internship, we left most of our things in storage and I decorated our small house with thrift store finds.  This was a brown-framed cardboard print of a prairie wagon with tall grasses and daisies surrounding it.  It was outdated and, as mentioned, cardboard.  While I loved it in a kitschy way in our Rapid City home, it was not a quality piece.  I saved it, though, and painting this poppy scene right on top.  I then repainted the frame green.  It made me a little sad to cover over the old picture but I felt it had served its time well and was ready for a new life.  I decided to make the painting after a friend asked me to paint her a picture of poppies for her new kitchen.  She asked for a yellow sky, and I conceded, although I thought blue would look better.  After I finished her piece I thought, Why not make my own poppies with a blue sky?  So there you go. 

When my son moved out of the nursery, I wanted to make his room feel just as purposeful as his nursery had been.  I saw a print of Eric Carle designed alphabet letters at Target, but it had pink and purple and wouldn't work for a boy.  I decided to make my own alphabet instead.  I'm glad I did because I loved how it turned out.  The frame was another South Dakota cast-off.  I had bought it on clearance at Target and it held a skiing poster in my husband's office.  I used mostly scrapbooking papers for this project.  I tried to make choices for my alphabet items that would not feel too babyish in a few years.  That's why L for leaf, M for mountain, and S for skis made the cut.  I also loved that B, C, and D could all be baseball related.  My husband and I were sucked into Cardinal nation when we lived in St. Louis.  As Michigan natives, we still have a fondness for the Detroit Tigers so I included the Detroit "D" as well.

On the wall opposite his ABC art, I cut out Henry's name in the same style.  My favorite part of this piece was the background paper, which I had painted using the metal caning of his vintage bedframe as a stencil.  It's subtle, but I know it's there, and I like that when he outgrows the bed or the room he can still have a piece of it.  Kind of like the pink bunny in Full House, but less sad, since no one died.

My daughter Lilly just turned one and I made this for her birthday present.  Lillian is a family name but I love that Lilly is also a flower name.  (I debated spelling her nickname Lily, so it would be just like the flower spelling, but decided to stick with the traditional form instead.)  I originally painted the piece with watercolor but didn't love it.  I then decided to outline it all with a magenta permanent marker.  That's when I really loved it.  I also added small hearts and doodles which made it feel more girly.  The frame was an ugly metallic-stickered frame from a garage sale but it had good bones.  First I painted it white.  Then I became a little Sharpie-happy and marked it up on all the raised portions.  I decided it was a little too much and painted over it.  The marker kept bleeding through and to me that worked perfectly.  I love how the painting and the frame work together now.

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Do you see why I think it is so fun to stay at Emily's house?  I hope you enjoyed this fun little tour.

Table Runner

When my parents came for a visit in April, my mom and I had a fun time working on crafty projects.  She went digging through my scrap bin and made this super cute table runner. 

Usually when my mom comes to visit she helps me do the hand sewing on my quilt bindings.  When I was at their house I found the table runner she had made and all that was left to do was the binding.  I hadn't brought any projects with me and I was having a bit of crafty withdrawl so I was happy to sew down the edges.  It was also nice to be able to return the binding favor to my mom for once.

The runner looks so fun in her dining room.  Yay!

Nine Happy Years

Michael and I just celebrated our ninth wedding anniversary.  (And by "just" I mean two busy months ago, oh well.)  We have held up the tradition every year of giving each other the traditional wedding gifts.  Mainly this originated because I found this great book, The Bride's Book, before we were married and it had the list of gifts in the back.  It has been fun to think up creative gifts for each other, as well as fill in the blanks through the years. 

This year the suggested gift was willow.  What a weird category.  The only thing we could think of at first that was made from willow was a basket, and that seemed pretty boring.  Maybe if we owned a house we could have planted a willow tree, but I'm sure we couldn't fit one on our apartment balcony. 

Then I was stuck by inspiration when I was at The Tattered Cover in downtown Denver with Colleen and Katie.  One of Michael's favorite books is The Wind and the Willows.  I knew we already owned 2 copies of the book, so it seemed redundant to buy another.  However, I did find a DVD version of the old TV show.  I didn't even know that the show existed.  So this was a perfect find. 

Michael and I have watched a little bit of it and it's quite amusing.  Michael loves it whenever woodland creatures dress up in proper attire and speak in British accents, so it was really a perfect gift.  However, as great a gift that it was to give, it could not compare with the AWESOME present that Michael gave me.  He found a giant metal willow tree to hang on the wall. 

I love it!

We hung it up in our bedroom.  Our apartment is quite cutely decorated but the bedroom walls were pretty boring.  Now I think it looks so fun in there. 

Yay for fun presents and nine happy years.

Henry's Quilt

I was really thrilled to make a quilt for my sister and her baby, Henry. I have made a number of quilts in the past, but for me personally, this was probably the most important quilt I've made.  If you paid any attention at all to my previous posts, you could figure out that Henry was born about a month after my baby was due to be born.  This was a time of truly mixed emotion for me, and probably still is to be quite honest.  I am so very thankful and feel so very blessed to have quilting in my life.  It allowed me to pour all the love that I have for my sister and for Henry into the quilt, when I was having such trouble expressing it in other areas. 

Did you have to stop reading for a moment and find a kleenex?  Me too.  Man, between this and the Harry Potter finale, I might never have a dry eye again.

Let's move on to the fun stuff, the quilt.  Yay! 

When I lived in Saratoga I made this fun quilt for myself.  I bought the kit for it at the San Diego quilt show and it was one of the first "real" quilts that I ever made.  I had such fun putting it together and I loved how it looked when it was finished.  I love all the randomness of the blocks.  Ever since then, I have always wanted to take a part of the pattern and make it into a baby quilt.  When I heard that baby Menz was on the way I knew he would be the perfect recipient. 

Emily did a lot of cute things putting together Henry's nursery.  With the help of my mom she made the bed skirt, curtains, rocking chair covers, and pillows (for the chair, not the crib).  Most of the fabric she used had been given to her by her mother-in-law, after she'd made a dress for Emily's niece.   I asked her to send me all the extra fabric.  (P.S.  Another thing I love about quilts is that the fabric itself often holds so many stories.)

When if finally arrived, I was so excited I started the quilt the very next day.  Luckily, I had the day off from work so I could spend the whole day working on it. Mr. Paws of course felt the need to help me with it, nothing new there.

I actually finished piecing the top that night.  I figured I was making good time since I wasn't leaving for Michigan for about 3 more weeks.  Sadly, my mom called a few days later with the news that my uncle had died.  (It's really sad folks, but I've used up my sad quota for this post already so I'm not going to expound.)  Anyhoo, instead of 3 weeks I now had 2 days to finish the quilt.  Lucky for me I work at a sewing store.  So, after working with a quilter all day, I threw Henry's quilt on Bella (our long arm quilter) and did the quilting, connecting the pieced top with the batting and backing.  The backing was a sweet piece of ticking fabric that my friend Debby gave me that had belonged to her grandmother.  I took the newly quilted quilt it to Bible study that night so I could work on pulling out all the basting stitches.  I was very tickled to see that my friend Dan was wearing a shirt made of the same exact fabric as the backing.  I have no idea why but it made me really happy.

Two days later, I sat in the airport, sewing on the binding as I waited for my flight.  (I'm so glad TSA didn't confiscate my needle.)  I finally finished it when I was in Michigan and here is is: 



Ta-da!

I love it!  Here's a closer view of some of the blocks.

 

I love this piece from a striped shirt.  I found it in a scrap bin from Mama Said Sew.  I really like including unexpected pieces of fabric into quilts. 

Here is some fabric from The Sewing Circle (best job ever) and some leftover from the original pink quilt.

The little flowered piece in the nine patch was also from a fabric swap at Mama Said Sew.  I probably wouldn't normally have included that design in a boy's quilt, but finding this fabric was a super great score.  My mom had made Emily and me a baby dress and doll bedding from this same material.  It seemed fitting to include it in Henry's quilt.

This plaid piece was from my (great) Grandma Goggy's stash.  I thought it was so cool to incorporate some of her fabric. 

My friend Glenda from work was awesome enough to machine embroider a label for the back for me.

Here is Henry's already cute, pre-quilt nursery.  

Here it is after.  

I love it!

And here is the proud quilt owner himself.  Now, who wouldn't want to make a quilt for this cute little guy.  One sweet quilt = lots of love to Henry from his Auntie Karen.



Bottles

I had really good intentions of blogging extensively about my trip to Michigan, such good intentions.  But the weeks keep creeping by and I keep ignoring this blog because those posts are so long.  I think I need to post random stuff and throw in a little Michigan here and there.  I told myself that it is okay if this blog is not chronological.  It's okay. 

So here is random for you:  I love glass bottles.  I love glass in general, I don't really know why.  I think because it is so sturdy and so delicate all at the same time.  I like the way light shines through colored glass.  I also like to collect things.  Michael and Colleen both call me a magpie, and glass bottles are a very cheap thing to collect.  When I lived in Saratoga, I had a nice little glass bottle collection in the corner of my craft room.  Here is a cute picture of Katya with the bottles in the background.

Here is a not cute picture of me with a better view of the bottles (a little blurry, but you get the idea). 

Now I am living in a small apartment, which means not a lot of room for knick knacky things.  I also don't want to spend any money on decorating (even though I LOVE to decorate) because I know this is a temporary dwelling.  So, here is my cheap, fun, decorating in the kitchen. 

I think these Izze bottles are so cool.  I love the big, twinkly, sticker and the bold colors. 

Also, check out our awesome old-school stove. 

Glass bottles = twinkly happiness.  Yay!