Tributary....nature + craft

good reads continue

2012-01-12T22:30:00.000-05:00

Last year, I decided to keep track of what books I read for the entire year. This was for no real reason other than to see what types of books I typically read. I included only novels/"book" books. I read a number of guides, cookbooks, travel things, etc over the year, but did not include them in my count. Overall, I made out at 32. I had no idea what number to expect to read, but I think this is a pretty level number.

I've decided to try the same thing for 2012. I'm already at 3 (in the second week!), mainly because I really liked these books and read them rather fast.

1-Lessons From the Mountain: What I Learned From Eric Walton - Mary McDonough

2- Start Something That Matters - Blake Mycoskie

3- Flunking Sainthood: A Year of Breaking the Sabbath, Forgetting to Pray, and Still Loving My Neighbor- Jana Riess

I'll be listing them as I read them under the "book" tab.

great rocket ships!

2012-01-07T09:11:00.018-05:00

These could quite possibly be one of the coolest things I've done. Plush rocket ships!

I really am not a huge space fan or that in to astronomy. Although, I did go through a brief time in 6th grade where I thought I wanted to study planets. (This was back when Pluto was considered a planet.) But after seeing (and buying) this fabric:

I knew I had to make a rocket ship.

Sometimes, a new plush design takes me a while to make. Days, weeks, or even in some cases months! I usually start by sketching out what I want and then cutting templates out of paper. Most times I have to make multiple trial runs of a design, but this one just clicked.

Just listed in the shop. Perfect for future astronauts or star gazers.

new fabrics and Christmas

2012-01-06T19:01:00.000-05:00

Now that all the holiday rush is over, I thought I'd share some of the things I got for Christmas. Kinsey gave me this wonderful fox necklace from boygirlparty.

I've loved this store for quite some time and have various prints and cards from her. I've been wearing this necklace everyday it seems.

He also gave me fabric. Lots of fabric, which I love. A few are from illustrator, Julia Rothman, whose work we both admire much. I can't wait to start using some of these! The green hill one on the far right, I'm planning a octopus or squid plush with it. I can see it now.

So great!

Also, on the subject of Julia Rothman, he got me this wonderfully illustrated book she did.

We saw a review on designsponge a while ago, but I completely forgot about the book. The illustrations inside are beautiful!

You may be wondering what I got Kinsey since he got me all these and more awesome things?

Here's one more thing he can cross off his list for his new business.... an iMac! (I must admit though, I've been using this a little bit and LOVE it. It's so much easier to use for photo editing and updating than our rather old laptop.)

In addition to my Christmas fabrics, I stopped by our local fabric outlet and picked up some great finds. First, this rocket ship fabric.

It caught my eye across the room and I fell in love. Not completely sure what I'll do with it, but it DID inspire a new plush design. Any ideas? (Coming soon!)

On the $1.98 a yard table, I found this crazy circus fabric. Once again, I have no idea what my plan for it is, but I couldn't resist getting half a yard.

And finally, from the .99 cents table:

I've actually seen this before there, but for some reason never purchased any. It's a pretty thin cotton, but such a lovely print.

Obviously, I'll be keeping busy!

handmade Christmas ornaments for 2011

2011-12-28T21:28:00.002-05:00

It should be no surprise that we like to make things. Christmas theme things are no exception. Our tree (Dougie Wonderfir) this year looked like this:

Project #1: Garland

This year, I was set on making some sort of garland. I had thought about going the paper circles looped together route, but then I looked at my scalloped circle hole punch. And my massive world atlas I came across for free. And my garland was born.

I started by punching out hundreds (really!) of circles from different maps. Then I simply starting sewing a long line without cutting the thread. I was left with a really long chain of garland. I ended up making 2 different chains for my tree.

It really couldn't have been easier and faster. This project reminded me of how much I love garlands. This could also be a year round decoration.

Total cost: $0

Project #2: Felt Circle Trees

I found these circle felt trees at Target a few weeks before Christmas.

I loved them. I wanted them for my tree. $3 was pretty cheap, but I knew I could make them without much effort.

I did not have the thicker felt the store bought trees had, but I do have just about every color of felt under the sun. The end result:

My trees ended up having a bit more movement and I opted to not included the rolled up felt for the trunk. Or the circle topper. I used plastic beads I've had forever and spaced two beads between each layer of felt.

Simple, colorful, and fun.

Total cost: $0.

O Christmas wreath, o Christmas wreath....how little did you cost me to make

2011-12-15T20:57:00.000-05:00

We put the tree up, decorated our house so me, have been opening our advent calendar everyday, and making ornaments. But I had yet to make a season appropriate wreath for our front door. We've had this everyday wreath up since the summer. I love it, but it doesn't say Christmas and winter goodness. So this past weekend I made one that does. Oh and it cost nothing.

All that's needed is:

* wreath form (I used an extra flat one I had leftover from last Christmas for this recycled milk cap wreath)

*yarn

*felt

*ribbon

*hot glue

*scissors

First, I started out by tying a knot with the yarn through one of the wreath form holes.

Then, I just kept wrapping the yarn around and around and around until it was completely covered. This is really easy and the yarn stays in place without any glue. This would've been even more easier if I wouldn't have chosen yarn that was in one huge tangle. But the color was just right and was worth the extra effort of untangling.

Green!

I only went around once, but you could do multiple layers with the yarn if you wanted. I don't mind a faint bit of the brown form peeking through in certain areas.

Next, I made some felt flowers. I have loved this technique since I found a tutorial online and used it in my previous wreath. (For felt flower how-to, see this summer wreath post.) I made a bunch and then hot glued them in place.

I chose to go with grays, creams, and a hint of blue for the flowers. I didn't want to make a completely literally red and green Christmas wreath that I'd have to take down in 2 weeks. Instead I wanted something a bit more winter season than December 25th.

After all the flowers were securely in place, I still thought it needed something else. So I found some brown ribbon and tied a bow to the top of the wreath. I then glued a red felt flower to the center of the ribbon.

Perfect winter wreath for $0.

early christmas softie sale

2011-11-24T22:39:00.000-05:00

In the spirit of the crazy Black Friday/Cyber Monday/ beginning of Christmas shopping craze.....

Plush Sale! Now through Friday, December 9th: All owl and elephant plush are on sale! Owls are $17.50 and elephants are $21.50!

New owls and elephants to be listing throughout this sale.

The owl above, Owen, is one of my newest owls I made. I've had this fabric for about a year, but never knew what to use it for. It's pretty busy as a whole, but broken into smaller sections, it's really quite eye catching and playful.

This owl, Denise, is from the other batch of Denyse Schmidt fabric I got from Jo-Ann. Here's the other fabric.

And don't forgot about the elephants! This take longer for me to make, so I can't make as many as the owls. But I love their movable arms and trunks!

Happy Thanksgiving!

best prints you've ever seen....

2011-11-23T07:59:00.001-05:00

I'm very excited to share some of my husband's newest work. Kinsey has been drawing for quite some time and is super creative. He made his younger sister's wedding invitations this past summer and has been playing around with hand drawn text for a while. A few weeks ago, he opened his own hand drawn illustration shop on etsy. His shop is called eager illustration.

Currently, he's been working on a lot of animal portraits. I love all of them, but the owl is my favorite. I really need to have him print one for my craft room.

They all feature an original animal drawing and below is a banner with hand drawn text. All the prints are hand drawn and then digitally colored. Most of the prints feature a wonderfully textured paper canvas which gives a nice dimension to the artwork.

He also is doing portraits of people. Lincoln, anyone?

Just this past weekend, we did a craft show together and his prints got a really good response from customers! Check out his shop and blog for more information!

Owls and Elephants and Animals....Oh my!

2011-11-22T21:10:00.000-05:00

If you've checked out my shop recently, you've no doubt noticed I've been making some plush toys. A LOT of plush toys. I'm currently featuring plush owls and plush elephants, but am currently working on more or less 3 other designs of animals. I really like the idea of making functional art and craft that can be played with, used, or just displayed. (Not that the clutches I make can't be used, but they will never be as fun to play with as a plush animal.)

Each animal is listed in the shop with a name and a little bit about him or her.

Above is Oliver. He is now in California where his new owner is feeding his hot cocoa addiction.

This is Elise. Her hobbies include painting, drinking jasmine green tea, an finding vintage jewelry at thrift shops.

This is Olivia. I found her belly fabric at Jo-Anns and it belongs to the Densye Schmidt line. I used this fabric as soon as I got home, which is saying quite a bit. I have a ton of fabric and find that I usually "reserve" my really great fabric for certain well planned out projects that may or may not ever happen. I'm hoping to use some of this fabric for a quilt (the same quilt I've been saying I'm making for over a year now), but couldn't resist making a few owls with this pattern.

Oh, and I'll be announcing my Black Friday/Cyber Monday/Two Week Special sale on Thanksgiving. Get ready.

Berenstain Bears

2011-10-21T00:13:00.001-04:00

I'm not going to lie. I almost bought these from this etsy store.

Then I remembered, I'm 25.

But, I did just pick up my childhood collection of 30+ Berenstain Bear books from my parents' house this past weekend.

I had no idea until today that new additions to the beloved series are still being published! It seems that Mama and Papa had a 3rd child somewhere down the line.

How I love the Berenstain Bears!

Coming this Wednesday....

2011-10-17T23:27:00.001-04:00

Meet the elephants! These ellie-guys and ellie-girls with be in the shop on Wednesday.

They're all decked out in their finest....

...and getting in shape in the meantime.

Acadia...four years later

2011-10-07T07:42:00.006-04:00

We just came back from a 1 and a half week trip to Acadia National Park. We first went to what we call our "favorite place ever", on our honeymoon back in 2007. We decided to celebrate our fourth anniversary with a trip back to the park and some much needed relaxation.

Here's an overlook at the top (well, what we discovered to be the first of the three "peaks") of a mountain that we grossly underestimated the climb. At the top, you could look out over the lakes, oceans, and land of the island. It was a great first hike of our trip and an excellent place to enjoy a soft pretzel and maple mustard that we packed from our new favorite bakery. (I admit that I became rather obsessed with these pretzel nuggets of glory....and the mustard was phenomenal. I could eat one everyday.)

This is from my favorite "secret" spot along the park loop in Acadia. There is a little pebble beach that isn't marked at all and you wouldn't know it was there if you weren't looking for it. I have no idea how we found it on our honeymoon four years ago, but we did and we think of this place when we think of Maine. There are all kinds of gorges between the mountain of rocks and when the water is rough, you can witness some pretty intense wave crashes. I love this sheltered hole of water along the edge. Check out the those colors!

Kinsey skipping stones on the "secret" beach.

A trail in the woods we followed. Who doesn't like the quiet of the forest with soft pine needles on the ground and moss?

Two of the videos stocked in our cabin. We aren't movie people (we have only been to the movies 4 times in the seven years we've been together), but these scream us. Seriously. Unfortunately, we didn't have a chance to watch them.

We did have time for these books. A Walk in the Park proved to be an invaluable guide. It list all the trails in the park with detail information on the elevation, difficultly, terrain, and different routes. We learned that when the author says "different and strenuous", he means it. We wanted an easy hike one day and chose a trail described as "one of the most difficult and dangerous trail in the park". (Jordan Cliffs, anyone?)

I loved the bright orange book (which takes a certain person to enjoy) and the one with the raccoon proved informative when on our last night at the cabin, we saw a family of raccoons come right up to our (glass and locked) screen doors. Raccoons are much larger in real life than you may think. The only other time we saw one was in the middle of the day at a nearby creek back home and yes, it definitely wasn't healthy.

We stayed here. The cabin was in a wonderful location in the park and really close to trails (walking distance). We loved this fireplace in the corner. The window to the right of the fireplace is where the family of raccoons came up. The cabin even had a small loft (which I named the "puzzle loft" because there were puzzles up there).

Here's the outside of the cabin. Complete with a birch tree growing in the middle of the wooden walkway to the door. Love it.

I love felt and making an easy summer wreath

2011-07-29T22:30:00.000-04:00

I recently made (or actually upgraded) a wreath for a front door. This weaved twig wreath has been on our front door since winter. Back in the holiday months, it sported some festive ribbon and tiny glass balls. After Christmas, I removed the decorations and just kept the bare wreath up. Everyday it seemed to be saying to me, "Cloth me! Decorate me again!"

I finally listened.

And one of the best parts is, I already had everything I needed for the project!

The supplies needed are very few. Felt (any felt will do really, even the cheaper sheets available at craft stores are great for making these flowers, so there's no need to buy the expensive felt.), glue gun, and wreath. That's it. I already had the wreath and a glue gun and felt are pretty much staples in our house. So the total cost of this project = $0.

First step is to cut out circles of felt. Then, cut in to the circle making a spiral shape. At the beginning, cut a normal strip and gradually have the strip get thicker. You'll end up with a little circle "knob" in the middle. It should look something like this:

Starting at the narrow end of the spiral, roll the felt up. Be sure to keep the bottom of the felt lined up straight.

As you keep going, little "petals" will form. It will start looking a little something like this:

Here's where the glue gun comes in. When you roll up all the felt and get to the center, put a dollop of glue on the felt right before the spiral gets to the center "knob".

The last step is putting a few more dollops of glue along the flower back and then pressing the center down.

Hello finished felt flower!

Making these flowers can be very addicting. It's super easy to do and you can make them in all different colors and even in multiple tones. If you're like me, you'll make more than enough for your wreath.

Next, comes placement. I recommend laying them on the wreath before gluing to get the design and composition that you want.

Once you're happy with the placement, hot glue the flowers on. You can always add things like ribbon or buttons to the wreath, too.

And the finished wreath hanging:

A lovely and incredibly easy summer wreath. You'd be foolish not to make one yourself!

remember that book...?

2011-07-27T08:42:00.046-04:00

I'm the manager of a bookstore/cafe during the day and often get asked the following questions: 1) Can you recommend a good book for me to read?, 2) What are you reading now?, 3)Do you read a lot?, and 4)Do you sell lottery tickets here? (The last one gets asked more than you'd believe.)

Anyhow, by the nature of my job, I come in contact with more books than anyone could ever read or even remember seeing. I read fairly regularly and usually have a book or two (or three) I'm in the middle of. I am not, however, good at remembering all the books I have read. So I decided to make a list of the books I have read (so far) in 2011. Of course, I didn't officially start keeping track until March, so I may have already forgotten a book or two.

This isn't for really any purpose other than just my personal knowledge of what I've read this year. I don't have any book goals or a certain number of books that I'm aiming for, I just wanted to see what types of books I usually read.

I'd say by looking at the list below, if you know me, these titles seem like things I'd read. If you have any interest in seeing my progress, I've included a "Book" tab at the top of the blog. I'll continue to update books I read on that page. Also, I'll include some of my favorite craft and cooking books I've come across lately.
So....

Books I've Read in 2011 (as of July 27th):

1- The Indifferent Stars Above: The Harrowing Saga of a Donner Party Bride- Daniel James Brown
2- The Coast of Maine – Louise Rich Dickinson
3- The Orchard: A Memoir – Adele Crockett Robertson
4- From Off Island – Dionis Coffin Riggs
5- How Did You Get This Number – Sloane Crosley
6- The Blueberry Years: A Memoir of Farm and Family – Jim Minick
7- The Dirty Life: On Farming, Food, and Love – Kristin Kimball
8- Mary: A Flesh and Blood Biography of the Virgin Mary – Lesley Hazleton
9- Hay Fever: How Chasing a Dream on a Vermont Farm Changed My Life – Angela Miller
10- Hipster Christianity: When Church and Cool Collide – Brett McCracken
11- Spencer’s Mountain – Earl Hamner (reread)
12- Olive Kitteridge – Elizabeth Strout
13- Amish Peace: Simple Wisdom for a Complicated World –Suzanna Woods Fisher
14- Growing A Farmer –Kurt Timmermeister
15- The Salt House – Cynthia Huntington
16- Made by Hand: Searching for Meaning in a Throwaway World – Mark Frauenfelder
17- Mirror Mirror- Gregory Maguire
18- We Took To the Woods – Louise Rich Dickinson
19- That Summer on Catalpa Street – Louise Pliss
20- Adventures With Hal – Gladys Baker Bond
21- Lemon Jelly Cake- Madeline Babcock Smith

garden destruction

2011-07-05T07:49:00.009-04:00

Before we bought our house in 2009, we had a vegetable garden for a few years at my parents house. Their house is situated near farmland and isn't fenced in at all. We grew a variety of tomatoes, peppers, cucumbers, melon, eggplant, peas, beans, and other edibles in the garden and had a pretty good success rate. We'd harvest pounds and pounds of tomatoes during our twice weekly visits during the growing season.

When we were looking for a house, we had a lot in mind for our backyard. The major thing was a fairly decent area for a garden. Our house had a nice size backyard for our area, but it was on a slope. We set to making raised beds and bought in nice blend of soil and made sure everything was healthy.

Our first growing season (2010), was off to a good start. Our tomatoes shot up and grew tall and prolific.

Then, one day we noticed the leaves started to curl up and wilt. The next day they took a yellow and brown appearance. The flowers stopped blooming and no more fruit was produced. We picked maybe 8 tomatoes from those plants before they died off completely. What was the cause of this? Blight? Wilt?

We took a leaf sample and went to our local nursery to talk to the experts. While they couldn't say for sure, they did ask us if we had any Black Walnut trees close to our property. We did. Our neighbors have two Black Walnut trees which are maybe 7 feet from where our tomatoes were. Evidently, these trees have a chemical called juglone that can be toxic to certain plants, especially tomatoes. There wasn't much that could be done at that point as we were told you'd need to plant the tomatoes 25 feet away from the trees and even that might not work.

Despite all this tomato devastation, we planted a new round this summer. We love the idea of growing fresh vegetables right outside our door and decided to plant them in a bed even further away from the Black Walnut tree. Everything was going well until a few weeks again, we noticed the "Walnut Wilt" reappearing. We didn't panic, we could still get some fruit off the plants if they succumbed again to juglone.

However, we didn't plan on animals attacking our tomatoes constantly. The other day, I walked out to check our garden and found this:

This tomato was about the size of two golf ball and we were eagerly awaiting the day to pick it. But something else got to it first.

So we decided we needed to fence the bed in. We had some chicken wire left over from a previous project so we used that. The holes we a little bigger than we wanted, but we figured it would still keep out the critters eying up our produce.

We were feeling good about this until the following morning:

Obviously we were dealing with a smaller animal or a bird. We have a family of chipmunks that live in our neighbors yard (or ours it seems), so I leaning towards chipmunks. (They dig holes all over our flower beds and we can't seem to get rid of them.) We have since bought new chicken wire with incredibly tiny holes, so nothing can possibly get in through the holes. So far, so good (fingers crossed). However, we did witness a hungry squirrel running around the fenced in bed trying to figure a way to get up. Luckily, he got frustrated and jumped around frantically before running his usual exercise course along our fence and taking off to another yard.

If only critters and Black Walnut trees attacking our tomatoes were the only gardening problem we have.

On Friday morning, after Kinsey got back from his morning run, he checked on our garden and everything was fine. Less than 40 minutes later, I went out to water before we left for work and was met with complete pepper massacre:

In all, our two tallest and most flowered pepper plants were snapped in half, two more were pulled straight up from the ground, and the remaining six were fallen over and trampled on. We have no idea what happened. A little chipmunk (our usual garden suspect) couldn't have done this massive work. A squirrel doesn't seem likely either. A rabid raccoon? A skunk? A bear? (We haven't seen any of these in our yard ever. I doubt the bear, but there have been bear sightings in the boro we live in about 5 times in the last 18 months.)

So we're down to 8 peppers still in the ground (we started with 13 at the beginning). I'm not sure how damaged these remaining ones are, but hopefully we get a pepper or two. This bed will obviously be fenced in immediately.

the campfire...in felt!

2011-05-20T07:49:00.002-04:00

You may remember me gushing about this book on this post.

After completing two additional african violets, I finally made my way to the campfire. Who doesn't love a good campfire? They really go hand in hand with the summer season. Here is the finished result:

First, I sewed the three logs. Each log has hand embroidered "knots" for a more realistic appearance.

Surprisingly, these went pretty fast. I enjoyed free embroidering the bark lines and was surprised by how much they resembled logs after being sewn up and stuffed. Quite frankly, I could've stopped there. (I do have plans in my head of doing an original tree stump in the near future!)

Here's the three finished logs all sewn and stuffed.

Next, came the final piece, the flame. I opted for standard fire colors of bright yellow, orange, and red. The flame is actually three separate pieces with three different colors per piece.

Here's a close up of the flame. Each felt piece is blanket stitched around the edges and together. I used red thread for all the colors instead of matching the felt for a little added detail. Crazy, I know.

Here's a shot from above, showing the three sections sewn together. The directions have you gluing the three complete flame sections together and then sewing the edges together. I found the glue to be rather messy and well, my fabric glue was rock hard. So I skipped this step for the most part. Instead of gluing, I just used some trusty sewing pins and pinned the three finished flame pieces together and stitched the edges to join everything. I found this to work great.

Another view of the three sides.

Overall, I really love this project. It's easy (I found it a lot easier and faster to finish then the african violets...although, I did make 3 of the violets in a fairly short amount of time, so I may have just really liked the change!)

All that's missing is the s'mores! (Which actually there is a project for them in the book too!) This would be fun to put in a fireplace you don't use or in a corner of a room. Maybe even outside for a little non working fire pit for a summer gathering.

backyard garden projects

2011-05-18T08:04:00.002-04:00

Last week, we decided to make another flower bed in our backyard. This is the first tiny step in what we hope to be a massive backyard renovation. Two major things we'd like to do include:

1- Build a new patio. Either by putting stone pavers over our existing concrete one or removing (which I assume would be very time consuming and not to mention rather backbreaking!) the concrete and laying flagstone in a free form pattern.

Here's our current patio...

I really like these pictures of what the flagstone could look like.

2- building a shed. The shed we have now is a small plastic one and isn't really too practical for storing garden tools, containers, and really anything other than our bicycles. Ideally, we'd like to building on the very back of the yard in the far right hand side of the picture below.

Which brings us to our current project of the new flower bed. We already have a small bed along the left side of our yard, so we decided to put this one on the right side along the rail fence. We eventually want to make the bed a lot bigger and more in a half circle shape. Possibly even with a bird bath in the middle once the ground is level. But for now, we opted for a simple rectangle to get things started.

First, we started by making shovel indents in the grass where the bed would be.

Next, came over turning all the grass clumps and digging through and removing all the various objects we find in our yard....glass pieces, huge rocks, marbles, broken pottery, plastic lions, and the usual things.

Once the soil was nice and clean of debris, I planted the new flowers I got from Kinsey's mother that morning.

More plants, including my new favorite: Lamb's Ear (front center)

Rose Campion

Columbine (one of my new favorites)

These are not in our yard, but Kinsey's parents. I love the circular shape inside the flowers and this dark color. We plan on getting some in these color for our yard soon.

"Moonless Night" daylilies, which are supposed to have a dark maroon and black flower.

Here's Kinsey giving the new transplants a nice long drink.

Here's the finished bed after putting some leaf mulch around the plants. (The green at the close right side by the post is daffodils. They bloom along every post by this fence in the early spring.)

early may flower garden

2011-05-12T08:06:00.005-04:00

Here's some spring pictures from our flower garden we took recently. About this time every year, I always wish I could take the next four months off and do nothing but gardening (and crafting of course!). Maybe someday.

Nice mix of colors on this tulip.

I love the shape and color of this tulip. We have two of these in our flower bed and they always are the last tulips to bloom.

Ants crawling on the peony blooms. As alarming as this can look, it's actually a good sign. It means the flower is nice and healthy.

Here's two poppy heads getting ready to bloom. I won't lie - last year I pulled all the poppies out except one because I thought they were weeds. I definitely learned from that mistake! Poppies are some of my favorite flowers, so I was pretty disappointed after learning this. Can't wait to actually see them bloom this year.

I'm not fully sure what kind of flowers these are. Although I'm pretty sure they're a type of bluebell.

Another favorite tulip.

No idea what kind of plant this is. I actually thought it was just a weed, but it has such pretty blooms all over and is about 20 inches tall.

Here's our very first ever blossom on our Betsy Ross lilac bush. We got this from a friend when we moved into our house in the fall of 2009. It was just a stick when we got it and then just had green leaves last year, and now it looks like an actually lilac bush!

This sedum I got from the local nursery at the end of the season last year on sale. I wasn't sure how it would transplant at the time, but it's really growing now.

And perhaps maybe, one of the most anticipated things of the spring garden...our strawberry plants! This one is getting so close! Hopefully we can get to it before the rabbits, or squirrels, or birds, or chipmunks, or any other critters that come into our yard!

living room in with the new and out with the old (table, that is)

2011-05-11T07:48:00.009-04:00

We're in the process of rearranging our living room (more on that later!) and needed a new end table for one side of the Klobo (our Ikea loveseat, incase you have no idea what we're talking about...see this post for our re-do of the Klobo slipcover.)

We decided to visit one of our favorite local vintage housewares stores to see what they had to offer.

We found this little side table with really nice detail.

Here's a close up of the detailing.

We purchased it for the mere price of $22. The table itself was painted a really light pink color which didn't quite fit too well in our living room. So we knew we'd have to paint it. I was leaning towards a super bright color, but didn't want to overpower the orange wall which it would be in front of. So I looked around at what leftover paint we had and found a sample color we got for the kitchen. (Which didn't quite look as we thought it would in that room. It's actually still on a patch of the wall...we're still figuring out what color we want. Another work in progress.) Anyway, the color is called Carolina Inn Club Aqua and is a blue/green color.

Here's a process shot. I'm still deciding in this picture if I like the color or not for the table.

In the end, we ended up really pleased with the overall table and color. It adds just enough color to not be overwhelming and fits in to the colors of the room well. Actually the color is pretty close to our lining set of curtains.

Here's looking down.

I don't think I've talked about our new lamps we got a few months ago, but here's a close up. They're by Thomas O'Brein for Target. I love the crackled glass circle shape of the lamps. I've been looking for lamps similar to these for a while, but never found anything really affordable. I actually saw a very, very similar style of lamp, only blue glass, in a recent issue of County Living magazine for over $300! Needless to say, these were much, much less than that!

One of the major things we wanted in end tables were a shelf or drawer to put things on/in. Often drawers can seem a bit heavy, so this shelf is really nice and open. The side detail is really interesting here, too. Just big enough to hold things in place, but not too boxy.

This is the hot mess that used to be our living room. Actually it usually wasn't such a mess. We were in the process of moving things around when I took this quick shot. The table to the right of the Klobo is the one we replaced. I love the table (Kinsey actually made this table in high school!), but it's destination in life isn't to be used as a side table. It's much too big and as you can see, it was often used as a dumping ground for mail and other non important things when we came in the door. This picture looks so crazy now that we rearranged everything. (More on that soon!)

Shiny and natural inspirations

2011-04-29T08:01:00.004-04:00

The other week, we were in Richmond selling our crafts. We love going here and look forward to the time to relax and go to some of our favorite places.
There are a number of pretty interesting shops and restaurants in this area.
Kinsey always stops here to check out the hat selection and I usually end up "just looking" at the local bead store. I'd work here in a second.

Here's my shiny selections.

I don't even really bead much anymore, but I fall in love with the selection here every time.

Another favorite is Maymont. Tons of acres of plants, trees, gardens, and more. Here's a shot of the Italian garden (with Kinsey).

I love these tulips! We have a similar style in our backyard, only the pink and white are reversed.

Here's one side of the herb garden. I'd love to have a nice herb garden in our yard.

And overlooking the back of the Japanese garden.

Such a peaceful place...even though it was spring break week and the place was packed with kids!

My new favorite craftbook

2011-04-28T08:06:00.011-04:00

About a month ago, I was reading a few different craft blogs and kept seeing the same book everywhere- Big Little Felt Universe. The cover instantly caught my attention. There's just something about apples and felt that makes me get really excited. So I decided to look into this book.

One of the first project pages I saw was the camping set. Yes, that's a campfire and a lantern and a s'more made from felt. Clearly, this was my kind of book!

(above book photos courtesy of this great blog)

Then I laid my excited eyes on this photo. Bamboo, african violets, and a cactus. Really, who wouldn't want these lined along their windows? No watering needed! So I placed my order and waited for my book to arrive. It took a week and then the package arrived. The only downside was I was about a week and a half away from Spring Bada Bin g.

I really needed to focus on that show so I had to put my new favorite craft book aside.

Luckily, this past weekend, I was able to try my first felt project from the book. I knew it would be a plant, I just couldn't decide which one. In the end I went with the African Violet.

All the projects in the book are hand sewn, so you can really work on them everywhere. Which is exactly what I did. I took the leaves to work to sew during lunch, worked a little on the flowers outside, and constructed the pot in the wee morning hours in my craft room.

Oh, and did I mention that you can take the plant out of the pot? This kills me. How cool is that?

Here's my newest plant soaking in a little sun in the bedroom.

Up next, I'm leaning towards the cactus. But first I'm planning on making two more of these for two lucky people for gifts. I really loved sewing three dimensionally with the felt. I usually do flat work, (with the exception of my owls) and liked the feeling of building something you could use or give to someone to play with or just feel.

There's over 70 projects in the book and I doubt I'll make all of them, but it's definitely inspiring!

spring cleaning

2011-04-27T07:55:00.001-04:00

The past couple days here have been so beautiful! Temperatures in the 80's and sunny. Perfect spring weather for outside gardening and cleaning, as well as allergies. Headaches and runny noses aside, Monday marked the first journey of the lawn mower. Our grass needed mowed before this but every time we had the day off, it would rain. A lot. We got our mower used when we moved to our current house and really haven't had any problems with it, aside from needing to sharpen the blade desperately.

Here's a overlay of almost all the backyard flower garden (the right side is only half showing). Right before we left for Richmond (April 16th) all the red tulips were just about to bloom and when we returned a few days later, they were in full bloom.

We have a number of different varieties in our yard. I like the ones that come a little later in the season. I have no idea what their official name is, but the edges are sort of frayed and the flower itself is orange.

(This picture is from last year.)

Bleeding hearts in bloom. These are actually planted in the pot on the top of the steps to the right in the picture above. These along with the other pot (which contain tiger lilies) are from the previous owners. I don't know why, but we haven't moved these planters. I'd like to transplant the bleeding hearts to the right side along the fence, but haven't gotten around to it. I love the shape of this flower!

More red tulips along the left side of the yard. If you look closely in the middle right, you'll notice two smaller pink and white tulips in bloom. These are some of my favorite flowers we have.

Here's a picture of my in the process of moving around some of our ferns. I love ferns. A lot. But the right side of our flower garden is overtaken by them. At this stage they are rather manageable- not too big, not too small. Big enough to enjoy but not big enough to block the view. Give them a few weeks. Or as it seems after just looking at them, a few days. They get really big and seem to take over. My plan is to move most to the far right side and against the lower fence (which you can't see in this picture). This way the ferns won't block the other flowers, but be more natural grouped densely together.

Spring...and bada-bing!

2011-03-26T08:12:00.002-04:00

We recently just found out that we got accepted to Spring Bada-Bing this April! We've done this show three of the past four years and love it. Not only is it a great and well put together show, but it always gives us an excuse for a little spring trip!

Some of our favorite places to go are here and here and here and to stay is here.

We've been busy working on some new items for the show. Can't wait to see the official list of vendors for this year's show. If you're around Richmond, the show is Sun April 17th from 11am-5pm!

New Shower Part II...The Finale

2011-03-25T07:49:00.000-04:00

If you've ever tiled before, then you've probably have grouted (or at least should have). Our night of grouting fell on a Wednesday evening (Day 4 of the Renovation) beginning at 7:30pm. We knew that this step may take a little time.

If you've never been acquainted with process, essentially you mix up the grout and using the grout float, spread the sandy mixture into the spaces between the tiles. You leave this set for a few minutes and then the fun begins. The grout leaves behind a white film that you need to wipe off with a clean, damp sponge. You keep doing this until the white film stops reappearing.

We figured on maybe needing to wipe over the area three times. Foolish thinking? Yes, most definitely. I honestly don't know how many times we wiped the tile, but I do know we started around 8:30pm and ended finally just before midnight. Yes, midnight. Almost three and a half hours of this.

I don't know why exactly it took this long or even if this is normal, but I do know this: If you're grouting, after wiping the tiles a few times with the sponge, use an old T-shirt and rub over the tiles. The white film fades away and you aren't a slave to the shower for the entire night.

So after we successfully got the film off, it was time to wait for 48 hours to seal the shower. We sealed after work on Day 6 and this was by far one of the most simplest tasks. Just brush the sealer over and wipe off the excess.

Great! Done! After waiting another 24 hours, we could finally shower (at home)! (Please note-we were showering during this time!)

Welcome to Day 7. The expectant finish the shower day (well, night that is). We were all set and ready to go when we realized.....the shower handle valve and diverter pipe were too short. And the lower faucet pipe was too long. By a lot. This was going to need replaced before we could hook the fixtures up. Obviously, this was not going to be as easy as we thought.

Luckily, Kinsey's uncle knows about plumbing and pipes. Unfortunately, he was out of town until Tuesday.

Day 10- Kinsey's uncle comes and replaces our lower faucet pipe and attaches the fixture. He also uses his mighty tools to pry off the old shower handle valve setting that wouldn't budge for us. At this point we were getting pretty excited and felt the end was in sight.

I'll spare all the minor details of "why doesn't this pipe fit?", "the pipe isn't long enough", "do we need a plumber" "various trips to local home improvement stores and plumbing specialist" scenarios we encountered in the last few days.
Let's just say we were beyond thrilled when we had attached the new fixtures and turned the water back on for a test run.

This was all that remaining of our old shower.

And the finished product:

We picked up a new shower curtain, hooks, rug, and various other accessories at Target.

I love our new shower head.

We didn't raise the plumbing at all in the shower, but the new head is probably a good 18 inches or so higher than the old one. The old head was just a stationary one that sloped down sharply. The new hand held one is high enough that I almost think it's like this one that I've always wanted.

These shower hooks were purchased as well. I love the little glass ball on the end of the hook. Our old shower hooks were the circle kind that snapped closed. It was always a hassle to un click each one and then re click each one to change the curtain. Does this sound lazy? Probably. Does it look a whole lot better? Yes.

And another shot of the shower curtain because I love it so:

Shower all done, now it's time to move on to the sink/vanity and the floor.

New Shower...Part I

2011-03-22T07:54:00.011-04:00

After just under 2 weeks (13 and half days to be exact), our new shower is finished!

We barely recognize it! Gone is the plastic shower surround. Gone is the mildew. Gone is the leaky shower fixtures. We chose a warm beige/brown porcelain tile called piedmont noce from Lowes.

The plastic surround came off surprising easy. It was never really properly installed in the first place and you could feel the sides weren't firmly attached to the wall. We scored the edges and pried the three sections off the wall.

Next, was the task of breaking through the drywall. We enlisted a small team to help with this phase of the demo and was finished quite quickly.

After the drywall was gone, this was all that remained. Our house was built in 1933, so the construction of the walls is rather old. It was rather thrilling to see everything removed and down to the bare bones of the shower. We'd been talking and planning this renovation for almost a year and it was finally taking shape.

After the drywall was off, came the long process of measuring, cutting, and drilling the cement backerboard. This is the only screw I believe I drilled during the whole process. It really took a lot of pressure to get the screws in. This task was left up to Kinsey and his father. This essentially ended day 1 of the renovation.

Day 2 involved beginning to tile. We chose 12 x 12 inch tiles for the back main wall with a single row of 6 x 6 inch tiles about half way up. The smaller two walls were 6 x 6 inch tiles the entire way. This was our first attempt at tiling. We went to a tiling workshop a few months ago at Home Depot and took diligent notes so we had a pretty good idea about the process. The hardest part is setting the first row of tile to ensure everything is straight. We mapped most of the tile out and tried our best to avoid unnecessary cuts. Around this time, we also realized it might be handy to pick out our shower fixtures, which we failed to purchase yet. We didn't want to cut holes around the plumbing that wasn't large enough. So Kinsey and I headed off to Lowes, while Kinsey's mom mapped out the tile placement.

A few fixtures purchased and one special order placed and we were back to the shower. Once we got the hang of laying the tile, the job went pretty fast. We finished one wall. And then another wall. And finished about half of the last wall when we ran out of thin set adhesive. So we took a break and headed back to Lowes for the second time that day.

We managed to tile about 90% of the last remaining wall, and then our tile cutter broke. And then it broke in a second place. And then it broke beyond repair. Granted, our cutter wasn't a very good one. We bought it on clearance for under $15. We later found out that porcelain is really hard to cut with this type of cutter.

Of course, every tile remaining needed to be cut. So we checked the clock and returned to Lowes for the third time that day (30 minutes before they closed) to see our options. We didn't really want to buy a new cutter. The cheap ones aren't very good (especially for porcelain) and I really didn't see a need to spend $50 or $100 on a tile cutter we may or may not use again.

Lucky for us, the friendly guy in the tiling department told us that because we bought our tile there, they can cut our tiles for us! For free! Not lucky for us, there was no way we could run home, measure the cuts that needed to be made, and return that night. So we'd have to wait until the next day. We were frustrated to have to wait to finish when we were so close, but were exhausted.

Day 3, began at Lowes (no surprise there) and we got the rest of our tile cut. By the afternoon, our tile was all up and the only thing left to do was to wait. The next step, grouting, couldn't be done until 24 hours after the tile was set.

Part II coming tomorrow.....

New Pins!

2011-03-15T22:58:00.000-04:00

I've been making a bunch of new pins lately. Some are in the shop and some I'm holding back for spring craft shows.

This one is a little ode to spring and the succulent:

I love these plants! I'm so looking forward to getting some seeds and plants started in the next week or so.

bathroom renovation progress part I

2011-03-09T08:01:00.030-05:00

This is what our bathroom looked like just 48 hours ago:

Yes, we finally started our bathroom renovation. We knew since we moved in that we'd end up changing the bathroom. We had one of those plastic shower surrounds which was okay, but it wasn't installed very good and seemed to be not firmly attached to the wall. So we decided to put up some tile. The bath doesn't look anything like this currently, but it's still not ready to use. However, it does look much, much better. Shockingly better as Kinsey's parents reactions say.

new clutches!

2011-03-04T07:59:00.006-05:00

I've been working on a lot of new clutches in the past couple days. I'm really enjoying playing around with some new designs, especially with water and the sun. Here's three of the newest ones in the shop.

Setting Spring Sun by River Clutch

The Creek in the Woods Spring Flowers Clutch

Snowy Spring Trees Clutch

Countdown to Bar Harbor.....

2011-02-23T07:54:00.009-05:00

"About midway along it on one of the uprights is a plaque marking the state line, and I for one always begin to feel wonderful the minute I've passed that marker. The air starts smelling better, and the trees across the river on Maine soil look greener. When I come off the end of the bridge, I always think, "There! Now at last I'm in Maine!" and everything is suddenly bright, even on a foggy day. Maine has that effect on her partisans."

~The Coast of Maine by Louise Dickinson Rich

In exactly 7 months, Kinsey and I will be in the middle of our anniversary vacation to Acadia National Park. Our first and last trip there, was for for our honeymoon, which will be 4 years ago in September. We are super excited to go back and if you know us at all, you know we can mention Maine daily, especially Acadia.

So in 7 months we could be here (on the overlook of Bubble Rock):

Or here (on Sand Beach):

Or here (one of our favorite spots that we call Rice Beach):

the gift of art prints

2011-02-14T08:02:00.003-05:00

A few weeks ago was Kinsey's birthday. One of the gifts I got for him was this great print from etsy by laurageorge.

The very top has the heading "things I'm thankful for" and includes just about everything we love.

Here's a fun little card, too. Also from laurageorge. They kind of look like potato people.

This one I got for Kinsey last September for our anniversary. It's from etsy by artsharkdesigns.

The print is actually of Maymont Park in Richmond, Virginia. Ever since we went to Richmond in 2007 to sell our crafts at Spring Bada Bing we've loved going to Maymont. It is a huge outdoor area/mansion/educational center and has some really amazingly large trees, too! (In fact, I called it the "land of huge trees" in an old blog post about the park here .) I was thrilled to find a print of this wonderful place and loved the couple with umbrellas image.

The Ongoing Quest for Fabric and the Shirt of my Dreams

2011-02-12T07:46:00.004-05:00

This past week, I found some really great fabrics for a few projects I've had in mind. Above is my newest fabric additions. The past couple times I've went, I've been really drawn to the "artist series" of fabrics they are carrying. Last year I bought some of this fabric by Heidi Grace. My usually crafting style doesn't really feature too much fabric that has busy prints. I'm usually drawn towards small prints and not too overall distracting from the main color. However, I often really find great fabrics with lots of color and big prints, but can't usually find a good use for them in my day to day sewing. Maybe I'm just plain in my choices. Or maybe I just prefer small prints. Anyhow, I have yet to use the yard I got of this fabric, but I love it.

Speaking of of big prints, I absolutely loved this one I found! It's very similar to fabric that Ikea offers. I like the flowers, birds, and nature inspired designs. I'm definitely planning at least one pillow and another very exciting project with this one!

This fruit fabric definitely has a retro vibe going, but I think it will be really fun to use for kitchen textiles. Maybe a few pot holders and kitchen towels? It also would make a really nice and graphic pillow. (Yes, pillows are a new favorite thing of mine.)

The whole reason I even went to the fabric store wasn't to stock up on fabric (which kind of happened anyway), but to find suitable shirt material. Last summer, I made a few sewing goals. The goals included making a dress (I even bought 2 or 3 patterns) and making a blouse. I didn't make the dress (I did cut out 80% of the pattern pieces) and I made a few attempts at a simple tank with shirring. The tank wasn't really what I wanted. I think it might have been okay, but the fabric just wasn't right. It seemed little too stiff. It seems to be really difficult for me to find the type of fabric I want for my shirt. I like my summer shirts to be pretty thin, soft, and usually a simple print. I have a few shirts I bought that have the exact material I want, which just seems to be 100% cotton or a cotton/silk blend. But the only fabric at the store that's even close to the same feel I want, is either too silky or the silky/polyester/see through material. All the 100% cottons are really stiff, even after repeated washings. So I guess my question is, where can I find suitable shirting fabric that is lightweight and in nice prints?

Until I find it, I figured I should start practicing. So the top 2 fabrics in my new fabric stack and the purple gingham (which is almost the exact feel of the fabric I want, just not really the ideal print) are my practice fabrics.

The pattern for this shirt I found last year on the Sew Mama Sew.

I love the the style of the shirt and the pleated details of the back. Why isn't it easier to find shirts like this one in the stores?

So, I'll be practicing with my fabric and keep checking the stores until I find "the" lightweight summer shirt material I want.

You + Me + the Jellys (or Jellies)

2011-02-04T08:04:00.006-05:00

Ever since seeing the jellyfish exhibit at the Baltimore Aquarium this past fall, I've been really fascinated with them. So much so that I've started to find myself sketching them in groups for no apparent reason. Then, I embroidered this orange one for my current exhibit.

My favorite jelly inspired design so far? Definitely this one. Two jellys (or is it jellies?) holding tentacles in love? Yes.

Offering them as pictured or customized with your choice of names.

Korn and me

2011-01-21T08:32:00.002-05:00

Just the other day, the local paper put my "Sewn Stories" exhibit in the "Top 5 Things to Do" at number 3. Right between a concert by the hard rock band Korn and a lecture about Martin Luther King Jr. Yeah, that's right Korn.

For another laugh (or two depending) you can read the interview posted on the Yellow Wall Gallery's blog here:

In the interview are links to fun things like the Berenstain Bears website and Legos, which is worth the time it takes to read the interview alone!

Show is up....thumbs are blistered

2011-01-20T07:35:00.001-05:00

Show is up and done! We hung my art up in the Yellow Wall Gallery at the Midtown Scholar Bookstore on Monday. Here's a portion of the pieces before their titles and prices went up.

I'm pretty relieved to have everything done. This was my first time doing a completely solo show. I'm very happy with the final 12 pieces that made it to the walls. As you may know, most of my work is usually in round embroidery hoops. I love using them, but it can hinder the overall design and shape. By doing my work in proper rectangular frames, I was able to play around with a lot of ideas I've had in my head lately.

While I love sewing and embroidering, I don't share that same love with framing. So that's why the framing waited until the very end. Meaning the 2 nights before the show went up. Most of my frames were made of unpainted wood and needed to be painted. Here's Kinsey painting the frames two days before hanging. Yes, it's nighttime. And yes, there is a few inches of snow on the ground. And yes, he did have to shovel some in order to stand where he is. This is why I married him. (And because he can reach things like honey on the very back of the top shelf at the grocery store.)

This was by far the most crucial supply! It's a heavy board that has acid free adhesive on one side that you stick to your fabric. It keeps everything nice and even and if done right, doesn't show wrinkles. This board also doubled as the backing of the frames because most of my frames were open backed. We (okay, Kinsey) used small tacks and nails to attach the board to the frame and needless to say his thumbs are a little numb currently from pushing so many tacks down on every frame.
Making a last minute adjustment.
Here's 2 of my favorites....well, actually 3.

"someone is outside the tent"

"the logger's wife" and "the logger"

I love these two portraits! I had the idea in the very last couple days and actually finished them the day before they were hung.

Also, the artist reception will be this Friday, Jan 21st from 6-9pm! More details are here!

Sneak Peek at the Art Show....

2011-01-06T08:02:00.007-05:00

So my solo art show is less than 2 weeks away (opening on January 18th) and I've been pretty busy finishing up my final pieces and getting everything framed and ready to be hung. I've especially enjoyed being able to work on a slightly bigger scale than what I'm used to. I'm often hindered by the size of the embroidery hoop I'm using, so being able to do things in standard frames and rectangular shapes has been a fun change.
Here's a planning stage shot of a new piece I finished (see the end of post for the final piece). I initially planned to do a full bear who was turning over some rocks, but settled on using just the back side of the bear. Here's also my beloved rotary cutter and my brand new cutting mat. I've been using a really old mat that had all sorts of ink spills and gashes in that sometimes made cutting a straight and even line a little challenging.

Here's a detail of an embroidered ship that I'm in the middle of.

Here's a before and after of one of my favorite pieces I just finished. I've been playing around with the concept of having a bear sort of "walk off" the page leaving behind his footprints in the snow. I initially had planned to do this in a circular embroidery hoop, but thought the overall design would seem a little cramped in the space. I decided to go with a more traditional rectangular shape for the design. I love the fabric that the brown bear is made with. I actually have no idea what the official name of this fabric is, but it's sort of suede like on one side and a more flat cotton appearance on the other side. The best part is that it doesn't fray. So it's perfect for using when you want sharp/complex edges and don't want to do a proper applique. I've had pieces of this fabric for years. I acquired a stash in my crafts class my senior year in high school in both this brown color and a forest green. Unfortunately, my stash has been dwindling down pretty fast lately.

And here's the after. I love the contrast of the white snow and dark tree trunks. All the trees were made from leftover scrapes of the felt from my owls. I kept the jagged edges on the trees for a little extra detail and more realistic appearance. This work also marks the first time I've ever including a child in a piece. A little reminiscent of Little Red Riding Hood perhaps?

Christmas and a Recycled Wreath

2010-12-21T08:24:00.005-05:00

Here's our Christmas tree this year. We opted for our standard Douglas Fir that we've been getting every year since we've been married. This was the first year that we put on ornaments that we had made as kids or actually a large collection of ornaments in general. In the past, we've "decorated" with dried leaves, pine cones, and acorns for a "from the woods" look. (And of course on the stair railing base is one of those great magazine trees.)

We also made a number of ornaments this year. A number being made from leftover pistachio shells saved from our all our old biscotti baking.

When we were going through our ornament collections, we realized we each had made an angel ornament with our photos on during the same year (1992). So obviously, they needed to go on the tree together.
Here's my latest project in my quest to find ways to use left over milk caps from work. A holiday wreath! (You can find other projects here and here.)
I used a wooden craft ring (12 inches) that I painted a green color. One thing I realized after I completed the wreath was that I should've strung a ribbon or wire through two of the holes so it could be easily hung. However, it still hangs perfectly well on a hook.

Each cap I hot glued down to the ring form and then to create a "bow" I layered a few caps in the lower corner. For added interest, I then attached various buttons to each cap center.

And the finished wreath hanging.....

How to....make free (or practically free) sparkly ornaments

2010-12-17T07:58:00.002-05:00

We've been trying to find ways to use our ever growing collection of milk caps from work, so it was only fitting to try our hand at making ornaments for our tree (Dougie Wonderfir). Kinsey came up with this sparkling design.

For this project, you'll need: glitter (we used Martha Stewart's glitter which is superfine and was super on sale at the time), a hot glue gun, Mod Podge, milk caps, and string.

Here's the simple how-to. Cut a small amount of string to hang the ornament with and hot glue to the inner edge of one of the milk caps. Take another milk cap and hot glue the two together around the inner rim. Next, brush on glue quite liberally. Then, pour the glitter all over where you just spread glue. (Note: only glue/glitter one side at a time or you'll end up smearing the glitter. So try to be patient and wait for the back side to try before attempting.)

And this is what you'll get!

Easy, sparkly, and inexpensive (free if you have glitter on hand!) They sure beat those standard glass balls.

Busy, busy, busy

2010-12-10T09:10:00.001-05:00

I've been pretty busy getting ready for my art show. I've also been busy making ornaments for our tree. I hope to have some ornament how-tos in the next couple of days, but in the meantime, here's a sneak peek at two of my new pieces!

I love, love, love the stitches and colors in this one! Any guesses on where it is?

Thanksgiving and a Weekend Sale!

2010-11-25T08:27:00.003-05:00

I love thanksgiving. I love the meal (minus the turkey) and just the nice relaxing feel of the day. The past two years, Kinsey and I did the meal ourselves (read about our past meals here-including my first (and last since we don't eat meat anymore) roasting of a turkey), but this year we're having both of our parents over.

We'll post pictures of our meal and details tomorrow, but I wanted to announce our Thanksgiving sale at the shop. From midnight Friday, November 26th though 11:59pm Monday, November 29th, we'll be offering free shipping (within the US) on ALL orders and 10% of all orders over $20!

New

2010-11-24T08:16:00.000-05:00

It's starting to get a little cooler around here. Granted, temperatures were around 60 today but the week ahead is only in the mid 40's! I actually love the cooler weather. I love sweaters, wearing layers, and scarves. (I also can't wait to break out my new winter coat!) I did a massive posting of new items today in our shop.

Some brand new items, some sale items, and some scarves:

(I did break out the new coat for these photos!) I love the green floral print on this one. Here's a close-up on the green one.

And this one (I named it Flowers in the Snow) features some of all time favorite floral fabric and a wintry gray fabric. This scarf also features small hand tying knots on every fabric square for something a little extra.
Check out our new items and my new favorite clutch.

Here's a new one....or three

2010-11-19T08:21:00.001-05:00

I've recently been creating more clutches. I used to make a lot of these, but took an unintentional break. Here's three of my latest. (Of course, they all feature trees! Nothing unusual there!)

I love this aqua canvas. The color makes everything really pop out, especially browns, which I use a lot of.

How I Spent Last Weekend...or How I Learned to Love Pinking Shears

2010-11-18T07:58:00.002-05:00

This past weekend was the local Christmas craft show that a neighboring gallery puts on each year. So of course I spent my days off before the show sewing and embroidering like crazy. This was my first show where I've had my fabric owls for sale and overall they got a really great response and I sold more than I thought I would there.
I also came up with my new Christmas ornament of the year. I recently re-discovered my fabric pinking shears and crafted this state badge ornament. The design of course is based off my "My Heart's In Pennsylvania" series that includes magnets and pins. I love being able to layer the felts and the texture that the pinking shears gave the final ornament. I especially love this wood grain fabric one and called it "Penn's Woods".

Here was a scene I saw much of while making them.

I hate to admit, but this massive pile is just round one of my PA ornaments. I made at least double this the very next day. I just like to make sure I have enough.

The show was very, very successful! Thanks to everyone who came out. With the last craft show of my year over with, now I can focus on making Christmas gifts and my two upcoming art shows. One will be a collective with Kinsey and an employee at the bookstore and the other will be my first solo show. Very excited about this! I'll have more details about both soon!

Fall Rain....

2010-11-16T22:18:00.003-05:00

Today was pretty rainy. Definitely a good day for a pot of tea and some sewing. Here's two quick shots from the outside world today. The road in front of our house is covered with bright yellow leaves that looked really nice against the wetness.

Here's a shot of all the different colored trees in our backyard. Well, actually there all not in our "actual" backyard, but rather the neighbors' yards. So pretty.

Finding, Buying, and Assembling...with a surprise

2010-11-11T08:34:00.003-05:00

Last week, Kinsey and I headed to Ikea with hopes of finding "the perfect" desk/worktable for each of our craft rooms. We both were currently using a 6 foot folding table that was good, but was a little un level in the center and looked rather temporary. We hoped to find something that would give us room to work, but wasn't quite as long. The longer the table, the more clutter and other things were on it.
Here's my current set up. Note: I usually have much more stuff on my table, but I was in the middle of a massive craft marathon the day before, so I cleared everything off for more room.

I found this option minutes after we first walked into the showroom section. (I love the curtains to the left of this desk. If they were a little thicker they'd be great for our house!)
I liked the drawers a lot and it was around 2 feet shorter than my current table. Also, I thought the white color would look nice against the light aqua walls.

I thought I was set. Now we just needed to find a suitable desk for Kinsey. We walked into the desk area at Ikea and were a little overwhelmed with all the options. If you're at all familiar with Ikea (and really, who isn't?), you know that you can customize your perfect desk - tabletop, legs, shelving, drawers, etc. We found a basic top - light pine and about 47 inches in length. Then I found that this little drawer shelving fits perfectly under the desk as a replacement of a side's legs.
Kinsey loved this and liked the idea of some storage for his inks, pens, and collage materials that were really close at hand. I fell for this combination as well. The original desk I found was nice, but was quite long....much longer than what I had wanted. And the drawer shelving was too good to pass up. All my sewing notions just a pull drawer away? Yes, please.

Here's our new desks in their packaging. I love their flat packaging. It means even more goodness can fit in our hatchback.

So on to the assembling! I will say that the "Micke" drawer has the most small parts I have ever seen with an Ikea piece. It was a little overwhelming, but we love putting things like this together!

Less pieces= almost ready for crafting!

Yeah! Drawer together! Last step: Time to put the tabletop and legs on.

Wait - what's that big hole in my table top that is discovered of course after I just screwed both legs in and am in mid turn to set it on my finished shelving drawer? Yes, my brand new tabletop has a hole the size of a half dollar.

Really. I don't really want to return this. Ikea is 70 minutes away. What to do?

Luckily, Kinsey was okay with the idea of putting some wood filler in the spot and using it in his room. He was planning on putting a plastic cutting mat on his desk top to begin with so a little dab of wood filler wouldn't make a difference. Crisis avoided. Here's my new desk set up.
Now, I just need to get the rest of the room in better order!

How to Turn All Those Magazines into Something That Looks Good

2010-11-09T09:02:00.002-05:00

If you're anything like us, you have tons of past issues of magazines laying around. I usually go through them and rip out any recipes, stories, or inspirations that I might want to reference later. I put these in folders, which keeps it pretty organized. Then, Kinsey usually goes through them for materials for his collages. More often than not, that's the end of the journey for them. Very few get thrown out until it gets to the point where I get tired seeing them and purge a lot of them. Now I found a reason to keep them around a little longer.

These trees are made from a magazine that has been folded a certain way on each page. Actually there are three different folds on every page. I saw a how to video on Martha Stewart's website (who else would have this? Actually it's on Reader's Digest's site, too.) At first I thought it seemed great, then I watched the video and thought it seemed like a bit much...it seemed like a lot of folding and that it would take a while to finish. I decided to give one a try anyway. I don't know what it is, but it was very relaxing to do. I suppose it's because of all the repetitive motions, but I actually enjoyed the process of folding.

I used Bon Appetit for the larger tree and Everyday Food for the smaller one. Martha spray painted and then glittered her trees. I kept my plain, at least for now. I like that they look like magazines.

You can see a detailed how-to here.

They look great in small groups! Maybe even include an origami deer with them?

1 Whale + 1 Owl= Lots of Little Owls

2010-11-05T08:02:00.002-04:00

It all started with a whale. A stuffed whale that is. Kinsey made this for me early 2009. I had seen a stuffed whale in one of my craft books and loved it. Although the one I saw in the book was made of old jeans and didn't look quite as good as the one below.
I love this whale and I won't lie, I sometimes use it as a pillow when I sleep. So seeing how much I loved the first animal, Kinsey surprised me with this one last Christmas:

I was so impressed and couldn't believe he didn't use a pattern for these animals. I told him he should really make more and sell them. Who wouldn't love an owl like this? But we never really got around to making more.

The other week I got the sudden urge to see if I could make a similar owl. I didn't want my new owl (or owls in this case) to be as large as the original, but not too small. I also wanted to change the eyes and make them not as large. I wanted to eliminate the zigzag stitching and give the a cleaner overall appearance. Another area I wanted to improve was the shape. I like the original and how the spiky tail is, but I thought a smooth, straight edge may be a little better for the overall shape. So with all this in mind, I set out to create an owl of my own. I started with this one....

I replaced the eyes and beak with felt, as well as the back of the owl is a solid piece of soft brown felt. I liked the idea of a bolder stomach fabric and the simplicity of the shape.

That owl eventually lead to a pair......
....which eventually lead to a small army of owls!

The final results: I ended up with an ideal length of about 10 inches and by replacing different features with felt, the overall feel is much softer. The owls don't contain any small parts and are filled with a non allegoric poly-fil. Just in time for Christmas...

Brrr.....it's cold in here

2010-11-03T08:34:00.001-04:00

It's been pretty chilly here the past couple days. Really chilly. Our house was built in the early 30's and can get a little drafty in cooler weather. To help prevent the chill we've been feeling the past few mornings and nights, we decided to do a little winterizing.

One of the things we did was putting plastic up over windows. I've never really did this before and always thought it looked sort of bad. Often, I'd see houses with plastic all wrinkled and really didn't like the appearance. So I had doubts.

We picked up a few packs of these at Home Depot for very little. It includes everything except obviously the hair dryer.

Essentially, you just put double side tape around the window, stretch plastic over, and then blow dry. We did the four downstairs living room windows. Our first one was really bad, our second one was semi-bad, and by our third window, it finally clicked. We figured out how to hold it taut enough and attach it so it didn't show all sorts of wrinkles. It actually looks like nothing is there practically.

Practically invisible! Hopefully, it keeps the cool air out!

chicago and camels

2010-10-28T08:19:00.005-04:00

A few weeks ago, Kinsey and I traveled to Chicago for my brother's wedding. The weather was beautiful and warm (mid 80's in October!) and we had a really nice time walking around the city. His wedding was on 10.10.10. The Chicago Marathon was also on 10.10.10. As you can imagine, the city was very busy. Luckily, a shuttle bus took us everywhere we needed to go.

One of the things we did was go to the Lincoln Park Zoo. Not only is the zoo free to get in to, it features all sorts of animals. Penguins, tigers, seals, buffalo, gorillas, and.....cows and pigs. One section was a barnyard theme. It was sort of funny to see these animals in a zoo setting. We're so used to seeing them all over that it seems strange to see them eating grass next to a fake silo and barn. Here's a photo of when we reached the entrance to the zoo and looked back towards the city.

Here was one of my favorite animals we saw...camels!

Here's Kinsey checking out the seals swimming in the underwater observation room.

This was the view from our hotel room. There were always people on the top of that center building eating. It looked nice from our room, but I don't think I'd like eating right at the edge of the building that high.

And here's a shot of me after the wedding waiting for the shuttle to take us to eat. I love this silver dress! I am pretending that the corsage on my wrist isn't really annoying me. Also, I am pretending that Lake Michigan was really the sea and we were in Maine.

currently in love with....

2010-09-24T08:55:00.004-04:00

About a month or so ago, I was at work (I'm the manager of an independent bookstore), and stumbled across a pack of prints by artist, Suzy Ultman. The set was by Chronicle Press and contained 12 large prints featuring everything I love....owls, whales, bikes, apples, and more. Her illustration style is really simple, but beautiful and features a lot of nature themes.

Here's some images from the set:

This one is hanging in our living room and is one of the first things you see when you enter the door.

This one isn't in the set I have, but I'm in love with it. Evidently, she is supposed to release a fabric line similar to this print coming in December.

I picked up this stationary paper doll set at Urban Outfitters (see above post for details on their reusable bags) for a mere $2.99. Eight different girl dolls are included (2 of each design) along with these really beautiful and large envelopes and stickers. I'd like to send or give them away, but I think I may have to keep one of each for myself!

saving trees and embroidering trees....

2010-09-23T08:47:00.001-04:00

The other day I was in Urban Outfitters and picked up a set of stationary that was on sale. As the cashier rung the purchase up, I noticed she placed it in what looked to be a bag made from that soft reusable bag material. In fact it was a reusable bag, or tote to be more exact. I was thrilled and surprised. Has this been going on for a while? I don't often shop at Urban Outfitters much, but loved this idea!

The back of the bag is black with a dark logo of the store. Definitely beats walking around with a plastic bag!

Today's the first day of autumn (my favorite season), and I can't help but think about trees. Conifers to be exact...which are more winter like, but still. I recently embroidered a new "Study of Conifers" which is listed in our shop.

Here's a close up of two tree branches.

our anniversary...and jellyfish!

2010-09-22T08:23:00.001-04:00

Today is Kinsey and I's 3rd anniversary. So this past weekend, we decided to do a series of fun and relaxing things. We took a trip to Baltimore on Monday and went somewhere we've wanted to go for a while now......the Baltimore Aquarium!
In case anyone is planning a trip here, Mondays are a great day to go. We ran into zero school field trips and overall it wasn't too packed. We saw all the different exhibits and a lot of fun fish like this one.....

However, our absolute favorite exhibit was a temporary jellyfish room they have. It's called "Jellies Invasion". The aquarium's website has a fun section on the exhibit here.

I took some of the best pictures I ever have of the jellies. The contrast between light and dark really turned out beautifully. We had a good time watching them swim in the huge tanks and spent a great deal of time in this room.

Here's some upside down jellyfish.

Looks kind of like a sun print, huh? All the stringy tentacles just float around like this.

This one reminds me of space. Kind of like those satellite photos you see of planets.

The last two are my favorites from the day. I loved the tank with these jellies in. The colors ranged from a really soft peach to a deep red. The contrast of the background really makes them jump out.

forest and the sea...

2010-09-15T08:32:00.002-04:00

Lately, I haven't been posting too much on my latest art and craft projects. If you read our blog occasionally, you probably have noticed we've been focusing on a lot of home projects.
Last week, I was able to set aside some time to create a few new embroidery pieces. These pieces contain my first attempt at cross stitch lettering.

Also, these are the first pieces that I've signed. I like the idea of signing my pieces, but like keeping the color I choose for it relatively similar to the background, so it doesn't distract.

This last one isn't a good photo, but it sold the day after I made it, so this was the only shot of it I got. I'm planning a small series based on the sea. Of course, the main inspiration is from the coast of Maine.

living room redo take two...Klobo before and after...

2010-09-09T08:22:00.000-04:00

We recently tackled a project that has been many years coming. Four years ago, Kinsey purchased a loveseat from Ikea (Klobo is the name of the style and is how we also refer to it.) for a mere $99. He was living in a small apartment and only had room for a loveseat, not a full sofa. The shape was nice and modern, but the downside was of course, it was white. We're not really white furniture people. Case being, about a month ago Kinsey spilled a bottle of black india ink on the arm of the Klobo.

This wasn't by any means the first stain. Imagine a well used piece of furniture in a white color...that hasn't been washed for four years.

So the other week we purchased a dark brown fabric in hopes of finally making a cover for it. We had just come home from Target with our new curtains, and suddenly the urge came to cover the Klobo. I think the task of making a slipcover was a little overwhelming. Neither of us had done this before and we weren't entirely sure about how to make everything fit.

We decided that we didn't really need to make a slipcover that could be taken on and off. We just needed to cover it, pronto. So we moved the Klobo to the center of the room and began to deconstruct it. The good thing about Ikea furniture is how easy it can be disassembled. We were left with 4 pieces.

We did a combination of of stapling and sewing. We sewed the sides and back to give it a nice, firm fit. The bottom edges we just stapled to the bottom, which is exactly how Ikea did it originally.

Kinsey was the stapler guy and I was the sewing girl.

Project breakdown:

The whole project took about 2-2 1/2 hours roughly. This includes a quick trip to Jo-Anns when we realized we were about 2 yards too short. Luckily, the Klobo broke down into individual pieces which made not having enough fabric not turn into a disaster. When we ran in the store we discovered they had exactly the amount we needed, no more and no less. We used a total of about 6 1/2 yards of fabric which was $9.99 a yard. We of course had a 40% off coupon the first time and a 50% off coupon the second time, so total cost was roughly $40 for the cost of all fabric.

Paired with our new curtains, we love it. A whole new loveseat for $40! Our next step for the living room: Bamboo flooring.

living room redo take one

2010-09-08T08:44:00.000-04:00

I've never really gave much thought to curtains. I mean, I've thought about the color they should be, but that's about it. I've always just sewed curtains for rooms out of really simple fabrics. I remember sewing bright red curtains for my bedroom when I was 10 or 11. I sewed these by hand, it took all night, and it was one of the first things I ever sewed.

When Kinsey and I moved into our house (almost a year ago), we needed curtains fast because there were no blinds or such downstairs. I headed to the fabric store and picked up some standard brown cotton and sewed them up fast. I for some reason decided to add small red loops to the top instead of just sewing a straight line to slide the curtain rod through. Anyhow, they served their purpose, but weren't anything fancy. Here's an overall picture of the set-up.

We've been wanting to get new curtains...maybe something to brighten things up a little. Not that it's dark in our living room at all, two of our walls are orange. So we were at the Target today and ended up in the curtain aisle. First of all, we were a little surprise about the price. $25+ for one panel, which means $50 for just one complete window. Of course, compared to other places, this may seem like a bargain. We couldn't really feel completely okay with spending $100+ just for curtains in our living room, so we were going to pass until we found a few packages with that pretty little red clearance tag. The curtains we chose were sort of a satin finish and a light aqua color. At first we weren't completely sure, but after comparing the hue with similar shades from on our walls, we realized it had the potential to look really, really good. So we got four packs.

And we put them up. No sewing. Just slid them right through the rod like probably 95% of America does.

Here I am sewing up a project that we'll show off tomorrow.

Now I will say, these do need ironed. Badly. But I couldn't wait to get them up and we only have a terribly small ironing board. It's a tabletop one that's literally 18 inches long. I wasn't quite feeling up to attempting that today. So squint and pretend not to see the folded lines, and that's how the curtains look (or will look soon).

Total price for all window panels = $36

could it be any easier...?

2010-09-03T08:44:00.002-04:00

I love cooking dinner. But like everyone, I don't often have much time to prepare much more than boiling water for a quick pasta or making an egg. Despite this, I really enjoy checking out different cookbooks from our local library. One such book that I've gotten out plenty of times is:

It's such a great book with some really delicious sounding meals. I always have been intrigued with puff pastry, but never used it. I knew it was something similar to a phyllo dough, which is something I use every time I make spanakopita (mmm...). Anyhow, I was glancing in the book, "A Year in the Vegetarian Kitchen" and stumbled across a recipe called "Easiest Roasted Vegetable Tart" that involved puff pastry.

Essentially I cut some zucchini, broccoli, and onion - roasted them in the oven with salt and pepper - tossed them with olive oil and basil- unrolled puff pastry to square- put roasted veggies on pastry leaving a small border on a sides- bake in oven.

If you never worked with puff pastry, you'll be amazed how it "puffs up"....hence the name.

See that puffiness up there? Amazing. It tasted wonderful and Kinsey and I are completely hooked on it. Next up, maybe a baked apple tart?

bedroom take 2...

2010-08-26T08:41:00.000-04:00

So, Kinsey and I have been on the path to improving our bedroom. Gone are the cold, harsh, white walls. Not too long ago, we made the room changing paint color (read about it here) and have been trying to find time to tackle a few more issues... (like hiding the hideous built in air conditioner). Our window treatments were pretty basic. No curtains (I've had a pack of really nice brown ones for months and months, but haven't actually put them up yet. Why? I really don't have a good answer.), just white apartment grade blinds. They blinds were functional and served their purpose, but we longed for something a bit more exciting. We've often looked at the blinds on our weekly home improvement store trips, but held off getting them because we kept measuring wrong. (We were convinced our windows measured 26", but of course this isn't a standard size, so no blinds would fit. Then one day, it just clicked....the windows were in fact 27", we somehow had constantly measured wrong.) So we picked up two packs of dark brown bamboo shades for our coastal blue room.

I'm not going to pretend that this pictures are good. They're not. However, it does give off the overall feeling. Things we learned in the process:

1- Read how to measure for blinds and actually measure that way. It's quite simple.

2- Blinds really do make a huge difference.

3-Pull down and to the right on the cord to open, down and to the left on the cord to close. Or is that backwards....Kinsey will be sure to tell me if it's wrong. (Okay, well I was the only one who learned this step. Kinsey is a blind expert.)

Total cost:
$25 per bamboo blind = $50

a good find....

2010-08-25T08:37:00.001-04:00

The other day I came across these old medical plates from an old book via a friend at work. Parts of the body, stomach parts, and blood have the tendency to make me queasy, but I immediately loved these prints.

One of the really fun parts of them is that they have a number of different parts that lift up. It shows and labels the local of different parts of the body, the names, and the order everything goes in. The only downside is, upon framing these, you won't be able to lift up the parts. For now, I just have these loose.

How fun are these?

corn and what appears to be a jungle....

2010-08-19T08:12:00.000-04:00

Hands down my favorite summer vegetable is sweet corn. Well...zucchini is a favorite too. And of course a nice, fresh, crisp cucumber. But corn is easily in my top 5 summer vegetables. Anyway, my aunt and uncle have a really large corn field in their yard. I'm not entirely sure what they do with all this corn. But the past two summers they've given us lots and lots of their sweet corn. We've always gladly accepted this offer and proceed to them spend a few hours husking all of it, boiling it, and them freezing it. We recently put corn away for the season, which was just in time because we were fast approaching our last bag from the freezer of last year's corn.

Here's our progress a few bags in:

The corn is grown organically, so there's always the chance of a few bugs or worms along the way. Here's a bright green one that I found happily chewing away as I peeled back the husks:

The corn was dropped off at my parents' house, so while we were there, we checked out the decline of what used to be a garden last year. Yes, these are weeds that are taller than me. Last year at this time, there were tomato plants and zucchini planted here. A few random tomatoes did come up from seed this year. There's a plant in the front right side of this picture.

. Actually, there is a zucchini plant in the front of the picture below. In May, there were rows and rows of sugar peas planted here. We harvested many, many baskets of them. It's sort of crazy to think how different this area was a mere three months ago. Not sure how high these weeds will grow....

a perk of being a wife....

2010-08-13T07:55:00.002-04:00

Lately, Kinsey has been practicing and creating a lot of art with dip pens and ink. He's been doing a few over his lunch at work and in the evening if time allows. His images are sometimes abstract, sometimes not, but always really beautiful. He's been practicing write letters lately and often draws little pictures with a note or two attached for me. What's not to love?

Remember this? I don't know how he keeps his hand so steady with all the detail.

Look for some of his pen and ink designs in our Etsy shop soon!

recycling and embroidery...

2010-08-12T08:23:00.001-04:00

So during the day, Kinsey and I are bookstore managers/baristas. The cafe we work in uses all organic and fair trade coffees and teas, as well as gets our milk delivered in glass bottles. Of course, we're the type of people who think the milk from glass bottles just has a better taste to it (which is very true!). We're also the type of people who try to find ways to reuse things. Old flyers for a past event? We cut them in quarters and make scrap paper tablets out of them. Old books with falling out/destroyed pages? We cut them up and use them for color and design on signs we make for our coffee and other items for sale. So we were eager to find a way to re-use one item that seemed to pile up fast....milk caps.

I've been occasionally saving a few for a number of months, but didn't know what to do with them. Magnets seemed easy enough, but it wasn't something I'd like to make tons of. Then one day, after looking at a towering stack of them, I thought about embroidery. Maybe pendants for necklaces?

Start with a milk cap. Something I love about these is how sturdy they are. Not your typically thin, plastic, supermarket milk jug caps. These have a little girth and hardness to them. The color scheme is limited to bright green, red, blue, and clear, however because of the nature colors I tend to use to stitch, the cap colors are a perfect fit!

I cut the tall edges away and smooth down the sides. This leaves me with something that looks like this:

After hand embroidering a scene onto some fabric scraps, I'm left with some great, one of a kind pendants. To make a necklace, I just string the recycled cap on to a piece of brown cord.

Small, embroidered art that's wearable.

Both of these examples can be found in our shop.

wildflowers as far as the eye can see.....

2010-08-11T08:30:00.004-04:00

One of my favorite things to do in the summer is the pick your own wildflowers that a local farm offers. Kinsey and I have gone at least once every year since 2007 or 2006. You just grab a coffee can, a pair of clippers, and walk out to be faced with rows and rows and rows of flowers in every color.

This summer has been incredible dry with very little rain, so the flowers weren't flawless, but compared to everyone else's flowers, it was amazing that they looked so good!

I loved these rows of bright purple flowers. They grow in sort of a "Y" shape with groups of little paper like flowers at each end.

We always seem to pick one of the hottest days of the summer to go flower picking. Yesterday was no exception at about 95 degrees.

One coffee can full of flowers came to about 8 different arrangements for us. At around $9 a can, this is definitely quite a deal.

Bedroom Blues...

2010-08-06T08:23:00.001-04:00

I won't lie. When Kinsey and I first saw our potential house, the bedroom was one of the rooms that sold me (The first being the dining room...painted in the exact shade of green we've always wanted and with a wonderful wood floor to add to that!) It used to be the master bedroom and a smaller room, but previous owners combined the two rooms to form a very generous and large master bedroom, complete with cedar lined his and her walk-in closets. I also was immediately drawn to the beams on the ceiling. We love the look of restored barns and all the woodwork, and while ours beams certainly aren't salvaged wood, they do the trick.
Anyhow, the one thing the bedroom lacked was, well, color. The carpet is a very neutral tan, the walls were a shade of white and all the trim in the room was a medium tan. It at times could seem very apartment like. Given the color of the walls in the rest of the house (green in the dining room and orange on two of the living room walls), it seemed that it needed a little boost. After occupying the house for exactly 10 months and going between a million various shades between light blue and light aqua, we decided to go for it.

Here was our bedroom right before painting began. Rather plain and actually almost dark despite the white walls.

Here's the color we settled on - "Aquatic Mist" by Valspar. We picked it because Kinsey made the statement, "It makes me think of Maine". Oh, and see that little red tool? It's one of those paint edgers you see all over in home improvement store that I never thought we really needed before. All that's changed. While I did still tape along the bottom of our heater, it completely eliminated the need to tape the trim on the ceiling, windows, and doors. Not to mentioned I feel like it saved a ton of time. Just one sweep of it is all you need. Perfect, perfect, perfect. And it's only about $2.50.

The first strip of paint using our new favorite tool.

The final result! This is right after we painted and of course before we moved everything back to their respectable spots, but you can see what a complete difference it made. The room is so much brighter now and gives off a coast of Maine feel to us. We're completely in love with the room now.
I'll have a more finished room picture posted soon.

gardens, wedding, donuts, and owls.....

2010-08-05T08:13:00.000-04:00

This past weekend was Kinsey's sister's wedding. The ceremony was held outside in the Hershey Gardens, in Hershey Pa. The weather was beautiful and was quite an enjoyable time.

Here's the rehearsal. They got married beneath the archway.

These were the centerpieces on the tables. Yes, donuts. The reception was all breakfast foods catered by the Hershey Hotel, which is a Rice favorite for breakfast. Yum!

Here's my sister in law, Hilary and my new brother in law, Shawn (Shawnzie).

Here's Kinsey and I after the ceremony.

Just one of the many butterflies hanging out.

This tree was in the Japanese gardens. I love how curvy it is.

Hello owl!

This is the first of two sibling weddings K and I will be attending this year. My brother is getting married in October. This was actually the first wedding we've been to since we got married ourselves. It's nice to just be able to sit back and get a chance to talk to people who you never see and eat the food at the reception. I found that I hardly had time to eat much of anything at our reception and could barely say more than hello to everyone that came. It's hard to believe that it's almost been 3 years already!

Our wedding in September of 2007.

fair ribbons....

2010-08-04T07:55:00.001-04:00

We like ribbons. We like arts and crafts. So what to do? Enter the fair, of course!

Last week was our county's community fair. We've never entered anything before (in fact we've never been because it's about 40 minutes away), but thought we'd give it a try just to see what happened.
We certainly am well aware that our style isn't really what is typically entered in county fairs. Not that all fairs are the same, but you see a lot of cross stitch geese and flowers really. Not that there's anything wrong about those things, but it would be nice if people enter a more wide range of work.
Anyhow I entered a pot holder, my Acadia embroidery/painting, my forest mini art quilt, and one of my favorite embroidery hoops of an eastern hemlock branch. Kinsey entered a magazine collage and a new pen and ink drawing. We weren't really able to go see the fair to see if we won, so we had to wait until this past Monday when we picked up our work to find out.
We won ribbons! Yeah!

Here's Kinsey's work. The collage won 1st and the pen and ink got 2nd.

My Acadia wall hanging took 3rd and my tree mini art quilt and embroidered tree hoop each took 2nd place.

We were pretty excited to win ribbons (which is the whole reason we entered), but weren't even aware that winners received a little prize money, too.

Summer on the Porch

2010-07-20T19:26:00.000-04:00

A little bit ago, K and I went to Ikea to look around for a desk for his art studio. We came across their outdoor furniture section and fell in love with this four piece set. After carefully making sure it would fit in our hatchback, we set our sights on setting it up and all the great meals we'd eat out on our back porch. I must admit, I bought the set really for the bench seat. I've wanted a good bench for a while, and loved this one. The entire set cost what I've seen just a good wooden bench cost. The large chairs are really comfortable as well.

The bistro like chairs didn't come with the set. But did come from Ikea as well.

My favorite seat.

A shot at dusk.

maine and...sunburn

2010-07-16T07:55:00.000-04:00

Kinsey and I have been going to Maine every year since we've been married. Our very first time, we went to the wonderful Acadia National Park on the beautiful island of Mount Desert. Unfortunately, our schedules don't really allow us to take a longer trip like that right now, so we haven't had the chance to go back yet. (Next year seems like the year, though!) Nonetheless, we've still manage to enjoy the rocky Maine coast and view in another great and closer area in Maine...(although I have yet to find a location in Maine I haven't fell in love with). The past three years we've been staying in the Portland area. Cape Elizabeth is a favorite of ours and we've spent lots of time just sitting along the coast, collecting stones and shells, sketching, and looking out at the ocean.
This past trip was very relaxing and inspiring....and well, hot. Everyday except the very last day, was in the mid to upper 90's. It definitely put a limited on the amount of hiking we did. Our massive sunburn that we got on the VERY first day at the beach also didn't help things.

Kinsey is a tiny speck among the rocks along the coast.

Me looking for sea glass among the rocks.

One of my favorite things to do in Maine is take photos and look at the tide pools. The colors are very inspiring and beautiful. Here's one picture I took near Two Lights State Park. (Mere minutes before eating what I consider (and many, many others) the BEST lobster roll in Maine at Two Lights Lobster Shack.)

This was taking at dusk in the harbor in Portland. I can see an embroidery piece in the future based on this photo.

This was taken at a super quick detour to York Harbor on our way back home. We first discover York Harbor last year and didn't have a chance to go back and spend more time on this trip. We did stop and put our feet in the water before getting started on our 9 hour drive home. This of course did three things: 1 -Made it incredibly hard to leave. The water was actually a decent temperature for Maine and felt so refreshing. 2 - Made us realize why we keep coming back to Maine and everything we love about it. 3 - Made us get sand over every area in our car. I were my flats I wear almost everyday out on the sand and as a result a never ending supply of luscious, white, Maine sand keeps coming out of my shoes.....of course I'm not complaining. Any reminder of Maine is a good one!

Summer

2010-07-01T07:00:00.001-04:00

In between picking and processing the many fruits and veggies of the season, I realized that my everyday purse was, well, a little autumn like. Dark brown and green made up the bag and the inside was a dark (and quite messy) mess. I'm on of those people who can put something into a bag and it becomes lost among the growing collection of pens and gum wrappers. I'd really like to try to keep a neater bag, so I thought a new one was in order. A few years ago, I got this great screenprinted linen and never knew what to make with it. I loved the mossy green color and the flower print. I decided this with my current favorite sea green canvas would be a perfect combination.

A square bottom is essential. I used to be real big into tote bags, then I discovered how easy a more shaped bag can be. This one took a hour in the evening and another hour the next day.

I love the contrast in the yellow lining.

I will keep this bag neater. I will not leave trash in it. I will not keep a stash of pens in it.

A great, new summer bag just in time for our trip to.......Maine. :)

New listing...

2010-05-15T08:08:00.000-04:00

Just listed:

I've been working like crazy after work every night this week on new things. This is one that came to my head one night and I was quickly able to finish it in the same sitting. I got the sea green canvas a while ago from our local fabric outlet, but never really used it. Now I've been using it for a lot of my embroidery. I love the color and because I often stitch in earth tones (especially greens) it really stands out nicely.

Art Show

2010-05-07T08:29:00.001-04:00

The bookstore-cafe that Kinsey and I are managers at (www.midtownscholar.com), had an employee art show for the month of April. We each exhibited 3 works which all but one were made especially for the show. Here's what 4 of them looked like.

Here's Kinsey's burning building collage. Kinsey's medium of choice is recycled magazine pages. I don't know how he can find the exact colors he needs so well. You don't really noticed that his art is made from magazines until you really get up close.

And a close up of the building and a car. I love all the detail in this one.

Kinsey had the idea for each of us to do the same design, but only in different materials. He chose magazine paper and I of course, choose fabric and embroidery. We entitled these "Ship at High Seas I and II". The first two shots are of mine. The overall work didn't photograph well in this light. I'm hoping to get a good shot before the buyer picks it up.

You can see the colors better here:

Kinsey's version:

I've always had a fascination with maps and trail booklets. I've had this idea in my head for a while and thought this show would be a good experiment with what I like to refer to as map embroidery. My subject (which shouldn't be a surprise to anyone) was Acadia National Park.

My favorite part. I liked this close stitch look a lot. All the different colors and the circular stitch motion have a really nice feeling to me.

Garden Update....lettuce anyone?

2010-05-06T07:59:00.000-04:00

We've been busy gardening - starting seeds, transplanting, planting, raking soil, expanding beds, etc. The last post (quite a while ago) I showed off our salad table we built. I'm thrilled to say that it's worked out wonderfully! Here's our lettuce all ready for eating.

So far, we've had no problems with pests or animals (the squirrel population here is a bit out of hand), so overall it was a great thing to build.

Chives are beginning to bloom:

The Bleeding Hearts are beginning to die. Doesn't the shriveled dead one look like a bean?

Our irises finally bloomed this morning. The purple and white marbled color is quite striking against the green leaves.

Grow lettuce, grow

2010-04-02T08:21:00.009-04:00

So I love the reality now that we have our own backyard and can build a garden or whatever we want. We'd like to make raised beds for our vegetables this year. Our backyard is on a slight slope, so we're hoping this will help level out the yard when we make them (hopefully this weekend). In the meantime, we remembered an article we saw last year on salad tables and decided to check it out again now that we have space.

We used the wonderful directions here to build it: http://www.hgic.umd.edu/_media/documents/hg601.pdf . It's pretty easy to build and the supplies are easy to find all at Home Depot or such. A few things to keep in mind though. 1- Make sure the battery is charged on your drill or saw. We recently bought ours and this was our first project, so we never took them out to charge up. We had to wait a while to be able to really use them and lost our daylight time, which is why the next point happened. 2- When assemblng and stapling the window screening to the frame, it may be helpful to do this on a light colored surface. We attached ours down in our basement where there was a section of dark carpet. Needless to say, one of us accidentally stepped inside the frame and ripped the screen halfway out.

You will step on it or at least almost, trust me.

3- Make sure when buying the rolls of hardware cloth, you get the right size. I for whatever reason didn't double check the width and it ended up being 10 inches to short. This involved us running to Home Depot right as they were about to close for the correct size. After we got back, we were anxious to finish and #2 (see above) happened.

Aside for these minor setbacks, it was really fun to build. It was definitely excited to move it outside and fill it up with the soil. We planted 3 rows of a lettuce mixture on one side and 3 rows of spinach on the other side. I plan on planting more rows again in a week or two, once these seeds are up.

Halfway filled with dirt.

The finished salad bed!

Planting our rows of seeds.

Our markers for the rows.

Our spinach seeds, all ready to be planted.

Spring in our backyard

2010-04-01T16:15:00.000-04:00

One of the things about buying a house in October is you never really get the chance to see what the outside is like in the warmer weather. So the past couple weeks have been quite exciting to see what sorts of flowers and plants are coming up. Here's a collection of photos I took recently.

Starting Seeds...

2010-03-26T08:00:00.000-04:00

One of my favorite things about spring and summer is gardening. I recently started a few herbs - chives, oregano, basil, lavender, and spearmint. The past two years, I've started all my seeds in our kitchen in our apartment. As you can imagine, this could be quite messy. So it was great to be able to be outside and not worry about getting dirt on the floor or on our kitchen table. I picked up one of those plastic domed "greenhouse" that are available everywhere now to give a try. I usually use the small peat pots, but was tired of how fast they would get mold on. The greenhouse I got has 4 different cell packs, each with 9 seed spots. I planted the oregano, basil, lavender, and spearmint in this. So far, so good. It makes watering easy. I bottom water so I don't distrubing the seed, so I just pour some in the bottom of the tray and have the plants soak it up. The chives I planted in these newspaper pots I made. My mother gave me a small kit that makes pots for starting seeds without tape or glue, just newpaper.

Here's my seed starting set up.

I've never tried lavender before. I thought it would be good to try growing and that I could dry the flowers to use in the soaps I started to make. However, I found out that new lavender plants don't get flowers until the second year. So I'll have a little bit of a wait.

Here's 4 out of my 5 herbs all planted and ready to grow.

Trees....

2010-03-18T14:35:00.001-04:00

I was going through some of the ever growing collection of photos I have on my computer, and came across some great close up pictures of trees. I actually forgot about almost all of these. We're pretty bad at actually going and getting them printed off, so they just kind of grow into massive folders on our computer. These made me want to find a few minutes this coming weekend to print them out.

The first one was taken in the fall in the town where we live. I love the ivy climbing up the bark.

This one was taken also taken at the same time and around the same area.

This one I believe was taken our on of our camping trips in Shenandoah Valley National Park.

And this one was taken by a creek close to where we live.

Our new cards....

2010-03-12T09:32:00.004-05:00

Yesterday, two little boxes arrived from Moo with our new business cards in. I ordered 200 of the mini cards and love them! I like how you can customize the image on the back of every card if you'd like. I kept it pretty simple and just chose two different images of my art/fabric collages for the back. Here's what the backs look like:

Here's the front of the card. I was a little unsure about how the orange would look for the background, but it turned out to be really nice. I choose one of my new fabric/embroidery girl series for the front.

Just in time for spring crafts show!

A little bit from our past weekend....

2010-02-24T21:02:00.004-05:00

This past Monday (in case you didn't know by now, our "weekend" is Monday and Tuesday!) we took a trip to the Baltimore Ikea. We went not really having any big purchases in mind, just a few small items and maybe just to look around. We've both been really liking one chair in particular the past couple of trips to Ikea. The "Poang" model. This chair has been around for a while and at first neither of us were really crazy about it. It just looked, well sort of uncomfortable. One day, we sat in it and realized we were wrong. Very wrong actually. It's quite comfortable and actually has a nice shape. So we ended up finally buying one. We opted for the straight black one and hope to make our own slipcover for it. An extra $89 for a green cover didn't seem like a bargain when this one was just $28. I didn't have a chance to take a picture of ours (it's rather dark right now) but here's the one from the Ikea website. Ours is just like this one, except our wood finish is more brown.

This past Christmas, Kinsey's parents gave us a really nice down comforter. We hadn't used it yet, because we haven't had a chance to make a proper duvet cover for it. We found two really nice covers for only $12 each. One is a light blue with circles, and the other is a green and white pattern. This one is on our bed now:

Kinsey's bread of the week was Challah. Here's a before and after shot. This was my favorite bread to date that he's made!

So good!

New Series Debut....and Bread

2010-02-17T20:43:00.003-05:00

I'll be listing my first in my new series of embroidered wall art today. Here's a look at my first finished one:

And a close up of some embroidery stitching:

I'm really excited about these. Like I said before, the new designs were inspired by an old collage I did years ago. I'll have to try and track that artwork down and take a photo to share. I really like the idea of capturing a person in nature. I'm tending to focus on the same type of silhouette for the girls-windswept hair, angular shoulders, thin waist, and an A-line skirt/dress. I enjoy being able to play around with different fabric prints and textures and then incorporating embroidery stitches in random places throughout. I really like the layered look of the ones I've been doing in the past few days.....however this first one isn't too layered. Hopefully, I'll have the other ones up and listed soon....mabe tomorrow morning when the light is right!

Yesterday, Kinsey continued his new pursuit in the art of bread making. This time he decided to make french baguettes. The final results were wonderful!

Here are the mini loaves on our pizza peel getting readying for their trip in the oven.

The warm, soft, delicious inside of the bread. I think I ate most of a loaf myself when they first came out....they were smaller loaves though!

A small pile of amazing baguettes....and a half eaten one!