Etsy Finds

(Didn't come in this box - the box is mine!)

I've bought another ring on Etsy! I just love finding interesting things there and I'm going to try to find my Christmas presents there this year. We'll see how I do.

Anyway, this ring is from Lucie39. Its her Snow Princess Freshwater Pearl and Wire Ring. She has one listed here if you want one and I'd happily recommend it. Its very cute! These are cute too!

Happy Belated Thanksgiving

This was Thanksgiving at my house. This was the first year that we've not been at my parents' house for Thanksgiving - they were visiting one of my brothers - so The Man and I made our first attempt at the Thanksgiving meal. We did a turkey, mashed potatoes, gravy, stuffing, baked corn, cranberries, pumpkin pie and orange pineapple slush. I also made wacky cake cupcakes and pumpkin spice cake for The Man to take to work. Goodness! It was a ridiculous amount of cooking for two people, but it was good and of course, we're still eating it!

Hope you all had a lovely day!

2007 IQF Photos

Once again, Mellicious has posted a bunch of IQF photos. There are 302 in there! Enjoy the inspiration!

Long Time, No Quilt

I haven't had much time for quilting lately with the painting and organizing and miscellaneous junk that comes with a new house and the puppy who thinks he must constantly be played with, and oh, of course, regular every day work! But when I do have a chance to sit down with a quilt, this is what I've been working on.



I'm about "yo yo"ed out. Ack. There are 900 for this quilt and I have nearly 400 on and I'm so tired of them. I like hand sewing, but wow. There's a limit for my attention span. I knew this would take forever, but I still think I underestimated it. I like it, but I just want it to be finished so I can throw it in the wash and soften it up and cuddle under it instead.

Just thought you'd like to see that I am, in fact, still doing something creative. Just nothing exciting to show.

Simple Sewing

Finally! I haven't touched my sewing machine in at least a month or so and this evening, I made a pillow. I know, a very complicated and exciting project. But whatever.

Its a linen zebra print that I made a small pillow cover out of. I'm not a big animal print person, so I'm not sure where this is coming from, but I thought a small pillow to kinda tie in with the rug would be good. Small progress on the pillow front.

P.S. Check this out!

I saw someone else link to this, so I'll pass it on here as well. Sew Mama Sew blog is posting Handmade Holidays: 30 Gifts to Sew with links to tutorials from all around to inspire you. Should be interesting. Today's post was on aprons. I am feeling like making aprons!

A Work In Progress

My living room, as well as the rest of my house, is a work in progress. Last week, we bought a rug and picked up a coffee table and side tables. Today, I got The Man to hang up some pictures. We're making progress! Now I think that I need to get home hurricane lamps for the coffee table to put some pillar candles in. The table lamps are obviously too small for the tables. I have some picked out that I like, but they're a bit much for me, so I'm putting that off. One thing just leads to another, doesn't it? Oh well. I'm also trying to figure out what kind of fabrics to get for pillows. Any suggestions? I'm thinking fall right now.

We had to have our electric service upgraded this week and they put in a new panel and a deperately needed ground. That cost a small fortune, but he did finally hook up my dryer and hung my chandelier since he was here. Yay! I have a crystal chandelier! The picture doesn't nearly do it justice, but this is it.

This is the picture from LampsPlus.com, where I bought it. Much better!

Can't resist adding - I didn't pay anywhere near as much as its listed now. They have some good sales if you watch!

When the electrician was here, they removed a clamp on our water main and it was corroded underneath, so we had a nice leak that would make its way into our basement, so we had to have that fixed right away. Today, the plumber came and spent a couple hours just sitting here because he couldn't find the valve to shut off our water at the curb. The Man called Pittsburgh Water and Sewer Authority without thinking. Contrary to what the name suggests, they don't supply our water. Only the sewer service. PA American Water does the water. Oops. So after discovering that, he called them and they came within the hour to shut off the water. Sucks to pay someone to sit around. Oh well. What can you do?

So we focus on the good things, right? My living room is coming together. I have a lovely crystal chandelier. My dryer now works (yay - no more lint!). Shouldn't be anymore risk of our house burning to the ground because of a stupid electrical system. Wahoo!

Sweet Surprise

Guess what I found in my yard yesterday! I took Dutch out for a quick potty break and he was taking his sweet time while I was freezing, so I walked around the yard (its tiny - the walk was short) and inspected all the different plants that we planted. Some have tiny sprouts on them, which, I guess is good, because at least they are alive. Some of the plants were just nothing to look at when we put them in the ground. ANYWAY. I happened upon this:

How sweet is that? It was nothing but a twig sticking up out of the weeds until a few weeks ago when we started tilling up the ground and mixing in some new soil. I discovered that the one rose still has some pathetic tiny leaves on it, so I weeded all around it just in case. There's another pathetic stick near it and I'm hoping come spring something good will sprout from it as well. Don't you just love plants and flowers? The littlest things are so pleasing.

Gratuitious Puppy Photos

Dutch and my sister's chihuahua, Evie

This is how well they played together. Looks fierce, huh?

Dutch's favorite spot - in the sun coming in the front window.

Sometimes he watches the birdies at the feeder.

He's stolen a feather from my wreath. I love how his shadow looks like a cartoon chi.

Of course, he's not allowed to chew on my slippers, but he cracks me up when he does.

Plants

I've been busy trying to prepare my yard for plants for next year. We aren't sure what we're going to do with a lot of the yard yet, but I must have my flowers, so I'm planting in some spots. I've bought Globemaster (purple) and Mt Everest (white) alliums, Casablanca lilies, snowdrops and tulips. Some of those were from John Scheepers, and some were from Home Depot and Lowes. I propogated a few plants from my Mom's hydrangeas and planted those as well, even though they are still quite small. I'm not sure if those will make it through the winter or not, but we'll see!

I also bought a bunch of plants from Spring Hill Nursery, like white and pink bleeding hearts, white astilbes, hellebores, lilac poppies, white reblooming irises, pink lupines, pink and purple lavendar and blue delphiniums.

But the real star of my purchases is my Godaishu tree peony from Klehm's Song Sparrow. Isn't it beautiful? Hopefully it won't take forever to establish itself and bloom, but they are worth the wait anyway.

My plants all arrived last week and my Mom helped me plant them all on Saturday. My husband tilled up the beds and added in some nice new soil. I haven't planted any of the bulbs yet because it has yet to get very cool around here. Probably soon it will though and I'll be out there wishing I hadn't bought quite so many. Hopefully we will be set for some beautiful blooms for next year though.

Kitchen After

And this is how it looks now:

So obviously it was a low-budget re-do, but it looks much better to me. I love the blue in there - it makes me happy! Someday we'll really re-do it, but I can live with this for now. Even the gray countertops aren't too bad!

It still needs some work - the one lazy susan is too hard to open or close, so its empty. I have no idea how to fix that. The hinges that we put on our biggest cupboard now down't allow the drawers to slide out. I'd like to get a knife magnet and an undercupboard paper towel holder to get that stuff off the countertops. I could also use a better way to organize my spices. And what in the world should I do with that big empty space above the oven?

But at least it looks better than it did before and I won't be hating it desparately until we can afford a real kitchen remodel.

Kitchen Makeover

I am finally getting around to taking "before" and "after" pictures of my kitchen. I guess I haven't before because its still not finished, but its most of the way done now.

This is the kitchen during our fist walk-through of the house.

Stage One - Making a Mess with Tear Down

Stage Two - Sanding, Painting, Wallpaper Removal and New Hardware

Step Three - Paint the Walls and Install Oven

Aprons and Dinner Napkins

I hurried up and monogrammed these aprons and set of dinner napkins for my cousin's wedding the other day. I'm always wishing that I had more time to make gifts more "special" and it doesn't seem like I ever do. But I thought these were nice enough, anyway.

Echeverias

At least that's what I think they are. There is a bunch growing right outside my kitchen door. I don't think I want to leave them there, but I like them and I will have to find somewhere to put them. I thought I could use a few indoors as well. We'll see how well I do with them.

p.s. There's just not much crafting going on here these days. I haven't even had my machine out since we moved. I have been sewing yo yos on my quilt when the puppy is sleeping or otherwise preoccupied and I have a whole 70 on. Out of 900. Oh well. I'm determined to relax and just enjoy it. I'll have to post pictures one of these days.