some nest-feathering, but with pillows

I’ve been having fun redecorating the family room walls, but I’m not quite ready to take pictures of it all and say I’m done. I decided today that I need to do something different in my fireplace mantel/ cubby thing so I’ve been looking for inspiring mantel arrangements and dreaming up what I could do with what I already have instead of the family photos that have been there for a year and a half. (And, to be honest taking photos of just one corner of the room is much easier because I can keep the baskets of unfolded laundry and explosion of k-nex behind me.)

What I can say is done is the sewing of these pillows and some quotes to hang on the wall. I have a friend who had a pretty quote printed as a photo at Costco, framed it, and gave it to me for Christmas– and I thought it was genius! So, I took some sayings I’ve wanted displayed in my house somehow, made them into big images using Inkscape (which is kind of like Adobe Illustrator, but free), printed them as photos at Costco, and framed them. They’ve been done for a while. I just decided they should go here.

The top one is from Doctrine and Covenants 29:34 where the Lord says “All things unto me are spiritual.” It’s a good reminder when I’m cooking dinner, picking up toys, helping with math, ignoring laundry that even all the mundane things that need my attention have a purpose– they’re spiritual. The second is a quote from Charlotte Mason that says “Education is the atmosphere we breathe, the envelope of wonder that surrounds us, held by the gravity of our daily habits.”

The 2 colorful pillows were so fun for me to make. They’re basically 4 little quilts, pieced and quilted and turned into pillows. Here’s one side of the first one:

I used the Joel Dewberry Modern Meadow fat quarters I had been saving to make another quilt like this. I never was really going to get around to making that quilt, and I decided this is a much better way to enjoy the fabric anyway.

This is the other side.

I got a little crazier with the second pillow.

This one is just quilted with straight lines.

I loved making these because I got to do everything involved in making a quilt, but on a much more immediate, instant gratification scale– and I can see and enjoy them every day.

I also used some home decorator weight fabric I had in my stash to add one plain pillow. It took all of 20 minutes (invisible zipper and all).

Here’s all 3 again in a different corner:

Obviously these are usually on the floor being jumped on or laid on, but they looked pretty here for a little while. I’m hoping at some point this year I can get a few Rollie Pollies made for jumping and rolling and reading. We’ll see. I probably really should be replenishing my supply of baby girl things– and will probably be more excited about doing that as the days go on.

So, anyone have some favorite mantel photos they want to send me links too? Feel free to leave them in the comments!

Art room tour

Want to see into my art room? I tidied it last Saturday and it’s stayed in pretty good shape for a whole week! I am certainly organizationally challenged and always have been. In high school, my best friend always bought me some containers and went through and decluttered and cleaned up my bedroom for my birthday. Now I live with a different best friend and he generally has a big hand in helping me keep my space under control (like throwing a quilt-in-progress over my drafting table to cover the mess).

But this time I did it all by myself! This is huge!

This is the view from the front room of our house. Our creative space is what would normally be a formal dining room, but I need to be able to work on making things right in the heart of our home throughout the day, so this is the perfect place to have my craft space.

I’ve got a big Expedit shelf from Ikea with a desk attached. There’s plenty of room for bins of fabric, boxes of precious metal clay stuff, printmaking supplies, knitting stuff, other crafty odds and ends, our little Tivoli stereo, and some pretty things too.

I’ve got some other Ikea cup things to hold pencils, markers, scissors, pliers– you know, all that stuff that needs to be right there for the taking.

In the big window is my drafting table. It was a dumpster find of Barry’s when we were in college and I seriously could not imagine life without it. It is easily one of my very favorite pieces of furniture in our house. My gecko lives in the corner over my Gocco and block printing stuff. Underneath my drafting table are rolls of paper, interfacing, contact paper, and baskets of mending, batting and foam. Oh, and a couple of quilts destined for Humanitarian Services.

Look up, and there are the birds!

Opposite the window wall is the kids’ drawing table. One of these weekends we’ll make a big magnet board so that Ian won’t need to tape his paintings to the wall.

Here are a few more pictures for good measure.

I love the old Singer from Barry’s aunt. It needs rewiring to work, but it’s really fun to look at anyway.

A shelf of pretty stuff. I spun thread and then needle punched the fabric for that little bear years ago. I still really like him.

I love these under-shelf wire baskets I found at the Container Store.

And here’s a sneak peek to another room I’ve been rearranging and hanging new artwork in. I think I’ll be ready to show it to you next week.

This post has no pictures, but it’s totally worth reading. I promise!

Sometime back in September Ian came down the stairs in the morning with something to tell me. “Mom,” he said, “we’re going to have a girl baby and her name is Eva. She is going to be zero and she’s going to have a pink shirt that is a dress.” He told me about our girl baby every day for at least a month. After a few days her pink shirt that is a dress also had butterflies on it. He would talk about where she would sleep, where she would sit in the car, how she would fit at the dinner table. Sometimes I wondered if he really knew what he was talking about. Other times I just attributed it to the imaginary friend stage he was in.

Barry and I had been talking about whether or not it was time to add another child to our family. He definitely had that “someone is missing” feeling. I guess, maybe I did too, but I also wasn’t quite sure if I could really add another child to my plate. If there was going to be another baby I really, really wanted it to be a girl. I read books and charted my cycles all summer, but it wasn’t until the fall that I felt like I was ready to try and would be fine with whatever Heavenly Father sent us. I would certainly do my part to make the odds for a girl as high as possible– but if a boy was what really needed to be added to our family, then that would be perfectly okay. So, for the first time ever, we actually tried to get pregnant. It took a few months, and on the month I actually ended up with a positive pregnancy test I had absolutely no signs of ovulation. My certainty and plans were completely thrown up in the air! How could I know if our timing was right? Were the odds of having a girl really in my favor? I was convinced that I’m just meant to be the mother of one girl and lots of boys, and since I was trying to manipulate things and take matters into my own hands Heavenly Father just had to intervene. He must have different plans.

But still, through those sick and tired days (read Christmastime) Ian still talked about our girl baby and her yellow hair and pink dress and where she would sleep.

And guess what? That little Eva is 20 weeks along, kicking around in my tummy. We had an ultrasound today and 2 sonographers corroborated the evidence. There were no little boy parts (which I am very accustomed to seeing) just 3 little lines that are the tell-tale signs of a little girl!

So, I’m announcing to the world that the 6th little Croker person will be joining us at the end of the summer!

Ian’s little Eva was not just an imaginary friend. She’s his sister– and he knew she was coming all along.

thankfully, my husband is an engineer

So, if you’ve read my blog for any amount of time you’ve probably noticed that often when I show you a finished project I say something like, “I’ve been making this in my mind for a long, long time,” or “I’ve been dreaming this up for a couple of years,” or something like that.

Well, this is no exception.

We were living in a tiny apartment in Alabama in the beginning of our summer of transition to Denver when a good friend sent me this link with exclamation points and excitement that I HAD to make one– it made her think of me. And I completely agreed that I NEEDED one somewhere in my new house, whenever it would be that I got settled. Since we’ve been here (for 2 1/2 years) I’ve been imagining those little birds in corners and bedrooms and had settled on just the place– a corner of the front room above the love seat that needed a little color.

But now that it’s made it is a little big and I’m afraid it would swing into the blinds or the bookshelf and be too much of a temptation for the climbing 2 year old to bat at. At the moment it is hanging in the doorway between the front room and my art room, but I’m thinking today I’ll put up a hook over my drafting table and let the birdies live there.

I’ve been on a bit of a spring-cleaning/ redecorating kick lately with a long mental list of things I want to do around the house and this was one of those things on the list. In a burst of spontaneity the other morning Jonah and I went through my scrap bin with bird pattern in hand and found pieces that were the right size, cut them out, matched them up, and whipped up some birds. That went really fast– especially with his help stuffing them. With all that built up momentum I gathered some sticks at the park the next day and started sewing birds to branches– only to have them hang upside down like bats. I discovered I needed to put some weight in the bottom of the birds so they weren’t top heavy and to use screw eyes to secure string to the branches so they wouldn’t twist. I dedicated the next day to ripping out tail seams and spooning in rice, then attempting to hang and balance it all again– to no avail.

Finally, when Barry had a free night we tried it all again. We found a few helpful things:

-Attach the birds to the branch with wire instead of sewing them on so they are easy to reposition.

-Thicker branches twist and roll less than skinny ones.

-We ended up using thin picture wire instead of invisible thread to hang the branches because it was more stable.

-Once we found the perfect bird positions we squeezed a little hot glue in to keep them there.

So, now it’s done and so fun to look at! When my art room is all decluttered and organized I’ll need some photo documentation, so I’ll show you its permanent home then.

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Monthly Archives: March 2011

some nest-feathering, but with pillows

Art room tour

This post has no pictures, but it’s totally worth reading. I promise!

thankfully, my husband is an engineer