Hope your day is a happy one!
Category Archives: A Little of Everything
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.
hipsta
Barry surprised me with a new phone on Monday. The one had was from 2003– but his is the one that really needs replacing. We got it when we lived in Albuquerque– so 2001 probably? It has a greenish screen with pixelated gray text. He had to hold the battery on with tape for a while until he found its discarded twin in a box of junk and switched batteries with it.
Anyway, as I was saying, I got a new phone. It’s pretty cool. It’s an iPhone 4. It can do everything but fold laundry. If you find the app for that make sure you let me know.
I’m having fun with the Hipstamatic. Changing lenses and flashes and film with a flick of my finger is so fun. I’ve never been much into technology and games (except for tetris while I was supposed to be writing papers in college), but I have to say this gadget is pretty cool. I mean, it reminds me when it’s time to take kids to karate– my hand written paper planners could never do that for me, so even things that were written down in multiple places would get forgotten.
And my kids can’t keep their hands off of it. I told them I will not put kid tempting games on it because it needs to be a PHONE– but maybe I could find a good knitting app…