A super busy week!

This week was super busy at our house, it was the first week of summer for the kids, we had Father's Day, we had friends over for diner (we had to dust the neglect from being so busy during the school year off of the whole downstairs) and I sewed like a mad person!

The first couple of pictures are from a decorating project I have been meaning to work on for a year, and only just now gotten around to. We bought a lovely antique shelf the last time we were in Germany (3 years ago I think) and it lived in the entryway of our last house as a coat hook since we didn't have a hall closet. In this house we put the shelf in the living-room but it sat empty for the last year until this week.

Last Saturday we took the kids canoeing on the James River, and popped into visit some friends and take them diner - I was massively surprised when my friend gave me the most lovely gift ever - a 24" reproduction 17th century wooden doll! I am eventually going to dress it in something fancy, but until then I knew it would live on my living-room shelf.

Of course the doll couldn't be all by itself up there, so I went shopping in my garage to find extra things amongst all of my stored decorative stuff. The big round mirror is one of my favorite things, the little saying plaque is a present I gave my husband on our 10th wedding anniversary and has sort of been a joke we have said to each other even before I found a plaque with it. The print is one that reminds me of my favorite stories as a child - we used to read "The Magic Faraway Tree" when we were little, and I imported a copy from England to read to my own kids it was so special to me. (It is by Enid Blyton and I highly recommend it.) The copper bits are the kid's little fists from when they were each only 3 days old, and then I added a few little filler things for color, balance. and presence.

Under the shelf I added an old engraving we recently got at an antique show (we love to go antiquing on weekends, sometimes I swear we can't possibly only be in our 30s!) I re-framed the print in a sale frame from Michaels and added a new acid-free mat. The butterflies were presents from Paul, he brought them home to me from a business trip recently and I hung them there for safe keeping and decided they made me happy there and so they stayed! The candles and sticks were more in my own garage shopping. The framed picture that is next to the lamp always makes me smile; it's of Paul's college roommate, my older sister, Paul, and myself, on Splash Mountain in Disneyland the week we got engaged. Our faces are so funny and it reminds me I am a fun person on days I forget! (I didn't want to show a close up in case it broke a copyright law or something.)

We made costumes and cake this week too. The kids love to dress up for movie premieres that they have been looking forward to, and they are avid, "Avatar, The Last Airbender" fans. I decided to kill two birds with one stone since I will be back at school this fall and won't have time to sew Halloween costumes; the kids said the Airbender costumes can double for both Halloween and dressing up now, so I am being extra proactive for this Fall. I can't post pictures of them wearing them yet because they want to wait until after the movie's opening, but they look so cute and were made almost completely from my insane stash of fabric. (you can see the costumes in a wad on the kitchen table in the background though) I made the costumes in only 2 days though, and it was a little too much for me - 2, 3 piece costumes including making the pattern left me feeling a little burnt out!

But I had promised Emmie she could make a cake, so in my exhaustion I supervised with my camera rather then actually helping her, (here she is adding homemade apricot freezer jam as a filling.)

She did a strawberry cake with apricot filling, and I added lemon juice to the store frosting to make it taste slightly less synthetic.

This week I discovered that my 9.75 year-old son has the same sized feed as me, mine are just mutantly wider. Paul took Friday as leave since it is our last weekend before I start a 5 week summer class, and the kids go to summer day camp. I should have lots to post about class, since it's a craft class. (5 days a week, almost 4 hours a day!)

And then finally today we went estate sale shopping, and Paul found 6 of these little bird place-card holders for $12

In my house we have a unplanned bird thing (the silk drapes in the library have birds on them, and they tend to pop up in accessories.) Anyway, my napkin rings are lovely little birds nests that I stick jellybeans or M&M's in to look like eggs

Since Paul is a genius he thought it would be cool to have little birds to fit in the nests........

It's like they were made for each other! I can still fit a few jellybeans along with the place markers so the mama birds can have eggs. I have decided that this Fall at school I am going to screen print some napkins and place mats with bird related things, and make the accidental theme a little more official (especially since I only just noticed that the "Magic Faraway Tree-ish print has a bird and a nest in it too, I knew they were in the picture, I just forgot to think about how they tied into the other bird stuff in the house!)

Anyway, I am going to try to be better about posting more then just once a week! But that will all depend on how big a commitment my class becomes, so I will cross my fingers I still will have time to breathe!

The house - Laundry room redo

When we moved into this house it needed to be completely redone, it had been a foreclosure and everything was very builder's grade and dirty. Paul deployed only about a week after we moved in, so a lot of the remodel was done while he was away and I was trying to fill my time!

So, one of the first rooms we did before we even moved in was the Laundry room (you have to be able to do laundry from day 1 right?) We were buying a new energy efficient washer and dryer, since the set we had were from off a street corner 10 years ago, and we decided stackable was the way to go.

The laundry room in our house is directly off of the kitchen and dining room, and is a pass through to the studio.

We started by Painting the room cobalt blue (the rug in the dining room has a dark blue border, and the kitchen has blue and white china) and then we moved on to redoing the floors; we took off the 1/4 round molding, and super scrubbed the existing linoleum. We decided to use a peel and stick tile from Lowe's, it looks and feels like marble, but is not as cold on your feet or hard on your lower back (I have back problems and tile always starts to hurt me if I stand on it for too long.) The tile has a 10 year warranty and cuts pretty easily as well, which is a great bonus.

After it was installed with tile spacers, we immediately grouted the gaps (this is the step that makes it look the most like real tile,) since we didn't have to wait for anything to dry first. Then we put down the 1/4 round again and touched up all of the white paint in the room. The washer and dryer then got delivered, which was very exciting since I really had never had any new appliances besides a fridge.

We went to the habitat for humanity store, and got a bank of 5 used upper kitchen cabinets for $125. We only used 2 of them in the laundry room, so the other 3 were installed in the garage as storage, for $25 we got a lower bathroom sink cabinet too. The lower cupboard didn't match the uppers, but I knew we were going to paint them all white, so it didn't really matter.

The finished laundry room looks pretty great (well at least I think it does!) I got a charcoal colored (granite look) laminate counter-top for the lower cupboard, and then we put a piece of wood with velcro stapled to it on the bottom of the top cabinet and and screwed down to the counter-top. I used a piece of bead-board (leftover from other projects,) that I cut to match the size of the square under the cabinet and above the counter-top, and framed it out in a simple molding. After painting the square out all white, I put velcro on the top and bottom and was then able to install it like a back-splash that could come off when we needed to get to the plugs or water hoses (there was a gap of about 6" from were the dryer couldn't go all the was against the wall because of the hose, and now you can't see it at all!)

I love how the laundry room is mostly white now with just a little pop of color, I recycled knobs from our last kitchen (housing on an AF base that so horrible they condemned it!) that were nickel plated and from Restoration Hardware. In the lower cupboard area we now have junk drawer space, a place where we keep the kid's extra asthma medication, stray sock space, and we keep a laundry basket behind the door. In the uppers we have extra light bulbs, all of the laundry detergent paraphernalia, and in the above the dryer section, anything we want to keep out of reach of the kids. We fold laundry straight out of the dryer onto the counter-top, and as far as a pass through is concerned, it's about as clean as you can expect a laundry space to be since nothing is in the way.

All together we spent $150 on cabinets, $40 on the counter-top, $50 on paint (between the white and blue.) $60 on the tile project, and I am going to guess an additional $40 on any extra trim or whatever that has to be bought along the way in any given project. So the grand total for the laundry room remodel project (I'm not counting the washer and dryer since they will be moving with us when we go) is $340, which I think is pretty awesome!

Berries for diner!

We picked a bunch of black berries the other night, and decided that we needed to do something a little different with them (we have been eating a lot of berries!)

I decided that it couldn't be that hard to make up a syrup recipe (I could have googled one, but I didn't want to worry about whether or not I had the exact amount of berries.) I used 1 cup of sugar and 1 cup of water, brought those to a boil and then added a 1/2 tsp of vanilla, some salt, and then the berries.

Isaac (my son) stirred the whole thing until the berries completely broke apart and then I stirred in some cornstarch that I had mixed with water so it wouldn't get clumpy. (I just added a little at a time until the syrup was the consistency I wanted.) Next I passed the mixture through a strainer to get rid of all the seeds, and what I was left with was a lovely red syrup! (I'm not sure why it was red - as soon as the berries hit the boiling syrup they turned bright red and they looked like raspberries!)

I decided that it tasted a little too sweet so I added a little lemon juice, and it was perfection! So, what do you do with perfection? I made puppy eyes at my husband and he made Belgium Waffles for us all (he has this really great recipe that involves folding egg whites into the mix and it's awesome!)

So we had breakfast for diner, and the kids thought it was awesome! I wish we would have had some whipping cream, but the waffles were so custardy and yummy it wasn't like they needed it for anything other then to look pretty.

Happiness is........

Today I had an awesome afternoon! I got to go to lunch with a friend, do a little sewing, and spend some time tidying around the house. The kids are still at school until the end of the week so I am still alone during the days, but as of this Friday we will officially have started summer!

I have decided to share some stuff on here every now and then that makes me happy- just little things that every time I see them I smile or that make me feel thankful.

First off our blackberries.....

When I was a teen I lived in England. All summer long you could just walk down the road and pick wild blackberries off of Cotswold stone walls and fences, they were always warm from the sun and huge.

When we moved to our current house I planted a blackberry bush as soon as it got warm enough, and to my surprise there were wild black berry bushes in the tree line of the woods in our backyard too! Last year nothing produced much of anything, but with careful pruning of the woods berries and a little time in the ground for the new bush, this year our crop is massive! I love letting the kids eat all they want, it seems like store bought fruit has to be rationed since it's so expensive, but with the blackberries, it's eat them or leave them to the birds. There's nothing quite like a berry straight off the bush, and having as many as you want to make summer feasts out of when playing outside!

I am not sure what it is about this little collection that makes me so happy, I found the pineapple finial at a little antique store in Richmond, (I am under no illusion that it's antique!) but the shape and color with the white coating on top just spoke to me, it's so textural. The oil lamp is one my mom got me about 10 years ago as a Christmas present, and the green glazed pedestal is one I got at TJ Maxx a while back. These all live in the library on a bookshelf, and every time I walk through the room I look at them and just sigh from how at home they make me feel.

These plates are from a sort of funny place in the house to be happy in, they hang on the wall of my half-bathroom! My half bath is actually one of my favorite rooms in the house (it was white, tiny and boring when we moved in.) We installed bead board all the way up to plate rail height, and then painted it a creamy yellow color with an even paler yellow above. These plates are from a little antique store, and I think I paid less then $20 for all of them. I love the simplicity of the gradiated color on the cobalt blue ribbon, I think it's quietly elegant and I love being surrounded by beautiful things in every room of the house!

My Version of an Anthropologie Cardigan, the home stretch!

In case you missed part 4 here it is

 I decided that the cardigan looked a little boxy on me (it's a large, and I am a small who usually wears a Medium so that I can have slightly loose fitting clothing.) So I decided to take in the side seams a little at the waist to make it more feminine. I started by pinning it, then basting with my machine, so that I could try it on and be sure I liked the fit.

After I knew I liked the fit, I used my serger to stitch the seams so they were finished and could still stretch.

I had clear glass beads in my stash, but had to buy the heavy duty thread I needed (bringing the grand total so far to $7.50 for the whole project.) I basically beaded wherever I thought it would look interesting, trying to get a similar feel to the Anthropoligie cardigan.

So, here is the Anthropologie cardigan, for $98

And then here is mine for $7.50 (sorry about the sunglasses, I am basically blind outside without them.)

Here is the back of the original.

And then the back of mine. (sorry about the bad posture mom.)

I am actually delighted with how this turned out, I don't usually try to copy things, but with a $90.50 savings, I definitely think I am gonna start doing it more often!

I linked up to a few link parties with this one, I would love any comments and followers that wandered on over here from them! Also don't forget to look at the whole cardigan revamp!

My Version of an Anthropologie Cardigan, part 4

Back to Part 3 in case you missed anything. 

Next I put black sewing thread in my sewing machine, and then mostly followed along the lines (anywhere I didn't follow the lines it didn't really matter, because once the paper was gone who was to know?)

Then I tore the paper away to expose the stitching on the fabric.

Here is the finished front before I washed it. (I washed the whole sweater at this point in order to age the appliqués.)

Here is a shot of what the inside looks like, it's nice and tidy!

In order to get the gathered hem detail that was in the original cardigan, I used an awl to open two holes in the bottom hem and then thread a piece of elastic through. I then pinned the holes shut and stitched over them in order to secure the elastic and hide the holes simultaneously.

I was pretty happy with how it turned out, you can't see where I threaded it at all!

Next is the beading and the finished product!

My Version of an Anthropologie Cardigan, part 3

Here is Part 2 in case you missed it

When looking at the original Anthropologie cardigan, you can see where the chiffon is placed, it is caught in place with the black stitching and then eventually the beading too.

I cut out irregular circles from the dyed pieces and then placed them down on the cardigan.

I drew flower-ish shapes onto fuseable tear away stablizer, and then ironed them down onto the chiffon and cardigan.

the next step will be stitching the black lines over the stablizer - which serves 2 purposes, I can follow the lines, and the sweater can't shift or stretch while I am sewing it.

And now onto Part 4

My Version of an Anthropologie Cardigan, part 2

In case you missed it, here is part 1

So step 1 was making the little silk chiffon patches to put on the front - I luckily happened to have silk chiffon scraps in my stash from another project, so they were free! The color was a great neutral skin color, so all I would need to do was dye them to make them go with the inspiration cardigan.

I had another freebie with my dye - at school last semester my weaving professor was getting rid of some out of date dye; the dye was still good, just the school couldn't keep it. So I brought home a bunch especially designed for silk and wool (protein fibers.) I cut my silk into scrap sized portions, and then used a for dye only Pyrex bowl to mix a tiny bit of water and a tiny bit of dye together.

The dye instructions say you are supposed to boil your fiber for 30 minutes, but I just microwaved each one for 2 minutes, and then rinsed with dish-washing liquid and water (detergent is bad for silk) The colors were super bright and didn't wash out at all, so we will see if they have light fastness and staying power.

After everything was dyed, I just put them on a towel to air dry

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Next is part 3