The St. Louis Zoo has been doing this for several years, but I didn’t know that! It was a hot chocolate sort of night.
Do you have an unusual place that decorates for Christmas where you live?
I have a friend who shares my addition. Her name is…wait that’s a secret, all I can give you is her first initial, B.
Fabric coupons, sales alert in the inbox or just because we drive by, we can’t turn down the call of that soft and colorful cotton. In one store the colors are lined up in rainbow order. Can you picture that? Everyone likes a rainbow don’t they?
One day B. brought by a small quilt she had made. It was a sodoku puzzle solved with fabric instead of a pencil. I wanted to make one so off we went to the fabric store. I picked out nice colors I loved and then we returned to my home.
I picked up the pattern and my eyes glazed over, my heart began to race and sweat beaded over my brow. “I’m going to be sick.”
“What’s wrong?” B. asked snatching the fabric from my hand to keep it safe.
“I forgot! This is a math puzzle. I can’t do these. I’ll never be able to make this quilt.” I collapsed into a comfortable chair…I wouldn’t pick an uncomfortable one!
B. being the most special person ever stroked the fabric in her hand and said, “I’ll make it for you. But you have to quilt it.”
Right then I knew we were friends for life.
Soon, the quilt top came back to me and she had pieced it together with her excellent skills. I quilted it with less than exceptional skills using invisible thread. I know! It’s not really invisible! It is however almost clear so you can’t see the mistakes.
And then being me, I had to add a bit of sparkle. I love my quilt. It hangs in my creative space now. Which is another blog post because to get it to hang in there major cleaning, moving and decluttering had to occur.
Here’s the quilt. And I still can’t figure out the pattern.
At the urging of my friends, Luanne, Terry, Brenda and Debbie I agreed to ‘decorate’ for fall.
Now I used to do a lot of decorating when my sons were home, when they moved out I tossed my barely holding together decorations. Which meant I had to buy more or did I?
What you are looking at is not the first try…oh no. The first try featured dried hydrangeas from the yard. Did you know that dried hydrangeas attract kittens? They do. They crinkle like paper and they are ball shaped so they can be whacked across the room. And if those are fun what about pumpkins and gourds? If you look at the stem of the pumpkin you can see the fresh break.
Once Oliver tired of my decor I thought I’d give it another shot. So I had to buy a few more things. He hasn’t discovered the changes-yet!
To me fall is about the changing of time, the clocks are reset, the tempeture falls and the thermostat goes higher, chili and cornbread hit the table and wood is stacked by the door.
So when my friend in Florida posted on her facebook status she was getting her first cucumbers and tomatoes, I was a bit shocked.
I know the world doesn’t revolve around my life, but I forget that sometimes and have to be knocked out of my spot like the hydrangeas. What I love about fall where I live isn’t the same as my friend in Florida. Something to think about.
What is fall like where you live?
If it is different than mine how do you decorate?
My son, Andy let me into his studio this week. It’s the first time I’ve had a chance to see where he creates his magic.
He is an artist. An excellent artist.
This is what his ‘desk’ looks like.
Look carefully at the top right hand corner. Can you see the basketball? The painting isn’t done yet, but I wouldn’t have guessed that. The basketball has the dimples painted on the ball. It took him a long time to get them all on there, but it gives the painting depth.
He uses the walls to clean his brushes.
I use the delete button to clear my work.
The left side of the photo has just a glimpse for you to see another painting in his architectural series that he is working on. This one overlooks Washington Ave. in St. Louis. I do not want to know how he gets up that high to get the view!
And like most creative people Andy has personality in his space.
He’s aquired a chair from somewhere, he has music, microwave and a photo of his grandfather on the wall.
He’s showing his dad a really good piece of wood that he’s going to use for a frame.
I love his studio. I wonder if he’d let me come sit in the blue chair and write someday while he paints. Probably not. He’s a bit like me–needing a space that has only me in it to write.
But I’d bet he’d let Oliver the cat, come and watch if he could.
So what makes your creative space uniquely your’s?
A friend of mine was getting a smaller hutch and let me have her old one. It almost matched my smaller one.
I didn’t want two hutches in the same color. So I donated the top with the mirrors and glass shelves because what I really needed was a ‘sideboard’ at least it sounds good. I seldom use this room, but the storage I could use.
I didn’t want too much of the wood tones in that room either. So I used the marshmallow white from Gliden that I had received in a free offer and painted the bottom. I changed the hardware too.
What do you think? I like it.
What could you do with some paint?
I live in the mid-west and June is one of my favorite months. It’s warm enough to sit on my porch, read a book and drink iced tea.
This year, June has been more like August, hot, heavy, humid air that goes into your lungs like chunky soup. Going outside meant hair that twists and turns in multiple directions, sweat sliding into your eyes on the walk back from the mailbox and even the cat preferred the air-conditioning vent to his favorite slab of sunny concrete.
In May, I had one of my ‘want to sew’ days. My daughter-in-law had scored a bargain on a few outdoor pillows and gave them to me. They didn’t work well with the cushions on the swing. So I headed off to look for a good deal on fabric and found one at Garden Ridge. 4 yards for $3!
Inspired by a Ballard Designs catalog, borrowed from my daughter-in-law, I wanted to create something that was simple and yet unique to us. And I didn’t want to take forever to do it because I knew June was coming! I wanted to be on that swing enjoying the weather. So I decided on a simple ‘B’ to adorn the pillows.
This week it is of course the end of June and for some reason the weather feels like the beginning of summer. It’s as if August switched places and instead of hot weather building it’s getting cooler. So out came the cushions, the book, the iced tea and the cat!
Who knows next week it may feel like December so I think I’ll enjoy the the weather we have today.
Odd, but I can’t use my hand on the computer mouse without it going numb (it is getting better), but I have been able to use a paint brush. Yes! I love to paint.
I’m sure when my husband built the house the robin’s egg blue counters were just perfect. I’ve been trying for 20 years to decorate around those things. I love blue, it’s one of my favorite colors. This color though is not meant to live on something so permanent.
It’s hard to tell in the photo but it really is BLUE! I added a color swatch of what it really looked like to the photo. The counter in our bathroom and in the little dressing area next to it were this color. Until…
my husband went to work out of town for a few weeks. He really shouldn’t leave me alone…he knows I like to paint.
I decided since Ed wasn’t home I would be the only one whose routine was disturbed so off I went to my Ace store, paint chips in hand. After many coats of paint I love the results. I even painted the bathroom vanity. Then I switched out the ‘country’ feel lamp glass for a more modern one. You have to look in the mirror to see it. I couldn’t replace the light. I don’t play with electricity. That’s Ed’s job.
While it isn’t a major remodel it was doable on my budget. Including new towels, wall paint and new shower curtain and pretty curtain hangers the cost was around $70.00. Feeling good about life first thing in the morning was worth the work and money.
Here’s the after photos.
Now I need to search my fabric stash for material to make a new curtain for the dressing area. I forgot to mention I removed the wallpaper border that matched the curtain.
Ed’s reaction when he came home? “Nice.”
It took a lot of time to cut all of these strips, even though I used my friend Diana Z.’s aquuilt. Without that machine I would still be cutting!
I wasn’t quite sure what kind of quilt I would make.
I found a pattern I liked called Crayon Quilt over at www.quiltville.com and decided since I had so many bright colors in my strippy stash I would make that one. So I pulled out the brightest of them all and made my blocks. Then I decided to add the ladybug fabric I had on my shelf to make borders. Yep, can’t leave things alone, I always change them even if it’s the words I just wrote on a page or a recipe! So my quilt isn’t quite the same as the one found on quiltville.com, but I do like it. I think the person I made it for will to. She’s 11 going on 17.
Because the front is so full of color I needed to have something just as fun on the back. I went for the bright neon dots on black. I machine quilted it with pink thread. I like it I wish I was 10 going on 17, because I’d put it on my bed.
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Kyoto
It’s been a long time coming, but I’m taking a break and playing in my creative space.
I have so many cards to make, the first is for Mother’s Day. You know it’s coming right? May 9. I’m so blessed to still have my mom and mother-in-law. It’s a pleasure to work on cards just for them. They both delight me. My mom is a scrabble player and I seldom win when we play. My mother-in-law amazes me with her strength and desire to cut grass at the age of 80! Both of them are great women of faith and I look up to them and to them for advice.
Some of my dear friends have moms waiting for them in heaven. If your’s is I know in your heart you’re missing her and this day is not easy for you. So if my post hurts you, please know I’m sorry. Some of those same moms are ones that I miss, thank you dear friends for sharing them with me through the years.
What do you do to honor your mom on this day?
Finished cards
And since I had time…I made another card and put the name of a dear friend of mine on a bag to hold her gift! Great creative day for me!
I came home from my last trip to Chicago with a print that I loved. It was a huge yellow flower. I didn’t realize it was printed on paper. By the time I got it home it had several holes poked in it. So now what? I tried to tape it and used a watercolor pen to make it look better. Didn’t work.
The print was stapled to a nice frame and I had an ‘aha moment.’
I ripped off the print.
And found this great base. But now what? I’m not an artist, that would be my son. He’s busy though and I knew he wouldn’t have time to paint me a nice flower, besides flowers aren’t really his thing, he likes to use mixed media.
I thought about using scrapbook paper but since this is going in my bathroom and I take super hot showers I had a feeling the steam would melt the paper.
I thought about spray painting it and just hanging it on the wall as is, and maybe sticking something else in the middle of the frame.
Then I remembered this floral fabric had bought from fabric.com! It’s a fun fabric and I thought I’d make a dress. Sometimes the fabric you see on the internet isn’t quite what you pictured when it arrives especially if you are math challenged. The dimensions of the print were given but I didn’t realize how big the flowers really were! The fabric has been sitting on my stash shelf for about a year.
I pulled it off the shelf and auditioned it around the frame. It looked good. So out came my staple gun–that took me awhile to find. I haven’t been in my creative room since November because I’ve been working only on my new book and nothing else.