Archive for projects
Nesting
I’ve been in a nesting mood lately. I’ve been finishing up projects and starting new ones. I’ve been in the mood to cook and bake.
This is my favorite project that I’ve finished lately. The fabrics are all pink and many have pink ribbons as well for breast cancer awareness. My grandmother died when I was eleven from breast cancer and that has had a big effect on my life-though probably not as much as it should.
Today dad and I are going to fix some holes in the house. There is one in the kitchen where the electric comes into the house. In the craft room the floor boards along one wall are just gone-when I ripped up the carpet in there, you could see that there had been water damage, but the floor was never fixed. Those two things weren’t a huge issue when it was warm, but it is thirty three degrees right now. I’m also going to have him take the air conditioner out of the window. Finally if we get to it, we might insulate and drywall the utility room. There is so much to be done to this house, and I can picture it being great, but I don’t have the time or the money to do it all now.
Lack of motivation.
This weekend was a lazy weekend. I really don’t have time to be lazy, but I could not find the motivation to do much of anything.
The kitchen is clean and the laundry is done, that’s something. Right? (It doesn’t seem like much if you would’ve seen my weekend ‘To Do’ list.)
Mom and Dad went to the camper this weekend, so anything I could’ve done on the house had to be something I could do myself. Saturday I could’ve painted, but I didn’t. Today it rained on and off. Tomorrow I am working. Ah well.
I have been working on this piece of embroidery for a friend, and I’m really ready to be done with it. He wanted a patch and I wanted to practice satin stitching-but I’m all practiced out. The holidays I decorate for are fast approaching and crafting holiday things is so much more appealing. I think one more week and I’ll have it done if I work at it. Here it is in progress:
Totally not my style, but he also seems totally thrilled with it. The black pen lines are where I traced it, the red pen lines are where I have corrected my tracing. A couple places like on the teeth, you can see a single stitch…I used that as a way to move from one area to another without knotting off and starting again. The eyes and very outer outline will be in black thread with a metallic blue mixed in. The teeth, the tear drop at the top and the circle below it will be gold metallic thread. Everything else left to fill in will either be light or dark blue. It is 4.5 inches tall. Lots of fiddly little lines…
After I finish that I am not sure what I will work on. I have quite a few projects in mind-but house things need done and holiday gifts need made.
I am so ready for Christmas. I have said that to Mom a couple times, but she says she is not. I want to get away from the whole lots of gift giving and that being the ‘point’ of the holiday. I want to decorate and bake and spend time with my family…gifts…eh. Half the time when someone asks me what I want, I can’t tell them. Generally if I want something a. I will buy it myself; b. I am too cheap to buy it myself nor do I want anyone else to buy it for me; or c. I will figure out how to make it. Mom has also wanted to know what I want for my birthday…I don’t know the answer to that either.
And it is late so I’m off to bed.
Moss Update
Today it just looks like nasty mold, I am going to get it out of there and hope it doesn’t pop up again.
Als0-hackers really need to find something more productive to do. While I am sure they are very smart people, my ftp site at work is not a good storage solution for German dubbed movies.
And I made a new header, it doesn’t link back to my homepage, but I’m not in the mood to read php and css tonight to fix that and the blue font color. Tomorrow maybe? Maybe this weekend? I also need to get Mom’s genealogy site going and Dad’s home health care blog started…but alas, there’s never a good time.
Growing Things
I put together a small terrarium yesterday with a glass jar from a candle that was rectangle shaped.
I added dirt and moss and apparently something else:
I don’t know what that is, but it doesn’t belong in my terrarium-as neat as it does look.
Spending Money…
I’m ready to stop.
Today I spent $337 to fix my car. New ignition switch and a new Engine Oil Pressure Sensor.
I also went to Hobby Lobby and bought some stuff for Valentine’s. The light in the picture is funny, but…red and pink paper, red and pink sparkly heart brads, candy heart buttons, two heart punches and a some matching ribbon.
I also bought some glitter this weekend at Wal-Mart. It is Martha Stewart brand that I had been wanting, but they put it on clearance:
Hobby Lobby has also started carrying themed cupcake liners, and well, I must have them:
And finally, for Brian, because I’m sure he misses my ‘Salad For Dinner’ post…this is what I had for dinner tonight:
Pincushions & Cameras
Two totally unrelated things.
For Christmas I received a Kodak EasyShare Z1485 IS camera (in pink!). It is a 14 mega pixel point and shoot camera. I’ve been pretty happy with it so far, but I’ve not yet printed anything off of it either. It came with a $55 voucher to kodakgallery.com for non-prints merchandise.
It has a ‘stitch’ feature to take panoramic pictures. My last Kodak camera did not have that feature, but I’ve been having fun playing with it:
This is a picture of my parents’ living room. In person it doesn’t look nearly this large…or fish-eyed.
Tonight I decided to make a pincushion. I ended up with this. The base is a paper mache-box painted a creamy color. The house and yard are made out of felt with embroidered accents. I’m listing it for sale in my Etsy store.
Tomorrow I’m going to make cards with my mom and contractor #2 is coming to look at the house. I don’t want to write about what contractor #1 said until I talk to this guy tomorrow. *crosses fingers that he has nicer things to say*
It’s my blog, I can use it to store links if I want…
• Ashford Knitters Loom Just think of the scarves that could be made with that thing. And quickly! Then I looked at the $230 price tag.
I want to make these:
• Jello Fruit – Other than the fact they are cute, I see no practical purpose for these.
• Mini Pincushions – There is a small pile of lids sitting on the kitchen table in preparation for this weekend.
Some neat graphic design stuff:
• Coffee Stain Brush For Photoshop – I really don’t know why you’d want this, it’s just neat.
• Vector Magic – I haven’t tried this yet, but wow, where have these people been all my life? Or rather, how did I just find out about them yesterday? (They trace your raster images and make them vector images.)
Just for fun:
• The Bureau of Communication – Form letters for miscellaneous things to fill out and email. Very official looking, if not so in subject matter.
• Japanese Print & Cut Out Things – I don’t know what a thing on this website says, but with random clicking you’ll get the idea. There are doll house rooms, stores, sushi, animals, vehicles and more.
Lots of stuff…
So I realized I never posted a picture of the new new guinea pig (or maybe I never even said for sure I got one?). Either way. I’ve had him two weeks, which makes him nine weeks old. He came from the show in Springfield. I wanted to name him Bradshaw, but it just doesn’t fit. Ryan says he should be called Mortimer, which I really don’t like (sorry if you read this). Mom says I should name him ‘Inches’. To go with Miles… Ha ha, right? It has been two weeks now though, and I just need to pick a name. Miles doesn’t particularly care for the young energetic nature of his new cage-mate, but they are getting on better than they did the first week. Mom noticed today that the little one has a bite mark on his ear though. I’m not sure if Miles did that or one of his siblings before I got him.
I had the oil changed in my car today, and of course, since I was in
Washington C.H. I went to the thrift store too. I picked up a little bud vase, a vintage stitchery kit and a plastic box filled with reference cards for houseplants. I don’t particularly care for the butterfly on the stitchery, but I wanted to know how they did the fuzzy dandelion and I liked the wool and fabric colors. The box that the houseplant reference cards came in is tacky, dirty and discolored. In Mom’s words when she came in my house tonight, “What is that?” The box will be going, but I hope the cards will have some useful value. The whole thing was only $1.91 though. So for that much, it is worth the amusement of the 70′s style photography.
Sunday Mom and I went fabric shopping. Lately when I have gone fabric shopping I can’t find anything I like. Sunday I spent $50 and could have easily spent double that. I went to get two pieces of a fabric – a blue and a purple for a baby quilt I’ve been working on. I ended up getting two blues and enough purple for the quilt and to back the thing too. It has embroidery blocks in it. I copied patterns out of the Stampin’ Up catalog. There are two frogs, a snail, a dragonfly, a single flower, a long patch of grass and little flowers and a long patch of water and water lilies. I thought it would come together easier than it is. I’m just not feeling it.
The second thing I bought though… Mom says, “Come look at this, I just think it is so you.” Evilness. Look at those bugs in all of their cuteness. It isn’t designed by Eric Carle, but it could be. I bought a yard of the bugs, half a yard of that funky stripe and a fat quarter of the dots. A few of the others I bought fat quarters of, the rest came from Mom’s stash. I have designed a nursery in my head around this fabric. Just picture it, bright vivid colors for the crib sheets, crib skirt, bumper, etc. A patchwork quilt of all of that. For a mobile there could be little felt bugs mimicked from the fabric. Meh. Normally I get a baby quilt pieced pretty quick, but I am oh so tempted to hoard this for that day in the future when I’ll actually need to design a baby room…
What if I just want to ramble?
I built a sidewalk today. Or something like a sidewalk, it doesn’t really go anywhere, it just keeps me from walking in mud or keeping a perilous balance while walking on the rocks lining the flower bed.
Crappy picture. It is from the camera phone. My house, even though it is sided now, is a brick house. So when you do things like till up the garden, you get bricks. So until I dig up more bricks, it can only be that big.
Ryan and I are starting vacation plans. This is always a frustrating job. Do we stay home or do we go somewhere. If we stay home, how many of those days will be actual vacation for me or entertaining people. (When he comes home there is always a ton of friends and family that want to come around, which is fine, it just doesn’t make for much of a vacation for me.) He had mentioned going somewhere for a ‘real’ vacation a month or so ago, so I had started planning for that. Now he is thinking about coming home for part of his leave and going somewhere besides home for the rest of it. I don’t really care. I just want to see him. Nothing set in stone though as the army will feel the need to change the dates a minimum of three times, requiring me to fill out an equal number of vacation requests for my job. Yay.
For the past couple weeks I haven’t been in the mood to make anything. That bothers me. I am never not in the mood to make something. I made myself make a needlebook. I did some cooking (which didn’t turn out all that great). I also decorated paper bags for Dad to put candy in and give to nurses and doctors (40 of them, they were nice and springy, but I didn’t have my camera). Today I made a bag to send to Ryan. It has more of a patriotic feel though.
Tomorrow starts the work week, so I should be going now.
On the couch…
is where I spent my day. Anyone who knows me should recognize that something is wrong there. I don’t sit still and do nothing well. I’m pretty sure I just have a cold, but it has kicked my butt. I feel better now, but I did rest all day, so I would hope I would. While on the couch though I browsed the internet. I would’ve played WoW all day long, but the servers were down til three pm. In the meantime I found this site:
Hrm well, like I needed more to do, but I am now signed up for five swaps.
1. An email dessert recipe swap
2. A bookmark swap
3. A birthday card swap (3 for women, 3 for men)
4. A blank card swap
5. A handmade needlebook swap
Those shouldn’t require as much work as the dollhouse swaps I do though…at least I hope.
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