Last of the Christmas Decorating

I promise - these will be the last pictures of my Christmas 2012 decorating.

Entryway

Primitive Box

on bench on Entryway

I purchased two berry vines on sale.  

One of them I put at the top of one set of 

kitchen cabinets using Command hooks.

The other one I put around the top of

my china cabinet.  I like the berries so much

I plan to leave them up for now.

Create and Decorate

I spotted this magazine on a recent trip to JoAnn Fabric & Crafts.  I'd never seen it before, but after thumbing through it, I decided to purchase it.  This is the January/February 2012 issue.  Inside are a variety of projects from painting to punchneedle to stitching (cross stitch, sewing, quilting) and some mixed media.  I took a few pictures, but I'll apologize for them in advance.  I took them at night while trying to hold the magazine steady, so the pictures aren't very good.  Hopefully you can get the idea!

Heart Pillow

Make-do-Patchwork Pincushions

(I found a glass piece on a recent trip to the Salvation Army thrift store to use for one of these.)

Winged Hearts

(I'll make these without the wings, 'cause they're just not my thing.)

Cross Stitch Heart

You can learn more about the magazine at their website.  While there, you can see a few more pictures from the current issue, browse their online projects, and sign up for their newsletter.  

I'd like to make the Winged Hearts before Valentine's Day.  We will have to see if that comes to be.

A bit of Christmas Decorating

I love decorating my home for Christmas and the winter.  I have an extensive snowman collection, which despite their objections, they keep adding to, and which stays up until the end of March.  And unlike many, I like to leave my Christmas decorations up until mid to late January, at which time I am sick of them.  It's usually cold, snowy, and overcast here, and I find the lights help me deal with it. 

I don't remember where I found this cute basket.  I have put it in my front entry for many years now, and after seeing this idea, I added the mini lights this year. 

*~~*~~*~~*~~*~~**~~*~~*~~*~~*~~*~~*~~*~~*~~*~~*

I'd like to thank Heidi of The Cranberry Chronicle for helping me with my Christmas centerpiece.  For a long time, I've thought of purchasing a hurricane vase, and I finally broke down and did it.  After some back and forth in my mind, and discussion with Heidi, I decided to put some table salt in the bottom of the vase, insert my candle, and carefully put two layers of small ball ornaments around it.  I did break an ornament in the process . . .

Decorating with Vintage Items

The definition of antique varies, even among experts.  According to the U.S. Customs Service, an item must be over 100 years old to be considered antique, but the term can be used loosely and applied to items much younger than that.  I'll use the term vintage to describe a collection of items I received recently from my mother-in-law, since I know none of these are over 100 years old, but may well be 50 years old. 

This is one side of my U-shaped kitchen.

 Close-Up of the above items.

 Horlick's Malted Milk jar.  I looked on Ebay and this is worth some money!

 See the two metal cans stacked up on each other?  One is a lard container.

  This is the cabinet to the right of my sink. 

 Close-Up of the above cabinet.

You can see that I mostly got old Ball jars, some with zinc lids.  I appreciate my mother-in-law sharing what she can no longer use with the family, and I'm thrilled to have these vintage items to display in my kitchen.

Painting Our Craft Room, Part Eight

My, oh my.  This project has been dragging along for a long time, hasn't it?  I am tired of going through boxes, bags, and other assorted storage containers.  But we are nearing the end, as evidenced by being able to vacuum about 2/3 of an area rug in the living room this week, and the pile of empty boxes that have made it back down to the basement.

Today's accomplishments included plugging in my pencil sharpener, taking a pile of unfinished sewing projects to the basement for temporary storage (Sarah is limiting me to one basket of projects in the craft room at a time), and going through every single rubber stamp that I own, which seemed like thousands.   We filled a copy paper box 3/4 full of stamps to get rid of, although whether we will try to sell them or give them away hasn't been decided.

We are hopeful that we can reorganize the Closet Maid basket unit we have - like the one on the right - so that my stamps AND Sarah's stamping/scrapbooking items will fit in it.  Our unit has single drawers in it except for the bottom on (the unit shown has double drawers). 

I am hopeful that my next post will be the last in this series, and I can finally take some pictures of the completed room. 

Painting Our Craft Room, Part Seven

Our new carpeting was finally installed on Wednesday afternoon.  We I was frustrated when the installers showed up two hours late with no call, but I'm thankful that it was an afternoon appointment and that Phil hadn't gotten up early.  (He is increasingly more tired, poor guy.  The link to his Caring Bridge site is on the left under "Favorite Web Sites".)  Sarah and I worked until the wee hours Thursday morning to organize my new desk and set up her sewing area, as well as put the books back on the bookshelf.  I had planned to move the smaller bookcase that houses our cookbooks back in on Thursday afternoon, but it was one of those days that nothing got accomplished.  I am hoping that we can figure out how to use our saws to cut the countertop so we can get that back in place and begin to put the rest of the room back together.

Does anyone have ideas for scrapbook paper/cardstock storage?  We have a LOT of paper, and Sarah isn't happy with our storage, which is a homemade version of this unit sold by Amazon:

I heard Blogger was having issues inserting images, 

and I guess it's true.  Go to Amazon.com and search 

for "2-Tier Paper Storage Cube System with Casters 

and Dust Cover"

When I say a LOT, I mean precisely that.  Our unit is stuffed.  I also think it's higher than this one, probably 48"?

I'll try to be back soon with some pictures.

Painting Our Craft Room, Part Six

The call we've been waiting for finally came while I was fixing dinner.  Our carpet has arrived!  Unfortunately, we have to wait an entire week for it to be installed. 

It's just as well.  I had my knee injected last Thursday (Synvisc) and I'm not recovering as fast as I would like, so moving all that stuff back into the room would not be a good idea. 

Maybe Sarah and I can start going through some of our supplies ahead of time.  That is, if we can get through the mess and find them!

Painting Our Craft Room, Part Five

I spend a lot of time watching the DIY Network.  I have to admit that this painting project reminds me of the show Renovation Realities.  Maybe not as bad, but similar.  We started with a simple paint job, which has morphed into not only painting the walls, but also replacing the carpet and painting the window casings and baseboards. 

While I was out on Thursday night, Phil and Sarah took down the crafting counter that my dad built for us, and emptied the room of everything except supplies, tools, my desk, and the computer. 

Grace helped my dad install the counter on February 13, 2005.

When I got home, Sarah told me she'd been injured; somehow, she cut her foot - perhaps from wearing flip flops while working? - but fortunately, it wasn't deep enough to need stitches.  (By morning, though, it was bruised and very sore.)  And she's not the only one.  Here's what I did early in the project.

That's my arm you see.  It still hurts.  I have numerous other bruises on my arms, too.

Earlier this week, Phil and I went to pay for our new carpet.  We had questions about the price because it was about $100 higher than what we had calculated in the store, and we wanted to know why.  The salesman started by saying there was a $97 charge for installation . . . whoa!  It was supposed to be $39 because we chose a StainMaster carpet.  We stood there and discussed that with the salesman who helped us initially.  Well, it turns out we did NOT choose StainMaster.  In the end, we chose a different carpet, this time a StainMaster.  It's a better quality carpet, and we ended up paying $4.00 more than the price for the other one.  We're still mystified about the original mix up, though.

The good news is that Sarah and I finished painting the walls on Friday night.  I have taped off the windows and hope to paint those tomorrow, as well as taking the old carpet out so I can easily paint the baseboards.  Sometimes it seems this project will never end.

Painting Our Craft Room, Part Four

We didn't get much done in the craft room today.  It was one of those days when we were dealing with other difficult issues that demanded all our attention.  I was able to take some of the boxes from the great room out to the garage in an attempt to make more room for items like sewing machines which shouldn't be stored in the cold.  (We have our first frost warning tonight.)  I still can't believe all the supplies we have in the room that need to be packed up and relocated!  We need to move the 7' high bookcase out to the garage so we can access the rest of the items underneath the table, so we will try to do that this afternoon. 

Lowe's came to measure for the new carpet on Tuesday afternoon.  It will be another seven to ten days before it comes in, or so they say.  You never know about these things.

I had said that the room was 10' square.  Turns out it is 12' x 12'.  Now, of course, you understand how we could put so much stuff in it, right?

Stay tuned . . .

Painting Our Craft Room, Part Three

When we got home from church on Sunday night, Sarah had pizza ready for us, so I poured a glass of Pepsi One and grabbed a couple of slices of 'za.  When I headed back to the kitchen for just one more slice, I got into a conversation with my son-in-law, so painting was delayed until 9:00 or so.  Then I realized I still had more painter's tape to put up, and I spotted a nail pop and a ding in the wall that needed spackling.  Needless to say, it was about 9:45 before Sarah and I started to put paint on the wall.  Why is it that the first coat takes so much longer than the second?  It doesn't help that we don't think our walls were properly primed by the builder and they soak up paint like crazy.  In fact, we used probably 3/4 of a gallon for the first coat on those first two walls I showed you in this post.  The good news is that we managed to put two coats on the first two walls, putting us well ahead of schedule.  The next step is to clear out the rest of the room.  We have to determine what can safely remain in the garage for a couple of weeks, and what needs to stay in the house.  Just thinking about packing everything else up makes me very, very tired. 

Painting Our Craft Room, Part Two

Saturday's plan never came to fruition.  I couldn't go to sleep on Friday night, and that meant I overslept on Saturday, which set the tone for the entire day. 

This painting job is going from tolerable to intolerable.  Here's the next installment in the story.

We got our dog, Kelly, four or five months after we moved into our home.  Shortly thereafter, she scared Callie, one of our cats, who ran into the craft room.  The poor kitty was so frightened that she - how do I say this delicately? - used the carpet as a litter box.  We thought we cleaned it up well, although at certain times of the year, some of the smell would resurface.  So, now that the time to paint has come, we knew we had to deal with the situation once and for all.  We discovered that the bottom of the bookcase has a residual smell, so we will handle that, but more importantly, we started working on removing the rest of the odor from the carpet.  But it didn't work.  On to Plan B.  Pry off one of the baseboards so we can pull back the carpet and check the pad.  Oops.  The pad smells, too.  And it's stapled to the subfloor.  (Is that common?)  I start pulling staples . . . and the verdict is that the stain goes through to the subfloor.  So into the car we go, heading off to Lowe's.  On the way, Phil and I are discussing the pros and cons of wood laminate and carpet.  Can you guess which one we settled on?

---> Insert Jeopardy Theme Song here. <---   

Yup, the carpet.  It made more sense for the craft room, mainly to deaden the sound, since we often work late into the night, and sewing machines and sergers can make a lot of noise.  Because Lowe's is running a special on installation of Stainmaster carpet - $39 for the entire house (not that we need the whole house carpeted!) - we went with that brand, and chose a warm medium brown color.  I will miss the lovely burgundy carpet that we have now, but it made sense to choose something that is more neutral.  I keep resale in mind these days; we're not thinking of moving any time soon, but one never knows.

The salesman at the store was very helpful; I had spoken with him earlier in the week about wood laminate, which we would like to put in our powder room, back entry, kitchen, and dining area.  He is going to try to get someone out to the house to measure on Monday or Tuesday, and then order the carpet.  He is thinking installation could take place around October 21, which, unfortunately, is the day I'm having my knee injected again, so that's not an option.  Sarah and I will talk and try to figure out the best time frame, but I'm thinking the following week would be good.  We are going to end up putting a lot of things in the garage, since the entire room has to be emptied.  That was not in the original plan!

The good news is that I don't have to worry about getting paint on the carpet when I paint the baseboards, or the walls for that matter.  That's always a good thing. 

Painting Our Craft Room

Our craft room is probably 10' x 10' or something like that.  It is stuffed full of books, sewing machines, crafting supplies, and my computer desk.  For that reason, and the fact I couldn't decide on a color, it has remained unpainted for the 5.75 years we've been in our house.  But the time has come to take the plunge.  The paint is purchased - a lovely light sage green - and we started clearing out the room.  Here's what we took out -

These pictures are of one side of our great room.  In the last picture, you can see we had to put some things in front of the coffee table, and to the right of the couch.  To put this in perspective, here's what we cleaned out:

 Yup - two small pathways.  And here's some of what is left in the room:

 I wasn't kidding when I said the room is stuffed!

Most of the painter's tape is up (still have to do the baseboards), and nearly all of the holes on the two walls we'll paint first have been spackled and sanded.  My plan is to sand the rest of the spots, then prime them, and hopefully start painting.  Since I'm writing this in the wee hours of Saturday morning, it remains to be seen whether my plan worked for Saturday, or had to be put off until Monday.

Drapes!

In my last post, I mentioned that I made drapes for Anthony & Grace's apartment.  I was able to get some pictures of them tonight. 

This was my first time  making drapes.  I used blackout lining, which I quickly discovered is VERY heavy, and made the drapes difficult to maneuver.  They are about 81" long, and approximately 44.5 inches wide.  Since they attack to the curtain rod with clips, I did not sew a rod pocket, although there is just enough room in the top hem to do a narrow one in the future if needed.  The fabric is "Pen Pal" from Jo-Ann Fabrics.

I couldn't resist including the monkey in the last picture.  I'm sure I've mentioned before that Grace loves monkeys and has them all over the apartment, in her car, and in their study.  Secretly, I love looking for new and unusual monkey items to give her!