no more 'feed me, seymour' fixture

Recently we were able to call in an electrician to hang our new fixtures and do some other electrical work at the new house. I'm very happy to look at this new, minimal kitchen light instead of the leafy, tentacled one that was there before:

I was surprised at how many folks on Instagram expressed their love for this very large fixture (nine bulbs!). I have missed the style boat on that one. I can see it would look nicer in the right setting if it was all painted white and had some smooth candelabra installed. I'm giving it to a sweet lady at church who loves it. I do wish it well.

Things are slowly coming together in other rooms also. No more large boxes to unpack, but there is a lot of clutter in every corner that I'm slowly finding spots for, or giving away. I have a shocking number of framed pictures currently piled against the stairwell. How did I get this many? Putting in some shelving before September in the school room would be nice so that I can get the hundreds of books off the floor.

I have to keep reminding myself that it took years to organize my other house and arrange everything just so. We had rooms with no furniture in them for a year or two when we first moved in. It's all a process. Like a fun puzzle that is slowly coming together and won't be as much fun when it's finished!

what I'm up to

Doors going in. That's Dave, possibly the
best person in the whole wide world.

Was my last blog post really in April? All May I've been in a vortex. Here's almost half of June gone and we are still digging out from our remodel, house move and an unplanned kidney stone surgery for my Schmoopie. (doh!)

May is always completely crazy every year because of:
- ending the homeschool school year
- our anniversary
- couple of family birthdays including my daughter's (13!)
- standardized testing
- Mother's Day
Sooo adding in the remodeling, packing, moving and the surgery just made this May extra action-packed*. Honestly, I was feeling a little desperate on a few of those days. Some hysterical tears were shed (by me). Balls were dropped. Spinning plates crashed to the ground. Hamsters fell out of their wheels. The surgery happened the day after we moved our furniture to the new house. Aaaand I felt like the worst mother in the world when I wasn't present to see my freshman in high school get several awards at the year-end celebration. ("Wait...you got awards tonight??") Gahhhh. She'll tell it all to her therapist in future years I guess. Gotta let it go. -whoosh- (there it goes)

*most positive wording I can think of.

But it's all good. All of it.
The remodel was finished. Mostly. We are moved. Schmoopie feels better! Thank the Lord! We love the new house. No one got hurt (except a few pieces of furniture were winged).

More memories from the remodel:

All the new doors and wainscoting were compliments of Dave.

Banisters were painted.

Carpet was replaced.

The entire interior of the house was repainted, ceilings, walls and trim. I painted the upstairs bedrooms but left the rest to professionals. I chose grays and whites. No pictures yet of the pretty new paint. Forgot to take pre-move shots! I went with Titanium for the main area, with some White Dove, Simply White, Sedate Gray and Revere Pewter thrown in. You can see a tiny wedge of Titanium on the wall in this next photo.

Oh, and we also had to replace the hardwood floors. Didn't expect that. But loving the new floor! It's hickory. The color is called Prairie Dust. 

We still need to replace the lighting. This evil, tentacled pendant in the kitchen (Feed me, Seymore!) has stabbed all of us in the head at least once. It's going. There's also a dark, aggressive looking Viking fixture in the dining room whose days are numbered. That stuff had to jump down the list for later along with the cabinet repainting.

Presently I'm buried in an avalanche of 20 years worth of stuff thrown into the new house. Squaring it all away will have to wait as we are in the middle of coordinating some improvements to the old house to get it listed:

You might remember the old color. Now the entire house has been painted Sherwin Williams Agreeable Gray, which my realtor and her designer assure me is the perfect, appealing shade of greige for house lookers. And it really is! Not too dark either. I think it looks so fresh.

And this carpet is just about to go in. The color is called Mink and I think it will look really spiffing with the new paint. Soooo close to listing the house. Feeling excited to get that going!

And feeling the pull to get back to my craft life -- Mr Drummer has been waiting and the last three of the Twelve Days patterns too, all tapping their tiny felt feet to be brought to life.

I hope your school break is going swimmingly!

what I'm up to

What is going on with me? You may have noticed I've dropped off social media. It's because we are moving! Just 15 minutes away but this process has taken over my life at the moment. After searching diligently for an ideal (slightly larger) house for 2 years we've pretty much found it. Our poor realtor! After about 6 months of fruitless showings we told him to forget about us and we'd just call him when we saw a house we wanted to see. Last month we saw the house listed online, went to view it and whamm-o, that was it. It's been a contracting/mortgaging/packing/painting/flooring whirlwind ever since. And throw in some home schooling and pattern design. And so much coffee.

My two girls are kind of freaking out. I caught Thing 2 hugging our refrigerator the other day. She's not ready for a strange refrigerator. I need to remember they didn't grow up like I did – moving every couple of years. They were excited about finding another house until we found one. They've never lived anywhere else but here. Unlike the moves in my formative years, nothing will change for them except for their house. Church and school are still the same. But it's still an adjustment and I have to remember to be sensitive to that! But not that sensitive. Adversity makes you grow. And there's a huge consolation for two teen girls in the new house: they each get their own bathroom. That will be epic. Plus they get to pick their own paint color for their rooms. Within reason*.

Our current house is pretty great. We built it in 2001. Picked out all the colors. Brought our babies home to it. It's packed with memories. It's our first house. I remember how huge it seemed after we moved here from our apartment. It has an awesome studio for my business. I think the sentimentality will surely hit me at some point. I'll be sad about leaving it. But for now I just ain't got time for that.

*No glitter. No green. No darks. No color that will be hard to look at. Nothing in the pink family. OK, basically they are constrained to white, blue or gray.

branch and berry applique pillow covers for people I love

Handmade gifts. I sewed these two pillow covers over the course of the last month for beloved people Robyn and Leigh. And they were mailed embarrassingly late for their September birthdays. Sorry, guys.

That's what they look like stuffed with pillows. This grey one is Robyn's, shown flat:

The colors were chosen to match her decor. So if it clashes, Robyn, please feel completely free to never tell me.

While I'm showing Robyn's cover I'll throw in the other handmade item in her package (but not made by me): this pretty embroidered necklace by Skrynka. Natalka is really so friendly and handles custom orders with ease. I got one for myself a few months ago and love it. Her work is so neatly done and I dig the antiqued finish on the chain and settings.

The orangey browny cover is Leigh's, made with her family room in mind:

Covers are much easier to mail than actual pillows, you know. All this goes on the assumption that they already have handy an 18 inch pillow that needs a fall makeover. Fingers crossed, ears plugged.

Both covers were made with the same pattern. I sketched the original design small on paper (I work much better with thumbnail size) and then scanned it and scaled it way up to actual size. I printed it out and traced a cleaner copy over it with freezer paper and punched holes for placement guides.

The fabric is heavyweight canvas. The leaves were appliquéd with a zig zag and the stems were done by many passes of straight stitch machine sewing while I re-watched Dr Who series 5. (My favorite is the first episode. "You're Scottish, fry something." Prisoner zero. Fish custard!) The berries are cut from wool felt and sewn on by hand.

I always wonder when I'm in the middle of sewing these stems if there is a heavier weight of thread that I can use (like jean thread) that wont mess up my machine in the process. I'll have to look into that.

I finished the covers with the envelope backs and piping method from my pillow cover tutorial of yore. Tacky glue sure beats pins.

pompeja pillow cover(s)

One for me and one for my birthday girl sister, Lori. Pillow covers make great handmade gifts! No fastener required if you do an envelope opening in the back. You can showcase gorgeous fabric without using a lot of yardage, just 19 inches square for an 18 inch pillow. Easy to mail, too. These colors seemed right up my sister's alley. They sure ping my meter. Brights on dulls! My favorite. I'll get yours in the mail to you, Lori!

I used my own tutorial to make them. Even though pillow covers are pretty simple to sew I was a little vague on how I did my piping last time. My blog comes in pretty handy to me. Har. I'm my most loyal reader.

The fabric is that vintage Swedish curtain piece I recently purchased. I have some scraps leftover that I can use another way. It's just too pretty to throw away.

In situ. How I hate this old brown couch in our dining-area-turned-sitting-room. I think the color is called "Slough of Despond". But the new pillow certainly makes it easier on the eyes. I'd so love to replace the couch with a light and bright Ektorp. Someday!

painted my brown brick hearth white, check

For so long I've wanted to do this. Why O why did I wait?

I um. Didn't mention it directly to my husband just before I did it. I totally did mention it several months ago to him and received a noncommittal noise in reply that completely might have meant 'Yes, please do this, it will be gorgeous' or may have possibly meant 'Over my dead body'.

I got the bee in my bonnet a few weeks ago to follow through so I went right out to the home improvement store and got a quart of stain blocking paint/primer in one, matte finish. Thanks, Mr Paintguy. I actually needed every bit of that quart because the brick and mortar are so porous.

Here's a before shot and also an action shot taken by my daughter. I didn't even think about taking a before shot until she mentioned it right before I started in on the mortar. She'll make a better blogger than I. The brick is the same brick as the accent on the outside of our house and just looked so dated in my light/bright room. It was a light sucker, especially with that black gas stove in the middle.

And yes, I managed to get paint in my hair. The painting took a few hours because I'm super picky about getting very accurate edges.

I wanted pretty full coverage but I didn't get the brush in every nook and cranny. Before I started painting, I considered just hitting the high spots of the brick with a roller instead of a brush to create a more distressed, patchy look. I was afraid it would be too busy in the small space. I wonder if I could go back with sandpaper and knock off some of the paint in random spots? I'm kind of enjoying the white out right now though.

When Michael got home I was in our bedroom. I heard him pause in the family room. I squinched my eyes and called "Don't you LOVE it?? I think it's GORGEOUS." (go for the over-the-top sale)
Short pause.
Then he said, very kindly, as he came into the bedroom and loosened his tie, "I don't love it yet."

He later mentioned that he was going to get used to it quicker than he thought. (For the win!) Now to get rid of the man-chair.

mustard + leaves + pillow

What do you do when you have company coming over and a long list of things to do that are more pressing than sewing random decor items? Why, you disengage your brain and make a pillow. And when I say 'you' I mean me.

See? It needed a blot of mustard yellow just there. In my defense I actually had intended to sew this pillow cover for quite a while now because I ordered the cotton before Christmas specifically for that purpose. A very quick, sew-it-and-be-done-with-it, plain, solid pillow.

After the brain disengagement happened somehow the 'solid' part turned into 'eighteen leaf applique'. I'm not sure how that happened. But I loves it.

It was quick and scruffy looking applique. All on the machine. Cut the leaves from chambray, layed them down with dots of Tacky Glue, zig zagged the edges, and ran a white vein down the middles. The black stems are machine stitched with intentionally wobbly lines and the leaf veins got several back-and-forths of white stitching so they are more visible.

new pillas for the living room

Late to the party with summery pillows but even so I forged ahead. I'll just bring them out again next spring. I don't think the wild combo of prints works as well with my decor as I thought they would, but they certainly are cheerful. The fabrics are mostly economical Premier Prints cottons.

The 18 inch square covers are simple and quick to make: just two 19 inch square fabric pieces sewn with a 1/2 inch seam allowance and a 16 inch zipper on one side.

what I'm up to

Giving up my school room, for one. The girls have shared a bedroom ever since I started home schooling way on back in 2007. My oldest will be twelve soon and she really needed a space of her own. She's a neatness person and a compulsive organizer, and her sister is... not that. I'm going to miss having a school room, but Thing 1 is thrilled with having her own bedroom. We've spent the last two weekends buying and assembling new bedroom furniture from IKEA and redoing the closets. I'm just going to say that the Hemnes chest of drawers comes with a jumbo soul-sucking five pound bag of screws and dowels. Clear your afternoon. Turned out nice though, thanks to Schmoopie.

And I'm also just going to say NO MORE BUNKBEDS. Oh, sweet ever lovin Mary Queen of Scots. No more wrestling sheets on and off a bunkbed. Oh yesyesyesss.

However, the poor girl does have to have this epic wall of schoolbooks and materials taking up an entire wall of her room. It just had nowhere else to go and no complaints from her. Now both bedrooms need finishing touches, like shelves, curtains and bedskirts. I have plans to redo their duvet covers into quilts (that photo was pre-bunkbed). Should be easy. Uh huh.

Now I need to find somewhere to put all the school stuff that is now homeless and is in piles all over the house. We'll be conducting school in the kitchen from now on, so I'm pretty sure going to need another one of these:

You should have seen the mountain of toys and books and educational tools we gave away over the weekend. At least ten garbage bags full. How did we get so much stuff? More to the point, why did I still have it? It was good to clear it all out, but sad too. Little girly toys, dress ups and beginner readers. Puzzles. Math manipulatives. *sob* School furniture went into the attic. If you've ever tried to disassemble a double IKEA Besta bookshelf, you'll know it's not for the faint of heart. After recalling how heinous it was to put together, my attitude was 'give it away and buy a new one later' but my husband is much more
1) handy
2) thrifty
3) determined
Thank goodness.

Making pillows for another. My screened porch badly needed some new ones because I can't ever remember to put the outdoor pillows away during Georgia's pollen season. There's just no coming back from the Bilious Green Fog sometimes. I picked up all these outdoor fabrics on sale at Jo-Ann and sewed up some quick pillow covers with zippers.

Planning more pillows. This time some summery ones for my living room. Aren't these bold ikat-like fabrics nice? Also cheap!

Ordering expensive apparel fabric. Because that is what you do when you already have too much fabric. I apparently have big plans for my free time this August. Robyn, I finally found that Liberty of yours I have coveted admired so much!



Laughing at this video. Young friends Micah and Chelsea are having their first baby, and I think this preview style video is the funniest and cleverest announcement ever. (That's my niece Erin and her husband Nathan making a cameo appearance in the whole airplane/choo choo train scene.)

And oh my word we are on the last seven days of the 2013/2014 Holland Academy for Young Ladies school year. I am We are really really really looking forward to our summer break. I have some Twelve Days patterns to crank out! I hope your summer is going swimmingly.

my friend Robyn's beautiful home

I didn't get to properly show off my friend's gorgeous home in my recent posts about Rio. While I was there I spent a goodly amount of time wandering around her house just oohing and ahhing (and taking mental copycat notes). I was finally able to persuade her to take some shots of her decor and send them to me so I could show you guys. 

Their space is absolutely flooded with crazy great light from the wall to wall balconies, plus the bright white walls. I think Robyn has done a fantastic job of warming it up with lots of color and homey textiles. It strikes a perfect balance of light, color and comfort. Lovely.

Homemade cushions abound. I love that Nani IRO fabric.

So charmed by the curated collections on her bookshelves, which are organized according to color.

Fabulous family art wall. Very honored to have my work featured! :-)

I thought she must have found this awesome painting at Hippie Feira but nope, she organized an empty canvas and gave brushes to her three kids. This is their masterpiece! I'd love to do that with my own girls. That's a handmade cushion on the bench.

This is her collection of oils from various art fairs and galleries. Such a great sampling of local art. More handmade cushions on the couch.

Her dining room!

Handmade table runner. The metal chairs!

Love love love the eclectic plate wall. Such a well-balanced amorphous arrangement and perfect touches of color. Great solution to the huge white wall.

From her master bedroom. Coral hues and homey patchwork. That's a souvenir needlework cushion from their recent family trip to Peru.

The foyer. Lots of personal family keepsakes.  I love the pop of red from that painting.

 The view from one of the balconies. Wow.

And here's one of Robyn I snapped while I was there. That's her bedroom behind her. The open balcony doors keep a refreshing breeze constantly blowing through the house.

Rich working hard on the main balcony. Can you see the tightly stretched netting? It's to keep important things like coffee cups and children from falling over the railing.

Thanks for the lovely tour, Robyn!