Squirrel stamp and ornament

So, I made myself a squirrel stamp.

Then I made a little ornament.  I will try and post tomorrow showing the steps.

I am imagining a little tree full of woodland theme ornaments.  I don't have any woodland themed ornaments so I am challenging myself to make them.  I am going to do multiples of each (I have this thing of having to have at least 3 of every ornament) so I am not trying to think of 50 different ornaments.  Whether I get there or not, well, we will see.  We are lucky enough to be having family visit us for Christmas (SO EXCITED!) and I have a loooong list of projects/cleaning/decluttering I want to get done before they arrive in early December.  I have a bit of a habit of trying to do too much at once.  Like we all do I am sure.  They might be lucky to just find the bed made.  :)

Pinterest Inspired Bench

I think I might have mentioned that I liked the easy instructions I found for making this little Shaker style bench and that I wanted to have a go at it.  I had it all finished a while ago (read: a year) but forgot to blog about it.  Ha ha, don't you love my confused decorating here?  I was just transitioning between Halloween and Thanksgiving so you get both!

Anyway, this is a really easy woodworking project that didn't require anything more than a drill, wood glue and screws.  I had all the timber cut to size at Home Depot but you could do that yourself if you have wood lying around and a saw to cut it with.  As it was, the guy at Home Depot totally stuffed up the measurements so I had to adjust the sizes on a couple of pieces after I started putting it together and realised it looked a bit odd.  Oh, I also borrowed a jigsaw from a neighbour to cut the triangular notches in the legs.

This is where I found the instructions and I strongly urge you to have a go.  It was a very quick project.  It took longer to paint it!

Hello

Well, hello there, if anyone is still around. :)

Dropping in with a quick little project I did a few weeks ago.  My wonderful sister and her husband made the trek across the Pacific to come see us (another sister is coming for Christmas - yay!) and I made this pillow for the guest bed downstairs.  I love it!  So cute for a guest bed and helped cut down on the 'twee' I had going on in the room (what better spot to satisfy my secret love of everything granny floral?).

I made a simple envelope cover from a drop cloth (seriously love those things), hand wrote the word on there with a disappearing ink pen and then embroidered it using a simple backstitch and a thicker crochet yarn in a dark pink.  I am sure I could have taken a bit more time and got it more 'perfect' (or, you know, in the exact middle...) by printing out a template, tracing it on or making a stencil yada yada yada but then I wouldn't have done it.  I only have snippets of time to do anything when the kids are home on holidays.  They are back at school as of yesterday so I have a list as long as my arm of projects I want to tackle now... I am working on rehab'ing a tray and freshening up my foyer right now.  Be back soon with the results!

Busy doin' but not bloggin'

While we have been dealing with this stuff (thankfully this is all gone now and we finally have a day above 40 degrees today!  yippeeeee!!!!).......

I was busy doing some inside stuff like hanging this gallery wall in our family room.  It is our favourite room in the house but was a but unloved on the walls and still felt very 'we just moved in'-ish.  Sooo, I finally got busy to stop myself from going CRAZY from the snow still hanging around in April.  I really wanted to only hang things that meant something or that I really love so I can get the most enjoyment from it everyday.  It is a mix of my kids' art, a framed doily my Nana made, the Home sign (which was made for us by our best friend Barry for us to take with us on our international travels and we have hung it in every home so far - it is the first thing we put up), a plate that always hung in my Nana's home, a favourite print from Emily of The Black Apple, a bottle of seaglass collected in Uruguay by another dear friend and gifted to me, seashell art I made fom seashells collected in Uruguay, favourite thrift store finds, etc.).  This wall was blank for a very long time but I put up the picture ledge last September and it has been only the picture ledge with a few accessories since then so this has been a long time coming.  What can I say?  I don't like to rush!  :)  I kid you not though, when my husband watches tv, he sits in a chair directly across from the tv just to the left of where I took this photo from and he DID NOT NOTICE the entire gallery wall (I did it while he as out of town).  After a few hours I just had to ask if he noticed anything different about the room.... sigh...

I have also scored a few thrift shop finds lately.  The above items were bought on a spring break Macklemore style 'thrift shop challenge' ($20 in my pocket...) with my kids.  The picture is a bit dark (it is a dark room plus it has dark carpet) but that super cute mid century bedside table was only $5.99!  So happy with it - it now resides in my son's room.  The globe was $10 and I loooove its soft colours.  I also got a little wooden craft plaque that I want to make into a key hook for near the garage door entrance, a wood and marble chinese checkers game and a tiny little English porcelain plate (I collect them - they are personal salt cellar type plates).

I also repainted my Home sign.  I can't remember if I have ever shown it before but I painted it a taupe colour to match the decor in our apartment in Malaysia for some reason that escapes me now.  I don't know when I will learn that I just like a lot of colour.  I have always loved it but now I LOVE, LOVE, LOVE it in yellow.  That photo above looks a little odd but I just got a new iMac and have always been a PC girl so it is taking some getting used to.  Therefore my old trusty photo editing tools (which I was not very good at anyway but at least I knew how to use them a little bit!) are not around.

I did this embroidery for my dining room (as part of another gallery wall).  I showed a picture of an oversized embroidery that I was taken with in my last post and I wanted to do one but simpler.  This is certainly nowhere near as large as my inspiration one either (it was 1m [3'] across, this is about 36cm [14"]).  I have never done much cross stitch either so I just did a simple back stitch.  This is the second version as I tried it first with regular embroidery floss but the line was too fine and you couldn't see it unless you were right in front of it.  I used an economical knitting weight yarn for this version and it does show up better but I think I have to have another try at it so I can see it from my kitchen.  I love the yellow but it is still hard to see from a distance.  I am thinking of cutting out felt letters and stitching them on next.  Not ready to give up on some form of yellow yet!

So, that is a quick update of a few things I have been busy with.  Hopefully I will be back soon with some more but my blogging schedule is a bit unpredictable right now (award for stating the obvious goes to me...).

Hope you are all enjoying a glorious Spring/Autumn wherever you are!  I am going to go and stare at the trees and imagine leaves on them...

Favourite Finds Friday

No crafting happened around here this week unfortunately (apart from the kids making crayon hearts for their valentine's for school).  Busy earlier and A has come down with a horrible cold Wednesday and I am fighting it off.  Nothing much happening except domino rally and lego building.  I need to drag the poor kid out to buy some chicken pieces so I can make a big pot of soup (and try out that recipe from last week's list).

So, in no particular order, here are my favourites from this week:

This link from Young House Life where kids describe what they think would make a cool house.  Cute and funny.

I just signed up for their $5 iPhone photography course starting on March 1. 

If you have received your copy of the latest Country Living, this huge cross stitch sampler is featured in a home on the front cover.  I love it!  It is 1 metre across.

I have quite the thing for bunnies and I adore this hook from Anthropologie.  They have a fox too.  I saw this on the lovely blog, My Old Country House when she redid a bathroom and used it there.

These pretty papers are available through Toffee Magazine for $2.50 for an instant download.

These bowls come from Country Road Homewares, a store in Australia.  They have this shape they call Bistro bowls and they bring out new patterns every year.  They have other matching items as well like mugs and my sister has a lovely growing collection of them in different patterns.  I bought two of these in pink (stowing them very gently in our luggage for our return trip) and have been happily using them since.  They just brighten up my morning a bit.  :)

This is a holiday rental in Cornwall.  I have always wanted to visit England and, if I go, I want to stay here!  So lovely and it is right on the shoreline.  I found this through the Hooked on Houses blog.  Be warned if you visit her blog, you will be hooked too!

Hope you are all well and happy weekend!

Happy Valentine's Day

Well, I am squeaking this post in by the skin of my teeth...  Busy week, sick kids, blah blah.  Anyway, on to the photo.  My sister and her family visited us from Australia last September/October and, on one of our outings, we spent some time on the banks of Lake Superior in Duluth (we all loved it btw!).  It is a very rocky/pebbly shore and I had the great idea that we could all look for heart shaped rocks as I had seen a number of them on other people's blogs awhile ago.  We did find a few but my sister also found this lovely little heart eroded into a big rock.  So I will leave you with that and save my 'bah humbug' anti-Valentine rant for another day.... :)

Cabin fever 2013 - pinch pots

My favourite side effect of winter is the kids' renewed interest in doing crafts together.  They tend to avoid it in the summer when they can be outside all the time and I miss doing these things with them.  Recently at school A made little 'pinch pots'.  A regular 1st grade item apparently.  For those of you without little ones to tell you, a pinch pot is just a clay pot molded by hand from a blob of aforementioned clay.  You can get them quite smooth if you keep a little bowl of water close by and dip your finger in.  Decorate however you like (I have a big jar of random beads and another of sequins that have been our decorations of choice).  I am guessing you can paint them once dry but I kind of like the natural colour.  The school one was painted and kiln fired (yellow! so cute).  I bought a big bucket of Crayola's air dry clay from Target (the kids' art and crafts projects section) and ours dry in front of the fireplace.  I am not sure what we are going to do with them all (be warned relatives back in Australia with birthdays looming...) but we have quite a row of them on our dining room windowsill.  I love that this is such an easy craft to set up as well.  Just grab the bucket of clay and a few embellishments and pull out your chunk of clay to work on.  I think I need to buy more clay.

Favourite Finds Friday

I wasn't kidding about my love of alliteration the other day (I am sure I have mentioned it many times actually....).

To finish up the week I am just going to share a few random things I came across this week that I enjoyed.

I just bought this great 'Hogsmeade Retro Travel' poster from Poster Revolution.  E is a huge Harry Potter fan and this poster is only $4.80 today (don't know for how long).

I am going to try out Smitten Kitchen's chicken noodle soup recipe - it looks fantastic.  I should try more of her recipes as they all look wonderful.

This image comes from a wonderful blog that you have probably already heard of, Posie Gets Cozy.  Alicia writes so beautifully and creates the most heart achingly gorgeous things.  But I just love this photo of some vintage wallpaper swatches.  That yellow one has me drooling.

Loving these cool eco friendly binders from Naked Binder.

Isn't this adorable?  I love this little woven heart valentine from Mini-eco in the UK.

Last but not least, I love this free printable colouring page from Gerbera Designs - it comes blank and you colour it in however you like (obviously...).  I am going to do one for each of the kids.

What have you discovered this week?  Do you overuse the word 'love' in your descriptions of things??  Feel free to share in the comments!

(disclaimer: none of these links/opinions are sponsored or affiliated in any way, none of these websites or people probably even know who I am - these are just my personal opinions of things I have come across in my internet browsing travels this week)