Posted by Katie on January 10, 2011

MCP Project — Week 1/52

So, my pho­tographs are typ­i­cally pretty… blah. I took pho­tog­ra­phy in High School, but for some rea­son my brain is just not trans­fer­ring those skills to digital.

One of my goals this year is too get bet­ter with my cam­era and coin­ci­den­tally The MCP Project 52 signups hap­pened to cross my path.

Here’s the gist:

MCP Project 52 – It’s a way to encour­age cre­ativ­ity, make pho­tog­ra­phy fun, and pro­vide a chal­lenge with­out actual pres­sure. Par­tic­i­pants will [sic] shar­ing their art work and images weekly while inspir­ing each other.

The theme of the first week, which I am slightly behind on, was “Around The House” so here’s my go.

100 2700x 620x465 MCP Project   Week 1/52

Click to embiggen

I fixed some of the overblown and added a vin­tage photo fil­ter to it.

I hop­ing that if I keep fid­dling with my cam­era every week that I’ll get bet­ter. Hope­fully. icon smile MCP Project   Week 1/52

If you’d like to join–and we’d love to have you–the infor­ma­tion is here. And be sure to stop by the Flickr pool of all the par­tic­i­pat­ing pho­tos here. There are some out­stand­ing pho­tos in there!


Posted by Katie on March 21, 2010

Here’s the big news!

I WON! I am SO not kid­ding. I WON!

snapshot3 Heres the big news!

I’m usu­ally not one to answer my cell­phone from Unknown Callers, but for some rea­son I answered this call. Then I talked very calmly, to a lovely woman named Stacey (because I’m sure she didn’t want to hear me squeal), hung up the phone and THEN squealed like an idiot. icon biggrin Heres the big news!

Check out the offi­cial announce­ment here. This is my goofy appli­ca­tion. I feel so dumb writ­ing these things. Thank­fully the judges must have a sim­i­lar sense of humor.

They asked just a few things from me; To keep my pas­sion and con­tinue doing exactly what I do and to cross­post on a blog that they will host for me. In return, they will spon­sor a few of my crafts. And I’m hop­ing for a serger. Maybe my Etsy shop is closer than we all think?

I haven’t got much infor­ma­tion from them, but do you know who’ll I’ll tell first when they give me more info? Besides imme­di­ate fam­ily and the neigh­bors and the guy at the con­ve­nience store and every­one on Face­book and all my sec­ond cousins twice removed? You Guys! Yay!

And, in con­clu­sion, thank you — to all of you who voted, all of you who encour­age me when I hold up a project, wrin­kle my nose and ask “Does this look stu­pid?”, and to who­ever gave me my cre­ativ­ity since both of my par­ents claim it wasn’t them and it was my Great Aunt Kather­ine, whom I never met and thank you to Prilosec!

I’m ram­bling.

Now, really in con­clu­sion, Yay! Thank you!

Posted by Katie on January 27, 2010

A Favor to Ask

4302024881 68fbd2df74 A Favor to Ask

Alright guys, I have a favor to ask.

Some­hwere along my inter­netty trav­els, I came across a sweep­stakes of sorts. Prilosec OTC, the heart­burn med­ica­tion, is offer­ing a spon­sor­ship. For any­one, for any rea­son. Accord­ing to the FAQs, it’s for around $1000, which isn’t much but is $1000 more than I can use on my hob­bies right now. icon biggrin A Favor to Ask

The selec­tion cri­te­ria has 4 sec­tions: Pas­sions, Cre­ativ­ity, VOTES, and Community.

So what I’m ask­ing from you is your vote for lit­tle hum­ble ol’ me. You do have to reg­is­ter to vote, but it should only take a few min­utes of your time to vote and leave a com­ment. And if your nice enough to vote and I win, most likely you’ll ben­e­fit in a round about way, come birth­days and Christ­mas. icon biggrin A Favor to Ask

Oh, and don’t read my dorky pro­file, I’m so bad at fill­ing out these things.

1574355240 b378f1654d A Favor to Ask

Thank you!

Posted by Katie on January 12, 2010

Chalkcloth Table Topper

Not too long ago we bought two sets of the Svala table and chairs from IKEA for our “play­room”. I was kinda bummed they came unfin­ished but then got excited that I could do what­ever I wanted with them. I mean, who doesn’t dream of this per­fectly coör­di­nated play­room that looks like it came straight out of a Pot­tery Barn or Montes­sori guidebook?

22860 PE091786 S4 Chalkcloth Table Topper

Svala from Ikea

The kids had dif­fer­ent ideas, as usual. Within a few days they had scrib­bled all over the top with crayons and who-knows-what. Even the table legs had been col­ored on. I’m totally psy­ched with the cre­ativ­ity com­ing from these two lit­tle boys. Psy­ched. Too bad they didn’t con­sult me first because their art­work totally didn’t go with my Pot­tery Barn color schemes. icon biggrin Chalkcloth Table Topper

LC2813 Brown Chalkcloth Table Topper

Daisy Dreams lam­i­nated cotton

I recently came across a tuto­r­ial for an oil­cloth table cover from Twig & This­tle, that I thought was a great idea for the boys’ work­space. I had some oil­cloth that I picked up from my favoritest fab­ric coop but it was very girly.

Then it occured to me that I had a yard of chalk­cloth in my stash. That would be per­fect! It’s fairly water resis­tant for spills and such, and I could whip out the chalks when the kids were bored. Score!

Kathleen’s tuto­r­ial included adorable lit­tle scal­lops around the edge, which I thought would be okay if done in a nice manly color, like black

100 1728 300x225 Chalkcloth Table Topper
Please ignore the mess.

chalk­cloth. But man, chalk­cloth is hard to work with. I didn’t have quite enough to cover both tables sep­a­rately so I did one cover for both tables pushed together.

I ended up just hav­ing straight edges with a lit­tle bit of dec­o­ra­tive stitch­ing.  I think it turned out pretty good and the kids have throughly tested it. Heck I even ended up eat­ing on it last night because we had a HUGE crowd to feed last night.

100 1748 495x371 Chalkcloth Table Topper

Chalk­cloth Table Topper

100 1747 495x659 Chalkcloth Table Topper

Pretty Col­ors

100 1742 495x660 Chalkcloth Table Topper

This is seri­ous business…

100 1744 495x660 Chalkcloth Table Topper

(Declan was still napping)

So if you’re in need of some­thing sim­i­lar head on over to Twig & This­tle for the exact instruc­tions. Or you can check out Oil­cloth Addict for a no sew cus­tom chalk­cloth table top­per, also.