Runaway October

Declan, Rowan and Mom’s new kit­ten, Cataclysm

After explain­ing to Declan and Rowan what Thanks­giv­ing is about, these are the things they have decided they are thank­ful for.

Rowan:

• Kurt (My moms cat)
• Lions
• Horses
• Cows
• Vit­a­mins
• Books
• Candy
• Jalapeños
• Mama
• Our house

Declan:

• Books
• Meat
• All that other stuff (Trans­la­tion: I’m dis­tracted and want to ride my bike, which I for­got to men­tion I was thank­ful for.

Or the S.M.O.R as I like to call it — The Sewing Machines Oper­a­tions Room.

Remem­ber this sorry lit­tle 11’x11’ room?

Which was later cleaned and some­what orga­nized to look like this:

Well, it’s kind of fin­ished now. It’s now a very work­able space and I can actu­ally com­plete projects some­where other than the kitchen table. YAY!

I took at least 100 pic­tures today, and about 20 a few weeks ago. This room is very very hard to photograph.

I even tried to take a video with my fancy new Flip Video Cam­corder from my Prilosec spon­sor­ship, but it eats bat­ter­ies like no other.

Of course I couldn’t find any bat­ter­ies to replace them with.

Such is the life of a mom.

The project table is com­pletely hand­made by me and my dad. We used plans from Knock Off Wood. Here’s the top and the cubby sides.

I’ll go into it in a lit­tle more detail later.

I’ll have to slowly buy or make some pretty bas­kets on con­tain­ers to go in here.

Love these stools from Overstock.com

Hand­made string balls made by one of the boys.

There was two.

One of them bit the dust, or rather, the dogs water bowl.

The string ball, not the boys.

Well, okay, they usu­ally assault the water bowl at least once a day, but they don’t melt.

Unless you count the dirt that melts off.

I should make some more. String Balls, not boys. Maybe a lit­tle girl but that’s a dif­fer­ent sub­ject.

Now maybe I can get these bad boys quilted and bound and in use.

And what craft room photo shoot is com­plete with­out a pic­ture of a cat.

I used Martha Stew­art Hydrangea flat paint for the walls. I also painted the ceil­ing and all the trim, but can’t find the names of them. They’re the same ones that were rec­om­mended on the paint chip palette. No wor­ries about every­thing match­ing together. What a smart girl, eh?

I can’t seem to find a decent sam­ple color online, so you’ll just have to squint and imag­ine you can tell the true color of everything.

I do hope to make some roman blinds or cur­tains for the win­dows. And the bas­kets I men­tioned ear­lier. I def­i­nitely need some art­work and other pret­ties to hang up and keep me happy while I work. I would really really love a stereo or MP3 player of some sort in there too. I work so much bet­ter with music.

So, that’s the S.M.O.R.

What do you think?

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Today is Mother’s Day in the USA. Other coun­tries have dif­fer­ent dates to appre­ci­ate mothers.

It’s really all about the ties of fam­ily, the strength of love and appre­ci­a­tion for the lead­ers in our life.

What bet­ter way to show you love your mom then by post­ing old pic­tures?

There’s Dad in the back.

Uncle Dar­rin, Grandma Betty, Mom hold­ing Cody.

Bon­nie and I front and cen­ter. This was 1989.

Hence those glasses. No, kid­ding. They’re lovely Mom.

Also 1989.

Grandma Betty and Bon­nie, Mom and Cody, Grandma List and Char­lie, then me.

Nice Bar­bie.

1991.

Grandma Betty, Mom hold­ing Erin, Grandma List and Cody.

Pretty Mama.

And just to prove I haven’t always been goofy looking:

Aug ’85. Almost three years old.

So make sure today that you give your mom a hug, tell her that she means every­thing to you, and be thank­ful for what you have.

And that she got rid of those glasses.

KIDDING! <3

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The heart of a mother is a deep abyss at the bot­tom of which you will always find forgiveness.

~Hon­oré de Balzac

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I like to fre­quent thrift stores, espe­cially on 50% off days. I also like to read dec­o­rat­ing and home­mak­ing blogs.

Because of said blogs, I’ve real­ized that I need to pay more atten­tion to dec­o­rat­ing my own house.

Thrift stores are a great place for find­ing one of a kind items, espe­cially if you have an eye for refur­bish­ing or updat­ing things. You have to real­ize the poten­tial of things, I guess you could say. My hus­band doesn’t quite get it, so I often get ‘What are you going to do with it?’ or ‘What is it?” or ‘Why on earth did you buy that?’. In gen­eral I get kid­ded for alot of the “dec­o­rat­ing” I do.

Recently I had a tough pur­chas­ing dilemma. My mom, the boys, a friend and I were at Good­will, when Mom men­tioned there was a really cool green chair near the back but it had some rips in it. I didn’t think much of it. I mean, a green chair, right? As I strolled towards the back… Okay, so as I calmly walked to the back while my kids were fight­ing like wolver­ines in the cart, the chair caught my eye.

See what I mean? Would that not have made you look too?

I think I sat on it for a good 20 min­utes decid­ing what to do. It was $25 on half price. Prob­lem was it had rips, like mom men­tioned. I even sent a pic­ture to my hus­band and asked what to do. Some­times it’s eas­ier to let him decide. He told me sure as long as it was in good con­di­tion. Yikes.

This is the seat. It was two smaller rips before my boys noticed it. :S

I just couldn’t pass it up though. I bought it!

I was so upset and angry when they loaded it for me though. The guy load­ing it put it on a box dolly and drug it across the asphalt, doing even more dam­age to it around the bot­tom edges then it had before.

My mom thinks the chair is awe­some, but Matt still makes fun of me for it. He just has no sense, right?

The color above is more true to life, and it obvi­ously needs a real home, other than stuffed in my front sit­ting room. From what we can tell it’s real leather and some­one cov­ered it by hand, hence the slightly erratic nail­head trim. But that’s all part of the appeal for me.

I’ve looked into leather repair for it, but hon­estly I think the lit­tle lamb skin on it is per­fect. It also helps reduce the stick­i­ness of bare legs against leather that I dread.

So, what do you  think? I LOOVE it!

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40 days ago my madre had a birth­day. This is what was wait­ing for her when she got home from work.

I used the Vin­tage Pil­low­case Lunch­box Tuto­r­ial from Oh, Frans­son.

While it’s nei­ther vin­tage nor a pil­low­case, I think it’s adorable. So did Mom. Good thing too, because I was fin­ish­ing up the last step as she walked in the door!

The tuto­r­ial pro­vides good instruc­tions for using Iron-On Vinyl. While you can’t see it in the pic­ture, the whole bag is essen­tially water/spill resis­tant. I had a heck of a time find­ing Iron-On vinyl. The girls at the JoAnn’s cut­ting counter had no idea what I was talk­ing about. Thank­fully some­one knew the store though. Turns it they keep it in the Home Dec depart­ment by the nail­head trim and cur­tain rods and such. $10 for a prepack­aged roll that should be enough for 2 lunchbags.

Also included in the tuto­r­ial is this cute lit­tle place­mat. Which is per­fect. We all know how ‘Ick’ lunch­rooms can be.

Next time, though, I don’t think I’ll cover the han­dles in vinyl. Or try to source a thicker vinyl. It already is get­ting a lit­tle ragged from light use. Mean­ing it’s car­ried back and forth to the car daily and that’s about it.

If you’re think­ing about mak­ing one be sure to check out the Flickr Group. There are some cute ver­sions there too.

I’d love to hear what you’ve made lately.

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