Sep 2nd, 2010
Welcome to my dining room! I’ve finally photographed my favorite wall of dioramas and botanical fantasies for you to see. Mind you, there’s much to be done in the new house, but sometimes I can’t believe we’ve only lived here a month!
Eric has always snuffed my obsession with little fake birds, but graciously sucked it up when I used them as a central theme for our wedding four years ago. He must have been kidding himself if he thought that I’d get rid of all of those little birds after the wedding was over. And indeed, I’ve held on to those birds ever since, without any real idea of what to do with them.
When we moved into our new house most of the walls were painted truly disgusting colors, but the living room was a shade of green that we could work with. It has turned out to be a fantastic backdrop for our botanical/library/harry potter decor, which by the way we had no idea our furnishings could support. The flora and fauna theme was strengthened by the fact that we live in a beautiful small, rural town with natural elements all around us. Our morning walks around the park are the perfect opportunity to collect luscious tufts of moss that fall from the hundred year old oak trees. It didn’t take me long to put my love of birds, glassware, and moss covered twigs together to create a diorama heaven. I love living here.
I think the birds look quite happy, don’t you?
As for the wet moss, I just give it a squirt of water every so often to liven it up. Eventually it will dry out, in which case I can either replace it with a quick trip to the park ( I LOVE it here!) or leave it brown. While I’ve used live moss, this look is just as easy to re-create with supplies from your local craft store and I encourage you to give it a try!
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Aug 11th, 2010
While my studio may have very limited wall space, the rest of the house contains more blank walls than you can shake a stick at. So Eric and I have been trying our hardest to fill that wall space with things we enjoy.
Eric has had this small, vintage Jesus portrait since college, when he found it, took it home, and drew headphones on it with a Sharpie. Little atheist Eric hardly knew what he was doing then, but years later that little picture with peeling paper has taken on new meaning.
I’ve always enjoyed vintage religious art and so I decided that little headphones Jesus needed a companion. And that’s how we ended up with the best paint-by-numbers Jesus EVER! Behold!
This is how collections are born, my friends.
Oh yes, and in case you were wondering, Eric is no longer an atheist.
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Aug 9th, 2010
So I’ve had this gigantic bulletin board that I’ve been lugging around for the past couple of years and I’ve never really found a great way to use it. It’s super tall and super duper long, but it’s almost too much space. Now that I’m in the sunroom/studio my wall space is incredibly limited due to the fact that most of my “walls” are lovely, beautiful, huge windows (I’m definitely not complaining about that!). So I figured I should make the most of my giant bulletin board and give it a makeover. Sadly, I was too enthusiastic to take “before” pictures, but suffice it to say that it was bland and kind of ugly really.
A bit of paint, some nummy striped washi tape, spray painted vintage push-in letters (from the same set that I used in the mailbox project), rickrack, and fabric-covered thumb tacks, and voila!
I had to break the “To Do” section up into categories because for reals, my to do list just goes on and on and on. I’ve been testing out my lovely new system for a week now and it’s really been keeping me on task! What’s out of view are a “Orders to Fill” section and “Ideas” section. Being organized is so much fun!
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Jul 28th, 2010
Our house was born one hundred and ten years ago with cuteness infused into its soul. It lived hapilly adorable for 59 years before something horrible happened. I’m talking about The Sixties. A lot of the cuteness got replaced with flimsy wood paneling. Then The Seventies, The Eighties, and the ugliest parts of The Nineties happened and a little more cuteness got replaced with side-opening aluminum windows, florescent box lighting, and cloudy-day-colored vinyl siding. So we’ve got a lot of re-cutification to do! Some ugly bits I can live with temporarily. Like the carpet . . . we’re just gonna have to deal with that one for a while. But the sad, sad porch and it’s even sadder mailbox had to be put right asap. The poor mailman has had to see that every single day for who knows how long. Read on for a How-To at the end of the post!
Ooh-la-la so official and fancy!
BEFORE- Dusty, lidless, crooked, and cheap looking- blegh!
How did I do it? Although it took me a while to figure out the best way to get the lid to attach, this project actually cost me $0!!! Pretty fancy for zero bucks, huh? I used materials that I just had laying around, but you could certainly purchase everything you need for under $15- minus the mailbox.
1.) Remove all ugly bits from your mailbox. The fleur-de-lis just popped right off with a knife. Measure the widest part of the mailbox and cut molding(s) to size. I used baseboard molding that had fallen off, plus added some cute scalloped molding left over from another project.
2.) Paint your molding, and spray paint the mail box if necessary.
3.) Embellish the front of your mailbox using wood bits (from Michaels) and E6000 glue. I happened to have some vintage 3D sign letters laying around, which I spray painted black.
4.) Attach a small brass hinge to the back of the mailbox lid. Double check that it will open in the right direction. Then attach the rest of the hinge directly to the inside of the back of the mailbox. Hang your mailbox and voila- postal cuteness!
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Jul 19th, 2010
Our POD is finally unpacked, ladies and gentlemen! That means that Eric and Polly are vagabonds no more! After 3+ years of moving from place to place, storing our precious things here and there, we finally have a whole house to ourselves, including all of our STUFF! It’s been so much fun to open boxes and find nostalgic things that I haven’t looked at in ages. And it feels really good that our scattered belongings are at last all within our reach whenever we want them.
So far we’ve only had 1.5 tragedies. 1. We couldn’t get the boxspring mattress up the stairs. It seemed illogical that it wasn’t fitting and we wondered what we were doing wrong, until we remembered that the previous owners slept downstairs so there were no beds upstairs since probably 1945 when beds were smaller or something. The regular mattress fit just fine and now our bed is just a touch lower than before, no biggie. And tragedy no. 1.5 is that two of the screws to the bed disappeared sometime during the move. We put it together anyway and hopefully the bed won’t collapse while we sleep!
Now we get to begin the overwhelming task of making our living room into a living room and not a labyrinth of boxes and assorted furniture. It’s going surprisingly fast and soon I’ll be back to posting about actual craftiness! I miss my sewing machine so much!!
I promise that next time I write I’ll a.) have something crafty to say and b.) I’ll have pictures!
P.S. The pups are LOVING the new house! They get a really big kick out of running up and down the stairs over and over again- crazy mutts!
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Jun 18th, 2010
In my flurry of travel I never got to share my Renegade weekend with you all! It’s hard to sum up such an explosion of awesome craftiness, but for the sake of time I’ll give it a shot.
Because I like to hit all my bases I decided to turn my Renegade Brooklyn weekend into a two-week, multi-city tour of craft and family! First stop- Storrs, Connecticut. I got to relax with family and enjoy some quality time with my badass, rapping niece, known to rap aficionados as Half-Dollar Hannah. Not only does Hannah spit some mad rhymes, but she also plays piano, softball, and has some mad skillz at a colonial game called, “graces”, played with something that looks like an embroidery hoop and gigantic knitting needles. Oh yeah and she SEWS!!! Love me some niece Hannah!!
It was my very first Renegade and admitedly, I was a little nervous about flying across the country for any craft show. But I’m so glad that my booth partner, Margaret of Paper Pastries talked me into it because not only have I discovered that I LOVE Brooklyn, but I got to participate in an explosion of craft and creativity and make a little cash to boot!
I thought I was so fancy when I first packed up my suitcase . . . but then we discovered that it was obscenely heavy and I had to destroy my perfect packing job. So basically I went from this:
To this:
Don’t ask me- I have no idea how i did it.
Next time around I’ll share a few tidbits about my the Boston and Chicago bits of my journey!
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Jun 15th, 2010
Can I please tell someone how good it feels to let my fingers fly over these delicate and oh-so-responsive keys?! I tried, I really tried to blog from my iPhone, but that keyboard is sooo tiny! I couldn’t upload photos so it seemed kinda silly anyhow. But now I’m home, I’m fed and watered, and I’m ready to get back to my sadly neglected blog! I guess it’s only been two weeks, but that’s like a million light years in internet time.
So give me a day to catch up with my laundry and I’ll share with you the many wonders of my journey across the country!
p.s. mwah mwah mwah to all of my internet lovelies- I’ve missed you, too!
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