Visit Deux-

Welcome back :)
Kelly asked for me to clarify, so hope this helps, My spaces are now highlighted with boxes :)
This is the living room on the wall across from the doorway is the couch. I am thinking of painting this wall.

Moving clockwise is the chaise, and a table, my new favorite garage sale chair that will be re-done when I can choose a fabric.

On the opposite wall from the Couch is the entertainment center (it is next to the door).

And on the right is a small bookcase/Roxy the goldfish. and the doorway to "the studio".

The studio should be the dining room, but we only have a kitchen table so it is my space for now! :) I am loving it. I feel so organized and inspired I love the lighting from the huge windows too.

Toward the bathroom and bedroom is the "bonus room" or 2nd bedroom. It is the game room and lives up to its title. Britton has every old school gaming system except a few and this is home to his massive collection. Now that he's finally got most things put away there is room for the futon we are getting, so it will be possible to use it for company, when necessary.


Back through the dining room is the kitchen. It has a huge empty wall that i am scheming to fix... (I think it might need Casey, who I recommended come visit me next month.

Ps. These are ribbon and button bookmarks that a girl from work and I made. They turned out really cute! I love the taxi, treasure map, and patriotic ones the most!

Welcome to the Chateau- Visit #1!

I realized it would be easier if I broke the tour into parts- It will be picture intensive anyways :) So without further adieu Welcome to the Chateau! We are on the first floor to the right. In Vegas our apartment only had windows on the south-west facing wall. The chateau has windows on 3/4 sides. I love all the sunlight... but need to figure out curtains soon :) This is the view from the back of the building. We back up to soccer fields and across them is a nursing home. Our garage is the one on the far right (mostly hidden by the shrub in this pic) Right now we are just using it for storage... but we will see. Our washer and dryer are down there. Here is our bed... the pillows are way crooked, oops. I haven't gotten the shams out yet. Here is my bedside table. I got the owl at Urban Outfitters in Vegas and had intended to paint it, but it fits in my yellow scheme perfectly. I got the vase and flowers for 90% at a sidewalk sale in the fall. And the green thing is my ring holder I made at a paint your own pottery place. Love it!
Britton's side has sidewalk sale vases too. I am not loving his side yet... We have a little bookcase over there for the lamp and clock. It works for now.
You will see quite a few projects from the last year are finally in their homes! :) Anya the Matryoshka doll rules from her royal throne. My most favorite gold chair.
The covered bulletin board I made has a few random wedding snapshots I had around. I think I would like a larger maybe b/w picture of us.

This is an amazing b/w pencil drawing from New Orleans that a friend bought me for a previous birthday. I am planning on scoping for similar pics from SanFran and Savannah in my up coming travels.
We got these with wedding gift card $ on clearance. We bought 3Rs and 1 U. and We cut the legs off 2 of the Rs to make Ps. :) I was pretty proud it worked. They were in the bedroom in Vegas but seem very appropriate in the hallway at the Chateau.

We finally got a bathroom rug last night. I like the ones we picked! These paintings have lived with me in 3 states. Britton didn't like the unfinished edges of the canvas. I hot glued grosgrain ribbon around the edges so it is less noticeable.Welcome to your first visit :).
P.S. I am keeping my eyes out for cheap frames I am thinking this is what the empty wall in the bedroom needs.... We'll see.

Christmas in July

The official first project in the Chateau was a long time in the works and with the assistance of my favorite toothless wonder- kid #1. (She lost 3 of the front 4 in the last 2 weeks. I had cut the cardboard rings and gathered the paint chips months ago, but I finally knew where both were at the same time!!! :) I had seen the idea here using styrofoam rings. We used plain old Elmers glue and variegated the green paint chips. It is hung using ribbon on our apartment door. Great style for July :)

This picture is us unwrapping wedding presents, almost 2 years ago! This was one of our favorite wedding gifts. Using my cricut and modpodge I made a similar (but not nearly as classy) one for some small group friends. We included our token wedding gift of nerf dart guns, too! :) It's hard to stay angry when shoting at one another.

Hello :)

Sorry I have been gone for so long! I am working as a nanny this summer and at the craft store and It has been awesomely, ridiculously busy.... good busy though.
The family I am working for is great, I am loving being a part of their family. I am working with the little girl whom I worked with all spring- she will be 7 this month, and her brother who is 8. I very lovingly refer to them as "the kid" and "kid 2"- to their face I call them various things (dude, their names, princess cupcake, goofball, silly, kiddo, captain wonderful, professor, etc.) They are busy so a lot of shuttling from thing to thing, but a lot of swimming, walks on the trail, playing, crafting, baking... Exhausted but loving it.
We got our own apartment- from here on out referred to as the Chateau. It rocks. It has a ton of closets and they are all like Harry Potter Tents- they appear small and normal, but in reality are massive and allow for storage of all of our stuff, truly miraculous. That being said we are trying to get the end of things unpacked and organized and I have quite a few projects and life to share :). I also have a "studio" room in the apt and it is shaping into such a great space. It feels SO good to easily find my materials and easy to clean up now that they all have a home. My work space is HUGE too, compared to all previous homes and that makes it easy to work as well.
I will try to take pictures in the next few days, I have a few more things that need put away/swept/hung up/etc.
My first sewing project for my new house was coasters! :) I had some wooden frame coasters and they were in pretty poor shape. I decided we needed to move on to better. I am a coaster enforcer and who wants to bring attention to those.... forever ago I had seen a make it Monday tutorial about pinwheel coasters. I had linen for a future project. How great is that! I didn't even buy anything for this project! The tutorial has a pattern but I haven't hooked up the printer, so I made my own. They turned out great! I love my scraps. Here they are in their coaster glory- ready to save my coffee table from the evils of the condensation that hold such power here in the shallow south.

P.P.S. We got new blank tea towels in a work and I am the embroidery expert (!?) so I got to sew flowers on the sample. It's cute.

Irony

Ironically I have hardly crafted since I last posted. I am living in "the derby city" and although the rest of the world is oblivious the Kentucky Derby is in 2 weekends, my "part-time" job is not so part time as I help sell hats to half the crowd. They are crazy! Gotta love hats.... anyways I wanted to post the few bday gifts I managed to complete and my squares from the quilt along.... I love them, so I am sad that I haven't had time to do anything... Oh well. :) Soon enough I guess.




I did make these birthday sleeves. :) I like the yellow and black scraps, but I love the random scraps one and I think that my boss loved it too... so that's good. I started sorting my scraps when i was working on them and had to quit because I didn't have time.... I am looking forward to going through them though.... and I my next project for me involves lots of scraps, but it might be awhile...

While in CO I worked on my blocks and I worked on another pixel pillow. This one is for another groomsman's bday and I had a plan to not chain piece insanity for this one. I had to have it finished the day after we got back. I used fusible webbing. It took longer than I thought but definitely less than the last. It is more consistent than the last. The image is the "keyblade" from Kingdom Hearts (another video game).

P.S. I do have a job interview with a local district for a job for next year.... if you could keep it in your prayers.

COLORADO!!!!!

So we managed to come to Colorado for part of my spring break!!! I am here almost a week and Britton was here Friday until today. We had a great time!

Friday night my parents got symphony tickets. It was Rodgers and Hammerstein night at the symphony. They played clips from the movies and played parts of the score. It was awesome. (Thanks Mom and Dad!)

We have had a bunch of quality time with one of my bf's Kimmi and her kiddos. Her eldest was our flower girl and it's crazy to see how grown up she is. We went to Casa Bonita- Britton had never had the privilege or experience. It is "the Disneyland of Mexican Restaurants." We had a lot of fun!
It is so nice to have a break and have time off with my husband and visit my parents. Colorado has also lived up to it's infamous spring weather.... snow days intermingled with days in the 70's! crazy fun! :) I love sunshine and am looking forward to the remaining days of my break.

I also am working on this quilt at Oh Franssion (she is amazing!) .... I am loving it and enjoying my fabric pics, but feeling very behind :) Oh, well.

Fell off the Planet...

So sorry I have missing all month. I have not had the time to craft and blog so crafting won out. I tried to post once and couldn't get the pictures to load and give up. SO I am going to try to post a few posts now and have a bunch of pictures.
3 weeks ago I ended up in urgent care, twice.... first I had a sinus and upper respiratory infection and then I had type A influenza. I slept a lot. I was down for the count. I ate 2 boxes of Popsicles in 3 days.... gross! But i bounced back and have managed to finish/start quite a few new things.
I managed a trip to my local quilt store for their fat quarter sale. I had a gift certificate from Christmas and so I managed to get quite a lot for just a little! :) Woot! I got all these and then the black and whites for my mod-quilt.
I finally finished all the auction stuff just in time for the auction. I re-did the onsies and tried to straighten the anchors using interfacing (I also added the borders and stitching.) They are still crooked- but they were cute and sold well with the adorable bibs. I made up my own pattern- similar to one I had used last year, and they turned out really great.
We started this teepee as the room's dontation to the auction. I put together the components of it and the kids decorated it. Well they liked it so much that we decided to keep it in the room. It's definately a fun hiding place.
I made this scarflette and coffee cozy for a girl in my small group. I had to learn how to purl... (it's a knit/purl repeating pattern) it turned out great.... even if it is just in time for spring! I started with this pattern but I had an odd number of rows, instead of even, because of the odd I ended up with kinda of a checkerboard pattern, instead of the ridges. I think I like it better! I am still a little slow but I will definately need one in my closet in the fall and it would be a good gift.
I patchworked this cozy and lined it with black polka-dots. It turned out cool and it was nice to only use scraps.
A girl at work is adopting 2 kiddos from Ethiopia. They had a shower at work and I wanted to do something other than baby blankets. I saw something similar... somewhere... I can't find it. and was inspired to make these for her kiddos- Madalyn and Carson. I wanted to make the boy one without an animal so I settled on an acorn. The nursery colors are pink, blue and brown. I used almost all scraps and frames with mattes that I found on clearance.