Mail Call

I’m a little belated in posting pics of these goodies I received from bookwormbethie (the two fat quarters in the first picture; the fabrics were designed by Darlene Zimmeran for Robert Kaufman Fabrics) and from My1stBambina (the “Afternoon Tea” fat quarter, a Japanese sewing book, and a Stumpwork book). (click on any picture to make it bigger)

The red background fat quarter and the “Afternoon Tea” fat quarter are both just begging to go on the freshly-painted kitchen walls; the blue background fabric will make a delightful trivet .

I can’t get my hands on any Japanese crafting books locally, so it was my pleasure to “ooh” and “aah” over the pretties in the sewing book — I didn’t see one single thing in it that I *don’t* like!, but I did take pics of some of the things I like the most.

I’ve never seen stumpwork, other than pictures online, so it was quite interesting to look through the stumpwork book. I’ve included a few pics of some of the detail work in that book — absolutely fabulous. I definitely want to try some of the techniques in this book.

Thanks, Beth and Monika, for adding to my “fun stuff”!!

Tired of Kitchen Talk Yet?!!

I actually am, and have been, crafting these past weeks . . . it’s just that I don’t want to post pics of what I’ve made / am making until the recipients receive their stuff later this month, thus the heavy kitchen-goings-on focus here on my blog in recent weeks.

Our fridge got delivered this afternoon. The manual says to let it cool for 24 hours before transferring food into it, so I decided to scratch the “put the kitchen back together” itch that started as soon as the delivery guys left.

I moved the freshly-painted lower cabinet back in there, between the fridge and stove. I need to put another coat of color on the drawer, and to put two coats of color on the backside of the doors — for photo op purposes, I propped the doors against the cabinet so you can at least get a general idea of how it’s going to look when reassembled.

I’m doing these pics as a gallery, but you can click on any you want to see bigger.

It looked too empty without anything on the countertop, so I propped the new mirror onto it, along with a few other odds-n-ends to give some color. None of that stuff will stay there, however — what lives on that countertop is the coffee pot, and I’m sure we’ll add a few other small things. The mirror will hang behind the sink, the basket with dishtowels lives next to the sink, the recipe box and mini-lamp live on the other side of the sink, and I’m not sure yet where the red clock will go (possibly above this countertop; it used to live above the kitchen sink, but can’t move back there because the big mirror has claimed that space).

In the closer-up pics, you can see the sample flooring tile that we chose, and the sample countertop chip, along with the drawer pulls and doorknobs. Not sure if you can see in any of the pics, but I scored some chrome lightswitch and electrical outlet covers at Lowe’s and have those up in a few places — I liked ‘em so much more than the usual covers and they weren’t terribly pricey (Lowe’s had reduced the price on ‘em).

The seagreen color on the lower cabinets and the chrome accessories gives a pretty retro feel to the room, so I’ll need to be sure and balance that with other things since I really am not especially going for a retro look — I don’t mind having *some* retro, but I don’t want it to be *totally* retro!! I’ve been reading lots of home decorating blogs and have picked up some fabulous ideas that I will be able to translate to this room.

Doesn’t this corner of the kitchen, along with the ceiling, already look so much better than it did last month?!!

Oh, that mini-lamp I included a picture of — I’m going to embroider the lampshade. I may end up painting the lamp base, but I won’t make that decision til the rest of the cabinets have been painted — I might find I like the dark lamp base just fine. Not sure if you can see in the picture, but there is a thin strip of red painted around the base in a couple spots.

We decided to just keep the existing ceiling fan and replace the light kit, so I’m on the hunt for that. I may end up painting the blades . . . but then again, maybe not.

When I got dressed today, I dressed in paint-friendly clothes, being optimistic that I would paint *something* before my day is over . . . now I have to decide which to paint — cabinet doors and drawer, or wall . . . (doors and drawer will allow me to get more crafting done tonight, so I betcha that’s what I opt for!).

A Few New Additions to Our Kitchen

A couple of these on the ceiling — this picture does not do justice to how beautiful these are, and they are FABULOUS hanging in our kitchen! They are not overly big in scale (which is hard to tell from this photo.)
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One of these to hang on the wall behind the sink, to reflect light and brighten up the space.
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Something cute to hold dish towels, cloth napkins, and placemats, so they are easily within reach. (This is actually a silver mesh letter tray with a floral design, that I found in the office supply area of Target.)
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These photos all came from store websites, not from my kitchen . More work needs to be done before photos from the kitchen pop up here!

Austen Fun

Jane Austen fans, if you haven’t yet watched the UK miniseries “Lost in Austen“, give it a look-see. It’s an interesting twist on Pride & Prejudice and I thought it was great fun. I started off disliking Darcy, but then, wouldn’t you know it, I took a hankering to him as the movie progressed . I didn’t realize beforehand it was a miniseries and popped it into my dvd player at 12:30 a.m. — bu then, I couldn’t *not* watch it all in one sitting, so found myself dragging into bed a bit later than usual that night!! (On the up side, I got lots of stitchin’ done while watching it.)

I’m reading the first books in the Eve Dallas series and am enjoying them lots. I love the main character, and her sweetie’s not bad either! While at the bookstore today, I picked up a paperback copy of A Breath of Snow & Ashes, so that I can reread it in anticipation of the seventh book in the Outlander series, An Echo in the Bone, being released in September. I probably won’t get to this reread right away, rather I’ll keep working through the Eve Dallas series for a while longer instead, so that I can time my reread of ABOSAA so that I’m wrapping it up about the time AEITB is released.

Speaking of released, kiddo and I *cannot wait* for Half-Blood Prince to hit theaters week after this!! As tempting as it would be to go to the midnight showings the night before the release, I imagine we’ll catch a daytime showing. I read the book when it came out, and kiddo and I have listened to the audio book several times (relistening right now, actually), so there won’t be any surprises — that said, I know there will be at least one scene that will have me sniffing . . . but I’m hoping the special effects will make seeing the movie on the big screen worth a bit of sniffing.

Kiddo has been very into a couple different book series in recent weeks: The Chronicles of Vladimir Tod, and Diary of a Wimpy Kid. It’s been fun watching him immerse himself in a book for hours on-end, oblivious to the goings-on around him. As mama to an unschooler, it’s pretty cool to see him make the choice, of his own free will, to tell his Xbox Live friends that he’s going to turn off the Xbox and go read for a while (and for “a while” to turn into three or four hours . . . although when we finally received the latest Vladimir Tod book from amazon last week, he read it from start to finish with no breaks, which was about seven hours total and which totally surprised the both of us!). I absolutely do not mind if he spends a lot of time gaming with his friends, but I also absolutely do not mind if he spends a lot of time reading, either — the key is for him to find books that are interesting enough to him that he’s willing to grab some quiet time to read them. One of his gaming friends recommended the Vladimir Tod series; the other series is one we saw at the bookstore which caught his attention. As a result of reading the Diary of a Wimpy Kid series, he’s been making his own comic strips. I do love watching kid-creativity in action!! Now I need to start doing some detective work to see if I can scare up some ideas of other book series he might enjoy.

We are making very good progress on our kitchen; I hope to snap a few in-progress pics Monday. I need to focus my time and attention to other stuff this coming week, so not much more will happen on our kitchen makeover until next weekend . . . which is quite okay with this ole gal’s body .

Finally, New Garden Pictures! + Taking a Break for a Few Days to Work on Kitchen

Overcast skies + cooler daytime temps = good opportunity to take backyard photos!!

First up, thanks to my hubby working his rump off several different times in recent months, we now have grass growing in nearly all the areas in the backyard that are supposed to have grass. Woohoo!! It is so nice to walk outside and see grass rather than dirt (I am a grass + trees girl, not a sand + cactus girl). Next summer we’ll get some grass planted right under the swingset, then we should be set. Below are the “After” and “Before” photos. (There’s just dirt underneath the blue tarp in the “before” pic — we used to have an above-ground pool set up there.)

These are the newer yellow squash plants; at the far end of this bed are potatoes. There’s still a few herbs growing in here too. (This was the bed that started out with lettuces, corn, and carrots.)

The okra plants are doing pretty good too.

Lookee, it’s The Tomato Jungle!!! There actually are some pinto bean plants growing on the outer edge, but otherwise this bed has been overtaken by tomato plants. There are oodles of ‘maters out there right now.

My favorite tomatoes we’re growing are these little Yellow Pear Tomatoes.

Lastly, here is the very last sunflower plant out of the three packets’ worth of seeds I planted in the spring. Once these die, we’ll pull up the plants and let the grass fill in the area where we had the sunflowers.

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I’m excited to say that I will be sanding, primering, and painting kitchen cabinets over the next several days. I’m not being sarcastic, I really *am* excited!!

We’ve done a lot to this house since we moved in seven years ago (something I have to remind myself of every now and then), and it feels good to be to a point where we can focus on the kitchen. We’ve already done lots of removal in there — nasty carpet, excessive cabinetry for the size of the space, etc. — everything else that’s left to be done is cosmetic . . . the “prettying up” work!! I’ll admit that demolition is fun, but I am itching to get the prettying up underway .

Being the night owl I am, I’ll start sanding the cabinets tonight, and may even get around to removing the cabinet doors and starting to primer them. I’ll be interested to see how far along I get by the end of the weekend. Wouldn’t it be cool if I was finished with the cabinets by then?!?!

My plan is to take a break from my blog and be scarce on the computer, so that I can focus on the kitchen. And when I’m not focusing on the kitchen, I have a new craft project I started last night that I can putz around with. But you never know, I may decide to pop on and post some in-progress pictures .

I do have some blog comments to respond to, which I’ll do after my few days’ blogging break. I received a cute package of some fat quarters from bookwormbethie, which I will post pics of when I get back (thanks, Beth!!).

If I don’t pop in before Saturday, all of you folks in the States have a safe July 4th!!

The Two Contenders (kitchen talk)

Okay, here are the two contenders for the color of the bottom kitchen cabinets (this kitchen is our inspiration for painting the bottom cabinets something other than white):

On the left is “Woodlawn Charm”, the color used in the kitchen I linked to above, and on the right is “Sea Wave”. Our walls will not be stark-primer-white, as shown in this picture , but *will* be something in the pale-ist beige / ivory / cream range. Upper cabinets will be white.

“Woodlawn Charm” on left, “Sea Wave” on right. The current cabinet color messes with this a bit, but this picture gives a better idea of where the color will be located. We want to keep our appliances white. Our countertops will not be stark white, as they are now. I’m not sure what color we’ll end up choosing — we’ll decide that after we’ve painted the cabinets and walls. (Ditto the flooring.)

I really do love Sea Wave (the blue-er) color (which, ironically, is identical to the color in the p.j.’s I’m wearing right now LOL), but I’m leaning towards Woodlawn Charm (the greener color).

In person, as in the photos, Sea Wave is bright . . . very bright. It also feels very retro-y to me, which, I think, would be increased tenfold by the fact many of the accent items we already have in our kitchen are red — retro is not what I’m going for. I also think the Sea Wave could be overwhelming, though in a kitchen with fewer cabinets it could be fantastic. Actually (thinking as I type!), our bathroom is small and I very well may repaint our bathroom cabinet with it.

Woodlawn Charm is more soothing to the eye, IMO. Even though it’s a deep color, it’s soft. Paired with white cabinets and light-colored walls, I think it will create a relaxing, cottage-y, environment. Red accents will provide a nice “pop”. We’ll be able to better tell after we get all the painting done, but I think this color would work equally as well with light-colored flooring and countertops as it would with darker-colored.

On the two walls that don’t have upper cabinets (you can see them in this post), I’d like to hang a few wooden shelves painted with whichever color we choose for the lower cabinets, using those shelves to display knick-knacks — that’d be a way to bring that color *up* into the room. I have some embroideries and fabric that I want to hoop up and hang in the kitchen, along with some of hubby’s nature photography and some art we bought on etsy.

I’ll talk with hubby tonight about the two colors and see which he prefers, then we’ll get the paint, primer, and stuff to sand the cabinets and actually start working on them. Weehaw!!! Hubby has done some of the work that needs to be done on the wall from which we removed the big pantry, but there’s still more left to do before it’s ready to be primered and painted. If this overcast, slightly-cooler weather lasts for a couple more days, it would be oh-so-conducive to getting some of this kitchen work done!

Kitchen Inspiration

I’ve been surfing around tonight, looking for rooms painted the colors on a paint chip strip my mom and I picked up today, and when I clicked over to this kitchen I fell in love. When I look at the transformation it makes to paint kitchen cabinets, it inspires me all over again!! Not to mention, her “new” kitchen is totally me — I love the color of the bottom cabinets, I love that the bottom and top cabinets are different colors, I love that she removed the doors on so many of her upper cabinets, and I even love the vintage-looking glass knobs on the cabinets. Look how light and airy that kitchen is now!!

My mom accompanied me to Lowe’s today, to look for possible wall colors for our kitchen, dining room, and living room. Since the rooms are more or less an open floor plan, the color in one room certainly impacts the other two rooms, which has proven to be the biggest hurdle for me in choosing a new wall color for the kitchen. She and I ended up choosing a paint strip with three colors on it, Valspar’s “Sea Air” (the lightest shade), “Frosty” (the medium shade), and “Sea Wave” (the darkest shade).

She and I gravitated towards the darkest shade, Sea Wave, and found a countertop sample and flooring sample that worked well with it. We both thought, “Woohoo, we did it!!”. But, then, nighttime rolled around and hubby and I saw how dark Sea Wave is when there’s no sunlight coming into the house, and agreed it’d be too dark for the kitchen walls, especially since two of those walls have little to no “stuff” on them (meaning you’d see A LOT of Sea Wave!).

So hubby and I thought, well, okay, we’ll try Frosty, the middle shade, as the wall color — you can get an idea of how it looks here — there are a couple different views of that color. Very pretty, especially with the blue / green / white color scheme — very soothing. And we’d decided painting all our kitchen cabinets white would be the way to go

But then . . . then we both looked at the pictures in that first link of this post. We’re both very open to the idea of painting the bottom cabinets whichever wall color we end up liking and painting the upper cabinets white and the walls a white/cream color. If the upper cabinets and the walls are a light shade, we could maybe utilize Sea Wave on the bottom cabinets (assuming that’s the color we end up liking the most).

Next up for me is to pick up a small can each of Sea Wave, Frosty, and Woodlawn Charm (the color of the bottom cabinets in the first link of this post) and a couple pieces of foamboard, so I can paint some sample boards of each color to see how each looks at different times of the day and at night. That’s not something I’ve ever done before, but after painting the far end of the kitchen with a color I loved last fall, I discovered I only loved the color when sunlight hit it, the rest of the time it seemed to have a very gray undertone to it. I don’t want to repeat that mistake, especially with the cabinets, so sample boards it is!

By the way, if you don’t click over to the first link, the blog’s author does mention in that post that the Valspar primer that they used on her cabinets that says you don’t need to sand first, actually does work. I’d never heard of that primer, so will have to look for a can of it and give it a try on one of our cabinet doors. Not having to sand the cabinets before primering would be fantastic.

More Goodies Via Mail

Oh boy, it’s been fun getting mail the past several days!!

From one of my very bestest girlfriends, Chris, I received a baggie full of assorted flosses, along with these very cool vintage embroidery hoops, all of which belonged to her grandmother. I was going to (”one of these days”) look for some vintage hoops on eBay, so I loved receiving these.

From Corinne of So September, I received a sample of her Mini 2010 D.I.Y. Calendar. Definitely follow the link to see how she finished her shop sample (not to mention, her pictures are way better than mine!). I’ll have to think about what I want to embroider in the spot at the top, and then how I want to finish the calendar, but I’m absolutely keeping this for myself . The mini and fullsize calendars are going on my “holiday gift ideas” list.

Last, but not least, my last Craftster swap partner, Rox (aka “atsuko” for you Craftster folks), surprised me with some mini notecards and envelopes she made out of maps. They are so cute!! She doesn’t keep a lot of stuff in her etsy shop, but she is always open to doing custom orders — just contact her through that etsy link. (If you haven’t already seen the fabulous jewelry she made me for our swap, check it out on my blog post here. I am wearing the heck out of my jewelry!!!)

All fantastic stuff, right?!?! Thank you, Chris, Corinne, and Rox .

What I’m Reading & Cooking & Crafting

READING:

I brought home two bags of books from the library last night. One bag was filled entirely with interior decorating / painting books (because we’re still undecided about new paint colors for the kitchen, living room, and dining room) — I skimmed through those last night and returned them today (sadly, there were no real “aha! that’s the wall color we need!!” moments). Listed below are the fiction and non-fiction books I’ll be reading over the next couple weeks — for some the links will take you to reviews I read that resulted in me adding them to my “to be read” list, for others the links will take you to amazon (some are books I just randomly picked from the library’s “New Books” shelves).

~ A Home at the End of the World, by Michael Cunningham

~ Undress Me in the Temple of Heaven, by Susan Jane Gilman

~ While My Sister Sleeps, by Barbara Delinsky

~ The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, by Stieg Larsson

~ Run for Your Life, by James Patterson & Michael Ledwidge

~ In Death, the First Cases, by J. D. Robb (my current Craftster swap partner is a fan of this series — since I love mysteries and I love series, I figured this might be right up my alley)

~ Book Lust, by Nancy Pearl (also got “More Book Lust”) — both are “books to read” books, because goodness knows I need *more* books added to my “to be read” list!!

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COOKING:

I had also checked out The Deen Family Cookbook, by Paula Deen, and promptly went and bought myself a copy today because I want to make most every recipe that doesn’t include shellfish. (I do love Paula Deen, along with several of the other Food Network folks.) Contrary to what you might think if you watch her show, every recipe in this cookbook actually does *not* contain a stick of butter or cup of mayo . In addition to the recipes, I love the stories that go along with each recipe (in my opinion, the stories that go along with recipes are as big a draw as the recipes themselves).

While I was looking through the cookbook last night, kiddo happened to look over when I was on the french fry recipe — there is a yummy full-page pic of some homemade fries and he immediately asked if I would make some homemade fries today. We don’t fry food around here that often — hubby fries up freshly-caught fish a couple times a year, and that’s about it. Homemade fries are something I used to make all the time “back in the day”, so I didn’t hesitate to tell kiddo, “Sure, homemade fries tomorrow!”.

These were the easiest, quickest, TASTIEST fries any of the three of us have ever had. I’m a fry snob — I can’t stand fast food fries and most restaurant fries don’t appeal to me either. These, though, were absolutely worth making our house smell like a diner!!

I made kiddo a plate of cheese fries, and hubby and I had some cornflake-crusted oven-fried chicken breasts to go along with our fries. Both recipes were from this cookbook.

I did look around online to see if the french fry recipe is online, but I didn’t find it. Basically you heat your peanut oil to 350, cut the fries to about 1/4″ thick sticks, and fry for 4 minutes, or until a pale gold skin develops. Drain on paper towels while you heat the oil to 375. Dip the fries back in for about 2 minutes (until they just start to become golden), hold them out of the oil for a minute, then put them back in for about 2 more minutes, until they’re a deep golden brown. Drain well on paper towels & salt ‘em while they’re hot.

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CRAFTING:

I’m gathering up supplies to try two new-to-me crafts:

~ Scrabble Tile Pendants — That link is to a fantastic tutorial on how to make these. If you click over to the tutorial author’s etsy store, she sells the supplies needed to make these. I looked around locally today but couldn’t find all the supplies (so frustrating!!), so am going to order a small kit that has a few of everything in it so I can give this craft a try to see how I like it.

~ Book Purse (written tutorial) / Book Purse (video tutorial) — I like the written tutorial better, but watching the video tutorial helped me better understand the fabric-cutting steps. This is a craft I’ve wanted to try for a while; now that I finally tracked down some instructions that make sense to me, all I need is to pick up one or two vintage books that have interesting covers made of cloth.

Mail + Some Other Pics

I’ve been out of commission the past five days — finally got some antibiotics yesterday and am feeling human again. I’ve been doing some paperwork the past couple days, so haven’t been crafting. I have been reading though (fifth book of the Bourne series — it’s my least favorite of the series thus far — bummer), and watching (finished Season 1 of Veronica Mars — loved it; currently watching last year’s Horton Hears a Who — loving it), and keeping up with other people’s blogs and the Embroidery group on flickr.

I received a nice surprise in today’s mail, a package full of goodies from My 1st Bambina. I had sent her some of these vintage hankies and, in exchange, she sent me all these goodies:

adorable teacups fabric, which will be hooped and hung up in my kitchen

oh-so-pretty seed packets fabric, which will likely end up hooped and hung up as well

some fabulous wooden spools and some needles — I’ve already taken the thread off the spools and they are soooo pretty and will go into my cabinet of heirloom and vintage goodies

oodles of buttons!! – I can’t wait to spread these out and get a good look at each of them

and some embroidery floss and trim (I actually didn’t have any ric rac or trim before this!)

Getting a package of goodies in the mail is sooooo fun and never fails to make my day. Thanks, Monika!!

Getting a package by email is also fun too!! Last week I received this trio of embroidery patterns from Corinne of September House, as a thank-you for the Craft magazines she won from me. I loved these designs when I saw them on her blog and had them on my “buy for myself” list, so was tickled pink to find them in my email. I will stitch them up and keep them, you can be sure of that!!

I tried to get some updated garden pictures this afternoon but it was too hot to be outside for long taking pictures, not to mention everything in the garden was droopy from the heat, so garden pictures will follow another day. However, I do have a few odds-n-ends pictures to share.

It was a little too bright out when I took this picture, but the sunflowers are fading fast in the heat, so I couldn’t resist snapping this. I planted a whole packet of these seeds, but only two or three of them actually grew and made flowers. I *love* the color of this flower.

Hubby and I bought a new bed a couple Christmases ago and it’s smaller than the one we had before. We have a heavy quilt to use on it in the winter, but we’d never bought a summer-weight quilt for it. Several weeks ago we saw some beautiful embroidered lightweight quilts on sale at JC Penney. This is the design we chose:

Who needs a shredder when you have an Annie-dog!! If I ball up a piece of paper and put it on the ground, that’s her signal that it’s okay to shred. She takes her job quite seriously, as you can see (I didn’t feel like futzing around with the digital image to get rid of the glowing eyes!).