down with brown

when we bought this house, just about everything on the outside was brown (though based on chips in the paint, it's been every color of the rainbow over the years - including pink!)  The eaves needed painting and we wanted to do away with the brown shutters, so this week we painted!  I won't say it was terrible, but I don't want to have to do that again for a while!  Painting surfaces over your head is not fun.  The porch ceiling needed to be painted (overhead) and that took nearly a whole day!  The eaves were the other hard part, but the trim wasn't too bad.  The good part is that we LOVE it and the house seems so much happier and fun now!

The green is called Bold Avocado, but when I look out the kitchen window and can see the porch trim and the grass, it's all the same beautiful color!  It's like we trimmed the house in spring!

Also this weekend, I did a little mediocre carpentry (that's the only kind of carpentry I do - it's adequate for yard stuff!)  We love vines and I have a bunch of seedlings of several types ready to be planted.  I made this vine pyramid for them - it's about 8 ft tall.

Then I found a 2x8x10 in the barn!  I had to rip it down into 4 -2x2's to make the sides, but now I have a 10 foot pyramid too!  I don't have a neat little topper for it yet, but I'll get one the next time I'm at Lowe's!  The fella has requested a shorter one too - maybe 5 or 6 feet.  He's the artistic visionary and will put them out where they'll look cool - I have the patience that he lacks and will do the building!  We saw plans for a cool planter box/bench combo that would be cool around the fire ring - that may be my next project!

2 finishes!

I took this week off work and I've been getting some stuff done, let me tell ya!  Our main goal was to get the house painted - well, it's brick so we were painting the underside of the eaves, the shutters, the trim, and the ceiling of the back porch - pretty much all of it is overhead work which is just the worst!  we're almost finished - this afternoon it will be done and I'll take pictures!  But in other finishing news, I finally got the living room curtains finished!  yay!  it's been a real weight on my shoulders!  they're just sooo hard to wrestle - yards and yards of heavy fabric and lining!  oy!  but they're done and those old lady curtains that were up before can suck it!

Oh, we also painted the living room a month or so ago - no more white walls there.  So my plan was to have all the fabrics work together since they're in eyeshot of each other - the living room curtains, the dining room chairs, and the dining room glass door curtains are all from the same Premier fabric line but different colors and patterns.  I just love them.  We also decided to make the living room curtains shorter than the previous curtains (which went to the floor) just to lighten up the look a little.

In other finishing news, I kitchnered up the toe on my mom's Mother's Day socks last night!  whee!  I'm glad to have those finished and ready for her!!  I didn't want to have to think too much so I used the Go With the Flow pattern from Interweave's Favorite Socks book.  I changed the ribbing at the top, but other than that it was a really nice pattern!  I've been doing a lot of darning my my socks lately, so I think I need to cast on for some socks for myself!  Gosh, I sure hope I have enough sock yarn, HAHAHAH!  please...

Oh, this yarn is from Earthly Hues, which unfortunately isn't in existence anymore.  She was a lady who dyed and sold her yarn here locally at fiber festivals -- SHE still exists, but she's not selling yarn anymore, I believe.  too bad.  I bought a bunch of stuff from her years ago and this is the first time I've used it - I really liked it!  

grey day, colorful pansies

Meadowview, my local nursery, is having a sale on pansies - all week I've been planning to go Saturday.  Then I woke up this morning and it's nothing but grey skies and rain.  and off and on snow.  It doesn't really put me in the mood for going to the nursery, but on the other hand, what brightens up a grey day more than some colorful flowers?  besides, in a few days when it's sunny, I'll be glad to have them.  I got a flat of 4 colors and put them in my vintage planters!  so pretty!  Now I just need some sun to go with them!

Look Molly, I made it!

I got the Molly Makes Crochet book for my birthday and for the first time in my life, I feel like I kind of get what the heck I'm doing when I try to crochet!  it's just like when you first knit and reading the instructions is like reading Greek - crochet is a different language too!  I screwed up my first attempt at this little trivet (they call it a doily, but I'm not crazy about admitting that I just crocheted a doily - so I'll call it a trivet, ok?) because I was crocheting into stitches instead of around them and I realized after I was done why the picture looked so smooth, but mine looked weird and loose and loopy.  I started again and it turned out pretty great, I think!

My favorite part is that little scallop around the edge - i can see myself using that around the edge of a baby blanket or something.  This is the picture from the book - pretty close.  just like with knitting, this really benefitted from a bit of a steam iron to block it out.

Fun!

waiting...

This winter seems to be never ending -- I don't think I'm being over dramatic when I say it's the worst winter ever.  We've broken records for sure - as has half the country!  I'm so ready for spring, but I'm trying to enjoy how pretty the snow is here (after it's off the driveway!) and watching the birds at the bird feeders! there were so many this morning - cardinals and bluebirds and little fat sparrows!  Kind of impossible to take pictures of:

And, to help me feel like spring will actually be here soon, I have shelves of seedlings!  this year I decided to do just plants and flowers - no vegetables.  I mean I'll plant seeds for things like beans and zucchini, but I'm not starting tomatoes and peppers from seed.  I like having 6 or 8 varieties of tomatoes, but when I start them from seed, I end up with 60 plants of each of those varieties!  that's out of control!  it's better for me to just buy 8 or 9 plants at the nursery for that stuff, and be done with it!  Flowers, however, I can never have enough of!

I can't wait!!  They're all doing so well!

thrift store score

Pa and I headed into town today to hit a couple thrift stores - it feels like we've come up empty handed a lot lately, but today was a real score!  My best find, however, and I can't believe I nearly didn't get it, is this speed suit!

Sure, maybe some people call them coveralls.  I think Ginny may be the only one to understand that this is what you wear to get your super science on!  They were new, with tags, for $8 and couldn't fit better.  They even have the elastic back waistband!  I fear that if someone didn't stop me, I might try to wear these to the grocery store!  i'll try not to do that though.  I also got 4 great skirts, and a giant bag of fabric ($3.99!) with all kinds of goodies - including some fantastic polyester doubleknits.  super!  the mister got 3 button downs, two sports coats and a backup papercutter!  everyone was a winner!  Oh, and yes, those are swans on my shower doors.  not really in love with them.  

finished!

I cut this dress out months ago, which is always my least favorite part of the sewing process, but even after that, it sat around.  I'll blame the holidays - but I don't know what it was!  I have to travel for work at the end of the month, so that gave me motivation to finish this!  I love it love it love it!

It fits great, and it's a style that I really couldn't wear before losing weight.  I did the sleeveless version, not because I want to show off my flappy arms, but because I didn't have enough fabric for sleeves, and I figured I'd wear a cardigan over it anyway!  I'll definitely be making this dress again.  It's Simplicity 2403 - one of their Project Runway patterns, which means there are a lot of variations on a single theme.  There's a pretty cute double breasted version which I may have to do!  I also like the idea of doing the skirt in a different fabric than the bodice so give a separates look, but in one piece.