Smile!

A weekend full of planting, laughing, visiting with friends and family and plenty of smiles! My gardener (the only kid who likes to play in the dirt with me) was hard at work planting Lilies & Dahlia's until he found worms to feed to the pet crawdad. Of course that's when Hobbes became interested.

 I finished up a few projects today. My youngest is making a lamp in his Industrial Tech class. He comes home and says "Mom, you get to use your dremel!" I was happy to help put a hole in the top and bottom of a Jack bottle. I can't wait to see it finished!

and while I was already playing with the dremel..

Next was finishing a purse for a lucky lady.

~Life is better when you're laughing!~

Happy Earth Day!

It's Earth day and I've been inside painting for the last two days. I planted seeds last week and will be playing in the dirt soon enough.

We've been busy painting the house and the railing on the porch, laying mulch, watching the grass turn green, making bags, coloring eggs and spending lots of time with family! I finally found the fastest way to color eggs and they're tie dyed!

~.~

I'd like to share the transformation of the concrete rock wall. It's only taken two paint jobs and five years to find the right colors. It started out red and was painted all white before we moved in. I hated it and even attempted to take the rocks down, that's when I found out they're made of concrete. I gave up that idea and painted them to look like real rocks, but something or maybe I should say someone kept telling me to make it brighter.

April Showers = more crafts!

Spring is here! The grass is green and the purple hyacinth flowers are popping up. We even managed a few good days between rain showers to uncover the flower beds and three truck loads of yard waste were removed, thanks to my awesome neighbor! I'm just waiting for the next sunny day to start on the garden. In the meantime I'm finding more crafty things to work on, with a few shopping trips for supplies.

New fabrics to play with!

A custom made Mini Messenger Bag.

Twine Flowers

You can find the tutorial at Really Reasonable Ribbon's Rambling

Today's rainy day craft of tinting glass jars.

Glossy Modge Podge + food coloring = tinted jar.

You can find a tutorial for these at My Beautiful Mess

...and I'm off to go puddle jumping!

New colors!

Thought I'd share just a few of my projects from the last few weeks.. it's funny how crazy life gets sometimes, but there's always time to create!

The purple doily.

The newborn slippers for baby Rowan Violet.

My flower arranging skills & a much needed spa day!

New colors for my Etsy shop!

(they'll be added this week)

Motivate all these guys!

Tension headaches last week lead to more creativity this week. Who wants stress anyway? When I'm making something new every day I'm happy! I'm trying to motivate all these guys in the house. Maybe this will help?

They have been a big help with changing how their room looks. We're working on a Mario Party theme. They have 7ft windows, which left me to making the curtains longer than the original. Oh how I've missed my sewing machine!

..and there's still more to do!

One small positive thought in the morning can change your whole day!

Valentine Crafts

   

    Thankful the sun is shining, maybe the -11 temps will melt away too! The water main at the high school is broke and I have a kiddo here with me. We found simple Valentine's Day crafts to work on.

Crayon Hearts

~.~
Many thanks to all the teachers out there!

May your Valentine's Day be full of Love!

Something New

    Sitting in the kitchen watching the bananas ripen and all I kept thinking was banana bread. It's my go to recipe when the kids haven't eaten them all. I wanted to try something new. I thought about frying them with a honey glaze, which would have been just as good as the next idea.
    I called a kiddo in for help since I was also making dinner when this thought occurred. Banana Empanada, nope never made it before. The look on the kiddo's face when the dough formed into a ball in the food processor was priceless. All he could keep saying was awesome!
    I was rolling out the dough & kept being asked how much of this? how much of this? I should've helped more since the end result was for the kiddo not to measure, but to just dump brown sugar into a bowl along with the bananas and he mixed until it was soup. We finished making them anyway and laughed so hard when I finally blurted out "I will never make these again", only to take it back after eating one. Next time I will not be asking for assistance so I can find out how wonderful they should be. It was an experience to say the least.

 

 Banana Empanadas

~.~

I found a pattern for Queen Anne's Lace. I haven't decided if it will be a bookmark, a bracelet, a little something extra for a future bag, or a new headband. Whatever it turns out to be will look great though!

 

Queen Anne's Lace

~.~

May all your experiences end in laughter!

Teaching Myself the Art of Tatting

Thank you Mother Nature for all the snow! I'm ready for it all to thaw out so we can go play in the dirt!

 I've shared a lot of snow days, movie marathons, and cooking adventures with my guys in the last month, but I'm ready to be back in the craft room. My little heater just can't keep up when it's -2 outside, so I'm teaching myself new things instead.

After years of crocheting I've managed to teach myself how to read most patterns and have now learned tatting. I started off with an intermediate pattern and I'm still searching for a harder pattern. So if you happen to know of one, send me a link! Just a few of my latest creations..

 The Peony Doily

Inspired by a Snowflake

The Delicate Butterfly

from a 1970's pattern

Starshine Doily

Think Positive Spring will get here eventually!

Doilies for the 1st time.

I spent the weekend searching for a new project, something I hadn't tried yet, something challenging. Who knew one of the many things my Great Grandma Flora was extremely good at would be so hard to figure out, even with a pattern. Sometimes while reading a crochet pattern the whole thing starts to look Greek! My first try wasn't so bad and worked out pretty well, even with the wrong size hook. The next one was the challenge. I had to stop reading the pattern and just make it by looking at the picture. It actually worked better for me. They still need to be starched and I will be writing my own version of the second pattern for future use. I would like to think my Great Grandma is smiling at this creation!

The 1st is a Dark Purple Doily.

 

The 2nd is a Dark Teal Peony Doily.

Don't shake the snow globe!

We are now living in a snow globe! Well, we were until someone shook it too hard and it all came down at once! Wondering back and forth to different windows thinking yep, it's still snowing. I caught this brave little squirrel outside during the blizzard.

Waking up the next morning to a sunny kitchen made for a good start!

We've made our trip to the store and I really don't want to go shovel, so crafting it is! 

More adventures with the dremel!