Under a blue moon

Well. Where did the time go?

This is the state of my studio kitchen at the moment.  I have an assembly line going to create the rest of the tags and I've taken over the entire counter.  I just have to apply the embellishments on the tags so I'm in the home stretch.

I don't know why I took a week off posting.  Work was at a crescendo this week, which is part of the reason.  The other reason is, well, crafting failure.  Takes the wind right out of my blogging sails.

Last year I saw a beautiful frame at Anthropologie.  It was dove grey with white, raised scrolly designs on it.  It was really pretty (comes in yellow and green too, I think).  It was out of my price range but it kept thinking about it.  Then I decided to see if I could recreate it.

I went to Ross.  I know!  And found a likely candidate for $8.99. 

This frame is a wee bit more dimensional than the Anthropologie frame - which had more of a two dimensional look to it.  But what the heck, it's only $8.99.

So I painted it grey.  Then tried to paint the raised bits white.  I wish I had taken a picture.  Let's just say it didn't work out.  It was hard to know where to put the white and where not to.

I decided to try something out of my comfort and normal decorating zone and repaint it turquoise.  I saw a picture of an ornate building in some Carribean country and wanted to recreate that vibe.

Umm.  No.

We just aren't turquoise people around here.

Thank goodness it's just paint.  I still wanted to elevate this dumb old frame to something other than it's typical, baroque origins.  So I decided red.

Maybe not.

Sheesh - can we just get a breeze around here?

Numbered tags

Marie Antoinette inspired tags for my niece's 2nd Annual Mother's Day/Birthday Tea Party. 

Each guest brings a wrapped tea cup and one of these tags will be attached to it.  Then each guest picks a number (little round tag up there) and matches it to the wrapped tea cup.  Then I do believe the person with number 1 opens her gift.  Number 2 can either take number 1's teacup or open her own gift ~ and so on. 

I was going to take a picture of the process of making them but it's such chaos that I decided to spare you.  Rather than an assembly line approach like I would normally do I am making each one from start to finish.  And evidently I need to spread out over the entire house to do this.  I'm not kidding.  I have a mess in the dining room, the living room and the kitchen counter to clean up.

So let's just talk about the tags, shall we?

First I take a standard shipping tag (bought in bulk at the stationary store).  Attach bits of patterned paper.  I scanned the backs of old French postcards, an old ledger sheet (also in French), and used bits of scrapbooking paper.  Then I embellished with stamped images, bits of lace, velvet ribbon and other trims.  Buttons, millinery flowers, crystals.

To make the glittered numbers I printed the numbers on a printable adhesive-backed transparency sheet (I just found this today at my favorite stamp store - I can think of a LOT of things to use this with).  I printed using grey ink and then went over the numbers with glue using a fine tipped paint brush.  Then poured on some German glass glitter and let dry.  Cut out, peel off backing and apply.

May Day

I think I am winning the aphid battle.  A few consecutive days of spraying down the bushes with a good blast of water and a couple of days of a light soapy spray (thanks Adrienne) and they seem to be gone for the most part.

This is an Abraham Darby.  I love the glowy centers.  Tournament of Roses has a similar color but not as many petals.  Both are work horses in the rose bed (Tournament of Roses has a better repeat throughout the season though).

The Abraham Darby gets so many huge, fat blooms on it I have to prop up the branches or it just wants to lay on the grass and take a nap.

Remember when that big old tree fell down and took out my green garden bench?  We have another bench that we brought up from the pond (the pond that is always empty except for the berry bushes and who wants to sit on a bench and gaze at that?) and I want to paint it but I'm not sure how. 

I mean I know how to paint I'm just not sure if I should paint the whole thing green or leave the iron bits black and just paint the slats.  Or should I just leave it alone.  I've never seen one of these benches painted.

What do you think?

!!Last day of my birthday month...

Wicker pet basket

I think Sara needs one of these for Remy, don't you?

I have been looking on-line for wicker bike baskets.  Now that the weather is getting lovely I want to ride my bike on my shorter errands - like to the library (which I go to every Thursday) or to the grocery store when I just need a few things. 

This, in an effort to be more green and to kind of trick myself into a little bit of exercise since it appears that willingly exercising just doesn't come naturally to me.

Of course those big, ugly, rear mounted bike baskets would probably be more practical but if this trickery is going to work the basket is going to have to be charming. 

In other happy news - the folks at Urban Outfitters, Inc. (Anthropologie) are opening a garden center type store called Terrain.  Go check out Oh Joy! for pictures.  We just have to hope it catches on and they open other centers around the country.  Like here.

(Note:  Picture above has nothing to do with Terrain.  I just needed something to liven up the post so I threw in a picture of my old planter.  But who knows - Terrain MIGHT carry stuff like this.)

Hope everyone is having a happy Wednesday.  I need to go find a party hat since it's the very last day of my birthday month.

Mamas Don't Let Your Babies Grow Up To Be Cowboys....

Second favorite picture.  Rick's number one pick.

Eric on the left and Evan on the right.  They are about 15 months apart and while they had the normal spats of two brothers growing up they are close now.

I probably shouldn't share this story but since neither one of them reads this blog what the heck...

A couple of years ago, when Evan was 18 he had to have open heart surgery.  He had a condition called Cardiomyopathy where the heart muscle becomes abnormally thick and rigid.  The surgeon had to go in and thin the walls of his heart so it could beat properly.  When the surgeon came out of surgery to tell us how it went the one thing that really registered (after "it went well') was that he was wearing cowboy boots.

After a week in the hospital he was released - the beauty of youth and their resilience and natural healing abilities.  Only after a few days he started feeling bad.  Worse than when he first got home.  We went to the emergency room and they discovered he had built up a lot of fluid around his heart and had to go back into the hospital.

I called Eric and he drove over to the hospital.  Evan had just had a procedure where they drained the fluid (harrowing - let me tell you) and he was heavily sedated.  Evan had been pretty unresponsive all afternoon.  Eric sat in a chair next to his bed and just started to cry.  This big, strapping 20 year old, sick with worry.  Evan's eyes flew open and he looked over at his brother and told him it was okay, he was going to be just fine. 

It was so touching.  And of course since then Evan hasn't let him forget it - 'hey remember that time I was in the hospital.......you big baby."

Here's something ironic - the entire time Evan was in the hospital he REFUSED to eat the food.  He was down right surly about it.  I had to tempt him with Jamba Juices and croissants from a local bakery.  Guess where he works now?  At the very same hospital, delivering food to patients.

Finished!

First of all if I ever say I am going to put a pleated ruffle on something just take me out back and shoot me.  Or buy me a fancy sewing machine that has a ruffle foot.

The embroidery part of the pillow was the happy, mellow part of the project (except for the occasional knot on the front which I discovered only happened with the green flosses (Hmmmm...). The rest of the pillow should have been pretty easy but it frustrated me at several points.

First of all my finished embroidered square ended up being a weird size - 9.75".  I was doing all kinds of mathematical gymnastics trying to figure out how wide the framing strips should be so I would end up with a 12.5" square.  Then I realized I should just sew on some strips and then cut it down to a 12.5" square.  Math has never been my strong suit. 

Then the ruffling business.  Oi.  I originally planned to do a pleated ruffle then abandoned that idea as too time consuming since I would have to do each pleat manually.  So I tried a standard ruffle (sewing two parallel lines and then pulling the threads to create the ruffle).  Forget that.  The length of fabric was LONG and my thread broke about a third of the way in.

So back to my original plan for pleated ruffles.  By hand.  And who ever invented corners?  What a stupid idea.  Do you have any idea how hard it is to sew a pleated ruffle around a corner?

Finally finished the front and got the ruffle attached but when I went to sew on the two back pieces I cut them about a 1/4" too short. 

I've always thought it would be lucrative to go into the throw pillow making business because they are always SO expensive.  Now I know why.   

Now I need to go redecorate the guest room around this new color scheme.

My favorite picture

I was going through an old box (one of those ones that hasn't been unpacked even though we've moved about three times since it was originally packed....) and found a picture that my Mother took. 

The little guy on the left is my youngest son, Evan and the sweetie on the right is his cousin Maddi.  Look at those curls!  And how they have their plump little hands on each others shoulders.

They have been the best of friends their entire lives.  They are both young adults now and still fast friends. 

The curls, sadly, are gone - Evan's hair is short and Maddi's is long and luxurious and not a ringlet in sight.

Catching up

Anyone remember this?  I think I started it back in January.  I got a knot in the front (hate when that happens) and I tried to untangle it but couldn't so I put it down for a while, hoping it would sort itself out.

It didn't.  So I picked it back up this week and and cut out the offending knot and pulled the stitching out and started up again. 

I plan on finishing it this week.  Ha!  Famous last words.  It's going to be a pillow when it is done.

I would get things done a lot faster if Belle didn't think the floss spools were her play toys.

Let's see what else have I been doing?  Oh - fighting battle with the aphids.  Every morning I go out and spray them off the roses with a good blast from the garden hose and the following morning they are back.  This morning, however, it looks like their numbers are diminishing so I might be winning.  They did ruin a few of the early buds though.  I have mutated looking roses trying to open up.

Stupid aphids.  Look - I just sprayed them a half hour ago and they are coming back.

They haven't been bothering the Iceberg rose bush though.  Iceberg was my Mother's favorite rose.  I love how the first blooms on the bush always have the slightest pink tint. 

It's because of the cool temperatures when the bud is forming, I've been told.  And since Iceberg tends to bloom until November around these parts the last roses of the season tend to be a wee bit pink too. 

Last day of Remy sitting....

I can't believe the week is almost over.  We have had so much fun.  He is just the sweetest soul I have ever come across.  He makes me laugh every single time I look at him. 

We spent his last full day together making daisy chains and letting him ride around the yard in big fat soap bubbles. 

I am not looking forward to giving him back.  Go back to Mexico!  Shoo!  Look!  Over there?  Is that a margarita??

Sigh.  We never did get tattoos.

Remy sitting or how not to wash a dog...

Remy got into a little situation on Sunday.  My very first day of puppy sitting him.  I'll never be trusted again. 

As mentioned the weather here in Northern California was spectacular.  We decided to have our hors d'oeuvres and wine out on the patio on Sunday.  Before we could do that we needed to wash all the grime and bird poop off the patio chairs.  We lined them up along the lawn and had an assembly line of spraying and wiping down.

When we were done we had a dozen clean chairs and a bit of a mud puddle along the edge of the patio and grass.

Turns out Remy is part pig.  Or is the hippo the animal that likes to roll around in the mud?   You would have thought the mud puddle was made out of liver treats the way he was flopping and rolling around.  In a matter of a second and half he was completely black.  Everyone wanted me to take a picture of him but seeing my career as a professional dog sitter quickly evaporating I declined to document this huge failing in my canine sitting skills.

I immediately took him back to the bathroom and commenced bathing him.  He has special shampoo for white dogs that gets his coat all sparkly looking but when mixed with mud it was turning kind of lilacky-purple.  I rinsed him off for a very long time but I don't know - what do you think?  Does he look a little bit pink? 

Maybe it's not noticeable.

Or maybe I'm pulling someone's leg.  How's Mexico guys?

Just a little Photoshopping magic courtesy of Joe.  See - he's a bit tuckered out but a normal color.