creative little daisy

I'm honored, flattered, thrilled, excited...

and any other nice words you care to throw in there. I'm delighted the nice ladies at Sew Mama Sew asked me to participate in Pillow Month. You can read my interview here if you like.  I love pillows and I love Sew Mama Sew and February is the month of love, right? I'll be doing a couple of tutorials one involves zippers the other piping. 

If you sew and haven't visited SMS, you should. They have TONS of tutorials and tips. If you don't sew but think you would like to try, this is the perfect time. Pillows are the perfect beginner project.

 

 

About the interview, that photo is a couple of years old and obviously not January. I had no problems answering questions, but submitting a photo.... eek! I am the most unphotogenic person you could hope to meet. I am allergic to getting my picture taken and no matter how hard I try to look normal, my face contorts and I just look crazy. I'm typically behind the camera so there aren't that many photos of me to choose from and then to find one of the few that I actually don't cringe at the thought of people seeing... well, that photo is the best I could do. 

 

So, what's new with you?

I'm still wreaking havoc in the kitchen. I got all the walls and trim painted white. I took the doors off one of the upper cabinets and started putting vinyl in the back. Then I ran out of vinyl. Drats. Here's what I've got so far.

I also managed to sweet talk Mitch into painting the doors in the kitchen black.

Why did I photograph the door from this angle?

I was trying to photograph this guy.

Meet Willie, my new grand-pup. Alyssa got a new baby, the four legged variety. Isn't he a sweetie? 

OK, did you enjoy that bit of sweetness? Back to the kitchen insanity. Why not do some closet demo while were at it?

I have a pantry that I really hadn't been using as a pantry for some time. It had really become the closet equivalent of a junk drawer.

So, I pulled everything out, and piled it on every flat surface in my kitchen. Nice.

That blue box up there has the topper from my wedding cake. I've been married 23 years. Do I really need to keep the topper from my cake?

Pretty, huh? Just wait till you see the inside of the closet.

Those big holes are from removing the wire shelving. It's outta here. The dirt, well I have no explanation for that, other than the fact with all that junk, who could see the dirty wall?

I'm happy to say it has been cleaned and painted and will be getting newly painted wood shelving.

Soon, I hope.

I'll be back later this week with a few more projects I've been working on.

I'm very excited to be contributing to pillow month at Sew Mama Sew.

 

 

Oh Crap!

And other philosophical thoughts had while painting my kitchen. White. I painted it white.

I went in thinking it would be a quick paint job. I only had to paint the upper portion of the wall, the lower part already had white bead board wallpaper.

I gathered my stuff, took off some switch plates and got to work. Painted a small section and stepped back to take it in. That was the oh crap moment. White. That white is a tricky little color. I only thought the beadboard was white. In reality, next to the newly painted swiss coffee white wall, my beadboard was gray. And not trendy, cool gray. It was dirty, dingy grey. Yuk.

Not a great picture, but trust me, it looked very dreary and very sad.

I had to remind myself, never make a decision about paint with that first swipe of paint. It almost never looks good until you get the second coat on the wall. I kept reminding myself of that as I trudged on singing oh no, what have I done, what have I done...

So I made my way around the room. One coat, two coats. It was a learning process.  I learned I really need and ipod, more on that later.  I also learned that your trim may be white, you may be sure your trim is white. If it has been a few years since it was painted white, it probably isn't really white anymore. Want to find out how white your trim really is, or isn't in my case, paint the wall next to it white.  That brings me to my final lesson learned. Never assume a paint job is going to be quick and easy.

Know where this is going? Yep, Almost every inch of my kitchen is getting painted. Including the upper cabinets.

The house was quiet as I painted, no one home but me and Toby. In the quiet, various songs played in my head. The first had been playing for a while before I consciously realized I was singing onward christian soldiers, marching as to war...

Why? Why is this song playing continuously in my head as I paint. No idea. Seamlessly the soundtrack changed and then Bad, ba-a-ad, blood, blo-o-od, is takin' you for a ride. The only good thing about bad blood... again, WHY??? Have I heard these songs recently? I have no idea. I don't even like Neil Sedaka and though I love old hymns, Onward Christian Soldiers is not a favorite.

If this painting continues much longer, I have got to get an ipod!

People who know me

think I change things a lot. Things like paint and curtains and furniture, and I guess they would be right. I am constantly tweaking and because of the tweaking of small things, folks  get a bit of a distorted image of how often I change big things, like paint or furniture.

For instance, I was discussing over Sunday dinner, the fact that I'm thinking of painting the kitchen. And of course, it gets met with the usual smile and shaking of the head. Didn't you just paint the kitchen? To which I replied no, it's been several years, like maybe five. Hmmm, is the reply. You know, the hmmm that means whatever. The hmm that means they hear you but aren't sure they believe you. 

So, having a blog has made it quiet easy for me to determine exactly when I last painted. It was December 2006. Over four years ago! Gosh, my photos were small back then.

Yes, since then I have painted the cabinets, twice. Changed out the counter tops and put up bead board wallpaper. (Here's a little walk down my kitchen's memory lane if you care to peek.)  But the wall color, the Martha Stewart Vintage Kitchen, which I still love, by the way, that has not changed in four years.

How long do you live with a wall color before you tire of it? Just curious. For me, I guess four or five years is an absolute lifetime in paint years. It's time. Vintage Kitchen is lovely, and I will likely look back at pictures and miss it, but I'm ready for a change and today is the day.

Any guesses to the new wall color? Nope, it isn't black. That's going some place else.

Subtle, sweet touches

Quietly adding a little Valentine love around here. I'm not one to decorate for Valentine's, or really any holiday other than Christmas, but with the help of my Silhouette, I'm finding adding subtle touches easy and very satisfying.

 

...the greatest of these is LOVE

Wooden eggs, tea stained and stamped. Clearly, I do not excel in stamping. Lets just say the crooked placement was intentional and adds that done by hand charm, shall we?

It's no use crying over spilled...

Hot Chocolate?  I knocked over a full cup of hot chocolate a couple of weeks ago. A cocoa volcano erupted all over this chair. I don't think I ever got around to blogging about her latest re-do. I've painted and recovered the old girl no less than 72 times. Well, maybe a few less than 72 but definitely no less than 6. The latest look, the one before her current look was made from a walmart clearance shower curtain. I used the same fabric, to make drapes for the dining room, but that's getting off topic. Oh well, since I mentioned it, here they are.

This photo doesn't show it, but the shower curtain wasn't long enough, so I stitched a solid gray band to the bottom. Not sure I love them. The vertical stripes get lost. I'm thinking I'll get some white fabric and paint horizontal stripes. I saw it done but didn't bookmark the site. Pre pinterest days. If you are reading this and you painted horizontal stripes on fabric to make curtains, please stand up.

OK, back to the chair. It was a hot mess. Literally. I would have been really upset if I had paid someone to cover it, but since I did the work and used clearance fabric, it was no biggie. I made one, I could make another. 

I dug around in my fabric stash and decided to go with a solid dark gray with cream piping.

I made double welt cording for the first time thanks to this helpful tutorial.   I used it around the back cushion and around the back of the chair. It's a little wonky here and  there, but not so much I want to rip it off and start over.

I think she's pretty sassy with her ruffly new dress. Don't you?

 

I'll be linking at some fun parties, check em out.

 

 

Are you Pinning?

I am and I love it! Pinterest is essentially an on-line inspiration board. A place to pin and catalog all the things you love.

Not only can you catalog your loves, you can see what your friends are pinning, cause Lord knows, we need to know what our friends are up to. (said with a bit of sarcasm) I like Facebook, really I do, but do I really need to know that you are having a ham sandwich for lunch. Just sayin.

Anyhoo, back to Pinterest, the other day I was trying to think of something clever or inspirational to write on the chalkboard in my kitchen. I remembered re-pinning some wordy inspiration, so I went there to find a phrase.  I decided on one I liked and began to write it on my wall. It didn't take me long to realize I'd never get effect I wanted free hand. I loved the subway sign style of the original.  Hey, this would be a great way to use my Silhouette. I could have cut it in vinyl, but I really wanted it to be written in chalk. So I cut a stencil with some contact paper left over from another project.

I used a chalk pen to fill in the letters.

Love it!

If you want to see my pins, you can click the link over there in the right sidebar.

 

On the topic of links, see the one with all the pretty faces, that says join this site- if you are a subscriber of my blog through google reader, would you do me a favor and click that? It may be a bit silly. OK, it is silly, but it's something that's been bothering me for a while. I've been at this blogging thing for quite a while, five years,  and I've made lots of friends.  According to google reader, I have more than 6,400 subscribers. I'd just love it if that silly little widget had a lot more of your smiling faces on it.

 

 

I'll be linking at some fun parties. Check em out!

 

I hereby award myself...

The worst blogger award. I have really become such a bad blogger. I fell right off the face of the earth there, didn't I? Not even a proper thank you to the folks who so kindly joined my first ever link party. Thank you ladies! Sorry it's so late coming.

I didn't really fall off the face of the earth. Actually, I was holed up in the sewing room, sewing and gluing my little fingers off in preparation for Christmas. Here's where the really bad blogger part comes in. I made at least 75% of the gifts I gave this year, and do I have a photo? That would be a very sheepish, head hung in shame, no.

The shame of it! At one point I had about a dozen fleece scarfs adorned with singed fabric flowers on my sewing table. Great blog photo op right? Too busy to get the camera and the lighting in there stinks... excuses, excuses.

Alyssa knowing how shameful it was not to take proper photos, kindly left one of her gifts here for me to photograph. My daughter is a better blogger than me and she doesn't even have a blog.

It's a teapot lamp. Wonderful instruction on how to make your own can be found at Vintage Revivals. I used all elements I already had, just had to plop down 20 bucks for the drill bit. Even at that, I think it's a pretty cute gift for $20, don't you? Alyssa especially loved the lamp, because she collects pretty tea cups.

I don't have a photo of the pile of scarfs I made, but I did take one of my own, just so I could share how cute it is and encourage you to make your own, cause it was crazy easy.

And inexpensive.

And it's really warm.  A big thank you to Suzanne at Just Another Hangup for the tutorial.

I also made some cute little girlie stuff for Bayleigh's new room. Alyssa re-did her room for Christmas. Is she her mama's girl or what? She worked like crazy getting it ready and revealed it on Christmas morning. Bayleigh had no idea it was going on. I'll get pictures and share them soon. She got a new kitchen made from an old entertainment center. C.U.T.E!!

So, Merry Christmas and Happy New Year, from the official worst blogger.

**I didn't forget I promised to give away two fabric flowers and I did rrandomly select a name- the day I said I would. It was Rachel.  Rachel, email me your address and I'll send you your flowers.