creative little daisy

Just popping in to say hello and offer you a fun gift

Happy Thanksgiving! I've been missing this place.

I woke up this morning feeling a little down, beating myself up about all of my shortcomings. I lay there letting the list go on and on in my head of the unfinished projects, the pile of laundry that never goes away, the bills that need paying. Not a good way to start the day. Then I closed my eyes in prayer. It's Thanksgiving and I have much to be to be thankful for, so many reasons to be full of joy. Worry and negativity need not be part of my thinking today. Sometimes you just have to make a conscious decision to shoo away the nagging negativity and just be joyful for all that is bright and good. Today is Thanksgiving, and I am going to be joyful.

I am joyful for the family God chose to let me be a part of. I will be missing Casey. He is still floating around on a great big ship somewhere between the Mediterranean sea and here. They were on their way back home last week, before all hell broke loose on the other side of the world. He would have been home next week, but instead it was decided that the homecoming would be delayed. I am thankful he is safe and although I am sad we won't see him next week, I know he is doing the job he signed up for. He is of course, not happy about the delay, but he is more disappointed for some of his friends who have wives and children waiting. Especially so for a good friend who's first baby is due on the 29th. It is very doubtful he will make it home for the birth. I will keep those young men and women who are sacrificing so much for the freedoms we enjoy in my thoughts and prayers as I go through this day of Thanksgiving. I ask you to do the same.

Now, for a little gift I am happy to be able to share. One of those things racing through my mind this morning was this giveaway. I was contacted by a representative from Silhouette America about a giveaway on my blog. I was provided an upgrade from the Silhouette Studio basic to the Silhouette Studio Designer Edition and also a copy to share with one of my readers. I wish I would have had more time to play around with all the new features, but I can tell you, I have really big plans for using it in my Christmas decorating. If you can stand more than one post from me in a day, I will be back later with some of my ideas. 

I didn't want to wait any longer though to offer you the chance to win your own copy, a $49.99 value. If you don't know what fun things you can do with the Silhouette Studio Designer Edition , check out the comparison here and a video demonstrating the differences here.

To enter all you have to do is follow Silhouette America on Pinterest and leave me a comment about what you are most thankful for today. This is going to be a quick giveaway, so go ahead and enter. I will be back tomorrow with some really good Black Friday deals from Silhouette America and announce the winner!

Happy Thanksgiving Friends!

Nana's gonna snap!

Freezer paper stencilling has been around for a while.

I did a pillow once, but Mitch cut the stencil out for me.

I'm no good with small details and an exacto knife.

But now I have a silhouette. Oh yea! That opens up a whole new world of possibilities.

So when I saw this on pinterest, I knew I had to have one

and by making my own I could personalize it.

I wanted mine to say nana instead of mama,

since most of my snapping involves Bayleigh.

Using the Silhouette Studio software and a camera graphic purchased from their store,

I created my design.

I cut the design on freezer paper and ironed it onto my tee.

I did not prewash the shirt.

I wish I had.

The layout distorted a little after washing.

Using a foam brush I painted over the stencil with acrylic paint mixed with textile medium.

 I placed a piece of poster board inside the shirt,

to prevent the paint from bleeding through.

I pulled the freezer paper off immediately and set the shirt aside to dry.

Once dry, I  ironed over the design (covered with a cloth)  to set the paint. 

Here I am wearing it. My head is absent from this picture because Bayleigh was the photographer.

I'm not really loving the way this angle gives me a double chin,

but that's what you get when you use a

photographer who's three feet tall.

 

 

They make it look so easy!

I've been pinning photos of lovely kitchens with open shelving. Ones like this beauty

Jones Design company

Artfully arranged dishes. Simple stacks of plates and bowls arranged in a way that pleases the eye and complements the surrounding decor. Nothing about it contrived or complicated. Like it just happened.

Well, for me it didn't just happen.

I spent two hours Friday night, (yea, I need to get a life) arranging these two shelves.

I climbed up and down from a stool so much my legs were sore the next day. (I need to get a life that involves more exercise apparently)

I'd move a piece,  get down, step back and look.

It was too busy, too stark, too blue, too, too, too...

It finally came around, or else I just got tired of fooling with it, once I took all the blue dishes out. Either they looked to arranged or too haphazard. If I tried balancing equal amounts of blue on top and bottom, left and right it looked like I was trying to hard, if I didn't balance them it looked, well, unbalanced.

I really wish I had photographed each step along the way so I can share how exciting my Friday nights are. Kid you not, two hours arranging dishes, so that they wouldn't look arranged.

I didn't want the shelf to be full of stuff that isn't used to just collect dust and in the end, there are lots of things there as fillers.  Now that I really look, it's mostly fillers. I do use those coffee cups and the white dish on the bottom shelf is new but I will use it.

I need to quit looking at these pictures, it only makes me want to go change things.

The stuff in the cabinet, we do use that. No fillers here.

For a little Valentine love, the pretty felted heart from my sweet {former blogger} friend LLA. Former blogger, not former friend.

And a bird. Oh my! Have you seen this?

 

I got a new sink, but that's a story all its own.

Oh what the heck, as long as I brought it up.

When we built the house, we had a white cast iron sink. I don't remember why, but at some point I decided I wanted to change it. I think it was losing some of it's shine and was hard to clean. Anyway, I got a composite sink that closely matched the lovely dark gray formica counter tops. Blackish gray composite sink with darkish gray formica, not bad. Darkish gray with butcher block, not so good.

I told my loving husband that I wanted the white sink back. It was still here, behind his barn. Yea, it looks like hoarders back there. Not really. Maybe a little.  We live in the country.

I'm rambling. It used to look sort of like hoarders. Before Mitch, the loving husband took a huge truck load of junk to the metal salvage yard (he collects cars and car parts like I collect furniture and lamps) and since the sink was cast iron, it went too.  That was after I told him I wanted it back in the house. After he told me there was no way he was putting that thing back in. It nearly broke his back taking it out. He said I'll buy you a new one, an acrylic one. He said that to put me off, hoping I'd just get over it. I didn't.

Long story short I have a new sink and it's big enough to bathe in. I don't know how, it is in the same hole, but this baby is HUGE.  I love it.

So there you go, I walk on the wild side arranging shelves and putting birds on them and my husband buys me gifts in the plumbing section of the hardware store. Don't you wish you lived such a glamorous life?

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.

 

 

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.

 

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!