We were all hanging out in the backyard last night.
Lucy collected and cleaned rocks from around the yard.
Our new chickens had dust baths under the bushes and relaxed. This is Coco.
We have 3 hens! Coco, Bridget and one who is yet to be named. Any name ideas?
Dustin has been hard at work finishing the chicken coop. He finished the door yesterday and made some screened vents.
And I worked on an earflap hat for Lucy for this winter. Almost done!
I really think it's just me though.
My husband's chicken coop planning: a still life.
This part in particular just cracks me up! I don't know why.
And a very small standoff occurred. Thankfully peace reigned supreme and all was well.
Being peaceful...I'm working on it. I just love the color of those eggs, don't you? We have a local lady that delivers fresh eggs from her chickens every other week.
I spent almost all day painting yesterday and love how it's brightened up our home! On the weekends when I'm at home with Lucy, I love watching decorating shows. I got all inspired yesterday after watching one and decided to paint one of our big walls on a whim! It had never been painted and was a harsh white with lots of nail holes and dirt - blech. That wall has been bugging me for a while now.
Tada!
It's a really nice sand color ( It's Valspar "spun sugar" from the Martha Stewart line). I love how it brightens everything up but is still a neutral and goes with everything. The color variation at the bottom isn't the paint, I'm better than that! :) Our house has weird lighting.
This is a better example of the color, I think. It took 2 coats.
This is the other side of the room:
I'm so happy with the way the house is turning out! We painted these walls a couple of months ago.
The green is Valspar by Martha Stewart, "tapenade" and the dark brown is "horseshoe".
I also wanted to show off my new cutie pie wreath!
It's a little gnome in his s'mores garden! How creative is that!? I got it from KnockKnocking on Etsy, of which I am a huge fan. I want all of her wreaths!
I've been down in the dumps lately - I don't think it's any one thing, just a bunch of things all stuck together. I've had a hard time pulling myself out of it. Today I was able to spend a good 4-5 hours in my craft room just messing around (thanks to my wonderful husband who kept Lucy occupied because he knew I needed time to myself) and it was so therapeutic! I didn't make any masterpieces, I just surrounded myself with candy colors and glitter and had fun.
Lucy has been so into dressing up lately that I thought it would be fun to make her a dress up corner. Yesterday we hung some hooks and a floor length mirror after I rearranged her room, and today I painted a "Lucy's Boutique" sign! I love how it turned out, and Lucy has been playing in there a lot.
Lucy's dress up corner
Sorry for the blurriness, I really need a new camera! It's just one of those things that has to wait for the time being.
Here's a close up of the sign:
It has a cute vintage paper doll dress!
I made her this one too:
If I keep on going this way, she's going to own every type of store there is!
I just discovered Diamond Dust! I'm probably one of the last people to find out about it, but I love it! It's crushed glass glitter that looks just like sugar. I've been using it on everything lately, and it's pretty inexpensive! I think I found an excuse to use it on everything I made today. I've also been playing with Paper Clay a lot too, I'm just getting the hang of it!
I feel a little better after my time in my craft room and Lucy's room looks cuter too.
I found this aqua colored old pantry cupboard at one of the local antique malls for $25 and couldn't pass it up!
The top is disgusting. This is after I scrubbed and scrubbed the dang thing. And let's just say I know it was stored in a barn at some point.
The inside has potential though, see?
Should I ever need to know about different herbs, spices and seasonings I totally have it covered. After having scrubbed and scrubbed and scrubbed, gotten cleaning solution all over the floor, and getting little sticky bits everywhere (and on my shoes) it looks much better!
Tada! Now it houses some of Lucy's many, many books. They were starting to stack up in a ridiculously large pile in the living room. To make the top look nicer I covered it with Amy Butler and some faux bois scrapbook paper and covered those with contact paper in case a certain someone thinks it's a good idea to put a sippy cup on top.
Cheapest makeover ever! I love my new cupboard.
We're doing better around here. The weekend helps. Sleeping in and being outside and lots of good thrift store shopping helps too. Sometimes it feels like everything that I try to balance ends up in a heap all at once, and I have to sort it out by myself. I panic, and then I work through it - usually freaking out a bit in the process. I can't even tell you how much just having some leisure time helps! I tend to forget about that. Oh yeah, that relaxation thing - huh. Guess what! There's a reason people do that.
I did lots of thrift store shopping today, see? Lucy was actually very well behaved while shopping with me.
I found some fun things! I don't know if you can really see that tree in the middle but it's vintage, is made of wire, and has lots of little metal leaves hanging off of it. I love it!
I had time to make dinner for once, too.
It's a quiche with ham and cheese. I got my main recipe here and tweaked a couple things. I love that recipe because it's just a basic quiche recipe that you can add whatever you want to. In this one I threw in some cheese (Parmesan, Romano and mozzarella I think, whatever was in the fridge), and some chopped cooked ham. I alter the recipe after having experimenting with it a few times by pre-baking the (frozen) pie crust for 9 minutes to reduce sogginess, cutting the half and half from 2 cups to 1 1/4 cups and adding an extra 5-10 minutes to the cooking time at the end. It is way easy and really good!
Having an outdoor table - ahhhh! How, in the 9 years Dustin and I have lived on our own, have we never had an outdoor table that we can sit at?! Are we the last people on earth to have an outdoor table? Probably. The wonders - I can eat! Drink coffee on the patio! Use the laptop! Hand embroider! All of which I've done already this morning, and it's only 9:45! While watching Lucy play, I might add. I know this probably sounds ridiculous, but I am so stoked about my new table, and it was only $34.99! Although, looking at the old photo, I don't think I'm quite dressed appropriately! Nor do I have a fancy hat!
Dustin has been working some overtime at night a couple days a week so it was nice to have him home last night! I made hot chocolate for us:
We watched one of our favorite shows, Fringe, and the science channel (I complained but he won) while I got a chance to work on some hand sewing. I love to sew things by hand. It isn't practical a lot of the time but I find it so relaxing and therapeutic. It's a toss up as to whether I'd rather be hand sewing or knitting. I probably do both equally as often.
I made these brooches for my Etsy shop:
I was so happy with the way these pictures came out! I'm finally getting product photos down a little more. They're sitting on the back of an old wooden soda crate, which I really like the texture of. I always either use that or a piece of white posterboard. I have 2 good photo taking spots in the house: on Lucy's dresser and on my craft room table. It has to be sunny though, and the curtains have to be open wide. I finally (finally!) figured out that you can use the macro setting on little things like these pins and the pictures come out showing all the detail. I am a slow learner but I'm getting it!
