Busy

I have been incredibly busy lately.  We went on a 1.5 week vacation and just got back on Monday.  So the preparations and actual trip have been consuming my ever minute for the past 3 weeks.  But we are home now and almost fully back into the swing of things.  I have started a few new projects, am catching up on chores and doing a little light reading.  I have finally started on the quilt for my youngest, I have about 1% completed, but this is what I have so far:

I am teaching a class next weekend on crochet so I am getting some samples made that I will later use in a "copy" project.  It will be more of an "inspired by" because mine will be constructed differently.  But here are the flowers that I have crocheted for that:

And finally here are some pictures from our trip.  We went to San Antonio, TX, with a side trip to Austin (I HAD to go to Ikea!!).  So here are some of the highlights.

My girl, Casey, recently mentioned that we should both post house tours on our blogs.  I have to say, my house is constantly a work in progress...  so surprisingly there is only one room that I would consider "designed" and that one belongs to my 5 year old :-)  I am SUPER eclectic and have just recently defined my "style" and before that I had no direction.  Now that I do have a direction,  I think that things will start falling into place.   When those places are at a point that I consider them complete, I will contemplate doing a tour.   For now, I decided to do a "close up tour" of my home and some of my favorite things in each room.  This will be a multi-post thing and will hopefully give you all an idea of what my home looks like.  My first one will be of my kitchen, so be on the lookout for that.  Until then, happy vacationing.

Recent Doings

It's been pretty busy around here lately. Here are a few things that I have done in the last month or so.

Remember all of the little charms that I was collecting to make this necklace from the Lucky Mag cover?  It is the Noisette Multi Long Necklace by Swarovski  and I just HAD to have it but wasn't willing to drop $270 on it.

So I collected a bunch of charms (mostly from Forever 21) and assembled my version for less than $20.  After I made this, I got to see the Swarovski version in person and I was surprised to see that mine turned out quite a bit more delicate...  but I still love it.  This is a very long necklace so it was a bit difficult to get a good pic, but here is what I've got.

We have lived in our house for 6 years now and my paintings from college are randomly hung all over the house.  Sometimes their colors and placement don't make sense but it is what it is.  I have a very long painting (4' x 22") that I did during my "Jackson Pollock Phase" in college that we hung up over our staircase pretty much just because there was a nail already there.  It was off center and hung on the wall all by itself and looked really out of place.  My intention was always to paint another painting in a similar size to hang with it.... but that never happened.   So, I was organizing the fabrics at work a month ago, drooling over the new Anna Maria Horner fabrics and decided that my favorite print in her Innocent Crush line (AH29 golden) would look GREAT next to "Jackson Pollock Phase" painting.  So I bought a canvas about the same size for 50% off and stretched the Anna Maria fabric over it and hung it "stair stepped" down the wall following the staircase.  The yellow in the fabric is more gold, and the yellow in my painting is a little more sunny and they really have nothing in common...  but I love how they look together.....

Here is a lamp that I bought at Target a few months ago (for 50% off)...   I LOVE IT and it looks great in my bedroom, but I am having trouble finding a shade to go on it...  So here is sits in my bedroom, not in use :-)  until I find the perfect shade.

So, I saw this cute little embroidered fabric note on Etsy and thought that it was the cutest thing EVER.  (I also saw a little irony when I realized that the shop has the same name as my blog-a-roo)

I thought that this would be a great end-of-the-year gift for a teacher so J-man and I made one this year for his Kindergarten teacher.  I machine sewed the lines on a piece of linen, I sewed them to look like the standard Kindergarten paper instead of the wide ruled paper from my inspiration.  I had J-man use a soft pencil to write her a note, I embroidered over it, then I ironed on a heavy piece of interfacing and sewed on a backing.  In the bottom left hand corner I also added in the school year dates.  I think this turned out super cute and this is something that I would treasure if I was a teacher :-)

I also made his teacher a necklace.  I made both of his Pre-K teachers apple necklaces and they really liked them, so that tends to be my go-to teacher gift now.  I try to make them look a little more abstract and less "teacher-y" in case they want to wear it for multiple occasions.

This will indicate size:

My 5 (almost 6) year old is completely into anything that George Lucas creates!  Indiana Jones is his all time favorite character (and movies) with Star Wars coming in at a decent 2nd place.  Comic-Con came to KC a few months ago and it just so happened that both of the actors that played J-man's favorite character, Boba Fett, were going to be signing autographs.  So the hubbs took both boys and J-man got both autographs and a picture with each actor.  I think it was the highlight of his year!  The hubbs bought a few metallic painted frames to use for the photos/autographs and I instantly didn't like them.  I have to appreciate that he was trying to go for a "Star Wars-y" look but they didn't match anything so I painted them orange.  Then I dusted off the ol' mat cutter and cut a few custom mats.  They took me forever but they are done.  We hung them on the wall in his room last night in a little cluster:

Here is the actor that played Boba Fett (the bounty hunter that captures Han Solo) in the original Star Wars movies, Jeremy Bulloch... with J-man in the photo in the corner, and his give away photo with personalized autograph:  (You can't really tell but my mat cutter cuts beveled edges so it really does look nice up close.)

Here is the one with Daniel Logan, that played the young Boba Fett in Star Wars II: Attack of the Clone Wars.  I have to say that the pic he took with J-man is my favorite, look how cute it is!  I am not sure if he had any give away photos or not, but J-man brought one of his comic books for him to sign that I framed with his picture.

 This is a greeting card that we had at work.  I thought that it would look perfect in J-man's room.  The colors are perfect and they are the comic book characters that he loves.  Link here.

I was thumbing through the Stampinton Somerset Studio Gallery mag and came across the cutest little portraits by Shelly Broughton.    Here is a link to some of the portraits that were in the mag.  I thought they were really cute and easy enough that it could be something that J-man and I could do together.  So I dug out one of his papers from school, I used Matte Medium to "decoupage" it to the back ground on a piece of stretched canvas.  We drew and painted him on top (including his lizard that he is holding) and then we decoupaged fabric on both side of the painting.  Since I didn't intend on framing it, I painted the edges orange to match his room....  the fabric was also scraps from his quilt so it ties it all in.  I think that this is a really cute souvenir from his Kindergarten days.

There are tons of things that I want and need to make that I just don't have enough time for.  On the top of my to-do list is a second quilt for my 2 year old.  I have the fabric to make it, I just haven't figured out exactly how I want to piece it together.  I don't want to make it exactly the same as the one that I made from his brother so I am still contemplating and waiting.  Here is the one that I made for his brother:

I also recently saw this image in the Urban Outfitters summer catalog:

I realize that it just a duvet cover that is creating the bed skirt, but it has inspired me to make one that looks just like it for my bed....  when I get a chance.

I should stop now...  I could probably go on FOREVER with my to-do lists :-)   Family vaca is coming up so I should have some fun photos from that to share.  Maybe I will find some time to make a few things too?  :-)  *wishful thinking*
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