Baby's out of the bag

Why have I been a blog slacker? I've been busy growing a little human. But I'm feeling better and house projects and life in general can resume so I can have more blog fodder and my sister can stop harassing me. For a peek in the womb-growing business, check out my other blog, Motherhoodasana.

Tweet tweet from the mantel

One of the many things I love about my sister Chance is her generosity. When she was visiting, she and her little family went up to Atchison, Kansas for the day. But look what she got me at Nell Hill's! A bird for my mantel. Just what I've been wanting!




The mantel is still a work in progress, so don't be too upset I'm not showing the entire thing.

Taming of the shrew: Home edition

We have a new friend. His name is Vinny. His past residence: our egress window well. His occupation: whatever shrews do.

One of my favorite things is to look into our oh so deep and wide window well to see what animals might fallen in. So far, we've had Larry the frog and Quincy the baby snapping turtle. When I saw Vinny, I first I thought he was a mole. But upon further research, we discovered he's a shrew.





And although I gave him the moniker Vinny with all the tender loving care of a mama, Jonathan liked calling him something that rhymed with Ducker. Our house is colorful to say the least. You see, Vinny wasn't necessarily doing anything down in that pit of ours. I was more concerned the thing was going to dig his way to the bottom and starve to death in his attempt to escape. And at first, we weren't even certain he was alive, but with a little nudge from a long pole, he scampered around. It's ALIVE! I was actually pretty excited about the creature, and me being me tried to get it to move around bit more by throwing a weed at it. Oh, my bad. The thing just raced to the side of the wall and jumped up into our siding. Christening him Ducker from Jonathan. It wasn't until then that we researched what he was to find out exactly what we need to do to get rid of him. That is if he came out of his hidey hole.



He eventually did come out, and the meantime we let him be while we trekked to Home Depot to get a live trap. The trap turned out to be unnecessary since the trap was for a mouse and shrews, once Jonathan got a closer look at him, are a little bigger. Plan B: find a box. It was now dark outside, so armed with a flashlight, we coaxed him on the lid of the box—once he quit playing like he was a rock! Then we walked across the street to the woods by our house and Jonathan launched him into the woods. Farewell Vinny!



Now we're making plans to prevent animals and humans from falling in. We really don't aspire to play Noah.

If this isn't cute

I don't know what is. Unearthing myself and my camera. I didn't take hardly any pictures while my sister was here visiting, but apparently I got enough or a couple picture that will steal your heart. Here's Abby. Isn't she a doll? She's at her favorite spot in my house: at the bar eating.

I made a curtain, part four: Big reveal!

Okay, okay. This is a loooonnnnggg time coming. What does that sidelight look like all dressed up and places to go? Here she is. Jonathan looks at it every week and says that I did an amazing job. Him saying that makes all my anxiety worth it.










Now we can walk around naked. If we want.

I made a curtain, part three

Deep breaths. I made the first cut. Into designer crazy amazing upholstery. And I had a plan. I would take a 30in. wide segment of fabric and then cut that in half again to fit the 14in. wide sidelight, covering the window so that the inside and the outside of the curtain was the same. This is a tall window that's highly visible to visitors as they walk up to the porch, so I wanted the pattern to be visible from the outside too. That was the final plan, but it took some getting there.



Initially I thought I would take a 30in. segment of the fabric for each side of the curtain, allowing for gathers. But once I started working with the fabric and the Heat N Bond, I realized that gathering the fabric would actually cover up the really cool oval design. When you pay $17/yard for fabric, you don't want to block the design. I also learned that although Heat N Bond is a really easy way to get around sewing, it wasn't going to hold everything on this thick fabric. Altering my plan actually made it easier to execute.



Once I had cut down my panels to size, I heated up my iron and got to work. I left room on the width to fold in the sides half an inch, and it turns out the pattern provided an excellent measuring tool in how far this would be: each oval was just folded in half. Neat and tidy. Once I had ironed down the Head N Bond tape to the backside of the fabric, it was peel and stick time.

Okay, it actually wasn't that easy, and this was my first time working with the stuff, so I enlisted Jonathan help in this step. While I ironed, he went ahead of me folding down the edge of fabric about to be ironed. This prevented me from having to stop and do it myself and keep the edges neatly folded. The first panel went without a hitch. It was on the second panel I ran into problems.

Apparently Heat N Bond can be temperature sensitive. You don't want to get your iron too hot, and alternatively, you don't want it too low. So I had couple inch sections here and there that didn't want to stay down. Once I researched the problem online, I made sure my iron was turned down.

Panels done, I got to the final part of my plan. Some actually sewing. I need to sew the two panels together so they could fit around the tension rods. Remembering my grade school sewing days, I faced the two panels together with the backside facing out, and marked 2.5in. in from the top. Because I still wasn't want to even sew that much, I did single stitches every inch or sew. Sewn, signed, and delivered, or more like, sewn, flipped right side out, and tension rods placed, it was time to give my foyer it's privacy curtain...

Master bedroom: art

I don't own a lot of art, but I do own a lot of our wedding pictures (four years this October! Where did time go?). Including these two pictures that my photographer had matted for me. I used frames I already had. In our old apartment, I had these hanging in different locations, but I wanted to use them together in our new master. To figure out the layout, I laid them out on the floor first. Here's how it turned out on the wall. Noticed the wall color! This collage still needs a little something...