Summer Update

We have been having so much fun, I can’t believe that this is my first blog post of June, time is racing by! Our big news is we had some work done on our house and they are finished! I really think you need to see the before and after side by side (to get a better look open this picture up full sized). And this isn’t really the after, it’s the construction is finished, but we still need to paint, hang some trellis, put the new(old) storm door on, and generally cute it up a bit more.
The front looks great, but that’s not the best part:Yep, that’s a brand new gate and a brand new privacy fence. I have wanted a fence since we moved in and now I have it! We are outside all of the time now, we have plans for a garden and a fire pit and who knows what else (we have a really large back yard). Today we’ve had a bike wash, later we’re going to go for a ride and work in the front yard some more. How is you summer going? It is speeding by like ours?

An Update: Not Nearly as Exciting as it Sounds

So, I’ve had a minor setback on the curtains, I sewed one of the panels together wrong.  It is not the end of the world and it can (and will) get fixed, however the curtains did not get finished today!  I lost a bit of my momentum when I screwed that panel up.

I did get the paint touched up and the mounting boards bought and cut to size.

Before with the patches from having our home insulated:

After, I sanded (lightly, they had already done that when they patched the holes), primed and painted the spots and I think the spots are now invisible:

I also cleaned up and organized her toys and returned all her brothers toys to his room, she takes them and hides them away while he’s at school.

I will be finishing up her new curtains this weekend, as you can see the paper shades that we currently have are a little worse for wear and one window is completely bare since an incident earlier this week.

Have a super crafty weekend! 

Nothing Crafty to Report

Hi everyone, just thought I would take a moment and let everyone know that I have nothing crafty to report.  This week our new house is being weatherized (Yay!), but it is absolute chaos here and there is no crafting taking place.  Our new home will be toasty warm this winter, but I have no projects to share.  This is my living room and dining room:You’ll notice that everything is pulled out from the walls and heaped up everywhere.  That table on the bottom right, (there’s a table under that basket) is where I normally do my crafting.

They have drilled holes in all the outer walls and blown in insulation made from recycled newspapers.

The holes are being patched and I will be retouching the paint in Little Miss’s room, I’m glad I haven’t gotten around to doing more painting.

They’ll be back again tomorrow fixing windows, putting in a new front door and adding some more insulation to our basement.  I’m hoping to have the house back to somewhat normal by next Monday.

The only semi-crafty thing I can report is that my Instant Cemetery was included in another Storque article, Yay again!!!

I’ll be back next week and back to being crafty and I’ll be securely insulated!!! 

What I did this Weekend

Last week we had an appointment with the Lincoln Action group, they provide weatherization and during the inspection we discovered black mold in one of our basement walls. Well you know that has to be fixed. Luckily in was contained in a small wall, so this weekend we took the wall down. I cordoned off the area with plastic put on my mask and started ripping it down. My Father was here to help and Marma(my Mother) kept the kids busy. Most of the mold was growing on the back of the drywall and there is no way to get it off, so out it went! The mold was caused by moisture in the wall from an old leak that had already been repaired. I sprayed the interior of the wall down with a mold killing spray, we have a dehumidifier running full blast, and in a few weeks when we’re sure the mold is dead and everything is nice and dry we’ll put the wall back up. We will be replacing one of the studs in the bathroom wall, installing an access door for the plumbing, and putting recessed shelving into the family room wall. And that swimming pool blue paint will get painted over too!

I have also been working on my Crafty Chica bag. I have finished the appliqués. Kelly (refibered) gave me a mini lesson on reverse appliqué at our Lincoln Handmade Team meeting last week. I have started the painting. I’m using regular acrylic craft paint mixed with textile medium, it’s taking a lot of coats to get good coverage, but it worth it.This is the back, I’m going to have to get a shot of these outside so the glitter vinyl is more noticeable! Here is the front, I’ve finished the white areas and am building up the yellow and red areas.

Once the painting is finished I will be embellishing this further with dimensional paint, glitter paint, rhinestones and maybe some sequins. I also have something super special planned for the inside, so check back. The contest has been extended to the 24th., so there is still time for you to give it a shot! (See the Flickr gallery here.)