Wooden Gnome-like Santas

I used to do a lot of wood crafts. In fact, I sold many of them at craft fairs. I don't know what made me stop, but it's been years since I dabbled in woodcrafting. I saw a photo on Pinterest of these wooden gnome-like Santa and I thought I could certainly do that without purchasing a pattern or instructions.

After a some thought, I drew multiple sizes of triangles on paper using my 10-degree quilting ruler. I cut them out to get a real visual of the sizes I wanted to make. I then determined the base sizes from scraps of wood my husband had lying around his woodshop.  When he saw what I was up to he volunteered some pallet boards and dowels for the legs. I loved the idea of using pallet boards! This was going to be fun. It also made him clean up after himself so I had room in the workshop to cut on the bandsaw and sand my pieces. I did most of the work myself however I did ask Jeff to drill the holes for the dowels. After painting the pieces, I glued them together and stained them. Once the stain dried I took them outside and sealed them with spray matte-finish sealer.

And viola...

The real fun was choosing buttons for embellishments.

They are ready for my craft fair next weekend. I can't wait to see how they fare. Then I will know if I should continue with woodcrafts. I hope they do well because I had lots of fun making them.

A Busy Summer Week

I love the television show The Office. It is my constant companion while I sew. Since I can find it on a cable station almost any time of the day it's easy to have it on even if it's just background noise. So I wanted to make a project bag using The Office themed fabrics. I got it started this week.

At this month's basement quilters group I finished up the baby blankets and burp cloths I started at the beginning of summer. I am so happy to have all these done before my next craft fair. I completed 18 blankets and 38 burp cloths. I think I won't have to make more for a little while - haha!

Our beloved Milwaukee Bucks are world champions and we've been dying to go downtown and take a photo next to the Fiserv Forum. We chose to do so this week because there's an art fair in the Deer District. What better time could there be? 
 

I sold a quilt on Etsy so I decided I would spend some of my earnings at the art fair. Sort of a pay it forward kind of thing. At least that's how I justified my purchase. I bought this cute little business card holder from a welder who repurposed old metals into new things. The "hairs" on this little guy were made from political yard signs. I'm so glad those are something else now. Tee-hee.

On another note, I picked these vegetables from my garden this week.

It's hard to tell but the entire bottom of the bucket is full of carrots. My garden is doing pretty well this month. It's hard work, but I love it.

Charity Pet Beds

Every year my church has a Christmas tree dedicated to pets. It's a thing that started many years ago when the pastor's beloved dog, Harley passed away. The tree was named after Harley and parishioners and visitors alike are encouraged to donate new pet items and make monetary contributions that will go to a local no-kill pet shelter. 

Each year I make homemade pet beds. I save fabric chunks and batting scraps all year in order to make them. I sew the scraps together to make the top then add old blue jeans that get cut into large pieces to make the back. The jeans add a nice sturdy base to them and the fabrics for the top are usually fleece or flannel for softness. 

Once the top is sewn to the back, I then take all my batting scraps and cut them up into small pieces. I also stuff the leftover fabric scraps inside as well. Nothing is wasted. What a great feeling. I love recycling and repurposing old things. 

This year I set one of the beds where my cat lays. I thought it would be a good test to see if a pet actually likes them. At naptime, he laid on it and stayed there most of the afternoon. Since I wasn't sure whether he laid on it because it was his space or whether it was the comfort of the cat bed, I moved the bed to a different location. He chose to seek out the bed and again napped on it. 

Now I'm in trouble. How can I take it away and send it to church when he likes it so much?

What's on the design board?

I'm in-between quilt projects right now. It's generally part of my summer ritual as I go from staying indoors to outdoor projects like gardening and my patio project.  So I've turned to my donation bin for inspiration. There are so many fat quarters in there that I needed to find a fat quarter friendly pattern and along comes the Perfect Ten pattern. It uses a little yardage and 10 fat quarters.

I pulled out 10 prints in bright primary colors. I numbered them from 1 through 10 and followed the sample layout found in the pattern. In an evening I had the blocks sewn together in three sections. All that's left is to sew the sections together. Considering the magnitude of my outdoor projects, that might take a while. 

It's Garden Time

Over the course of the last week we made cedar raised bed garden boxes with the boards we salvaged from the removal of our deck. These boards are over 30 years old. Just look at how great they look.

We made a total of 5 boxes of varying sizes. It totally depended on the length of the usable boards, but in the end we made it work efficiently where we got the most real estate from what we had.

There's a box for beans and peas, one for peppers, one for tomatoes, one for cucumbers and pickles, and the last one has carrots and lettuce planted in it.

My garden has everything necessary for success - a rain barrel is in one corner and a compost bin in the other. And lastly, there's a section with a rock border that is holding back the ever-creeping strawberries. I am so happy with how it turned out. I just hope I can make things grow.

I stacked up the empty containers that held the baby plants from the nursery.  There's plenty of empties!

Once the garden was done, I started on some small projects, like re-painting the star that hangs over the shed doors. It was so faded you couldn't tell it was red. Well you sure can tell now. Ha!

We have some decisions to make regarding the space where the new patio is going. First of all we have to decide where to put the pergola posts. So I've taken my free-standing posts and moved them around to get a visual representation. I only have 3 posts so we will have to get creative to mark where the fourth post would go. I guess a rock will do.

Once that decision is made, my husband will have to run an electrical cable underground to the spot where the post will go before the cement can be poured. It's a serious decision that we don't take lightly so it's stressing us out.

Now that the plants are in, I can see my next project; I have to paint my garden fence. It's so chipped and faded it is very overdue. These fun outdoor projects are taking up my sewing time but I don't mind. I love the warm weather and the gardening as much as I love sewing.

Our (Once Upon a Time) Beautiful Deck

I have always loved my backyard in the summer. Especially my deck. It was a place of solace on warm summer evenings and a fun place to hang out with friends and family. Now it has become old and worn out, just like its owners. Haha.

We hired a contractor to make us a new patio. Although it will be beautiful I will still miss the nice feel of the deck under my feet. So today we have to start to tear it out. We were going to take this on last year but we had so many other plans (lots of travel) that we couldn't squeeze this project in. It was in desperate need of staining last year and we let that go and this year I actually fell through at a rotten spot. That's when you know it's time to say good-bye.

So here we are tearing it out. We still have quite a way to go but we're getting there. We are taking the cedar pieces that are still in good shape and saving them to make raised bed garden boxes. Nothing will go to waste.

Once the new patio is in, we will be putting in a pergola - a project that will take the two of us . I can't wait!

My New Bathroom

This is my ugly bathroom. It's the private bathroom off the master bedroom suite. Outside of changing the paint color over the years, not much else has changed in the room.

Then we decided to replace the bedroom carpet and include the bathroom, closet and hall so there was a consistent floor throughout.

As we worked through our options for floor, I found this piece of art. It is an oil painting from a local artist from the Lake Winnebago area. I absolutely fell in love with it and I instantly knew what I wanted to do with it.

Yes, it's going in the bathroom. My bathroom. So I took the painting to the store to pick out a new bathroom paint color.


My husband was taking the old sink and cabinet out so the new floor could be installed where the cabinet was. It was all good timing, then I could paint the walls where the cabinet was. And it was good I was painting before the new floors came so I could be messy.


Somewhere along the way my husband found a brand-new-in-the-box Kohler vessel sink at the Habitat for Humanity ReStore. He had to have it even though he didn't know where he would use it. I think he wanted to re-do the powder room and make it fancy but I had other ideas. I drew up a plan where he could take the old cabinet, make it smaller in both width and height. I really wanted a new cabinet to have legs and not be up against the side wall. And I wanted a drawer on the bottom.

Amazingly, he did it. He cut the base off, took the doors off and made the frame smaller. We picked out milk paint to coordinate with the flooring and he sprayed the cabinet with our new custom color. I had some fun buying new crystal knobs for the cabinet too. We looked for antique ones but couldn't find any but that's ok, most of the project was a repurpose project.

We considered making a cement countertop but I think we were both ready to call this a finish so we went a shop less than a mile away and had a custom quartz top made for the sink to sit in. It is so beautiful.

Once the cabinet was finished, my husband took the old large mirror to local glass shop and had it cut down. He used scrap wood to make a frame and used the same milk paint to finish the frame.

I bought a waterfall faucet to install over the sink to finish the entire thing off. I love the end result and I totally enjoyed the adventure getting to this point. Now I get the fun of picking out new bathroom accessories and towels.

Pallet Christmas Tree

I came home from the quilt shop today to find this little gem on my front porch. Apparently while I was away my husband got a little creative. I showed him some pallet Christmas tree photos and mentioned that I would love to have one. He decided to whip one up and I love it. Monday we will go out shopping for lights to put on it. 

While cleaning the living room to prep for the Christmas tree, I discovered that we sure do get a lot of magazines. I was surprised at how many there were. I did order a few subscriptions for my husband when he retired and a few for myself as well. I guess I thought we would actually have time to sit down and read. Boy, was I wrong! 

A Busy Saturday

It's a sad day today. My old car died and after a week at the repair shop, it was determined that it is not worth fixing. Apparently Santa Fe's have 3 catalytic converters and on this car, 2 of the 3 are in need of replacement. There are no after-market parts for these so you have to get them from a dealer. The cost of the parts with labor runs about $2K. If new converters are installed it's still not certain the problem will be fixed.

Considering the blue book value of the car it's just not worth the trouble so today my husband sold it 'as-is'. I thought I would take one last photo of it before the buyer loads it on his trailer. I enjoyed driving it and after I purchased my Mini Cooper, my daughter enjoyed it as well. So for the next week we will be searching for a new car for her. I think next week will be stressful until she finds one because she is using my car until then leaving us to have to alter our schedules a little.

Today we also had our appointment with our tax accountant to get our income taxes done. The new tax reform hasn't helped us much. We owe way more money than I thought we would.

Oh well.

We left the accountant's office and stopped at the Habitat for Humanity ReStore. My husband loves the store. A few weeks ago he purchased a door from a deconstruction project. It was so old, heavy and well-made and he's enjoyed refinishing it. While we were there I picked up some beautiful crystal wine glasses and some glass door knobs. Since he is changing out our doors we might as well have new knobs to go along with them.

Here's the view out of my kitchen window this afternoon. It's starting to rain and all the ducks are coming in for a landing. We feed more than 50 of them regularly. They hang out here all winter.

You can see the hammock frame sticking out of the snow. Last week you could only see the top of the frame since the snow was so high. It is melting slowly and hopefully we are finally seeing the end of this brutal winter.

Repurposed Curtain Packaging

When I purchased new curtains they came in these individual vinyl zip-pouches. I set them aside wondering if I could repurpose them since they were so well constructed.

Today it occurred to me that they would make really nice project bags. I've seen tutorials on Pinterest to make them with some fabric, vinyl and a zipper. I figured why make them when I can use these.

I removed the labels and cardboard that held the curtain panel and peeled off the label from the outside of the packaging. It sure is a lot of waste just to sell a curtain panel.

I used the little pocket inside the package to hold the pattern for the project and put the cut pieces inside. Now I have a project ready to take with me to open sew! I have a bunch of these packages so I will prep more projects and use them to carry with me.

A few of the packages have some sticky stuff left on after peeling off the label so I will put some stickers over those spots and make the project bags even cuter.

What's on the design board?

I've had this project waiting for me for quite a while (all summer long) and I am finally getting to it. It's a client project where the request is "can you make a lap quilt with my daughter's old pjs? Her name is Joy and it make a great Christmas present. Can you also incorporate the ruffles in the quilt as well?" After thinking all summer long as to how I was going to go about it, I came up with these large blocks.

I started with some fleece to use as the background fabric. I cut the fleece into strips and hated the bulk of the whole thing. I also wondered how I would quilt something totally made of fleece. I was trying to ignore my general dislike of fleece and come up with a way to make it work. It wasn't happening. So I dug out some fleece from my stash and stitched strips around the fleece. I liked the feel, but hated the colors I used. I tried using a soft pink like the Joy applique and I tried using a bright green that is also found within the applique. Both did not work. After a trip to the fabric store, I had the right colors for the blocks. 

I stitched the strips onto the fleece squares and ended up with the results shown here. I have enough Joy blocks to alternate with the plain dotted fleece blocks. I will end up with 4 rows of 4 blocks each. I think I really need to make this 5 rows of 4 blocks each. I definitely have enough fabric to make more dotted fleece blocks but no more applique blocks. I'm considering adding in some blocks framed with white fleece and maybe even adding back the soft pink block.  I will have to make a white block and maybe incorporate the ruffles then see how that looks before moving to the next decision.  The next think I have to consider is whether I should square up the blocks and make them wonky or just square them up straight. 

For now, I think I need to work on something else and think about it for a while. I don't want to make and decisions I will regret later.

An Earth Day Tradition

We always get a real Christmas tree. We are lucky to know someone who owns their own Christmas tree farm and all we have to do is just ask for a tree. We tell them we want a Frasier Fir, preferably a skinny, shorter version. Like a Charlie Brown tree. Of course, it's never like that. The trees are always very beautiful and we are grateful that all the fuss of going out in the cold to personally pick out a tree is removed from the process. Some people enjoy that ritual but not me, I am really not fond of cold weather. So this works out perfectly.

For me, the hard part about having a real tree is letting go. It seems such a shame to cut this beautiful living thing down for something so (realistically) unnecessary. But there is something to be said for the amazing pine smell that permeates the house. So I keep the tree up for as long as is practical. And once we take it down we place it in my garden for the duration of the winter where it becomes a refuge for the birds. It's amazing to see how many little birds protect themselves among the branches during bad weather. It's a beautiful thing.

Once spring comes I have to get the tree out of the garden. So we have a bonfire to turn the tree into ash. The ash gets turned with the compost that goes back into the garden. It's a great way to complete the circle and use every bit of that tree. So another year goes by and we feel good about renewing nature's gift and giving it back to the earth.

Homemade Christmas Ornament

I made this ornament from a toddler-sized t-shirt. The 'Joy' under the tree on the shirt was kept as part of the ornament on purpose since that's also the name of the girl who wore the shirt and she will receive the ornament.  I added a nice green ribbon to hang the ornament and it really does match even though my camera did not do it justice.

My Finished Painted Light Fixture (and Ceiling Fan)

I finally finished spray-painting my ceiling fan. I actually painted the light fixture a while back. The polished nickel color turned out great on the fixture. There were so many little parts to paint that it took a long time because of all the painting-drying-turning-painting-drying...to get all the nooks and crannies covered.

All that was left were the fan blades. I painted those with a matte white earlier this week. Once that was completed, my husband installed it back in its place. He put the old light bulbs back in and I didn't like the look. So we went shopping for new bulbs. We bought some small bulbs that looked like flood light bulbs. And that made all the difference.

What's on the design board?

My design board is currently empty. Why? Well it just happens that things are moving so fast around here. Last month my daughter moved into a new apartment a block away from my home. I am so excited to have her and my granddaughters so so close to me. The thing is though, this move has sucked up all my time.

I work two days a week so that takes up some of my time but the rest of my time is spent helping everyone get settled in. So that means walking Chloe to the bus in the morning, picking up the girls from daycare some days and helping any way we can to make the new transition easier.

I also recently updated my kitchen and one of the things I didn't like was the ceiling fan. So I spray painted the light fixture and the fan blades. I prefer re-purposing things to buying new and I do love the light fixture so it was an easy decision to update the colors.

Since I set up the garage for painting, I thought I would paint an old nightstand that's been in the garage for a few years. I also painted my daughter's dresser and my granddaughter's bookcase and dvd stand. The weather has been unusually warm for late September so I wanted to take advantage of every single day of this nice weather while I still can do things outside.

I've spent so little time in my sewing room but I'm certainly using my time wisely and productively.

Kitty Zipper Pouch

This is a little project made from a toddler t-shirt. The cute little shirt has a kitty on it and it is a little faded - a sure sign of shirt love from lots of wear.

I cut the image from the shirt while trying to keep as much surrounding fabric as possible. Thus the rectangular shape of the pouch.

I used a pretty cotton fabric on the back that complimented the colors within the image. I also found some cute kitty fabric in a green print, the same color as the text on the t-shirt image.

I made some pockets inside the pouch to make it a little more versatile. The color combinations in this little bag were so very much fun to use.