Life in Color โ€” a scrappy Log Cabin quilt block pieced in pink and green prints.
  • On Saturday Sciarrino and I got out our garage sale purses, baskets, and treats to keep us going through the morning and grabbed the local paper. We headed out into the big bad world of estate, garage, and yard sales. In case you haven’t heard this is the coldest spring in the last thirty years, and I think as a result the sales have been HORRIBLE. I swear, there were weeks and weeks with no estate sales even listed in the paper. Crazyville, last year I couldn’t keep up. So it didn’t make me want to get up early and out there. But we decided there were a few neighborhood sales and it was worth it to get out. We didn’t get a lot, I got jars and these goodies:
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    A never used watercolor tablet, a bingo game with awesome pieces, and a fun painting book. I have a collection of those learn to paint at home type books going and am planning to group them all together somewhere in the house. The shoes are the best though. This woman had hundreds of pairs, and they were 5 cents a pair. Sciarrino helped me track down the mate because there were just mounds of shoes. They are a little big, but check out how loved they were:
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    She had them repaired at some point, which is something I would do too.

    In other news I’m cleaning out the craft room and I came across this:
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    It’s a ring of Bazzill papers, with labels on the back that tell the color. I got it a few years ago off eBay, it’s very handy if you’re like me and have a ton of this stuff. Instead of bring your project to the cardstock stash, you just bring the ring to your project. I just go the official swatch box though, so I don’t need it any more. I know it’s not quite up to date, but if anyone wants to pay shipping ($5 priority), I’ll happily package it up and send it to you, just comment below.

    5 comments on Back in the thrifting groove
  • I can’t remember if I blogged about this before, but they had a great deal on these awesome Denyse Schmidt Quilt-It Kit before Christmas.
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    Before you get all mad that I’m just telling you about it now, I keep seeing them there, for five bucks (regularly $22.95)! I own the book that these come from, and this has a lot of my favorite projects from there (including that quilt with the triangles that I have had cut out for about two years – oops). You also get enough fabric to make the pillow on the front, and general sewing directions. It’s so handy! I got a couple of these with the thought that I would bundle up a card and some fabric as a gift, haven’t gotten to that yet.

    What made me think of that was this:
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    I picked up the Lion Brand Crochet Box at Border’s Tuesday. You get FIFTY cards (they open up like the others to show directions), two skeins of wool-ease (not my favorite, but good practice and enough to make that little baby kimono on the front left card), a how to crochet booklet and crochet hooks. There seems to be one problem with this set. The fact that it’s crochet. I have been meaning to pick up this skill to add borders and things to knitwear, but haven’t ever taken the time to learn. So last night I sat down with my new kit to try my hand at it. Um, I can’t crochet. I think I have to have someone show me in real life because learning this kind of thing out of a book? Close to impossible. I think I have regular chain stitching down, but I don’t want to teach myself bad hook holding habits, and I’m pretty sure I will. But none the less, tons of cute patterns, and all of that was only eight bucks, I don’t know what it was normally, I couldn’t figure it out. So get crafty. I’m off to update my neglected Ravelry page.

    Oh and the ants are either dead or hiding. Bj sprayed something around the house last night. I’m going to look into all those natural methods though, thanks for the advice. And no one came forward with a good ant trait, so I don’t feel so bad.

    4 comments on Border’s Bargins
  • Bedroom5

    The room really is too tiny to be a master bedroom, but we make it work. The bookshelf (where I keep most of my folded clothes and things) is out in the bedroom instead of the closet because you can’t get to the attic with it in front of the ladder. So ignore it please. If we were going to put on the door than I had to get my act together and finish the windows in here. The only ones in the house with vestiges of the nasty cream that the whole house used to be. Plus I had broken the window pane on one of the windows last fall. The sash broke and the window slammed shut unexpectedly shattering a piece. We’ve had duct tape on it for months, oh so classy. Even classier still, the new glass I had cut for it was leaning against the wall in here for a month or more. Next to a box of glazing points and little container of glaze.
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    The process of working on these were the same as the living room and craft room that I did… when did I do those.

    Unfortunate placement of closet door. Mmm my wedding shoes. I want to wear those again.

    Meanwhile Bj was perfecting things in the garage.
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    It’s all done! He has the project going out there of cleaning door hardware. See how there is actually room to have a project going?
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    We got all the rest of our camping/backpacking/sporting/Christmas stuff up here. And there are still empty bins. Heaven. ๐Ÿ™‚
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    Now those two leaded glass cabinet doors are the only things I have left to paint! I might paint the inside of that door too, just because it’s so dirty it can’t be cleaned and I have extra exterior paint. We got a tool holder for the corner which is so nice. And Bj built this:
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    A workbench. It’s extra tall for his extra tall self. We managed to fit all our firewood under it.

    Bj said he is going to spend all next weekend playing Xbox. We are so sick of working around the house. In addition to all this he conquered our backyard, which was thick with grass over three feet tall. We really let it go. Once you stop mowing it’s impossible to start back up with our push mower if it gets above a certain height. That happened sometime last summer and it had been wild kingdom back there ever since. Bj has some allergy issues with grass (I think because he wasn’t born here. Is that how it works?). The whole time he was weed whacking the thing no problem. And I was all, hmmm maybe it’s a mental thing. Then he stopped. And sneezed, and sneezed, and sneezed. Yuck poor guy. So we’ll see if we get anything done on the house or if we do take a break. One things for certain. We have to take care of these visitors:
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    The sugar ants finally found the kitchen (took them long enough). Quick someone tell me six good things ants do because I’m not seeing their value right now. Also they seem really stupid. One side of kitchen dirty dishes in the sink. Other side super tidy and clean cupboard of food all packaged, no crumbs, nothing open. They are in the cupboard, just dancing around canned food. Idiots.

    12 comments on Behind door number one…

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