Little Acorn

Exciting Times...

We've been slowly transforming our yard from a muddy dog run with thickets of noxious weeds to a lovely green oasis with smaller patches of still noxious weeds. We brought the grass back to life, planted trees and shrubs and perennials that have all had time to settle in and spread out and we were really happy with large portions of our garden. But there was the back corner...Known as "the pile" which was about a 16 by 12 by 3 foot tall hump of earth and rocks and giant roots covered in vigorous and invasive weeds. Also in that area was some patchy grass, some broken concrete sidewalks and my raised beds. And of course that is the area my kitchen window overlooks, so every day I could look out there and wish it different. David and I were smart enough to know that our marriage couldn't withstand the weeks of digging it would take to get rid of the pile, take up the sod, build planting beds and lay down gravel so finally after begging for years some gentle hints, David decided that my present of the year (for ALL the occasions) would be to hire someone to do this huge job for us. Here is a during and an almost-there picture. I'm still searching for a before picture although it's not an area I tended to photograph very much. Hopefully the after picture will be in mid-September and then I can have the fun of deciding what to plant in my new beds. My first instinct is a herb garden, an asparagus bed and veggies, but then I remember that while there is a lot to love about feeding your family from the garden, the stores and markets are full of delicious food, and the joy of having a bouquet of fresh, fragrant flowers in the house all through the year might be even better. I will go and buy myself huge bunches of fresh asparagus in the spring, but I would never ever buy myself a bouquet of flowers as it just seems too decadent. So I'm thinking disease resistant and fragrant climbing and shrub roses, more peonies because they're my favourite, and an array of beautiful and nose-pleasing flowers that bloom over a long season - a cutting garden. I'm up for any suggestions! There's also room at the back for a play structure for Adeline. I'd love a sweet playhouse that I could decorate, but our active girl would probably get more pleasure from somewhere she could climb and swing and slide. Then when Adeline outgrows that we could put in a trampoline (because I looooooooove to jump on a trampoline and Adeline would probably like it too) or I could just take up the gravel and have more room to plant things. I'm soooooooo excited about this project - it's been a long time coming.

Work Day!

Adeline loves to get out the tools and help her Daddy! As soon as she sees the tools she starts excitedly chanting "Wook Day! Wook Day! Wook Day!" and she can't wait to get on the job. On today's list was to put together our new coffee table.

Adeline read the instructions very carefully.

Adeline insists on her own screwdriver and she really does know how it works.

Adeline has a very, very, very patient Daddy.

Waiting

This morning while I was waiting for the paint to dry in the playroom so that I could start moving in the furniture, I spotted Musette rolling around in the warm spring sunshine. I wonder if this will still be her favourite spot once Adeline is here?

Musette and Zephyr are so lucky that they have good friends who are willing to visit them while we're gone. My Mom will be here the first week as she's off for spring break and then she'll come down on the weekends so they won't be alone for too long. What spoiled kitties! It's so comforting to know that they'll be well cared for while we're gone.

And then when we finally get home? Oh my...their quiet little world will be turned upside down!

Learn from my mistakes

To be discussed: A patchwork pillow destined for the playroom with a hand embroidered panel of birds and cherry blossoms in the centre

At first glance: Looks pretty good

On closer inspection: Why would anyone choose to use 2 completely different colours of blue in that embroidery?

The lesson: When you buy your crafting materials in thrift stores, very often you will run out of said materials right in the middle of a project. Improvising is often in order, and often turns out lovely creative results that were better than your original plan. But not this time, when the perfect shade of blue to finish the embroidery was nowhere to be found in the entire city. There are also 2 different pinks in the cherry blossoms, but that's less noticeable.

Will I learn this lesson: Not likely

And another thing: Even if you're being cheap and don't want to use any more of the pink fabric with tiny birds on it than you absolutely have to, the back of the cushion should be the same colour as the front or it just doesn't look right. I used a vintage sheet with a white background and flowers with all the colours that are found in the patchwork for the back and I think the white peeking out just looks wrong.

Will the intended audience of playroom goers notice any of these things: Extremely unlikely

Kitties!

When I was a wee girl I had 4 framed pictures of kittens in my room. When I grew up (or pretended I did, anyway) the only one I kept was the black and white kitten that reminded me of my Sam (or Stunt Cat Sam as he was also known, as he was prone to calamitous and often hilarious accidents). He was an awesome cat and a great childhood companion, even if his nose ran all the time and he sneezed cat-snot all over you daily. When David and I left to go bring Adeline home, her room was functional and ready, but it didn't have any of the finishing touches. Since coming home without her we hardly ever go in her room, but every time I find myself in there, I really notice the bare walls. The first thing I thought of were the kitty pictures and I went and fished out the Sam-kitten from his box and I immediately regretted letting the other 3 go. There was never any mackerel tabby Musette-kitten, but I remembered the white kitten, the Siamese kitten and the ginger Zephyr-kitten really well. Now thanks to the power of etsy (I loooove etsy) they are mine once more! I found the 3 kitty prints that I was missing and just days later they arrived in my mailbox. I love getting good mail, which is part of the reason I love etsy. Now I need to find some appropriate frames and then part of my bare wall problem will be solved.

Here is the Sam-kitten in his original frame...

Some calamitous and hilarious things that happened to our Sam...

He fell down the chimney. He was possibly hanging out with the birds up there and just slipped. He was dizzy, but unharmed.

He got locked in the dryer and went around for a bit before being rescued. He was dizzy, but unharmed.

When scared by a very appropriately named dog called Yo-Yo, he leapt over the kitchen table, over the heads of my Mom's guests and straight through the window, leaving a cat-shaped hole in the glass. He was dizzy, but unharmed.

Finished!

You guys gave me such great feedback on my WIP's and wanted me to finish the quilt, so how could I disappoint you? Plus having to be in Vietnam in 2 weeks is pretty motivating. I thought I was fairly efficient and hardworking before we got this news, but now I am in super speed mode and am getting a lot done. Last night while watching some much needed television I finished hand sewing the binding on the quilt.I love hand sewing, so it was a fun evening. I agonized so much over what to use for the binding, but once I decided it needed to be finished TODAY I just got to it and stopped thinking so much. I think this is the way I need to operate until we go - less thinking, more doing. This was my very first quilt and I'm really happy with how it turned out! It's meant to be a floor quilt for playing on, but since baby Lam has no bedding yet and I just don't like anything I see in the stores, she may be sleeping under this for awhile until I make something different.

Another Weekend

No, it's not snowing in our upstairs hallway, that's just drywall dust (and David's cute feet). This was another weekend of getting ready for the small person. I'm looking forward to the part of nesting where we're just hanging up pictures and folding tiny onesies into drawers. The part we're doing now is sometimes pretty hard and doesn't often leave us with happy family memories. We're always proud when we've accomplished something, but I can't say we actually have fun doing most of the renovations. We're doing a lot of jobs that most sane people leave to contractors, but we're cheap thrifty, so we do what we can ourselves and it's amazing what we've learned to do in the 5 years since we've lived here. When we bought a centenarian house that hadn't been loved in many years, we knew there was a lot to do, and I suppose the imminent arrival of the small person is as good an impetus to get things done as there could be.This weekend there was drywalling and basement sorting, thrift store gathering, research on a new car and maybe even a new computer (one capable of editing video and holding thousands of photos of what will surely be the world's cutest and possibly most photographed baby). Busy times in the Little Acorn household. We still have to finish the drywall repair in that hallway (maybe tomorrow?) and then we have to paint it. In the small person's room we have to paint the closet, install some sort of clothes-containing system, put up some shelves and install the new light fixture and then we can get to the fun part of furniture/rugs/lamps/pictures/bedding. There's a room on the main floor that we currently use as an office that is totally creepy (think peeling navy shiny vinyl 80's wallpaper, ancient cracked plaster and way too much dark wood) and I really hope we can get that one finished this fall as well. I also think I've made the decision to give up my main floor studio for awhile. I'll still have a studio, it will just be in the basement instead of in the happy sunny room right off the kitchen where I can watch the garden grow and stir the soup in between seams. I really do love my studio and David worked so hard to make it nice for me. It's a small room, but it has a 12 foot ceiling and two huge windows, so it's always warm and bright and I know it will make a lovely cozy playroom. I know many of you don't have the luxury of having a dedicated creative space, so I'm certainly not complaining about having to move my studio downstairs. The basement will be good. It's a big space, so I'll be able to fit in both a cutting table and a sewing table, which will be awesome and something I certainly could never have done in my current studio, and it's warm in the winter and cool in the summer and you can watch television while you work or take a break by laying on the bed. Hmmm. This is sounding okay to me. I really love the idea of making dinner in the kitchen while listening to a little person talking to their toys in their bright and happy playroom.

Our Weekend

This is our weekend. This swirl of cardboardy chaos used to be our lovely basement guest suite. Now it's where David pulls out all the boxes from the storage area and goes through them one by one. It's his version of nesting, and I've never seen him more motivated to de-clutter and reclaim the room in the basement that his boxes were occupying. I'm way less of a packrat. Let's just say that I have a different relationship with my stuff and am less sentimental than David, so it's 90% stuff from his life before me that David is slowly sifting through. There's a few piles - keep, the thrift store, garbage, recycling and sell. It's a slow process, but for me it mostly entails laying on the bed and encouraging him to not read the old free newspapers before they get tossed into the recycling bag. Occasionally I'll say "What would the small person think?" which helps him make his decisions. This picture is kind of like an "I Spy" book. Can you find... Zephyr? A vintage fisher price toy? 20 of the 600 cd's that David owns? 1 of 3 non-functional dvd players that we still have for some reason? A grocery bag full of Polly Pockets? David's red suitcase? A set of jalapeno party lights? My grandma's rocking chair? As with most of my pictures, you can click on it to see a bigger version.

Back to the Studio

I've been really avoiding my studio lately. Lots of reasons, none of them very good ones, and I really must get back in there soon. I do need to figure out some way to work in there in the summer. It has huge south and west facing windows, so it gets HOT and I don't cope with HOT very well. It's a lovely room the rest of the year, but come summer I have a hard time making myself go in there. I may have to get up earlier to work or stay up later. I've been busy on the sofa knitting away on my neverending lace stole (never again will I knit lace - NEVER - stop me if I try), but the only thing I've sewn since the softie awards is this cushion cover for the living room. All the fabric is from the thrift store, except the black. I was really lucky to find huge linen tablecloths in tan and red. I MADE the binding and am pretty darned proud of it. I'm working my way up to a quilt. The blue Ikea sofa, along with most of the rest of our furniture, came to our relationship from David's swinging bachelor pad. Some of it wouldn't have been my choice, but we make the best of it. It's interesting how rooms I really love on other people's blogs are so different from my own decorating style. I love to see those pictures of houses that are full of bold colours and interesting things to look at. Ones where every surface is filled with charming vintage treasures and little collections and where colour and pattern are a part of everything. My house is pretty minimal, really. It's an old heritage house, but our style is modern, with a few vintage touches, and I like that juxtaposition. We have lots of clean lines. Almost no clutter.  Nothing but black and white photographs taken by David and I on the walls. Neutral colours except for our redredRED kitchen. I think a lot of our style is influenced by how much I hate dusting and how intolerant I am to dust. I guess I satisfy my urge for riotous colour and mixing patterns in my studio making things for children, but for myself I mostly keep it simple. Most of my fun thrifted treasures end up in the cupboard, to make brief appearances in photo shoots or in a seasonal display. The sweet ceramic wildlife does its job and then back out of sight it goes again. I hope no radical kitsch empowerment group ever starts a campaign to set them free. I'd hate to have to dust them every week.

More of the Studio

The Studio

No more fabralanches! The studio is finally looking like a work space. We bought a tall metal shelf which, while not the most attractive thing I've ever seen, does the job well. All my fabric is up off the floor. No more teetery piles! I also reclaimed a new work table from the basement so that I have enough room for both cutting and sewing in one place. Even better, now that the piles are gone I can get the ironing board in there too. No longer will sewing something be a three room process! My studio is tiny at just about 8 x 8, but this new arrangement seems to make the best of it. I'm not using it yet though. It's all too perfect and organized right now for me to mess it up with actual work. I suppose I'll get over that, but until then I've taken to the sofa with my yarn and have started crocheting a lap blanket. I'm thrilled about the new studio arrangement, but Musette and Zephyr seem a lot less happy. Musette lays on the bare table and stares at all the fabric on the shelves. I think she misses those squishy piles all over the floor. I half-heartedly try and keep them off the table in there, but who can say no to those eyes?

Have I Mentioned How Much I Love Ball Fringe?

I finished up the cushions for the window seat in the bedroom, using the embroidered pin-up girls from this post and some recycled/reclaimed fabrics and trims (including my very favourite thing ever - ball fringe!). The cushions really make me smile! I used to try and fight the eye-gougingly-bright pink walls by using neutrals in the brown/black/taupe/cream family in there, but since I've decided to stop resisting and just let this room be the blaze of kitschy colour that it wants to be, I'm much happier. I'm loving the way the window seat area is looking and I may even have to show those cats who's really in charge and kick them out of there so I can spend some time in the sunshine with a book and some tea. Of course sitting in the window seat makes me look at the bed and I'm really thinking that it's time for it to come over to the bright side too. A crocheted afghan? Ripple? Granny? Maybe a quilt? The cushion construction was breaking some new ground for me - up until now straight lines haven't always been my friend and I've thought that quilting certainly took more precision and patience than I was up for, but it looks like there's a possibility that I might have been wrong.

There's more photos on Flickr.