Okay, just joking. But I did spend $25 and a little work to postpone the inevitable remodel. I wanted just a little touch that would be nice to look at and let me focus on something other than what I want replaced.

We bought this old house with it’s remodeled kitchen in August. It’s all relative. The house is so old we aren’t even sure when it was built. I have been told 100 years old, 105 years old, and 150 years old. Anyway, we don’t mind since an indoor kitchen and bathroom has been installed since then. But the latest kitchen remodel was in the 1970’s. We found this old flooring when we replaced the dishwasher. I kinda like those colors!

But not sure I would go for this wallpaper. We found it under some cabinets we removed.

Here is what the island looked like when we moved in. It has that little bar in front which makes the kitchen almost too narrow for a table. I’m not quite sure what they were thinking. It also had those overhead cabinets that made it feel so much smaller and you had to duck your head to see what was going on in the other part of the kitchen. Those came out the day we moved in.

So one day this winter, I had finally had enough of that little bar taking up room in my dining space and collecting all the junk that walked in through the kitchen door. The man was obliging and we literally banged, bent, and pulled until we yanked that thing off the front of the island. But we were left with a bit of a gap in the front where you could see the back side of the dishwasher and the cabinet inserts. Anyway, I finally grabbed a piece of wood, gussied it up and covered up the gap.

I feel surprised every time I walk into the kitchen and notice it. And it is a relief to feel like I have something completed, at least for now. It will make it easier to ignore the other things I would eventually like to do to the kitchen, like paint over those dark cabinets and replace the counter tops.

Besides the fact that it needs vacuuming! This is the latest furniture arrangement. I am a chronic furniture re-arranger. Especially, after moving into a new house. It always seems to be an exercise in problem solving. Trying to combine the best traffic flow, with the most functional use, with the best view out the windows, and of course it all has to be pleasing to the eye (at least to my eye!) So this is the latest. I thought some of my family that has not seen us in this house yet might be interested.

No pictures on the walls yet, and I am waiting until we get a string of warm days to paint so that I can leave the windows open. I put up the red curtains so there would actually be more color. I have such a hard time living with white. I love it in design magazines and in other peoples houses, but having too much white in my house doesn’t feel like home to me. I used some $5 clearance shower curtains (thanks Christy for the tip on that clearance sale!) and tied them up on a bamboo rod with a bunch of different ribbon that someone gave me years ago. They are a bit short for a normal floor length curtains, but work perfect for leaving our heat register exposed so we aren’t just heating behind the curtain.

I have actually never been a big fan of bows, so I don’t know how long this will last. But for now, I feel pretty good about getting some color up and being able to use what I already have.

I happened upon this little bit of decor tucked up next to the hand towel in the bathroom.

Apparently all you need is a horde of twisty ties from a few weeks of your bread supply. I have no idea where the boy hides his stash, but I am starting to wonder what other projects he has in the works that I don’t know about yet.

What can I say? At least it is a little closer to spring, but it is the month when winter starts to get old. The dreary view from the back porch:

And since I can’t run off to California, Florida or South America, I just want to run to the warm colors of my bedroom and the warmth of the down comforter.

I hung the curtains around our bed a few weeks ago. I was thinking of painting the room first, but something about hanging them always makes me feel like I have come home, so I decided not to wait. I noticed that World Market had my dream bed on sale for half off a few weeks ago. I have always dreamed of a four poster bed, but when we did have the money for it, we ended up adding it to what we needed to buy a car. The truth is, I am not sure I would buy it, even if I had the money. I hope to live in this house a longish time (10+ years, keeping my fingers crossed!), but I am a nomad at heart, and can’t bear to invest in furniture I will want to move over and over again with me for the rest of my life. So for now I am sticking with just the mattress and box spring, along with my $100 used sofa and $50 dressers. All things I would feel quite comfortable giving away, if we had to move. It’s working for me, so I guess I won’t change yet!

Okay, this dresser isn’t snappy, but hopefully the story will be. When we moved in I realized we have this little nook in our bedroom that is perfect for a dresser, but was just a bit too narrow to fit either of the two dressers we already owned. Since we could use another dresser for our family of four anyway, the search was on for one that would fit. I found this one at a thrift store and I loved it. I loved imagining what this old antique dresser would look like in our old antique house.

But, even though it passed the sniff test in the shop and passed the sniff test on the way home in the car, and passed the sniff test once it was in the house, for some reason when you put something into the dresser it would absorb odors that were not detectable, but obviously hiding somewhere. So good smelling clothing would come out of the dresser smelling like they had just smoked a pack of cigarettes while your back was turned. So I scrubbed it top to bottom, inside and out, in every nook and cranny that I could get to. I aired it, sunned it, smothered it in baking soda, let it sit with odor absorbing charcoal, and ended up coming to the conclusion that the one thing missing was time. It was just going to need to sit and I didn’t know how long. Bummer. So the man and I had to creatively arrange our clothes in a tiny kid size dresser and wait. After three months I put something in the dresser and it came out smelling like it had smoked a few cigarettes instead of the whole pack. But after five months, I put a clean towel in and it came out smelling like a clean towel. Yippee. Now that the dresser was no longer converting all of our clothing into smokers, we could use it in our bedroom, in the little nook where it belongs. It looks so happy there. And our closet is happy that it is no longer having to house t-shirts, sweaters, and pajamas on hangers!

It dawned on me that as we reach the three month mark after moving into this house that we can actually consider ourselves “settled.” There is still tons of work I want to do, but the truth is that it doesn’t all HAVE to be done. So I have finally decided to let it go, and get on with life. A fresh start. New (very old) house to decorate slowly and back to projects that are not house related. So anyway, here is a shot of the color in the kitchen and my new shelf.

It is the only room with color so far. I know that some people like soothing colors. I am one of those people that needs colors that will actually keep me awake. The white in the rest of the house isn’t working for me, but we will get to that… eventually!

I was driving around yesterday running errands and I heard Garrison Keillor describe this time of year as “almost spring.” While the end of winter actually felt like spring, now we have been back to just waiting for spring. Which makes it easy to stay indoors and do some quilting. And I remembered to grab the camera a little earlier in the process this time!

This is the first time I have used pins instead of basting. It was much faster, but I had cheap pins and so I really should get some better ones if I do it again. Safety pins around here have always been disposable in a way. You use them for odd things and they rarely make it back into the pin bin. Here are the three layers I was turning into a quilt sandwich.

And here is most of the rest of the quilt. This will be for a twin size bed and I am making two of them.

I really love the fabrics. These were also sent to me by my sister in law to make quilts for her boys. So I can’t take any credit for the fabric choices. I love the mix of colors and textures. And I love the way she threw in a few Michael Miller prints in with the recycling of some old jeans and other leftover bits of fabric. It has been really fun to see them come together into one.

Wow, actually I can’t believe it. We went to Chicago for a four day weekend last week to spend some time with family and I am still trying to get back into a routine. I missed my normal chance to run errands without kids over the weekend, so I still have that feeling like I am trying to catch up. Although, thrifting with Carol was much more fun than being here doing my grocery shopping! Here is one of the things I am currently working on. I need a few more supplies, but the fabric store is so much more fun without the kids. I am sure you will see a lot more pictures of this in the coming weeks.

I also have more storage ideas to post. I just need to run around and take a few more pictures. If you want more inspiring photos check out my sister-in-law’s photos on flickr. Being at her house is always so inspiring for me, I am sure you will see why!

After posting my peanut butter jars in their new costumes, I thought maybe I should do a series on all the crazy stuff I use for storage around here. I like storage boxes of all shapes and sizes, but don’t like spending money on stuff like that if I can figure out a way to use what I have.

These are cardboard boxes the hubster brought home from work. They are all the same size and are even the perfect size for holding sewing patterns, although I also have them holding tape, glue, string, and fabric paint. I covered the fronts of the boxes with some art nouveau papers that I try to keep on hand for stuff like this. I did spend some money on paper that I like, but it is easy to make a little go along way on projects like this.

So, now I am wondering if any of you have storage ideas that you have posted that I haven’t seen yet… send me links!