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.

Our new house has a few trees that we have not seen bloom yet. We pruned them late winter and brought in some of the branches a few weeks ago to see what we have to look forward to. The first to bloom was the Magnolia. We weren’t sure that was what we had until we finally saw the blooms. Now we can’t wait to see the whole tree light up with these fragrant flowers.

But nothing is blooming yet. Here is why:

We woke up to another beautiful snowy scene. It is very festive in December, but is getting a little old about now! We live far enough north that we can usually expect a few random snow storms in late March and April, but I am not used to this much snow this often. We also brought in branches from a flowering crab apple tree that we have. It’s gearing up to bloom and looks like they might be red, but we will have to wait a few more days before we know for sure.

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.

One desperately needed! The Girl is making dinner. The Man is supervising. Jerusalem Artichoke Soup from the Jerusalem Artichokes harvested from the edge of the corn field by the girl at a moment of independence. Those moments are coming more and more frequently these days. She is only 2 months from becoming a teenager (TWO MONTHS… ONLY!) She pulled them out of the ground a few days ago. She failed to consider that dinner plans were already made and in the works! Man, I remember being that age… I’m sorry mom! But we have four cooks in the family. That’s four out of four! That is awesome. The boy can make some mean scrambled eggs… you know, a few shells that bite you back when you take a bite! No, actually, he is pretty excited about his new skills and being able to cook over a flame instead of in the microwave.

But it’s been a day. A pretty normal one actually, filled with eye rolling, sibling rivalry, frustration that “mom’s making us do school”, and “how come the third grader gets to do easy math?” from the seventh grader. “Um, well, do you want to go back to third grade? It could be arranged!!!” Anyway, I am thinking about the years to come and how excited I am that they are both getting more independent. And also that they are young and think it is such a treat to cook dinner for the family. It is so nice to spread out the work load!

So, since we moved to this house and are turning it slowly into a homestead, I am realizing that my posting is going to have to include more of my other projects besides sewing. Last fall I took time out to can tomatoes and make pickles and debated about posting that stuff, but it just didn’t seem as interesting to me as the other projects I wanted to work on and post. But it’s sugaring season here and the maple in front of the house has 3 taps in it. There is another bucket around the back.

Tuesday, the sap was overflowing and we got a few jars. Today I got four and a half more. These are shots shamelessly stolen from The Man who said, “Hey, I thought you had a craft blog!”

So far we have bottled 3 quarts of maple syrup. I still feel shocked when I think about the fact that you can get that much sweetness out of an old tree in the front yard. It’s amazing!

At the age of four my son always wanted to make “crap”… his way of pronouncing the word “craft”. It was too cute and funny to correct, although of course it didn’t take long for him to figure out his mistake. We had some good laughs in the meantime. But when the kids started making these little tissue people, I thought it fit the description. Although, I think it’s pretty creative kid crap! Check out the angel:

And the little disco man. Is he prowling for a date?

Oh, look. He met someone!

And if you can supplement your kleenex, rubber bands, and marker with a few scraps of fabric, a stick, and some yarn you can make yourself a little finger puppet.

Their creativity amazes me. Not because the final product is so amazing, but because they can take what they can find and have fun with it without my direction or prompting. My input into this project… hmmm… I took away the TV years ago. Does that count?

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!

The man was photographing ice crystals on the windows early this morning when he trained his camera on my newest Handmade Rescue.

I stopped into the local Goodwill to try to find some cheap food bowls for the rabbits. When I spied this I had to get a closer look. I was so fascinated by the design. I haven’t seen anything like it before. It seems to be re-purposed wool. Each rectangle is stitched on all four sides and then the pieces are stitched together. Add that fancy crocheted edge and… Viola!

As if I need more ideas for projects. But I am not sure I can resist trying my hand at this.

So what I was going to say was that this is the second Handmade Rescue that I can think of and it just gives me a thrill to rescue something that someone put so much effort into. The other one was a gorgeous hooked rug, that I will have to post about sometime. I thought it would be fun to spread the fun around. Please share your Handmade Rescues if you have any! You can link from the comments sections so we can all see. And maybe I will have to figure out how to set up a flickr group. Anyone interested?

Hey, I actually figured out how to set up a flickr group. Here it is if you care to join or just browse!

Breakfast for one… can take forever. Here is why:

Let’s just call it “school.” We’ll do math later.

Getting your internet fixed. That takes forever. Especially if you call them during the holidays.

Getting settled into a house… five months and counting, but making progress. I’ll even post some pictures soon.

Getting back into blogging. Keep your fingers crossed!

Getting my groove back. Hopefully this will help:

Finally spent the weekend setting up a workspace. Hopefully one that will be enjoyable to work in, instead of the cramped corner I had my stuff crammed into last month. This is actually in my daughters very large bedroom. It’s large in floorspace, but as you can see, not so large when it comes to head space. Her craft area is the desk on the far right of the picture and I am looking forward to working on stuff together!

Like most projects, setting up this space was actually the culmination of multiple projects including building a bookshelf divider, setting up the kids reading space (we call it “the library”), and moving my son’s bedroom. I wanted to get pictures, but their idea of clean, is not a picture I want to catch on film (or digitally, as the case may be.) One of these days, I’ll get pictures. But don’t hold your breath.