Holidays: Advent Calendar

I love handmade things for the holidays.  I like ornaments, garland, the lights and I love handmade stockings.  Since having a little one, I have found myself wanting to decorate more.  I prefer snowflakes and stars to Santa and stuffed snowmen however, and so I am thinking about ways to bring in tradition into our way of thinking and approaching the holidays. I love the idea of counting time, so I like the basic concept of an advent calendar, I could even get into little treats, as long as they were healthy and didn't buy into the need to go out and BUY 25 things every year to put into this calendar.  We are also trying to reduce the sugar, which is no small feat this time of year.  

My solution was much more simple.  I made a calendar, and handstitched a felt star to move through the pockets to count time.  It may look a little Americana, but I think it fills the bill of a more natural approach to the holidays quite well.  It also makes for a nice little way of marking other events, like my daughter's birthday and that of my late Grandma.  I think a handstitched item to mark the Solstice would also be good, so that it can move each year to the appropriate day.

House: Red Gets a New Room

Many parents can attest to many things that they would do if it meant getting sleep, more sleep or better sleep.  For us it came down to this: Scarlett (Red) had to move from her bright naturally lit room in the front of the house to a cozy, darker and quiet room at the back of the house.  Between early summer sun rays brightly, albiet beautifully, lighting her room and waking to the sound of vehicles on the road, I was quietly cursing to myself very morning too early to mention.

Red is getting older, and much more mobile.  While some children spend a lot of time really getting into letters and using words, she is getting into and creating puzzles.  Getting out of the crib was a puzzle quickly solved by climbing, as is getting things off the counter.  Clothes?! Well there is a fun puzzle!  Wooden puzzles are quickly solved and resolved and outside is THE jam.  She taught herself how to swing at 19 months or so.  Running around in the lower field is a fantastic adventure and hikes are something to quickly get yourself dressed for.  So how do you make a room that is safe for your climber and that is fun and creates an indoor outside? A nature themed toddler room!

The Parts:
When Scarlett was still an infant I found a fun bed by P'kolino and stored it away.  This summer I had purchased some of those Ikea leaves to try to use on her swing to shade afternoon rays and never installed them. I had found a remnant of linen fabric depicting birds and flowers in a graphic cut paper style and bright orange.  I had some left over blue wall paint (it was the wrong color the first time, but it would be a great cheery sky).

The Plan:
I have a handy husband, but he detests painting, so when he went out of town for a project, I got to work!  Stitching the curtains, building the bed, painting the walls.  Yes, Red's bedtime became a highly productive time for me!  After I got it all done, I arranged the P'kolino chairs (that are also puzzles and building blocks) and quiet time activities.

The Result:

In the morning, I often wake to hear Scarlett talking to her friends and babies, reading them books and talking about outside and her best friend Chichi (not her name, but thats what Red calls her).  Her room is a very fun and brightly colored nature room.  She loves it, and she sleeps til 6:30-7AM.  I call it 100% worth it!

Ornaments: veggies

As much as I'd like to say the reason for my absence in posting is due to having too many projects to post about, I can't.  No excuses here.  But what I can say is that it's that time of year again and I'm putting some time in.  This week I filled an order for Garden Fever! in NE Portland.  I put together a dozen selected veggies.  I don't have a huge variety of veg cookie cutters so I cut each one of these sweet ornaments by hand and stitched them up for their December 1 event.  There are still plenty there, so if you feel the need, you know where to go! ;)

Eggplant, tomatoes, carrots, parsnips, cabbage and beets, oh my!  Each are hanging on a festive green cord.

Sneak Peek!

Some dear friends are expecting a little boy and I'm working on something that I'm really excited about!  Their baby shower is May 28, so after that, I will post all of the pictures!  Megan likes elephants as a theme, and James likes interesting color combinations.  Here is a sneak peek, no one tell the momma and papa!

House: Hen Mansion in progress

We have been busy with new house projects!  The chicken coop is the most complete, and now that 4 of our 6 lovely ladies are living outside, it's time to show it off!!

This is what we started with.  The grand master plan?  What you see will evolve in the next few years into a garden brewery (yes, that's right, I said brewery) that is terraced on this hillside.  The chickens will have free reign within the garden.  It has to be fenced for the elk and the deer, and the bunnies, so it will be a large space for the girls to roam.  For now, they have their mansion!  Modern with a touch of country chic.

What is next for the hen house?  A few finishing touches.  Adjusting where the sculpture hangs is the first and easiest.  I made this sculpture in college, a little bird crazy, yes.  It's feathers used to be covered with vellum, but the years were not kind to this one.  It didn't help that I left it outside after college but whatever.  It finally has a home, and with a little adjustment, it will be perfect!

After that we need to plant some berries and hops and lay some stone.  The wooden piece that is going across the roof needs to be replaced with aluminum angle that hugs the wire fencing material to the house and the egg door needs to be cut out as well as the small chicken door in the front.  Then to get our garden in.  Final Hen House pictures to come!  Thanks for reading and visiting.

SPRING: a few hairclips and a few hundred daffodils

Spring is coming, Spring is COMING!!  While there are a great many things blooming at my old house, and in Portland, my new house is waiting....  waiting for the yellow explosion from the hundreds of daffodils the former owner planted everywhere.  And while it is nice to have some blooms this year, these guys are getting moved.  Not that I don't like Narcissus.  I do, I just want them to be used as a dramatic statement in another part of the yard.  In the meantime, I'm celebrating the coming of Spring with a few hairclips for Red and her friends.  Here are a couple that will be gracing the heads of cuties soon.

New project: BIG new house

I apologize for being a bad blogger since December.  After the winter sales we traveled to New England to visit family and when we got back, well, that's when we entered the throws of buying a new house.  We made an offer and closed on a new home in 3 weeks.  Holy whirlwind.  With the help of A LOT of people, we moved in a single day.  Amazingly, all of the furniture from our 780 square foot Craftsman filled out the 2500 square feet of this updated farmhouse well.  So, besides a few orders for hairclips that I have, most future blogposts may well be home improvement or garden design related.  Here are a few before pictures.  I'm really looking forward to sharing projects! 

Summary: Scarlett's photos

So as it turned out, we did actually get outside for a few of the photos, and the ones inside turned out amazing! Did I need to worry about the paint in the bathroom (see 'arrangements: moss' in last month's posts)? Nope.

A huge thank you to Emily Garrick-Steenson at Emily G Photography for these wonderful images!  I'm truly excited about them, so go check them out!  And leave her a post if you feel so inclined!

Summary: the 2010 Garden Fever Winter Art Festival, aka my first craft sale

To summarize simply, the sale went really, really well.  If you stopped by, or sent me good vibes, thank you immensely!  I sold out of necklaces (I initially made 6) by 10 this morning, and I made more in a mad dash and brought them down.  I sold over half of the initial hairclips.  All in all, I'd call this a success.  I have to send out a thank you to my fantastic husband and his company, PVS Instore Graphics for making me a really sweet little display:

Using scrap material, they made this with a file I created in AutoCAD and some graphic images that I had taken of my pieces.  I filled the hairclip area, and last night made a few more pairs.  This really helped create a little space for these.  I am truly one lucky chica!

If you are looking for a nice gift for the gardener in your life, please keep Garden Fever! in mind.  They are fantastic people, and Lori does the buying and she has quite the eye.  They also have nice greens and garland for holiday decor needs.

As for the rest of the pieces, I'll be making Twinkle * Twinkle * POOF! Etsy Site postings for them as soon as possible.

Garden Fever! Winter Arts Festival

Garden Fever! is a retail nursery with a sweet spot in my heart.  While it is true that I have spent many days there checking on plants in all kinds of weather and creating displays on the retail floor when I was a Landscape Design student, it's just the kind of place where the people become part of the family.  Not just my favorite former employers, Lori and Richard, or co-workers who have become steadfast friends, but some of the customers are also near and dear to me.  I'll be at the GF! family table, if that tells you anything!

It's easy to see why that is one of the reasons that I'm so excited to be participating in this year's Winter Arts Festival.  I look forward to this sale each year.  It's my annual kick off to the season.  I love the getting my fortune told (she's really good folks, I'm not usually the fortune teller seeking type) and that the Goddess Flora Chorus & Deadheading Society sings their fun, wacky songs.  I like that Garden Fever! spreads the love, supporting a different organization each year.

This year it is the Parker Sanderson Fund of Hardy Plant Society of Oregon which brings in well known, high quality speakers and funds scholarships for horticulture students to attend.  The Hardy Plant Society is great at really supporting further education in horticulture.  I really love them.

So, as in a post from November (see "Announcement: ..."), I have been busy making necklaces and hairclips.  While I fully admit I have jumped off the momma deep end with the clips, I absolutely love getting a kick out of handstitching these lovelies.  That's right, no sewing machine was used in the creation of my items.
While I love my machine, it's just a little difficult to get it pulled out with a cruisin' 11 month old (yep, that means the ornaments were handstitched too).  Many of the pieces are nature inspired, especially in the clips, and then there are geometric pieces.  A lot of it is using a really quiet color palette compared to what it may have had even a year ago.  An old friend said that Scarlett was teaching me about neutral color when I was pregnant, and it seems to be so. In any case, here is a little sneak peek at some new things!

Come out Saturday evening for the festivities!

What: Garden Fever! Winter Arts Festival
When: THIS Saturday, December 4 from 5 - 8 benefits The Hardy Plant Society of Oregon
craft sale continues Sunday, December 5 from 9 - 5
Where: Garden Fever! located at 3433 NE 24th Avenue in Portland, just south of the Fremont Intersection

Ornaments: Peace and Love

What more can you ask for than peace and love?!  Not much in my book.  As I listen to Scarlett saying "mamamama" in her crib to try and get out of her one nap of the day, I feel amazingly blessed to have plenty of both in my life, even while there needs to be more of both in the rest of the world.  The last ornaments on my list are now complete, and I feel it's pretty appropriate to have doves for Wes' grandmas and a heart with "paperdoll" children for my mom.

The doves, one with flower wings and the other with gentle snowflakes, seems very apt for two women who are pretty peaceful beings.  I almost wish I made these first, because if I had, everyone may have gotten them.  So simple, and so great in the end.

My mom does most everything with a good intention (and even of her ornery things).  Her heart is huge and in the center of it are her grandkids.  So here they are, 2 little girls and 1 little boy!  I suppose I could have rearranged them to be her children, also 2 girls and 1 boy, but I'll let her say they are whatever she wants them to be, maybe they just represent both.

Ah, I'm feeling mighty proud of myself for getting these all done before December 1.  Yes, I'm one of those crazy people who are usually done shopping in general now.  More than avoiding the stress, I prefer to shop early so that I choose gifts for people that really make me think of them, perhaps that they will even find useful and not just end up on a shelf or in a drawer.  That's my deal, and now I get to relax and enjoy the month!

Have a great winter!

Announcement: Garden Fever! Winter Arts Festival

 

I've been busy getting hairclips and necklaces ready for the craft sale at Garden Fever!  Saturday, December 4 from 5-8 pm, my favorite retail garden nursery will be having a fundraiser to benefit The Hardy Plant Society of Oregon.  10% of the proceeds from this event will go to this great organization to bring speakers and provide scholarships to horticultural students.  Crafts will also be available 9 - 5 the next day.  These are some examples, I am hoping to get plenty more ready this week!  I love asymmetry, and I love original crafts.  Each one is unique.  They are made individually!

I hope to see you there!

Getting Crafty for a Birthday

Yep, it's been just about a year since my little Red was born!  Modern Domestic Sewing Studio was offering a holiday banner workshop for something very similar to this.  I couldn't make it any of the days, and after I kept trying to figure out how to rearrange my schedule, I looked at it and thought to myself "why am I overthinking that" it's easy, so I just did it myself.  Thanks in part to my fabulous husband who took a file to work that I made and cut out some stencils on his shop's fancy I-cut.  It's very simple, I used interweave to attach fabric to felt, and then used the stencils to cut out the shapes, and simply ironed the layers together, cut some holes and strung it together with some fancy cord.  I love this, and look forward to pulling it out every year as long as she lets me!  I would really like to take a class at Modern Domestic, and would highly recommend them to anyone who is interested, so I will have to keep my eyes on their website!

Ornaments: for the sisters

My sister: amazing momma and woman.  She has 2 kiddos (see kiddo vehicles), a full time job and now is also a full time student.  Seriously.  Amazing.  For her, I made a book.  It represents several things: home (kinda looks like a scrapbook), studies, what is written and what is still to be writ.  Inside is a little surprise just for her, especially since she follows this blog (hehe).

For my sister-in-law: a house.  She has traveled the world with the peace corp (twice) to help people.  Now she works as a retention worker to help people who were recently homeless be successful.  Soon, she may have her very own house.  So a house, in all of connotations of home and love, is perfect for her.

Ornaments: water fun!

Kayaks!  My brother is a HUGE whitewater kayaking fan, and my father-in-law has recently decided to build the strip-built kayak (flat water) that he has wanted to put together for years.  I must say, these were really fun!  I can't wait for them to see these ornaments!

Arrangements: Moss

On Saturday we had some pictures taken.  Our intention was to reflect Red's (aka my daughter Scarlett) first birthday, but they are more accurately for the 11 month mark.  We live in Portland, where winters are pretty mild, but in the last few years we have gotten some pretty dramatic cold fronts that snap everything into winter.  This year is a great example, with lows expected in the high teens and the highs in the high 20's this week, we are experiencing a crazy snap that is getting some of the local old timers talking about the '50's.  To put it in perspective, there are a great many plants that haven't even gotten their Fall color.  Last year in this very week, I was installing (with the help of the amazing wonderful Jaylene Walter and co) a front yard design for a client (somewhere around 36 weeks pregnant, yes) in short sleeves and rain boots.  All of this weather history has a purpose, I was thinking that we were going to be taking pictures outside.

Luckily Emily of Emily G Photography thinks we have plenty of light in our 1914 Craftsman house.  That creates a whole other thought, "oh boy, that means I really need to get the house ready!"  Like many, even in rooms that no one really pays that much attention to, I look at and see things that I'd rather not share.  Such is the case with some paint in the bathroom of all places.  Last year we did some renovating in baby preparation, and we used zero VOC paint, which was good but bad.  It's soft, just in case you didn't know that.  It doesn't harden, so you can damage it easily.  My remedy for that, plants.  It's the landscape designer in me, or the visual artist, or the crafty sewist, or maybe just the matron of the house, whatever!

I had gathered some moss together on a recent outing and have been thinking that I should make a terrarium with it.  That hadn't really happened yet, so I gathered together some Japanese pots that I have, put a gravel filled bowl in the bottom with some water (to create humidity) and covered them with rocks (which I love - love, love, love ROCKS) and arranged the moss.  Together with a Staghorn Fern that lives in the bathroom, I created an arrangement that hides what I don't like to look at.  I'll be very honest, I don't mind talking about it, but I don't like looking at it!  In fact, if I had put some thought into it, I would have held off on cutting the fern back so it was bigger, but again, I thought we'd be shooting outside, remember!

A few other things to get ready: if it's going to feel like Christmas outside, bring on Christmas inside!  Our house is a whopping 780 sq. ft.  Yep, not even exaggerating.  We have 2 larger dogs to top it off, so we usually try to have a small living Christmas tree if a tree at all.  Instead we really like bringing in garland and using it for window valances.  This is usually where the ornaments go too!  This year we are leaving for the East Coast right after Scarlett's birthday, so we are just doing lights and a few select decorations.

Ornaments: snowflakes and stars

I mentioned before that I rarely hunt down patterns when I make crafty things.  It's true.  When I am making something that really needs some kind of pattern, I may quickly draw one up, loosely, or like here, I just find something that I can work with.  In this case you may have already guessed it - cookie cutters!  I just selected some shapes that I liked, traced them onto the back of the felt, did the embroidery freehand, cut them out and stitched them together.  See how the same shape can give different results?  And this is just 2 examples of 2 shapes.  The possibilities are absolutely endless!

Ornaments: food

 Ah, sweet bacon, apples and pear!  Food is a big deal in my family.  My husband and I both love to cook, and our daughter seems to becoming quite the eater.  Her palette is definitely not mild.  To celebrate her first foods, I made her an apple.  Sure, I could have made something she can't get enough of: grilled marinated portabello mushrooms, spinach hummus, or something like that, but let's face it, that wouldn't be very interesting as an ornament.  An apple signifies something about firsts, maybe it's the crispness of the first bite of one, or the shiny red apple on your teacher's desk, regardless of your personal association, an apple seems appropriate and makes a great finished product!

La, la, la... and a partridge in a pear tree!  My Mother-in Law has a classically trained singing voice and this song is one that she references a lot during the holidays.  What better subject for a felt ornament just for her!

As for bacon, there are a few people that "love" is not a strong enough word for this food.  With that in mind, I made an ornament for my brother's girlfriend that honors this food.  She also happens to have a great sense of humor, and will most certainly find this really funny.

Ornaments: kiddo vehicles

My niece and nephew are 2 and 3 years old and are going to have a great time with these.  Last year I made them gingerbread people, and when we visited them in September, they had kept them out to play with.  I'm sure these will make great additions to their collections.  The truck has an open topped bed so that he can put little things in it, sticks and gravel, or maybe just organic O's.  My niece is quite a princess, so she can pretend play with this little bug that she is zipping around town!