Paint in My Hair

Easter Egg Countdown Pattern

As promised, here is the pattern for my Easter Egg Countdown.  It's a Sunday to Sunday countown. I did all the stitching by hand with pearl cotton and it was really easy, especially with Downton Abbey playing. Thank you Masterpiece for actually giving us some resolution this season.  Last season, I was literally searching desperately for the missing disc, sure that there must be one more episode.  Didn't you love the last scene this time?!?  I have to confess, I watched the last ten minutes again last night and I probably will again.  I LOVE that they post the episodes on pbs.org now.  

I'm convinced that a little handwork and a really good movie is one of the best combinations on the planet.

 

 

Pick Your Mood

Luke brought home one of my favorite kid crafts ever.  Luke loves it and loves to update us on his moods (happy 99.9% of the time).  Before  we left for a birthday party Luke made me come downstairs to see where his arrow was pointing..."excited!" 

The birthday party involved his first trip to Chucky Cheese and his excitement was not unwarranted.  In fact, he had so much fun that he later asked me to clarify the distinction between Chucky and Jesus.  WOW, he really likes Chucky.  We've had to have a similar discussion about Batman.

Funny things Grant is saying:  Grant calls a lolly-pop a "lily-pop."  Needless to say, Lily thinks this is the cutest thing ever.  She may be right.

Grant has started parroting some of our favorite Luke sayings like "guess up" for guess what, And Dog-Vador for Darth Vader.  Thank heaven for these morsels of cuteness that outweigh the chaos wreaked by little boys.

 

 

Spice

 

When Lara Rossignol showed me these beautiful chairs she covered I fell in love with her photography and her beautiful blog.  Some people really have an eye for style and simplicity.  The chairs are covered in one of my new Painters Canvas colors: Spice.  

We're home bound with sickness today.  So I'm adjusting my plans.  Costco will have to wait.  Instead I'll play with my water colors and pin some pics from Lara's blog.  Sometimes a day at home is a blessing in disguise.  

 

Easter Countdown

Lily and I have been messing around with wool felt and food coloring.  We only used the box of four colors from the grocery store to get all these colors.  Can you believe that?!  I'm positively giddy about it.  I've written down the "recipes" for our favorite colors and will post them soon as well as the template for my Easter Countdown ornaments.  

I really want to make this a special Easter. Each egg ornament will have a symbol of Easter in the little pocket and we'll do a daily devotional starting the Sunday before.  Hopefully the kids will get into it enough to remind me this year.  Last year I tried including candy in the daily devotional to get them to remind me. They did remind me, but the candy was too much of a distraction.  So this year I'm trying prettier eggs (and my iphone alerts).  

I do love holiday traditions.  We hide easter baskets instead of eggs.  Some years the Easter Bunny has left a trail of jelly beans leading to the basket--a tradition I picked up from my SIL Heather Bailey.  My mom used to get us a new swim suit every Easter.  I loved that.  I'm always on the lookout for great holiday traditions.  I'd love to hear yours.

 

Hello Adorable!

Look what I found on Etsy (by Sweet Pea Totes) --simply adorable.  I LOVE to see what folks do with my fabric.  It still amazes me to think, "That's my painting on a purse!."  I can honestly say I never expected to be doing something like this.  I really do love it.

 

Dining Room Makeover

So here is what London and I worked on last week.  I can't tell you how happy this little makeover makes me.  The walls in the dining room are already peacock blue.  Believe it or not I didn't paint them that color! The owners did.  (Thank you owners!!)  This shelf is set into the kitchen cabinets and the dark wood behind my dishes wasn't working.  I need a temporary solution since we are renting.  I've had several people tell me to try the cornstarch-fabric-wallpaper-thing.  I finally took the plunge.  Now, we were a bit lazy and used spray starch and I did have to tack the corners.  It may have stuck better with the cornstarch/water mixture or liquid starch.  But even with the tacked corners I am THRILLED with the results.  Has anyone else tried this?  Any tips?

My dining room chairs have more coats of paint than I can count.  I am really enjoying the bright yellow.  I'd give you the color, but I had to tint it like 15 times to get just the right shade.  The first time I painted them they were so bright it hurt to look at them.  

With all the yellow and turquoise, what this room needed was some bright pink.  The main motif is pieced from different shades of Painters Canvas and the embellishing flowers were cut out of Gypsy Vine.  I used some fusible interfacing to iron on this motif and then just machine stitched circles over the the entire thing.  Here is the template for the main motif. 

Well, the boys have watched entirely too much TV today.  I'd better get going.

 

Warm Hearts

We threw together a little Valentines Day party for Lily.  I made pizza dough and the girls shaped and topped their own pizzas.  Then they decorated cupcakes.  Last we made little heart shaped hand warmers.  I got the hand warmer idea from my friend Trenna who gives a darling tutorial here.  We did use the machine instead of sewing by hand.

What a sweet bunch of girls!  They were very patient with my little boys who wanted to participate in everything. And they are the perfect age for doing a craft like this.  They were all able to do most of the sewing.  I think the whole shin dig cost me less than $15 and required very little preparation.  The cleanup is, of course, a different matter. :-)

P.S. The Jolly Jabber posted an interview with me today.  They asked the craziest questions.  Also, tomorrow I'm the feature designer on Kathy Miller's blog.  I'll get the applique template mentioned there on my blog by Monday.

Wink

Had to share this classic Grant pose.  He loves to work it.  He's actually learned to wink at his preschool teachers to avoid getting in trouble.  He also tilts his head to one side, bats his eye lashes, and says "pwease" when he wants something.

This morning we had fresh strawberries with breakfast--Grant's favorite.  I warned everyone that they'd better eat theirs quick because Grant would inhale his and then start begging for everyone else's.  Sure enough, before anyone else had finished theirs he whipped out the head tilt, eyelash bat combo and asked me in his sweetest voice, "Can I pwease have daddy's stwawberries?"  Daddy had the most remaining on his plate.  Daddy said no.  Cruel world.

More Fun Than Laundry

It's been a great week so far.  I've been cashing in on some labor swaps with friends.  I LOVE labor swaps.  I'm taking a break from my Friday Group while we are in DC--I've been assured I'll still have a spot when I return.  So I've just been doing more spontaneous labor swaps.  I gave a friend a beginning sewing lesson and the pillows above are the result.  She had hardly touched a machine before!  Don't they look great.  We just made a little piping from some Navy Painter's canvas.  Putting it down the middle was a lot easier than going around the edges and it really ties them together and adds structure.  

In exchange for the sewing lesson Stacie came over and helped organize my studio--a great deal for me since I love teaching sewing lessons and I don't love organizing studios.  

Then on Tuesday London came and helped me cover my dining room chairs--also payment for sewing lessons.  They look FABULOUS.  I'll take pics soon.  It's so much more fun doing stuff like that with a friend.

So I had to run out and take Dave to the station this morning.  I needed to dress the boys in a hurry and, no joke, these were the only clean clothes I could find.  Since it's too cold for shorts, I compensated with snow boots.  Looks like I need to start swapping laundry labor for sewing lessons.  Ugh.

Lily's Painting

Should I ignore the thumping upstairs?  I'm pretty sure that crashing sound was Legos being dumped out. The thumping is a mystery, but they are definitely getting along.  The question is--Are they united in some devious or, as Luke would say, "snakey" activity or just throwing toys around? More crashing. I'd better investigate...

All is well.  According to Luke they are playing giants, and they are bad guys, and they have lots of pets, and they are killing pets.  A little gruesome, but I guess boys will be boys.  

I've been wanting to post a closeup of the painting I did for Lily's room.  The light isn't great in there and I was having a hard time getting a good picture of it. Today is sunny and gorgeous so I took it outside.

I'd better go.   They need me to get down their robot building toys so they can build a good guy to fight.  That poor good guy is in for a rough time with all those "killing pets" around.