Mending

My felt needlebook and other sewing items

 I finally attacked the mending pile.

My gran's thimble.  Makes me think of her while I sew ...

Poor Steve had almost no pants to wear 

 - the pockets had all worn through,

and buttons had come off shorts and a shirt.

The towering mending pile was a sore spot near our laundry.

I keep my sewing kit in this vintage tin.


But after just two sessions,
one with the sewing machine
and one by hand,
they were all mended, ironed,
and back in the bedroom ready to wear.

Leaving me feeling frugal and virtuous

with an empty mending basket!

Free Day No. 1 - The Kitchen

Emily headed back to school today, and Laura went back yesterday, so that makes today my first "free day".

Don't get me wrong, I LOVE my girls, and I LOVE the holidays, but since about 4th January (when Steve went back to work) I've been aching to tidy the house and calm things down a bit. Even I can only cope with so many books, craft projects, DVDs and toys strewn about the place.

But oh while the girls are home, and the weather was warm, and I was a bit sick, and my iPad is too distracting, it was too easy to procastinate!

And then I discovered Lissa's blog, and her kitchen:

It is so clear and uncluttered and light and spacious!

And for the last week I couldn't get it out of my head.

I decided that today was The Day.

So this morning after some grocery shopping I began to tackle my own kitchen.

Here are some before shots - but please remember that this is my kitchen at it worst - I haven't cleared up from making school lunches (and what a shock to the system that is!), and now I've bought in about 7 bags of groceries to add to the mix.

First thing I did was to get the groceries away, veggies into Tupperware in the fridge,

fruit in it's place on the bench, looking much better already.

Then I worked from right to left, removing absolutely everything from each section of the bench top, cleaning it and replacing only what I really use and love.

This is the back left corner of the kitchen before:

And after:

Much better!

I have always loved these little spice jars that my sister gave us when we got married, and use them regularly. But with their peach-colored design and raffia they are looking very dated! And I don't have room for them in the pantry.

Then I had a brainwave! I replaced the raffia with some natural looking string, and just turned the jars around to the plain backs! Voila! Neutral colored spice jars with cute labels! Now I can love them all over again!

I kept working my way around to the main bench of the kitchen, cleaning and decluttering. I threw out lots of old pens and nicknacks around the phone, and decided to work out another spot for my folders. I still have some stuff to go through, but this is the end result of my labours:

A clear bench, lit by the skylight above.

The living room behind me is fairly dark, the curtains are shut today to keep out the heat.

Fresh summer fruit

I found this old tea box in my Gran's garage when she was moving from her home. I stored tea in it for years in the pantry, but now it lives on display and holds lunch snacks for the girls.

It's close to hand for those busy mornings but looks better than bright packaging on the bench.

A few more jobs to do another day - clean my old electric jug collection,

Clean the windows and glass in the cupboards

Find something to go on the lower shelf here:

It's pretty much how I left it when I moved the Christmas ornaments out.

And now at last I can get out my lovely new pitcher I found at Bed, Bath & Table this morning.

But where to put it? My bench top is so lovely and clear. I don't want to add it in anywhere.

At times it can go on the dining table, filled with flowers or foliage, but it needs a home.

Aah!

Perfect.

Still' farmhouse' but more 'chic'.

The phone and stationery area is sorted and simple.

And my hens have a new home too, on the windowsill.

After two hours of hard work it was time to stop and have some lunch.

And now I have room to prepare it!

Fresh baguette ...

with filo, and tomato and basil from the garden. Yum!

Loving my new-look kitchen.

But in case you think tomorrow will be a day of rest, let me tell you about the other side of the kitchen ... where I ... ahem ... piled a few things in order to get the more visible parts of the kitchen sorted ....

Linking to:

Metamorphosis Monday

Anti-Procastination Tuesday

White and Bright

The last week has passed in a blur of plaster dust, dropcloths, primers, paintbrushes, rollers and visits to hardware stores. This old ladder has been our faithful friend.

We are giving the girls' room a makeover, and painting was the first step. We painted over the pale blue (with blue and white checker stencilled border) that I put there way back in 1995. The blue served us well, even though we ended up having two girls we had a nice blue and yellow colour scheme happening.

But lately the blue and yellow scheme turned to multicoloured as millions of soft toys arrived on the scene over the years, and the walls turned to not-so-blue and the ceiling to not-so-white. A paint job was well overdue. With Steve recently out of work the time had come.



For a week the girls slept in our room, we slept in the living room among the piles of paint equipment and soft toys, but today we moved our bed back into our own room, and tonight the
girls will sleep in a bright, white, clean, lovely room.

Over the next weeks we'll have new beds and bookcases delivered, and I'll be able to show you their finished room!

But I can show you one thing I've done - how cute is this lightshade? And only a few dollars at Hot Dollar! We are loving it.

What I've been doing ...

I haven't been posting much lately, I seem to have been flat out! So I though I'd let you know what's been happening in the last week, at least.

The girls went back to school a week ago.

They are pretty happy in their classes and everything is going well so far.

I spent most of that first school day giving the laundry a "makeover". Not so exciting, but so satisfying. Our laundry is basically a closet off the living room with folding doors. I dumped the wonky 3-section clothes hamper, which always stopped the folding doors shutting properly, took out all the paints, old bottles, empty plastic containers, etc etc that were in the cupboards behind (which I could never get to, anyway) and replaced all that with 4 clear plastic boxes, each labelled - lights, darks, towels and paints.


It took a while to find some boxes to fit the space, which is why I hadn't done this much earlier. So washing is easier and the living room even looks tidier now that the laundry doors shut properly.


Fortunately I have a window in my laundry "closet", which makes all the difference. On the windowsill I put a blue glass winebottle and a blue jar to make me happy. Oh and the shining sink makes me happy too (Flybaby that I am). So it's all good and washing happens much more smoothly in our house now.

And onto more exciting news (because I know that my laundry is really only exciting to me ;-) ... two weeks ago, after many months of thinking about it ... I joined Stampin' Up! as a demonstrator! Marelle is my upline - make sure you visit her beautiful blog.

Last week I received my Starter Kit and since then I've had just a few chances to PLAY with my new stamps, in amongst teaching piano, leading bible study, and everything else that's started up again for the year.

The card at the top of the post is one I made today, using the Bodacious Bouquet stamp set, which is so much fun. Colours are Regal Rose, Pretty in Pink and Garden Green.

Well, after my day of playing I'd better go and tidy the dining table so we can eat (and not stamp) at dinner time, then off to pick up the girls from their Irish Dancing class. Although I've been quite busy up till today I'm thankful to have things I enjoy doing to fill my days.

Thoughts of Spring

Spring is almost here, and now and then we have a warmer day to let us know. Actually I am quite happy with our cool winter days generally, and have much more energy now than I will in summer.

So, keeping that in mind, these are my plans for the next few weeks before the school holidays:

1. Keep the house tidy - at the moment the house is very tidy, which is unusual for me!

2. With the house being so tidy ... get more actual cleaning done

3. Sort out the girls' room a bit better (the messiest part of the house at present)

4. Finish Laura's quilt (just the binding to hand-sew now!)

5. Start planning and creating for Christmas - just getting a start

6. Prepare for our weekend away - a festival of Irish music - in a few weeks

7. Keep up with my reading: John Piper's Desiring God for bible study; Jane Eyre for an online book group, and various other books piled by my bedside and elsewhere!

8. Scrapbooking - have bought some new albums so now it is really time to stop procastinating over September-Dec 2006 and just do it! And then there's the rest of 2007 ... and now 2008 ... but finish 2006 first!

9. Baking - I have lots of plans to try different recipes ... but I need to stop buying so much food from the shops so that we actually need me to bake!

10. Cards - I am hoping to make many more cards and actually send them to friends when they need a cheer-up, rather than just make a pile and store them in a box!

Slow Saturday

After a late night watching the Olympic Opening Ceremony it was a slow quiet day for us.

Some sunshine, some washing.

Some tidying and shining,

Some baking and eating with cups of tea,

A little scrapbooking,

A late afternoon walk with a winter sunset.

A good day overall.

Cute organisation

How cute are these bulldog clips from Kikki K.? I bought them yesterday while I was "grocery shopping" (well, I did get to the groceries eventually!)

I couldn't decide between the birdies and the red clips with the symbols, so I had to get them both!

Now I will just have to tidy my computer desk and find some very deserving papers waiting to be clipped together.

After shopping in Kikki K. I am always inspired to organise my papers and life better ... but the cheap/creative part of me wants to do it at a much lower price! I'll try and take some photos of my Kikki K. low-cost take-offs in the next few days.

A slave to the weather

After two weeks of almost non-stop rain I feel like this:

As the collections of waiting-to-be-washed, half-dried-in-front-of-the-heater, and almost-dry-but-not-ironed clothes pile up, I'm looking forward to seeing more of the sun in future.

More Cards and a little Cleaning

Some more cards from my Hero Arts late-nighter last week:

I'm busy preparing for a Mother-Daughter Craft Night on Friday night with Emily's friends and their mums. Just finished the pre-cutting and will get all the stamps and tools ready to use.

Oh and spent 5 hours cleaning the living room. I swept and washed the floor, and wondered why I don't do it more often. Then I counted the pieces of furniture that have legs ...

1 dining table and 6 chairs

1 girls' desk and 2 chairs

3 stools at the kitchen bench

2 club chairs

5 little chairs or stools for little people and 1 little table

3 sofas

That's 24 items each with four legs. That's NINETY-SIX legs to sweep around. Yikes!

96 feet to remove fluff from ...

96 legs to collect dust!

And that is not counting a rocking chair and 2 beanbags

No wonder I don't wash the floor that much ...

Hmmm maybe it's time to declutter some furniture ..