She needs a name

My gorgeous nieces appear courtesy of Life on the Farm.  :)
We're growing attached to this pup but haven't settled on a name.  I created a poll. Want to help?

Click here to take survey

And then we got a puppy

We've been over-thinking this for months. Decided not to, absolutely not, and if we did get one it would be a grown dog, but then somehow we ended up with this.  A puppy!  She's two months old, and is, as the Humane Society put it, a "mix." She's adorable. I've never raised a dog before...wish me luck!

Spring fun

We've been running around like crazy in this heat. If the rest of the summer's schedule looks like this I'm going to have to figure out a way to "quit" and homeschool summer too.  We're always on the run! Splash parks, playgrounds, pools, berry patches and playdates--we need to slow down before we break down. Individually it's all fun, but it adds up to a wee bit much. Here's a photo of my little guy trying to swipe strawberries after our recent berry-picking excursion. I made the mistake of letting Dorothy use her own tray, and I had no idea how many she'd pick. I ended up with two gallons of strawberries--about twice as many as I'd planned on. I made strawberry-mango jam, cooked strawberry pie, uncooked strawberry pie, pie filling for the freezer, strawberry ice cream, strawberry daiquiris, daiquiris for the freezer, strawberry bread, bread for the freezer, and we ate huge amounts of strawberries and cream. Enough! Enough! Like our recent schedule of fun, the berries were wonderful but too abundant.

Somewhere in there (I think it was before the advent of the strawberries) I also invented a new cookie I'm pleased to share. I'm not sure what to call it--a Derby Pie Cookie?  Is that trademarked too?  A Kentucky Cookie? A chocolate walnut cookie with thoughts of thoroughbreds? Anyway, it's sort of like Derby Pie (I mean NOT Derby pie, since the original of course is famously trademarked) but a cookie.  Here's what I did:

1 cup plus 2 TB all-purpose flour
1/2 tsp baking soda
1 stick (8 TB) softened unsalted butter
1 cup brown sugar
1 egg
1/2 tsp salt
2 tsp vanilla
2 TB bourbon
1 1/2 cup chocolate chips (I used semi-sweet, but I think next time I'd use dark)
1 cup chopped, toasted walnuts (toast for 10 minutes at 350)

Stir flour with soda and salt together with a fork. Set aside.
Cream butter and sugar in a mixer bowl, then add egg, vanilla and bourbon.
Add flour mixture and stir until smooth. Stir in chocolate and walnuts.
Drop onto parchment-lined cookie sheets and bake at 375 for 8-10 minutes or until done.  Leave ample space between cookies because they spread a lot.

Our nest

I finally took some photos of our nearly-completed bedroom. The only work left in here is to paint the ceiling and trim. The photo above is the master bedroom before we moved in. Those dusty old valances are making me itch just looking at the photo!  We had intended to paint this room a sort of soothing neutral color, but when we stripped away the wallpaper we found a wall that had been a light turquoise. We liked it so well we ended up changing our color plans and painting the walls a deep turquoise instead, inspired by the color that had been on the wall in some previous incarnation.

I used fabric from Joann for the curtains and pillows in here, Legacy Studio's Nestled in Branches. I fell in love with this fabric when we were house-hunting, and once it finally came time to work on our new bedroom I was relieved that they still carried the prints. I bought the whole bolt of the curtain fabric! I still have some left and will probably do a small lap-quilt down the road. I did the pillow shams (as well as a slightly different alternate set so one can be in the laundry, not pictured) in strips of the bird fabrics with some solids as accents. I used a decorative stitch along each seam and binding along the edges. Once they were done I felt like I'd taken what could have been a very simple project (shams made of two pieces of fabric stitched along three sides) and made it needlessly complicated, but I really do like the final product. I also shouldn't discount the enjoyment I got out of stitching the strips!  Life's about the journey, right?

The whimsical bird print against my new white blinds and the new black curtain hardware makes me happy. Those windows wanted to be free of the dusty, stuffy old curtains that must have looked fresh and pretty when they were new, but had long since outlived their moment. Waking up in this room is wonderful!

I needed something on top of our wardrobe, so I combined a metal basket from my mother-in-law's yard sale with a bird intended as yard art to complete our free bird (ha ha) theme in this room.

And this wasn't really intentional, but seemed serendipitous. My grandmother's lamp looked great in the living room of my old house but was having trouble fitting in to any of the spaces we were creating here. Now that everything is put together it looks like I actually created a room just for this lamp. I don't get much into emotional attachment to objects, but it is nice when an object I love in its own right, like this lamp, also shares with me the memory of my grandparents' living room where it shed light on many family moments over many years. My paternal grandparents died during my two pregnancies (Grandpa during Dorothy's, Grandma during Worth's), and now their lamp shines on the baptism portraits of my beautiful kids. I think they would have liked that.

Gifts and summer pajamas

I put the home related sewing aside this week to make myself a pair of summer pj's. Sleeping in old t-shirts and well-worn pajamas pants is comfortable, but sometimes I just want to feel a little cuter at night, even if the only person to notice might be my still-won't-sleep-through-the-night toddler. I used a free pattern I found online for the tank, but I'm not going to link to it because I really didn't care for it. I had to make many alterations and it still is a bit big, even though the pattern involved taking my own measurements before starting. It'll work fine for sleeping though. I made bermuda-length sleep shorts to match by cutting around pants I already own and they fit perfectly. The pajamas are made from super-soft thrift store sheets in 100% cotton. I love the pretty print, and that new fabric could never be so wonderfully soft. (Aside: Wondering about that beautiful turquoise wall behind the pajamas?  That's my bedroom! It used to be covered in "tropical" wallpaper. More on that project is forthcoming!)

 

This was a Mother's Day project I'd almost forgotten to blog about. I bought some little silver charms at Joann that are intended to hold tiny photographs. Then I printed out a whole page of empty squares just the right size on cardstock and let Dorothy draw mini pictures in each one with pen and colored pencil. We chose our favorites and I glued them onto the charms, then we covered them with several coats of brush-on gloss glaze. The flower charm was a gift to my mother and the bird is now mine. We strung them on silver chains.

Dorothy had a major milestone this past week--she finished preschool! As much as I'm looking forward to having her home next year it was emotional and a little rough to watch all her treasures come home from school. It was like watching the sweet and nurturing space they'd created for her there being dismantled. She has laid her beloved resting rug on her bed here at home and has been sleeping on it, and we put together a small bag to hold her other treasures such a her photo album and name card. To honor the lovely women who have given her the treasure of such a warm and lovely year of preschool we made homemade shopping bags. Dorothy chose the fabric (from the same sheet as the pajamas) and helped me sew the seams on her little sewing machine.

Her confidence is a wee bit ahead of her ability, but the slightly off-kilter seams don't show unless you're looking, and they prove that the love and work of a five-year-old went into the construction. I made small drawstring bags so the teachers can easily stash their shopping totes into their purses or glove compartments.

More Aunt Stephanie's Room

The guest room is officially done! The neighbor girl who plays with Dorothy walked in, not having been in the room since we were using it for post-move storage, and gasped. It was so gratifying. And then she was so impressed that we had a whole room just for guests that it made me remember Anne of Green Gables and Aunt Josephine and I secretly vowed to invite her over to sleep in it sometime. It does feel sort of indulgent to have a guest room after we seemed so cramped with the four of us in our two-bedroom six months ago. I made up the bed with clean sheets today and am feeling that much more settled here. Ignore that the brass bed really needs to be polished. I augmented store-bought bedding (Target and IKEA) with homemade toss pillows and I sewed homemade bias tape along the bottom of a plain store-bought bed skirt.

In such a bright room I wanted bright photographs too. I painted old gold picture frames black, then snapped photos of the kids posing against a backdrop of the (uncut) curtain fabric. It's not like you'd walk in and notice that the photo backdrop matches the curtains, which is just as well, but the overall effect does help tie everything together in this bright and colorful room.

I wanted to bring some of the room's black accents onto the bed so I made one pillow using this terrific owl fabric I found online. It didn't quite work, though. You remember that Sesame Street game from when we were kids?  Which of these things doesn't belong?  It was totally this pillow. I thought that if just one owl could be orange then it would really make everything look harmonious, so I grabbed an orange Sharpie marker and colored one owl in. Let's hope the cat doesn't puke on this pillow because I have no idea how orange Sharpie would wash, but I love the way it turned out. Now the pillow looks like it belongs perfectly.

I also embellished the white pillowcases that go with the plain white sheets on this bed. I used more of the homemade bias tape (do I need a support group for my recent bias tape problem?) and some of the decorative stitching on my new machine.

My success in painting the hokey flowers on the thrift store rocking chair inspired me to try something similar on an old milk can. I bought this jug at a yard sale when we lived in Oak Park and kept it on our front porch at our last two houses. It was already black but was starting to look sort of pathetic and rusty, so I sprayed on some new black and painted on the flowers and our name. I may get tired of looking at my own unprofessional art work every time I enter my front door, but it shouldn't be hard to spray on over the decoration when that time comes.

Aunt Stephanie's Room

I've been working on the guest room, otherwise known as Aunt Stephanie's room.  (Stephanie was my college roommate, is honorary and beloved "aunt" to my kids and is my favorite and most frequent houseguest, hence the room is named for her.) The walls are a creamy yellow that look more or less intense depending on the light. I hung simple white shades in the window for nighttime privacy, then made slim curtains with tie-backs so they don't obscure the view. I love the crazy orange bird print, which is Pretty Bird Spice by Michael Miller.

The rocking chair was a thrift store find, $12.00, and it was your basic old wooden rocker with an awful, dusty cushion. I ditched the cushion, painted the rocker black to tie in the picture frames and curtain rods, and free-handed some orange flowers on the top. I love the way it now looks like it was made for the room.

For most of the rooms in the house I've chosen a group of favorite fabrics as a starting point and this room was no different. The Michale Miller Pretty Bird fabrics appear on the lamp shade, the pillows (here and more to come), the bedding (stay tuned), and the curtains. Gluing homemade bias tape on lamp shades is slightly addictive because it's so fast and it looks good.  Now I've got my mother doing it too. The funky candy dish was a vintage eBay piece because I just had to--how could I do a room in orange but not have something made out of that crazy fiery retro glass? Other bits of this room are still in progress and will be done soon--so if you're thinking of visiting me and staying in my guest room, pick a date!