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It's like an endless home decorating magazine! Lots of comments and suggestions, cool things to try and plenty of eye candy.
Some of my favorites from today...
Out With the Old, In with the New kitchen
Basement Family Room with Aqua Glaze & Cool Tree
I'm still trying to figure out if you can create a portfolio of rooms you like or bookmark other users as favorites, no luck so far. It does say 'Rate My Space ' beta so maybe improvements are on the way. In the meantime, go ahead and explore!
After keeping my studio spotless for nearly 2 weeks, I finally broke out a bunch of supplies and started working on a few projects. I decided that I can work in here, just not in the manner I'm accustomed too. In other words, I can't take out too much stuff and I have to clean up daily. I'm so used to leaving my stuff out in a pile (I'm not done with it yet, I'm going to work on it again the next day, it's late, etc.) on my table or desk, that it really takes some discipline to clean up after myself. It's worth it though, I do love coming in here when it's clean. It also helps that I have 2 IRIS carts from Costco with removable storage drawers. That way I can stuff all the things for a particular project in a drawer and take it back out when I'm ready. It's working so far anyway!
Here are a few snippets of some Valentines I'm working on.
I'm using (almost) all materials I had on hand. I did buy one package of 'Smitten' (K&Company) dimensional stickers at Michael's, but that's it. Materials include sheet music, scrapbook paper, rubber stamps, Mod Podge, cardboard, foam tape, and jewels. Oh, and how could I forget, glitter.
After I finish these up my next challenge will be figuring out how to send them to my Valentine pals.
It was certainly an exciting mail day today. Not only did my daughter receive her long sleeved Pop Tarts American Idol t-shirt, I was the recipient of the new Pottery Barn Kids catalog!
Spring is in full bloom inside the PBK catalog and there's lot of new and inspiring eye candy. Because who actually gets the PBK catalog to shop?? We are lucky enough to have a Pottery Barn/Williams Sonoma outlet within about an hour of our house so any PB merchandise we have is from the outlet. You can find some great deals there, some of mine include: dining room table (seats 10) $299, dining room curtains (sheers) $7, adorable puppy sleeping bag $30, 25 cubby wall shelf $6.99. And the list goes on. I should probably plan to head down there one more time before we move back north...
Back to the inspiration. I love this page of fabric swatches. If I needed a swivel glider for a nursery and had $1000 to spend on it, I'd love the pick one of these fabrics. Also noted: lots of bird motifs, lots of branch motifs, polka dots, cupcakes on the party table, banners, and lots of furniture with 'brooks green' finish.
Very spring time indeed!
PrestoBingo is made up of two artists, Joyce Hesselberth (that's her work on the left) and Dave Plunkert. I found their work on both trunkt and etsy. They describe PrestoBingo as 'modern art for modern kids'. They have several robot prints available (I guess I especially like these because my boys' room currently has a robot theme) along with other whimsical yet clean lined offerings. 
They also do graphic design and illustration work through their Spur Design website.
All of their sites are definitely worth a browse!
The house is clean. The laundry is done (which never happens). The kids are off from school and not fighting. My studio is too clean to create in. So I've been alternating between touching up the trim paint and kicking around online. I stumbled across one of those surveys on someone else's blog and figured, hey, that's what I could do while I try to remember what else I was going to do!
So here goes...
1. What is your occupation? Stay at home mom, babysitter at other people's homes, and quasi professional house cleaner ; )
2. What color are your socks right now? White, Champion sport socks
3. What are you listening to right now? My daughter is playing 'Every Day is a Winding Road' by Sheryl Crow on her computer in the other room and I can hear it quite clearly
4. What was the last thing you ate? A banana
5. Can you drive a stick shift? Yes, that's the type of transmission I learned to drive on
6. If you were a crayon, what color would you be? One of those rainbow glitter crayons that looks different depending on how you hold it on the paper. Or spring green.
7. Last person you spoke to on the phone? My husband
8. How old are you today? 40. Same as yesterday.
9. Favorite drink? Pink lemonade (even though it gives me heartburn so I don't drink it much)
10. What is your favorite sport to watch? NFL Football
11. Have you ever dyed your hair? Yes, highlights
12. Favorite reality TV show? John & Kate Plus Eight on TLC
13. What was the last movie you watched? A Good Year
14. Favorite day of the year? First beach day of the year
15. What do you do to vent anger? Get snippy with family, go for a walk, vent to a friend or Mom
16. What was your favorite toy as a child? One of them is pictured above, a playhouse my parents built for me when I was 4
17. What is your favorite, fall or spring? Spring
18. Hugs or kisses? Hugs & Kisses! If it's Hershey's though, kisses, definitely ; )
19. Cherries or blueberries? Blueberries
20. Do you want your friends to email you back? Sure, who doesn't like personal email
21. Favorite dessert? Cheesecake
22. Living arrangement? House with one husband, 3 children, one dog and one cat.
23. When was the last time you cried? I teared up during this week's Extreme Home Makeover episode
24. What is on the floor of your closet? I think I saw a pair of my husband's sweatpants, other than that, spotless.
25. What did you do last night? Folded laundry and watched real estate shows on HGTV
26. What inspires you? The ocean, sunsets, store windows, catalogs, greeting cards, my kids
30. What are you afraid of? Elevator rides to the top floors of tall buildings--and being on the top floors of tall buildings
31. Plain, cheese, or spicy burgers? Plain
32. Favorite breed of dog? Cute ones. We have a golden retriever and he's pretty cute despite his fur that I'm constantly finding all over the house.
33. How many years at your current job? 10 (the mom part) and 5 months for the babysitter part
34. Favorite day of the week? Wednesday
35. How many states have you lived in? 2
36. Celebrity crush? Matt Damon, in a brotherly kind of way. Matt Dillon in a non-brotherly way.
37. Ever driven a motorcycle or heavy machinery? No, but I want to drive a golf cart so badly I can almost taste it!
38. Who is your favorite NFL team? New England Patriots (even when they were 2-14)
39. Do you have a house phone that is not cordless? Yes.
40. 10 inches of snow or 100 degree weather? 10 inches of snow--unless the 100 degrees is at the beach or the dry heat of AZ. 100 degrees in NC would surely have 150% humidity along with it and that's just no good.
Wow, I didn't realize how long that was. But kind of fun.
If you're so inclined, do play along!
I'm not sure if I've posted pictures of my studio on my blog before. I know I have some from this spring posted on flickr so I probably have. At any rate, at the moment my studio is super clean. As in I don't dare actually make anything because I'll mess it up. We're getting ready to put our house on the market so it'll (hopefully) remain super clean for a while. But a short while with any luck! I had to snap a few pictures the other day, I love the way the sun streams in here in the afternoon. I sewed the car-wash style table skirt this week--looks so much nicer than staring at my Iris carts under the table. I had to "undress" my woman (dressform) and strip her of all my assorted goodies. Now she's wearing my apron full time. Lucky for her, she looks good in anything!
Metal angels from Sarah's Midwest of Cannon Falls collection a few years ago. The trio sits atop my stamp shelf. Love the shell and starfish details!
Today's post features a few collages from Sarah's darling little book Objects Of My Affection. It's a book of poems, collages and paintings--perfect for Valentine's Day.
Here are 3 of my favorites..
I been cleaning my studio lately and came across several books by Sarah Lugg . She is one of my favorite artists (aren't they all...). I love her collages and the way she incorporates natural objects, text, embroidery, handwriting, and color.
The picture on the left is from her book Sarah Lugg's Handcrafted Wedding. This book didn't even come out until several years after my wedding but that mattered not. The projects and photography are lovely and can be widely adapted for any party, festive event or just as a springboard to creating a unique piece of art.
The project pictured here is a delightful trio of napkin rings that double as place cards (p. 31). Wouldn't they be fun at a Valentine's tea party??
A couple of years ago, December 2005 to be exact, I decided to paint a mural on a couple of the walls of our 2 story foyer. We were having a holiday party and lots of family coming to visit for Christmas. I also knew that in January we would be having the foyer and hallway painted. So I figured, why not.
My original inspiration was a piece of Martha Stewart wrapping paper with some stylized Christmas trees. I decided on the colors based mostly on what I had on hand. I used leftover wall paint for the 3 large trees and the bells and supplemented with acrylic craft paint on the rest. I'm pretty sure my husband thought I was crazy. My kids loved it though and were quite distressed when it got painted over in January.
I loved it too. When I (finally) finished the foyer painting I couldn't stop so I painted the snowman in a box who pointed the way into our playroom at the landing at the top of the stairs.
We did indeed have our party and I'm pretty sure we made a lasting impression with the neighbors ; ).
Of course now the foyer is painted a lovely (if boring) shade of beige (Benjamin Moore Shaker Beige). But for a few weeks back in the winter of 2005-2006, we had the coolest foyer on the block.
{the large text on the wall reads 'wish big', the 'win the lottery' wish inside the bell refers to a local charter school lottery that was held in March of '06. We didn't get in but fast forward to Summer 2007 and my boys did indeed win the lottery and now attend a different (maybe even better) charter school}
