girls and curls

look who's reading!

Regan has been working with Max all year, learning letters and practicing their sounds and this weekend all that work has culminated in this...
Max, reading to the family (with his proud teacher looking on)! Looks like Regan has made my job (of teaching kindergarten this fall) a whole lot easier!

just for me

I've been admiring all of Target's Liberty of London things since they hit the stores this spring and finally brought home something for myself from the collection.

I am so glad to be done with the rearranging and am looking forward to a relaxing weekend. So, as soon as I finish hanging this...
putting up this here (scroll down)...

And painting this...

you will find me reading this. (I just had to throw in one more picture of my pretty new wallet!)Hope your weekend is happy and relaxing too!

my "studio" tour

I finally finished last night! Turns out the job of rearranging the office/craft/school room was a much bigger job then I anticipated. I still have a few loose end to tie up- like that pile of "to be filed" papers on the desk and we would also like to replace that IKEA rolling file cart (far right, in front of window) with a real file cabinet, oh and those boxes of magazine under my sewing desk that need to be gone through, but otherwise It is mostly done, and finally usable! Here are some pics...

Before:
After:

under construction: the school/office/craft room

This is what my poor husband has to put up with...
I have a disease, it's called chronic rearrangement syndrome. It is genetic, I inherited it from my mother and I think I've passed it on to my daughter too. As soon as she saw me moving furniture she got really excited and started telling me about how she wants to rearrange her room!
The truth is, this space just was not working for us anymore and I've been itching to find a way to make it work better. I don't know that I've found the answer, but I finally realized I could not figure it out unless I just dove and and started moving things. I am obviously a long way from finished, but hopefully by the time Phil gets home from taking Max to a birthday party we will at least be able to walk in the room :)

Oh, and here is a little peak at my new table/counter top. I have a few 2x8 pieces of plywood in the shed, so I cut one to fit my space and covered it with scrap book paper and a roll of plastic I just happened to have in the garage!
Well, I'm going back under, hopefully I will resurface soon with more pictures. TTFN!

window treatment

Okay, so our new windows are in (and they look oh so lovely) the trouble is, I can't decide what to do about curtains! I almost hate to cover them up they are so nice- even putting the couch back in front of the window was hard to do. But, they do seem kinda bare like this.

These are the curtains we had up before- just sheer, white, tie curtains. Oh, and there were blinds up before, but I am leaving those off, at least for now- I never have liked them anyway.

And here they are pulled back. I'm just not loving them.
What would you do?

new windows!

A friend from church came over today to "help" us install our windows- you can see from this picture how most of the day went- Neil doing most of the work and Phil and I standing by to hand him things (and take picture) We are so grateful to have had a professional here to "assist" us. :)

Okay, so I threw this picture in just because I though it was cool.

This was the first window to go in.

If you look closely you can find Max in the background watching in almost every picture. He's gonna be our handyman.

Phil- working hard.
We had not taken the stickers off or clean up the yard yet, but they are all in here!

Here is one from inside- I love how the windows look open with grids in the top sash only.

A close up from the outside. I love how the trim looks all wrapped- makes me anxious to do the rest of the trim on the house!

And finally- the before...

And after! I am enjoying the first ever cross-breeze in our house as I type! So nice to have windows that actually open :)

random

It just hit me how far behind we are in school- we don't want to spend our whole summer doing school, so we have been in overdrive this week starting the catch up game. So far it is going well, hopefully we can keep up the schedule and be done by the end of May. Anyway, time has been slipping by so fast, I just realized I have not blogged since Tuesday, so here is a post of random pictures from our week.

We got a new mattress Monday (our old one was defective- very saggy) and the old one was on the floor of our living room for 2 day. Oh, so much bouncing fun! Anywho- the kids were playing hide and seek the other day and this was Regan's hiding place. It is a bit freaky looking, but she was trying to blend in :)

I couldn't post a bunch of picture and leave out this cutie- so sweet!

Captain Hook had to change (I thought it might be a bit distracting to his classmates) but Peter Pan and Wendy accompanied us to Preschool Wednesday morning. Today they were dressed in their circus costumes- they are practicing for the show now while we wait for daddy to finish mowing the lawn.

Look at what we found in our yard this afternoon! Actually, the neighbor's dog found him- good thing there was a fence between them! He's back at the creek safe and sound now.We have a friend coming over tomorrow to help install our new windows- I am so excited, it will be so nice to actually be able to OPEN our windows- there is at least one window in out tiny house that we have NEVER been able to open!

Hope you all have a fabulous weekend!

upcycled maternity dress

I was cleaning out my closet this week and came across this maternity dress. I love the print of the fabric, but don't have any need for a maternity dress. I decided it would make a great skirt. So this afternoon I cut off the top and sewed a casing for an elastic waistband and...

Tada! A new skirt! Okay, so my waist is about two times that of my dress form (I pinned it in the back) but you get the idea :)

sweet dreams

I have been admiring Rose Hip's crochet trimmed pillowcases for months now, wishing I knew how to do it myself, but not having the energy or focus to figure it out on my own. And then I stumbled upon this! Then, while we were in MD, my mom and I snuck off to Home Goods where I found these polka dot pillowcases (a perfect match for the quilt I am working on)!
I can't remember what night I started this (maybe Wednesday?), but it was pretty simple- this week has been crazy between unpacking, being sick, getting back into the swing of life at home, remodeling my kitchen :) etc. So, needless to say, I have not had a lot of time to craft but I did find enough time to finish up one pillowcase.

Oh, and look at the fabulous slipper that Regan made! Seems we both are good at getting half of a pair done, the questions is, can we finish what we've started?

it all started in the silverware drawer

Our silverware drawer is right under the most prominently used portion of our counter. Because of that it quite often if full of not only silverware (and sundry other kitchen-y type things) but lots of crumbs, dripped jelly, spilled flour... you get the point. Yesterday I was unloading the dishwasher and reached that point of ultimate disgust- the drawer must be cleaned. As I was putting the silverware back in the drawer I just couldn't bring myself to clutter the drawer up with all the extra junk that was in there. And the next thing I knew I was cleaning out all the cabinets, looking for things we no longer used. I came up with a whole box of stuff to donate (plus a couple of bags of stuff to toss)...

Then I moved a book shelve from the the garage to the kitchen

And finally took out the 25+ year old, above stove microwave.
That was totally unplanned, but I am so glad we did it! I've been talking about taking that thing out since we moved in 4.5 years ago and it is finally done! The only problem now is that I can not get to the wood in my shed to fix up the space until we get our new windows out of the shed and into our house! Hopefully next weekend.

the awakening

WARNING! The following pictures are FREAKY! Proceed with caution and know that no children, plants or animals were injured before, during or after this photo shoot! :)


We met Phil's family at a park in Ellicott City last weekend and the kids discovered this pit full of small pebbles. The mom's were sitting at a picnic table 100 feet away and called over after a bit to find this:
Ever seen the Awakening in DC?
We won't talk about how dirty the kids were after this, but you can be sure that they were all THOROUGHLY scrubbed that night!