darah doodles

sheesh. that month went quick

2009-03-29T19:48:00.004-05:00

I know I've been absent. I got a job. Major upheaval. Not a lot of crafting. Well, some crafting, but no blogging about crafting.

So maybe I'll catch everyone up over the next couple days! Maybe . . .

There was one quick little project I did several weeks ago that I keep wanting to post.

So, I bought this crate of clementines. It was a complete splurge, but good citrus is hard to get here. This time of year I fall off the local food wagon. It's the fruit. Always the fruit. Darn you Iowa winters. Anyways. They were yummy. And we were left with this great box.

I got the idea from somewhere in the blogsphere. I wish I could give credit where it's due, but I cannot remember where I saw it. If you know, please let me know!

We made a doll bed out of it!

I sewed up a simple muslin mattress and pillow and then a couple flannel blankets out of cheap remenants I found at JoAnn's.

It was a hit.

I have no idea how long it will last as it's basically made out of paper and a lot of staples, but for now Elmo, Abby and Marsha all have a nice place to sleep.

what is it with Mondays. . .

2009-02-23T20:03:00.002-06:00

and giveaways??
Unraveled (remember, the growth chart inspiration?) is having an awesome giveaway. And a bunch of her yarn stash is for sale.

Come on- - help support her fabric habit!

cozy hooks

2009-02-19T11:01:00.004-06:00

I found some of the material I'd been seeing pop up on Etsy as super cute kids' clothes down at JoAnn's the other day. Score! I have a hard time finding cute stuff at JoAnn's sometimes. I think I'm overwhelmed by how many choices there are.

With some of the fabric I made a roll to hold my crochet hooks. This was kind of a test run to see if I could manage it for some pens and possibly help my friend Melissa corral her inherited knitting needle collection. I'm finding that I like these little projects. They're easy to take an hour or two to figure out and create. Which is a good amount of time when you have a two year old; sometimes that hour or two takes eight or nine! I thought it turned out pretty good for having a sort-of pattern. Guthrie picked out the ribbon. I was uncertain, but it appears she has good taste! And my crochet hooks are happy to have a home instead of being strewn about the house. Gus immediately lectured me that these hooks were going nigh-night. Right Now.

Apparently they also snore. Who knew?

february felt board

2009-02-18T11:31:00.005-06:00

This past Christmas I made Gus and my two adopted nieces felt boards. I equipped them with some basic stuff to get them started and to acquaint myself with working with felt and cutting out really small pieces! My goal is to send them a packet a month throughout the year ending next Christmas. There will be a lot of seasonal stuff, but also some just basic fun sets. I'm making Gus a set too, but I'm holding off until next year to give them to her. I think she'll get more use out of them then.

For January I included a snowman set in the Christmas presents because I am well aware of the post-Christmas slump in creativity! So, February was my first month to actually make a little kit. It was so much fun!

Here's what I did. First, duh, it was Valentine's Day so there were hearts and little birds and an owl.

And then to mix it up a little I did a tic-tac-toe board. I'm sure Mel and Duffy are loving all that tic-tac-toe right now. You're welcome! :)

I'm excited for next month. I'll post what I sent as soon as I know the girls have recieved it!

Imagine Childhood + The Crafty Crow

2009-02-16T07:56:00.002-06:00

It's Monday again and the Crafty Crow has another awesome Giveaway.
She's giving a gift certificate to Imagine Childhood!
Go check it out.

Aren't the treehouses awesome??

The Rainbow Superbowl

2009-02-11T17:43:00.005-06:00

Apparently we had a rainbow themed Superbowl party. It was a little light on the "party" as some friends we invited over declined to come once we told them Gus was 30 lbs of virus. I don't blame them. One bit. However, we did still have Uncle Andrew over because arrived the day before the virus.

A few days before, I'd picked up some super cheap wool roving. Super high quality, just super on sale. So, I thought we'd try our hand at felt balls. There are tutorials 'round the blogsphere - just type in 'felt balls, how to' and pray you don't get something vaguely pornographic. Kidding. So, I won't repeat the directions here. It took a bit to get the hang of it and next time we do it we'll be outside and I won't care so much about keeping the water ON THE TRAY GUTHRIE LAINE!!! We will be doing it again because it was really fun and even though we all suffered from pruney hands -- much to Uncle Andrew's horror -- we have some pretty awesome felt balls to show for it.

We also tried our hand at the rainbow cake that's been lurking round the 'sphere. Admittedly, I didn't so much read the ingredients aside from cake mix, blah blah blah, frosting. So I missed out on the fact that we needed some Sprite. We were Spriteless and had to make the cake in the ordinary fashion. C'est la vie. I think the Sprite adds some leavening that the eggs did not.

That said, it was pretty freaking awesome and I'll totally do it again. I was worried that you would be able to taste the food coloring. That it would get all chemically amidst the cakey goodness, but it wasn't.

And the game was good too -- I think. . .

what a mess! a lovely mess!

2009-02-06T09:45:00.003-06:00

If you keep up on my other blog you know we've been trapped indoors for several days with a nasty virus. No one has gotten it quite as bad as Gus. She's eaten nothing but yogurt for 3 days. And stew. And smoothies made with aforementioned yogurt, but not the stew. That's gross.

I'm hitting that point in winter where I just can't take it anymore. The snow is almost gone and there are no buds on anything. I hate having to dress in so many dang layers. I know that next month will be worse -- there will be the possibility that it could be warmer than it actually is. And there will be a lot of brown, but also there might be a chance for us to force some budding on our lilac bushes inside. Until then we're letting this feed our soul.

Isn't it the most gorgeous amaryllis you've ever seen? The box said it was going to be red, but it's this bright orange instead. It's so cheerful! John asked, how long will it bloom for? I'm not the only one who is getting some color therapy from it.

So. I know you're dying to know how our valentine's day stuff went. Well, we made a great big mess. Emphasis on great though. I don't mind cleaning up after a big creative day.
I so appreciate having room in our house to do this. After years of small apartments it's so nice to have room to breathe while I make things.

I've been reading maya*made for awhile and pondering her love for newspaper and man oh man she's totally on to something. Newspaper is my new favorite thing. It's forgiving. We have a ton of it thanks to QC Times' inability to cancel my mother's subscription and whatever we don't use can go in the compost bin.

We couldn't stop making newspaper hearts. It was so much fun. Oil pastels on newspaper hearts are cool. As is both watercolor paint and acrylic. And when you get the crossword it's a special treat. Or a map. We have a lot of maps in our paper. I guess people get lost a lot? Hmm.

I can't show you all we did because then that would ruin some Valentine's Day surprises, but I can show you this:
Not the best picture. It's a weird spot for light - especially late in the day.
I love being able to decorate our stairs. Until now I had our scarves lined up, but given my angst towards winter I decided to take them down and put this up instead.

Then we put some hearts in the window and we're going to put more hearts in the doorways.
I'd forgotten how fun it is to sew paper. We sewed our wedding invitations and it was super fun. So, look forward to a lot of sewn paper in the near future I think!

have a great weekend!

valentine's day prep

2009-02-01T23:05:00.007-06:00

I've been kind of excited about Valentine's Day this year. I'm not sure why- we don't usually do much.

I think I'm in need of some splashy color in our house though. I should rephrase that: I'm in need of some splashy semi-temporary decorations in the house.

Tomorrow I'm going to my first interview in 4 years. Wish me luck. I'm rewarding myself by coming home and making some of these.

maya*made has done some more newspaper bunting and after 3 seasons of loving her stuff I'm going to make some of my own.

That is of course as soon as I vacuum all the remnants of rainbow cake out of our carpet. Gus decided chopsticks were the best way to eat rainbow cake. Word to the wise; chopsticks are not so conducive to cake. I will do some post-Superbowl blogging later on. We had some good times even though everyone was sickish - especially and mostly the little one though.

Stay tuned! And Happy Monday!

growth chart dilemma

2009-01-24T10:01:00.005-06:00

Before Christmas I picked up this awesome material from Phat 1/4's Quilting in Galena. Which, by the way is a lovely store and I could do a whole post about Galena and the great shops there. I'm hoping we'll go back this summer for some more poking around.

So, here is the fabric.

I love it. Get it? Trees... growing... get it?

I know. I'm so witty.

But I'm having a hard time sketching it out. It's been on my to-do list for awhile and I just can't quite get it. Here are my dilemmas:

- finding a vinyl tape measure that goes up to 6 feet because John is almost 6 feet tall and I want him to be on it. I am capping it out at 6 feet though because, dude, if you're over 6 feet and related to me, well, it's just not likely. My aunt had emailed me this fabric, but I don't think it's consecutive enough(?) to mark a lot of growth. However, aren't you just loving Moda these days? I think this would be so cute on a little smock.

- how do I mark off the dates? I've been perusing the wealth of cool growth charts online and like what Kristen from Unraveled did with the white vinyl. She's going to use a permanent marker to write dates. I like that that will probably be permanent. I am also toying with the idea of affixing a little tag where we measure. It would make some kind of 3D aspect to it. I feel like that might be an invitation for little fingers to pull it off though.

- and I'm waiting for a pattern or vision to inspire me. I'm not the hugest fan of the more kid oriented growth charts that are out in mass market. I'd like it to fit into the rest of our house without screaming, HI I'm a growth chart! See my giraffe? or something.

So -- any suggestions??
I'll keep you posted and will probably continue to just cart the fabric around with me for a few weeks. It's been in every room of the house. Used as a tent by Guthrie. Used as a blanket by the cats. Layed out open on the floor by me over and over. I'm sure it loves the attention. I'll just keep doing this, but any suggestions by you would be very welcome!

happy weekend!

because nothing says I own this like a 5/8 drill bit.

2009-01-22T16:30:00.002-06:00

So, remember this? Yes, it was Gus' uber-safe jungle gym.

The walls were minty fresh, with matching carpet of course.

Well there was some of this:

isn't he so cute??

and several trips to Lowes, one bout of the flu, and more Super Why! than I'll cop to.

We did this:

but wait, before you get all, "holy moly girl you just violated like 85 rules of design making 1/2 this room bright red! I mean what is it 8 x 10 feet? geez."

THEN we did this:

We've still got some work to do though.

A new computer table. The Lifetime table just isn't cutting it.

And we need some curtains. My love of mini-blinds is waning.

And a big comfy chair.

So, it is a "finished" product.

As finished as it's going to be for now.

Check that out. I'm so proud.

We had to use toggle bolts because we have plaster and lath walls. After a few hours of severe frustration (and a bigger drill bit) I have it down to a science. These shelves are never coming down.

Most importantly, though, is that we now have space for our books. Now I feel like we are home.

I feel a huge sense of peace because of this room. I'm not exactly sure why. I think because having my favorite books on the shelves is the same to me as having pictures of my loved ones up. I can remember so much of my life by glancing at the titles.

All the philosophy and religion books are the beginning of my life with John.

Carting What Am I Doing Here around all over Europe
Ina May's Guide to Childbirth while wading through the last months of pregnancy.

Reading Holy the Firm while sitting by my Grandma Bump in the hospital. She woke up at 3:00 am and was lucid for the first time in a long time. She told me she loved me and that I had turned into quite a nice looking girl. She was good like that.

And before you get all, man she reads some heavy books - I have a special place for all the Danielle Steelesque books John's gotten me over the years too.

See, these books are my home too. I'm all for simplifying. I'm all for paring down- even in this room, I mean really, how many copies of de Anima does one household need? But if there was a fire and everyone got out safe and sound I would still mourn my books.

Count on us spending a lot of time in here as a family.

Gus loves her shelf. We've had a lot of time in the bean bag chair over the past couple days. And it's fun to see what she picks up off the other shelves. Yesterday she carted around Kafka for a few hours. Which just makes me giggle.

I am excited to have several art books accessible for her to explore.

And in case you were wondering - here's the playlist necessary for such a feat:
Tori Amos
Led Zeppelin
Garden State
Ani DiFranco
Johnny Cash
Beck
A Fine Frenzy

And BIG thanks to my mom for helping measure, providing moral support during the drill bit

fiasco, and supplying us with donuts and lattes!

And just in case you were also wondering what's under the mint green carpet. . .

but that's a summer project. Maybe a pre-centennial project -our house was built in 1910.

Because I am DONE with the major household projects for now. I hear some draft snakes calling my name.

A nice easy afternoon project.

Crafty Crow Giveaway!

2009-01-19T14:00:00.000-06:00

One of my favorite sites-o-inspiration is the Crafty Crow. Aside from it being a wealth of craftknowledge it's incredibly organized. I love trolling through their archives looking for projects. And the books! So many lists of books. What a great resource.

Today is Giveaway Monday -- doesn't that make the beginning of the week so much better??

be sure to head over and enter for
Shabby Chic Products
An Awesome Book
Vintage Valentines

Good Luck!

we're so trendy

2009-01-19T12:08:00.003-06:00

See -- Pantone released it's new color of the year.
It looks strangely similar to our chalkboard wall.

Pantone says, "In a time of economic uncertainty and political change, optimism is paramount and no other color expresses hope and reassurance more than yellow." Fitting, no?

tweet tweet

2009-01-12T11:30:00.000-06:00

I remember walking home from Lacey Elementary proudly carrying my handmade suet for the birds to enjoy. You know, pinecones, peanut butter, bird seed. I'm sure I'm not the only one. I wonder if they do it anymore given the whole nut allergy thing?
Mid-winter is a cool time for birds here. At our old house we had a few cardinals that appeared in our tree almost daily. I've only seen one since moving here. Kind of sad. I never understood why people liked them so much -- until I lived through a brown, white, and gray winter. I get it now. We also have quite a few bald eagles. They winter in Le Claire, up the river from us.

In the effort to attract some more birds Gus and I made some suet or 'tweet nums' as she calls them. I love this; her learning talk.
Nana Loree (of the above mentioned photos) sent us a huge box of pinecones a while back from Bend, Oregon and we've been crafting with them all winter.
So, we got out our pinecones, peanut butter, ribbon, and some birdseed.

Gus helped spread on the peanut butter. Well, maybe that's a little strong. Gus ate a lot of peanut butter while I coaxed her into spreading it on the pinecone. But she was a champ about putting the birdseed on the peanut butter laden pinecone. We rolled it around, poured it on, shook it off, it was a veritable sensory extravaganza!

I think I remember leaving them at school for a couple of days before taking them home to hang up, but I figured the peanut butter would freeze which is totally the same thing as drying right?

Here are our creations hung up on the back porch. Sorry for the dicey picture quality- it was cold. See all that gray and brown? Red birds would totally liven that up.
So far no visitors, but I will keep you posted!

Happy tweet nums!

*If you do have a nut allergy I think any peanut butter alternative would work. And if you are trying this with small children check your pine cones for pointy tips. These are easily sniped off with a pair of scissors.

play kitchen

2009-01-08T16:13:00.007-06:00

I'd wanted to get Gus a play kitchen for Christmas. No one in our house is up for a big plastic monstrosity, but neither are we up for buying a sweet wooden one. I'd toyed with buying this, but decided against it because Duffy lives very far away and I think he might be the only one I know who could put it together. Isn't it amazing though? I absolutely love it.

This past summer I picked up an old wooden tea crate for Gus to use as a table outside (along with a couple red wooden chairs) at the Country Fair Mall in Coal Valley, IL. It's turned out to be the coolest thing- and the perfect size for her. I found a similar one in our garage left by the previous owners. Sweet. Play kitchen here we come!

I took the back off because it was pretty buckled and worn.

It took some effort. Gus helped. Her and her plastic tablespoon.

Then I stapled some thick corrugated cardboard (inspired by swiss miss's kitchen!) in place of the back and it made the carton quite sturdy. Eventually I think we'll put it on a stand so it always remains about waist high.

I was watching Chocolat while I worked on it so the color scheme was pretty inspired by Vianne's shop. Add some fabric, knobs and an old kitchen organizer that is useless in our current kitchen and voila!
Gus' new play kitchen.

I think she'll be excited when she gets home today! I'll try to get some pics of her playing with it.

one down, several to go

2009-01-06T22:41:00.000-06:00

Oh these resolutions.

I haven't tried the whole bread thing yet, but we did make our house more kid friendly. Starting with the hallway! This was also our first paint job in the new house - call it Darah's war on pink and taupe. Or maybe Darah's war on Rose Quartz Make It Stone! because all three of those things are all over our house. It's just not us.

The hallway however is now us.

Here's a before:

I know. The only things going for it are the beautiful pics courtesy of Loree Tanner and framed up and given to me by my hubby for Christmas.

And here's the after:

This big wall is the only one that is split up like this. The rest of the hall is the grey color. Which, by the way, took two tries. We went from 'touch of gray' to 'secret passage.' The first was very blue.

Then there's the black stripe creating a crazy obvious visual barrier for our two year old so she doesn't think all the walls are chalkboards! I think it would have been nice in navy blue too. There I go with my blue again though. The black helps out the picture frames though, don't ya think?

Yep, the yellow is a chalkboard.

We followed Martha's recipe for chalkboard paint, 1 cup of latex paint to 2 tablespoons unsanded grout. Rumor has it that acrylic paint works just as well. So I mixed it up 1 cup at a time and painted it on with a brush. It went very quickly, which was good because it's grout and it thickens. Duh.

I did two pretty thick coats. After the paint dries you sand it with fine sandpaper. Given the age of our house I didn't want to risk something crazy going on with the sandpaper and having some lead released into the air from whatever is under the old pink paint. As it was I didn't wear a mask and regretted it the next day when there was some yellow snot and I freaked out for a few minutes because I forgot I'd sanded a yellow wall the day before. Anyways.

So, then after I tempered the wall we drew all over it!
It was awesome!

We need to get some darker colored chalk because right now all we have is white and yellow. It shows up, but black will be way cooler.
It makes me pretty happy to turn the corner going up the stairs. Definitely makes me feel like this is really our house (because calling a plumber to fix the water heater didn't apparently).

Also I am loving how it looks with the laundry room door curtain. Amy Butler rocks my world.

And so on to the next project.

We'll be tackling the bad boy this weekend I think.
I gave John a circular saw for Christmas.
So this room will go from super safe (ha.) jungle gym to library.
Wish us luck!

So here it is. . .

2009-01-01T22:08:00.000-06:00

2009! yay I can finally stop writing 8's. I don't like 8's at all. They're tough for me. They fall in the same camp as capital G's. Which is why I married a man with a last name that starts with G and named my daughter Guthrie. Call it a life goal for me - comfort and skill when writing the letter G.

So, on to the 2009 goals. I'm only going to lay out the ones that either I want to be held accountable for or have to do with what this blog is about. Here goes:

get better at machine quilting. I'm a stitch in the ditch kind of girl, which is kind of boring.
make our house more kid friendly. Right now it feels like our house with a whole bunch of kid's crap thrown on the floor. I'm not saying I want to color my couch, but we do have plans for a large chunk of the hall to be a chalkboard.
blog here twice a week or so.
learn to bake a decent loaf of bread. I am bad at bread. This makes me more willing to shell out serious money for good bread and this irritates me because I'd much rather shell out my time and have my house smell lovely and get some serious domestic satisfaction.
Feb 1 start an Etsy store. That's all I'm going to say about that for now.
complete my Reiki Master training and start practicing with people I'm not related to.
grow a garden that can keep my family fed. And preserve enough of it to get us through a good part of the winter. The preserving I did for this year - we're already more than 1/2 way through the goods. Except the beets. We're good on beets.
keep working on balancing my input and output. My input being how much I read about great things I would like to try or implement in my family and output being either doing them or doing other creative things. It's a hard balance for me.
oh and get better at making G's now that I don't have to worry about 8's anymore.

While that looks like quite a list I know it'll keep me busy with some new hobbies so that by the end of the year I can say - fresh Challah anyone? and actually mean it. And maybe it'll keep me focused as I try to figure out what the hell I'm going to do now with my life. At least professionally.

See you later in the week with some January crafting goodies and hopefully some new home decor photos!

hey --- i'm over here!

2008-12-30T10:35:00.000-06:00

After a very crafty season I’ve decided to start a new blog just for craft, art, or craftyarty stuff. Please continue to visit us a http://littleguthrie.blogspot.com. I’m going to try and save the family stuff for that blog and the creative stuff for this blog. We’ll see how it goes.

And in celebration of it being almost a New Year and all I’ll keep you posted on my upcoming Etsy site. Nothing says 2009 like handmade! Join the trend!