Category: just stuff.

You’ll remember that I shared my co-worker Jodie’s house last December (here, here, here & here) and her decor was fab.  She has done some really clever things in her home.

Recently she mentioned to me that she wanted to make some Easter eggs similar to some she’d seen on Pinterest.

Initially she tried decoupaging old sheet music onto plastic colored eggs, but she wasn’t happy with the results she got.  So she and I were discussing other options and I mentioned that I had a few rubber stamps that looked like old printed pages.  Maybe she could stamp some tissue paper and then decoupage it.  But we both decided the ink would probably run when the tissue paper came into contact with the glue.

Then Jodie was shopping at JoAnn Etc and she found some plain brown cardboard eggs.

She thought maybe she could stamp right onto the eggs and get the look she wanted.

The flexibility of one of my Tim Holtz stamps worked perfectly for that.  Normally this stamp is meant to be adhered to an acrylic block before using it, but in this case the ability to curve the stamp around the eggs was an advantage.

Jodie just inked up the stamp and then wrapped it around the egg as best as she could.  I think the design of the stamp, which is full of random styles and sizes of fonts allowed her to blend and overlap the stamp which created the perfect look on the eggs.

I love Jodie’s choice to have some rather non-traditional looking Easter eggs, don’t you?

She stamped about half of her eggs and left the other half plain.

She loaned them to me so I could take photos to share with you guys, but when I return them I think she plans to keep them all in one basket (well, OK, it’s really a bowl).

But do you think she’d notice if I nabbed just a few of them to display in my little ironstone tureen?

Or maybe I need to make my own stamped eggs for Easter.  What do you think?

I don’t normally post on a Sunday, but this morning I wanted to thank you for your support after my post on Friday regarding Tom & Naomi’s fire.  Every comment and/or donation was greatly appreciated.  The ash has settled and Tom & Naomi are considering their options on how to proceed from here.  I’ll be sure to keep you all posted as their plans progress.

Also, I wanted to let you know that Mr. Q’s grandpa Bud passed away early this morning.  You might expect us to be a house in mourning, but that isn’t the case.  Bud had an amazing long and full life.  He was always telling stories about his experiences such as helping his dad run bootleg liquor down from Canada during prohibition. He also told many tales about serving in WWII as an interpreter.  Having been around for over 100 years, Bud had seen a lot.  Can you imagine having been born at a time when only 35% of homes had a telephone and then living to see that come full circle to cell phones that can be taken with you everywhere eliminating the need for a home phone?

Recently though Bud was basically just patiently waiting to join his wife who passed away two years ago.  When someone asked him what he thought she would say when he joined her in heaven, his answer was ‘what took you so long?‘

So rather than being sad, we are celebrating the fact that Bud has gotten his wish to join his wife and that after two years apart they are finally back together again now and can both rest in peace.

The radio station that I regularly listen to used to have listeners call in on Monday mornings with their ‘high’ and their ‘low’ from the weekend.  It was amusing to hear what kinds of things people called in with.  But it also made you think about life and how it really is all about the highs and the lows, and how often they happen in the same week.

But this week the balance got a little out of whack around here.

High:

Mr. Q’s bff (I’m pretty sure they don’t call each other bff’s, but I can, right?) came to visit from New York to help him celebrate his birthday.

Low:

Mr. Q’s 100 year old grandpa’s health has been steadily declining and this week they officially put him on hospice care.  Grandpa Bud has been ready to go for a while now.  He hasn’t had much quality of life for the last couple of years.  Mr. Q has breakfast and lunch with him every day, which is an awesome thing and I know Bud enjoys seeing him, but nonetheless Bud has made it clear that he is tired and ready to be done with this thing we call life.  He says that no one should live to be 100.  So although it’s hard to see Bud declining, it is not unexpected and it will ultimately be a blessing when Bud goes.

And another low:

And then while my mother-in-law was in town to attend a meeting about her dad going on hospice care, her husband’s incredibly amazing workshop burned down.

You might remember when I blogged about Tom’s fabulous workshop about two years ago.

When Tom & Naomi moved back to this area from New Orleans several years ago they bought a fixer upper property.  Their plan was to fix it up over time doing all of the work themselves.  They live on a very modest fixed income, so they have to space the work out over time as they can afford the supplies.  It’s absolutely nothing like an episode of Fixer Upper where the work is done by a team of people in the space of a month or two.

Their initial priority was to build a workshop for Tom to work in.  He is an amazing woodworker.  I showed you the trim he made for the front of their house …

But before he got to that trim, Tom spent several years getting his workshop up and running.  He’s been continuing to work on it while also working on the house.  The upstairs of the workshop was nearing completion.  Naomi had just called me last week to ask if I would help them stencil the ceiling (which I thought would make an awesome future blog post).

They heated the workshop with a giant wood burning stove.

They thought it was safe.

They were wrong.

Although there is no official word on the cause of the fire, it’s likely that it was a spark from the wood burning stove.

Not only did Tom lose his workshop, but he lost everything in it.

His tools and supplies, his books, his photos of past projects.

What used to look like this …

Now looks this …

But worse yet, he also lost some of his most precious things like this amazing miniature train chapel car that he built many years ago for Naomi.

Which now looks like this …

Remember the tiny boats that he carved …

Gone.

Yes, these are just things.  And no one was hurt, which is absolutely the most important thing here.  We haven’t lost sight of that and we feel totally fortunate that this wasn’t so much worse.

But I know many of you are fellow artisans and can probably understand the loss that we are all feeling, most especially Tom.  Many of the pieces in that workshop were ones that he put his heart and soul into crafting by hand.

My sister-in-law Heather has set up a Go Fund Me page for Tom & Naomi.

So today I am doing something I’ve never done before (and hopefully won’t ever have to again).  I’m asking you to consider showing your support for my blog with something more than just a comment.  Even if all you have to give is $10 or $20, if even just 100 of you can give a small amount … well, you can do the math.  It will add up.

It will also go a long way towards helping Tom & Naomi rebuild.  Although they are insured, the insurance is never going to pay out enough to replace all of the equipment that was in the shop, and certainly never enough to replace the handmade details that made the workshop what it was.

So thank you from the bottom of my heart if you are able to help.  And even if you can’t help with a donation, just knowing that people care would be a big boost to Tom & Naomi’s morale, so please leave a comment that I can share with them.

Happy New Year!

I’m back from my blog hiatus and I have to say, it was a little weird.  I’ve taken some breaks from blogging before, but usually I take them while I’m traveling so my time is pretty much occupied.  This time I was just at home, and although I was busy with holiday gatherings, taking down the decorations and even painting a couple of pieces of furniture, I really missed interacting with you guys!  Plus, it was frigidly cold here in Minnesota.  Yesterday we woke up to a windchill of -37.   Funny side story, Mr. Q told me that when he was a kid he thought it was the “windshield factor” and they were talking about how cold the windshield of the car would feel.  Well, either way, -37 feels cold and I was not motivated to go out much.

But that gave me a good opportunity for reflection, and thinking back I realized that 2017 was a pretty darn good year.

In March Mr. Q and I went looking for bald eagles along the Mississippi River with my sister and niece, and we found plenty of them.

I still thank my lucky stars almost daily that my sister and niece moved to Minnesota over two years ago.

Mr. Q and I took an amazing trip in May that started in Copenhagen.

Then there was Norway.

And Scotland.

And finally, England.

I inherited my travel bug from my mom who still works as a travel agent at the age of 77.  Mr. Q and I have been fortunate in being able to travel to some amazing places over the years.  Check out the ‘travel’ category under ‘stuff.’ over on the right side of the page to read some of my travel posts.

My sister bought her house and we helped her move in June.

I feel like this really made it official.  My sister will definitely not be deciding that she hates Minnesota (even though the windshield is -37) and wants to return to New Jersey.  Not that she ever was considering that, but it still feels good that she has put down permanent roots here.

In late summer we redecorated our master bedroom.

We had the floors refinished, added a faux ship lap wall, new light fixtures, a new to us headboard, and I painted all of the furniture in the room (except that bench).

We had help from Ken on the ship lap and the bed, help painting from my sister and help from nnK finding some college kids to do the floors.  I really couldn’t do these things without help from friends and family!

Although we missed a few of our favorite neighborhood sales while I was gone on my trip in May, my sister and I did score some hauls in the fall.

My sister has become the perfect garage saling companion.  She drives, she brings snacks, she’s an expert at packing stuff into the vehicle (all of that stuff fit into her SUV), and most importantly she doesn’t really compete with me for the good stuff.  We have very different styles, so that works out quite well.

I met my idol, Miss Mustard Seed, in October.

Much like many of you, I have been following the Miss Mustard Seed blog for several years.  Earlier this year when Marian announced that she was moving to Minnesota I thought that maybe, just maybe, I’d get a chance to meet her in person.  So it was super exciting to not only get the opportunity to meet her, but also to spend a day at a painting workshop she co-hosted with Carver Junk Co.

That was followed by a fun trip to Disney World with my sister and my niece over Halloween.

I was included in my first magazine just before Christmas which was pretty exciting.

I celebrated my 4th blogiversary in November.

And sprinkled in between all of that I did some painting.

A few of my faves from 2017 include the antique headboard that we used in our master bedroom makeover.

I discovered the Iron Orchid Designs transfers last year and immediately fell in love with them.  One of my favorite pieces with a transfer was this gorgeous Eastlake style dresser.

 A friend of mine suggested using Fusion’s Mustard on this union jack desk, and I loved how it turned out.

My next favorite also included an IOD transfer.  The sizing of the transfers is just about perfect for a typical piece of furniture like this linen press.

My final fave for 2017 isn’t exactly just one thing, and it isn’t exactly a piece of furniture.  It’s more of a … well … what should I call it?  It’s the idea of turning a mirror frame into a chalkboard frame with a shelf instead.  This was one of my greatest discoveries in 2017.  Well, technically I did the first one in November 2016.  I love re-purposing these beautiful frames into something that people want to have in their home.

So there you have it, 2017 was a pretty darn good year.  In fact, I’m beginning to suspect that there is no way I can top it for 2018.  Well, we’ll just have to wait and see.  I did paint some fab pieces during my blog hiatus so be sure to check back later this week to see them.

But in the meantime, did you have a favorite from among the pieces I painted in 2017.  Check out my ‘fab furniture’ page and let me know which one was your favorite!

Today is the winter solstice here in the Northern Hemisphere.  This is the day of the year with the shortest period of daylight.  Did you know that the Twin Cities are located on the 45th parallel.  That’s exactly halfway between the equator and the North Pole.  This makes us further north than some parts of Canada, like Toronto for example.

I am betting that I am not alone when I say that I struggle with the dark and gloomy days of November and December here at the 45th parallel.  Typically November and December are the least sunny months of the year for us.  Even January has more sunshine.  This time of year I leave for work in the dark, and return back home in the dark, which makes blog photo taking very challenging.

I often tell people that I don’t mind the cold or the snow, but if only winter weren’t so dark.

So I greet the arrival of the winter solstice with some relief knowing that from here on in we are going to slowly start getting more daylight hours each day.  We’ll also start getting more sunshine during those daylight hours.

I am more than ready for that.

In the meantime, I’m going to take a bit of a blogging break over the holidays to regroup, spend time with friends and family, maybe even take a few naps.  But I also want to focus on painting some furniture.

As you’ve probably noticed, I’ve been posting five days a week since September.  I didn’t really mean to start posting every week day, it just sort of happened because I had a lot of smaller projects going on that I wanted to share.

Plus, a I received a few comments on how much readers were enjoying getting a post every day.  I didn’t want to disappoint people by cutting back on the frequency of my posts.

But after taking a bit of time to reflect on that, I’ve realized that daily blogging has taken too much time away from my true love which is painting furniture.  Suddenly the furniture painting is taking a back seat to the blogging instead of the other way around.  In addition, I often find myself rushing thru my projects so that I can get them done in time for another blog post.  Quality is suffering in favor of quantity, and nobody wants that, right?

But don’t worry, I promise I won’t abandon you.  I’ll be back to help you celebrate the new year (and the longer days).

I’ll share a recap of my favorite pieces from 2017 and I’ll definitely have some new furniture makeovers for you.

So be sure to stay tuned and in the meantime happy holidays to you and yours!

 

Those of you who have been following my blog for a while know that my sister and niece moved here from New Jersey a couple of years ago.  Since they’ve been here we’ve started some new Christmas traditions.  Last year we drove around looking at Christmas lights on Christmas Eve, and I think we’ll do the same this year.

And last Saturday, for the third year in a row, I went to my sister’s house to help with her Christmas baking.  My sister definitely got all of the baking genes in our family, and basically there were none left over for me.  She loves to bake, and she makes a ton of cookies, quick breads and candy at Christmas.

Let’s face it, I really just go over on baking day to hang out, watch Christmas movies and eat cookies.  I do however have one official duty.  Ball rolling.  I wrote about discovering my mad skills at ball rolling the first year I helped Debbie with her baking.

Apparently no one really enjoys this part of the baking process.  My niece made up some lame excuse about being the godmother at a baby christening back in New Jersey just to get out of it.  So this year most of the ball rolling fell to me.

And although my sister cut down on the number of kinds of cookies she was making this year, apparently most of the cookies that require ball rolling remain on the list!  That includes Snicker Doodles, Almond Cookies, Ginger Cookies and Peanut Blossoms.

And this year a new task was added to my to-do list, Hershey Kiss unwrapping.

Yep, I can handle that one too, no problem.  Although now that I think about, maybe that is a bit of a demotion from ball rolling.

When I’m not rolling balls, or surfing Netflix in search of Christmas movies, I play around taking photos with some of my sister’s vintage cookie cutters (even though we really didn’t use these to make any actual cookies).

With all of this going on last weekend, I didn’t have much time to paint furniture or even finish the final post about my tour of Jodie’s house.  But I hope to be sharing that by Friday, and maybe this coming weekend I’ll find time to paint some real furniture.  I’m starting to suffer from withdrawal.

Oh, and one quick public service announcement.  If you’ve been thinking about painting your own gift boxes …

Or maybe even just a decorative hat box or two …

the plain cardboard boxes are 50% off this week (thru Saturday, 12/16) at Hobby Lobby making it a great time to stock up.

One of the things I started painted on the painting day that I shared a last week was a suitcase that I picked up at a garage sale last summer.

That’s it in the ‘before’ photo above.

I think it looks slightly more interesting in that photo that it really was.  It was just your basic hard sided Samsonite.  So I decided to paint it.

I started by painting the bottom portion with Fusion’s Coal Black.  Once that was dry, I taped off a line and painted the top portion in Fusion’s Casement, which is one of their brightest whites.

If this is starting to feel familiar to you, that’s probably because I’ve painted a few of these over the years.  You can see them here, here and here.  That last link is to a post from 2015 when I was going to have a suitcase painting class at my house.  That idea was a bust, by the way.  No one signed up, which was a bit of a bummer.

But anyway, after getting that far with the suitcase I was debating what stencil to use on it when the Christmas sign I painted for my sister caught my eye.

I realized it would fit perfectly on the suitcase.

How cute would that be set up beneath your Christmas tree?  Or sitting beside the door in your foyer to welcome your holiday guests?

But of course it occurs to me that no one wants a suitcase that they can only put out at Christmas.

So why not add a different stencil to the other side?

Once Christmas is over, you can just flip it around.

Now it’s a two-faced suitcase!

This year I decided to pare down my non-collection of vintage ornaments.  Or maybe I should say ‘refine’.  Yes, I like the sound of that better, I decided to refine my non-collection.

I pulled out all of my ornaments and went through them one by one.

I started with all of the solid colored balls.  I sorted them by color and I packaged all of them up to be sold at Reclaiming Beautiful.  Next I sorted through the rest of them and set aside any that I didn’t absolutely love, and those got sold as well.

Leaving me with just a few of my favorites (that is totally sarcastic, unless you consider about 150 or so ornaments to be ‘a few’, bwa, ha, ha).

One of the characteristics that pretty much guarantees a spot in my ‘favorites’ category is hand-painting of any kind.

I find the hand-painted ornaments just so darn charming even when it’s nothing more than a couple of swipes with a brush.

The ornaments also have to fit into my color scheme of pink, aqua, green or silver.

I don’t have a lot of green ornaments, and you’d think this would be a fairly common color, but for some reason it doesn’t seem to be.

But sometimes I deviate from my color palette if the ornament is pretty enough.  For example, just a handful of blue ornaments made the cut.

I also have a small contingent of gold ornaments.

I can’t really explain why these next two ornaments, with their oranges and yellows, made it through.  Except that I love those daisies, and the combination of orange, hot pink and red works for me too.  I think both of these have a 60’s vibe, don’t you?

This last ornament is one of my particular favorites with its hand-painted flowers.  I think they are supposed to be lily of the valley, or possibly white bleeding hearts.  What do you think?

If you are new to my blog and you haven’t already heard me say it, I find most of my vintage ornaments at garage sales and estate sales.  Oftentimes people are selling a bag full of ornaments and the vintage glass ornaments are mixed in with plastic, pipe cleaner, wood or other sorts of ornaments.

It’s less common to find ornaments as a set, or in their original box, but I do sometimes find boxes.

It’s even more rare to find boxes in really good condition like this one.

I almost never find a boxed set of ornaments intact like the one shown above.  I purchased all of those ornaments separately and then put them in a box that came with other mismatched ornaments.  Antique shops will almost always break up sets like these and sell them individually.  I think it’s easier to sell single ornaments for $3.95 each than it is to sell a box of a dozen for $48.

This year I put my silver tree full of vintage ornaments up in my Q Branch next to my giant English cupboard, just around the corner from my black and white decorations.

My pink painted gift boxes are perfect underneath it.

Speaking of which, don’t forget, tonight is the deadline for leaving a comment on my blogiversary post to be in the running to win the Seven Swans a Swimming box full of goodies.  If you haven’t left a comment yet, you still can up until midnight tonight (US Central time).

And gosh, I totally forgot to mention it in my original post, but Fusion also provided a jar of one of their new waxes to throw in with the giveaway.

This is their Rose Gold wax.  I haven’t tried this one yet, but I have tried the new Clear Wax and I loved it (I’ll be sharing more on that tomorrow).  If you win, I hope you’ll try out the Rose Gold wax and let us all know how you like it!

A while back my friend Terri mentioned that she’d picked up a couple of boxes and a little stool at a garage sale that she wanted to paint up for Christmas gifts.  So last weekend I suggested she come over to my house for a painting day.  I invited my sister to join us as well.

Terri has become a big fan of Fusion paint since painting her kitchen cabinets with it earlier this fall.  I am planning to write a post about her kitchen, but I haven’t quite gotten around to that yet.

So anyway, she wanted no part of using milk paint, she just wanted to stick with the Fusion.  She started with the little stool and some Limestone.  Once it was painted, I suggested she add a stenciled number to it.  I just happened to have some number stencils that I thought would fit perfectly.  So I asked her what her lucky number is and guess what?  She doesn’t have one!  Of course mine is 22, or in a pinch just 2.  When Terri asked my sister if she had one, she immediately answered “Five!”

Doesn’t everyone have a lucky number?

Well, Terri has one now!  We officially chose the number ‘7’ for her (which, by the way, is the number of siblings in her family).

She chose Coal Black for painting the larger of her boxes, which will be a gift for her son (I’m pretty sure he doesn’t read my blog, so no spoiler alert necessary).

We went through my stash of stencils again for this box and Terri chose the Apothicaire stencil which I think has a more masculine vibe.

Although I only included one of the smaller boxes in my ‘before’ photo, Terri actually had two of them.  The first is intended for her daughter and when I asked her what color she wanted to paint it she settled on yellow.  Believe it or not, Terri carries around the lid to a can of yellow spray paint in her purse that exactly matches the yellow in her daughter’s living room.  Talk about a dedicated mom, right?

It happened to be almost the exact shade of Fusion’s Prairie Sunset.  I had to dig around in my paint stash, but I knew I had a little sample jar of that color somewhere.

I had just enough paint left in the jar to cover the box one time.  Since we weren’t sure if one coat would do it, we started with a base coat of Fusion’s Little Star, which is a brighter yellow, and then we covered that with the Prairie Sunset.

And that’s your q-tip of the day:  if you aren’t sure you have enough paint in your chosen color, but you know you’ll need more than one coat.  Use a similar color as your base coat saving your final color for your last coat.  I suppose you could also just buy more paint, but that’s not very frugal, now is it?

Terri’s second smaller box got painted in the Limestone.  She’s keeping this one, along with the little stool, for her own craft room.

By the way, she chose the warmer Limestone white for these pieces because she also has this dresser in her craft room …

I painted it last spring in Miss Mustard Seed’s Linen which is also a warm white and is very similar to Fusion’s Limestone.

You might be getting the impression that we only worked on Terri’s projects on painting day, but that’s not the case.  My sister brought over a little oil can to paint, but I neglected to get any photos of it.  And I had my own stash of stuff to paint …

But, uh, I sort of didn’t manage to get any of my own pieces finished!  So, you’ll just have stay tuned to see how they all turn out!