q is for quandie

I was digging around out in the carriage house a few weeks back and came across a pair of abandoned table leaves that I forgot I had.

I believe they came off the table that I’m using for a desk in the Q Branch.

Obviously it was time to turn these into some signs!

I had already painted a base coat of blue on one of them using paint leftover from farmhouse dresser no. 5, so that gave me a head start on that one.  The second one got a base coat of Boxwood (dark green).  Once dry, I rubbed some hemp oil around the edges of both pieces and then added two coats of Miss Mustard Seed’s Linen.

I had a feeling I would get some great chipping on these since I had also gotten gorgeous chipping on the table-turned-desk that they came from.

And sure enough, much chippyness ensued.

The sign with the blue background chipped a bit more than the one with green, but they both got good and chippy.

Do you sometimes feel like your kitchen has a revolving door?  Is it nearly impossible to keep your pantry stocked?  Do your kids eat the groceries before you can even get them out of the shopping bag?

I don’t have any teenage boys in my house, but I have plenty of friends that do and they all tell the same story.  They can eat you out of house and home.  I was thinking of them when I decided to go with “24 hour grocery.”

I cobbled together four different stencils for the wording on the sign.  The “grocery” stencil is from Donna at Funky Junk, the “2” and “4” are from Maison de Stencils, and I cut the “hour” stencil myself on my Cricut.

You know, there are really a limited number of ways to take a photo of a flat sign!  I staged this one over my farmhouse table and filled the table with some typical pantry items.

I was wishing I could hang this in my own kitchen or pantry, but I just don’t have a wall large enough.  These signs are 42″ wide by 15″ tall.

How about you?  Do you have the perfect spot for one?  They are both for sale.  If you are local and can pick it up, leave me a comment if you’re interested in more details.

My sister and I visited the Marjorie McNeely Conservatory at Como Park last weekend to check out the Poinsettia display.

We happened to go on the one day of sunshine we were allotted for the month of December.  OK, maybe that’s a little bit of an exaggeration but we have had some dreary grey days of late.

There weren’t very many people there, except for that one lady who simply would not get out of my shot!

But the poinsettias were beautiful, and I loved those succulent balls (that sounds really wrong, especially on Christmas, but what would you call them?) that are floating above the water.

Here’s wishing you and yours a festive day with family and friends.  And if you aren’t one who celebrates Christmas, here’s wishing you a relaxing day watching old movies and eating take out Chinese food 😉

(see, I’m telling you, that lady was in every. single. shot.)

Merry Christmas!

For my birthday this year my sister gave me this book.

We were out shopping one day and I happened to see it and mention to her how much I would like to have it.  And then I believe I handed it to her and she put it in her shopping basket.  LOL.  Yet another benefit of having her live nearby!

She wrapped it up and gave it back to me on my birthday.

 I have quite a few chalkboards around my house.  I still love them.  I know some people consider them to be so ‘yesterday’ and they are over them.  Not me.  But my biggest problem is that I’ve never been happy with my attempts at making ‘chalkboard art’.  They have been pretty lame, to be quite honest.

Last Christmas I even resorted to ‘faking it’ on the chair chalkboard in my kitchen.

Which was a total failure when the double sided tape I used to attach the printed ‘chalkboard look’ art wouldn’t come off and I ended up having to repaint the chalkboard itself.

I also tried using Martha Stewart’s liquid chalk and a stencil, which was also pretty much a fail.

Now that I have the book, I’m determined to improve my chalkboard drawing skills.  I started really small with adding this little flourish underneath the ornament wreath on the chalkboard door in my Q Branch.

Don’t be fooled by the chalkboard design above the wreath.  I accomplished that by printing the design on paper, rubbing chalk on the back of the paper, placing the paper over my chalkboard and then going over the entire design with a pencil.  Thus transferring the design to my chalkboard door.  Then I went back over it with a white chalk pencil.  Rather time consuming and putzy, but it looks pretty cool.

But the design under the wreath is free hand and drawn using some of the hints from the book.

 I next moved on to the chalkboard in the kitchen.  I tried a couple of different lettering styles on this one with another free form flourish at the bottom.

Not too bad.  Still not gorgeous, which is what I’m aiming for, but OK.

So I’m going back to the old adage, practice makes perfect.  I need a lot more practice.  But luckily, as I mentioned, I have quite a few chalkboards to practice on.

My sister Debbie is quite serious about her holiday baking.

This is no small undertaking.  She bakes more than a dozen different kinds of cookies, plus various quick breads.  Then she also makes fudge.  The crazy part is that she did all of this back in New Jersey in a kitchen the size of a small walk in closet.  Seriously, I don’t know how she did it.  She has a much more suitable kitchen here in Minnesota and I know she is enjoying it!

She sets aside an entire weekend for her baking.  Since this is her first Christmas here it was also the first time I got to see the production first hand.  Her small dining table was piled high with supplies …

… nearly disguising my niece’s white tabletop Christmas tree.

Luckily Debbie’s new apartment has a good sized island which became the cookie cooling zone.

It was also the measuring zone.

I usually have to throw flour away at my house because it goes past the expiration date.  Yes, it’s true, flour has an expiration date.  I bet Debbie doesn’t even know that.  I believe she went through several jars of flour in one day.

For the first hour or two I was fairly useless as a ‘baking helper’.  My main job was to retrieve supplies from the table as needed.

Debbie did all of the complicated stuff, like rolling these Stained Glass Cookies into long rolls and then slicing them into cookies …

and spreading the dough out for Simple Sugar Cookies …

sprinkling them with colored sugar …

and then slicing them into delicious diamond shaped cookies once they were baked and slightly cooled …

I think these were my favorite cookie that we she made.  They had a faint almond flavor and were perfectly crisp.  Yum.

In addition to supply gathering, I was also given the task of crushing party mints which involved a hammer (since Debbie couldn’t find her rolling pin).  I’m pretty good with a hammer.  However, soon after my sister mixed up the Party Mint Cookies I found my niche.  Rolling balls.  Turns out, I’m good with balls.  Sometimes my balls got bigger than they were supposed to be and Debbie would admonish me to rein it in a little.

But just look at the Snicker Doodles that resulted from my mad ball rolling skill …

Once Debbie had observed my ball rolling talents, she had me rolling balls for the rest of the day.  I produced a serious quantity of balls, like as in 100’s of them.  Balls rolled in blue sugar, balls rolled in green sugar, balls with a milk dud stuffed inside.

Turns out Debbie’s least favorite part of baking a million cookies is the ball rolling!  So now I have an official function in the cooking baking operation.  I hope to be rolling balls for my sister for many years to come.

How about you?  Is there a holiday baking tradition at your house?

I always try to tell people that I’m not a collector.  I don’t really collect anything in particular.  I don’t like a lot of clutter.  And all of that is totally bogus.  I am clearly in denial.

 As I sit here typing this post I can look at the cupboard next to me and see my collection of vintage silver salt & pepper shakers, behind me is my collection of tiny dressers.  And right next to that is the tree that contains my vintage Christmas ornament collection.

I’ve been hoarding collecting vintage glass ornaments for many years now.

Long enough that I have been able to refine my collection to mostly pinks and aquas (oops, that’s kind of bogus too, the silver and gold ones are just in the dining room).  I really love the hand painted versions.  They are so charming with their little painted flowers and flourishes.

I have a couple of strategies for adding to my collection each year.  First and foremost, I visit a little second hand shop called La Garage in North St. Paul.  This shop is like a garage sale in a store.  I believe they get most of their inventory from estate clean ups.  Each year they close up for the week preceding Thanksgiving and they completely revamp the store for Christmas.  They open back up on Black Friday with tons of ‘previously loved’ Christmas decorations.  I’m always able to find quite a few vintage lovelies on their trees.

I don’t do much shopping in antique shops anymore, but I will make an exception for this collection.  I can find ornaments a few dollars each, which is a pretty affordable splurge.

In the case of my ornaments, I even have a sub-collection.  Vintage glass Christmas tree toppers.  A couple of you noticed these in the background when I posted about the sweet little mini dresser on Monday.

I was able to add that tall silver one to my collection this year.  I found it at an antique shop for $15.  A splurge for me, but worth it I think.  Isn’t it gorgeous?  Prior to this acquisition, obviously the little aqua and silver one was my favorite.  Now it has competition for the top spot.

In case you are wondering, those tree toppers are not just precariously balanced on that window ledge.  I have added a little Stick Um Candle Adhesive to the bottom of each one so it is securely held in place.

This year my silver tree is in the Q Branch.

If you look really closely, you can see a bunch of little reflections of me with my tripod taking these photos in the ornaments.  Ha!  Thank goodness it’s blurry because I’m pretty sure I was wearing paint splattered clothes and I hadn’t put on any makeup.

Come back next week for a full tour of my house all decked out for Christmas!

Linking up with:  French Country Cottage and Making Broken Beautiful at the Curator’s Collection.

Last summer my sister Debbie picked up this little oak sleigh on the cheap at a garage sale.  I think she only paid a dollar or so for it.  I didn’t get a ‘before’ snap of it, but it was basically that 80’s pale oak with a shiny poly on top.  Debbie painted it with Miss Mustard Seed’s Tricycle way back then and then it sat up in my carriage house for a few months.

Both Debbie and I were keeping our eye’s peeled for the perfect stencil for it.  We saw a couple that we both liked, but they were either too big or too expensive.  Finally Debbie picked up an inexpensive snowflake stencil at Michaels, and I suggested we try cutting our own stencils for the rest using my Cricut machine.

We started with “Brrr…” on the side.

And then we added “No. 25” on the front …

The beauty of cutting our own stencils was that we could size them precisely for this project.

Once the paint was dry, we sanded lightly and then waxed.  We used hot glue to adhere some floral foam inside the bottom of the sleigh.  The we gathered up some things Debbie had been stocking up on to use inside.

The birch logs were gathered by the roadside when we were up north for our scrapbook retreat.  The single spruce top was free at Home Depot.  They don’t sell them singly, but when Debbie asked the garden center manager if she could buy just one he said “oh, just take this one!”  Some of the other greens are also free ones from Home Depot.  Did you know they keep a big bin of the branches that have been trimmed from the Christmas trees and you can just help yourself?  Jeesh.  Wish I had known that before I bought all the greens for my front window box!  Debbie did purchase the red and white candy decorations and the red twigs, as well as some of the nicer greens.

All in, I think Debbie spent under $25 for everything needed to make this darling Christmas decoration.  She’s going to put it on the balcony of her apartment.  Unless she decides it just too darn cute to be outside!