Tuesday, June 29, 2010

Etsyblogger of the Month: Beaded Tail

We're making tails wag one bead at a time!

Sharla may run Beaded Tail, but Sadie, Angel and Isabella run her home. And rightfully so. These adorable pets have such a fantastic mommy in Sharla. They were all rescued by her and found a home where they are treated like royalty. Just check out her blog to see it in action. You can stroll with Sadie and watch the birdies with Angel and Isabella.

Sharla continues to help animals outside of her home through her jewelry and collar covers. These fantastic & often pet themed beauties are made with animals in mind. A portion of all sales proceeds benefiting animal awareness causes. Just think, any of these pieces could help a cute little furbaby.







Monday, June 28, 2010

Now for the Floors and Walls

Okay. The cabinets are in. The countertop has been templated. Next!

Painting and floors. The floors are the easier decision. Hardwood (engineered). New baseboards too. They will be the 1st baseboards actually since it is currently shoe molding. I love the look and hubby's allergies will love it too. Actually, they might get ticked that they won't be as busy, but hubs will be happy. As for color, we still need to look around somewhat. But I have a pretty good idea.

Paint. Ugh. For the most part I do not mind painting. But do you recall the wall color of the kitchen? Um, not gonna be fun to paint over that. But even worse, for me anyway, is all the window trimming. New windows were put in a few years back. I have yet to do the final touches on the trim. You know, all the wood fill, sanding, repainting. My hand just can't work in that position for very long. Heck, it barely makes it through a bathtub scrub down. So yes, we are paying someone else to do it. And all the other bits & specs that need fine tuning on the walls.

Color? I had fun with this one. I turned to my trusty computer photo software and played! I masked out the walls & floor to replace it with various color combos. It was a long, fun (for me anyway), process. Originally we were going to paint all the rooms the same color. Then just 2 colors with the kitchen being complementary. Then two tones of one color in each room with the back walls being the darker. Um, still not 100% sure which is the final. Probably the two tones throughout. Maybe. Probably.

These are the top winners so far...


I lean towards the bluer set while hubby leans towards the greener set. Although, they are very similar. And if your eyes or computer can't tell which is which...1st is blue, 2nd is green. Hmmm...if enough people can't tell the difference, I may just flip a coin :P

The last set, the browns ("tea chest"), did not make the cut for the kitchen due to the lack of color that it would leave in my kitchen. But it would be nice in the rest of the house. Especially for my pics for the shop - a nice neutral background is one thing I do not have anywhere right now.

So - opinions? comments? new suggestions? offers to come & watch my son & dog while it gets done?

Tuesday, June 22, 2010

Kitchen Cabinets - CHECK!

Wow. 4 days and done. I just can't get over how quickly...and how well...the cabinet guy (and his wife/partner) got these in. I am in love. I still find it kind of funny how much I love the color. I have always loved cherry, but when I first started toying with the idea of a kitchen redo, my mind kept going to a lighter beech since the house is not exactly large. But the kitchen is. So it works.

My new ginormous lazy susan...

Now to decide on the backsplash. The countertop guy came in for the template & we talked about it somewhat. I did not think things through with the sales guy. Or more so, he didn't bring it up. I really want the backsplash to go all the way up to the bottom of the cabinets. The backsplash he was referring to was the standard 4"ish height. So now I am pricing things out. It could cost almost as much as the countertops themselves for the full height backsplash.

This is the sample of the countertop (not the easiest to see, but the darker specks are the same color as the cabinets)

S0 my options:
1) full backsplash: pro - most appealing / con - most expensive
2) standard backsplash with tile above: pro - cost effective/ con - not quite the look I want, but okay
3) standard backsplash with paint above: pro - cheap* / con - not the look I want and *may end up being the priciest because of fixing the wall itself

Monday, June 21, 2010

Kitchen Cabinets Day 3

I can't believe so much got done on Day 3. Amazing. Kiddo doesn't think so though. He hit stir crazy early in the day. Thus a new game was created: "Stuffed Animal Wonderland Battle". Basically he sits on his bed in a large plastic tub while I toss all his stuffed animals at him. It entertained him for over an hour. My arm felt like it worked out. And it became my turn for the stir crazies. But look at the pretties that came of it:


And do you recall the multiple floor layers? Well, I didn't yet take a pic of how the cabinets sit on the awkward surfaces, but I did snap this. It shows the corner section - where my nifty built-in ginormous lazy susan goes - and just how much subfloor is exposed that inch & a half below the current floor. Although in the pic it is hard to see the depth, but the floor variation glares. It'll be fun to see him conquer that ggrrrr.

Day 4 shall be the last - we hope. From here on out it is "just" putting on drawers, handles & molding. Which has got to be frustrating with all that fine tuning. Stay tuned :)

Oh - and notice how lovely the paint looks now? LOL! It's pretty much purple in the daytime. Clash City. Now I want to get the new paint job done even sooner. I was thinking a pale muted tone of khaki or olive. What do you think? The floor will probably be a lighter tone of the cabinets & the countertops are a creamy sand.

Friday, June 18, 2010

Electric Comes to Play

Day 2. Demo is done. Walls look scary. Floor is wonky. Cabinet guy is ready to put in the frames. And the electric boys get to come play too. Um, yippee?

Okay - we saw the demo. The walls look yicky, but will be covered by the cabinets and the backsplash. So it'll be okay.

The floor. Yikes. Layer after layer after layer. there is a good inch and a half of layers. Under the old cabinets was just the subfloor. But as you can see, there have been quite a few floors put on...without ever taking an older one off first.

This is a grrr for both them and me. Them - getting the cabinets to sit right since the are deeper than the last set. The old - and gone! - bottom cabinets were not the standard depth. Another pain of the old kitchen. He was able to work it...of which I had no doubt. This guy rocks. Nothing is done halfway. But the corner is going to be a problem. I'll take a picture when the cabinets are all in to show the problem. It may fall into the hands of whoever does our floor. I apologize to them now...whoever they may be.

The electric. Ugh. Just look at the mess behind my outlet. There is like 5 pounds of crap in a 2 pound container. And they do have to mess with this because the outside light, which does not really work, is connected to it...somewhere.

They also had to add a couple outlets along the wall. There was nothing to the left of the sink. Just another thing on the long "what were they thinking" list. Those were not much of an issue. Neither was disconnecting the garbage disposal cord which was wired directly down into the floor to the basement and not plugged into an outlet, say, under the sink. Imagine that. Now there is an actual plug there for the new one. And a hole in the floor waiting for the dishwasher :) Dishwasher!!! Ah, the things that get me geeked.

The electric boys also had the pleasure of working on our 3 way switch for the upstairs light. But that is a story for another time. In the end, and many miles of wire later they got the job done. And most of it was done simultaneously. The cabinet guy...actually, he is a full fledged licensed contractor, but since he is just doing my cabinets he's the cabinet guy :) Well, luckily he had a couple trips to make to bring the cabinet stuff on over. So by the time he was ready to start on the long wall, the electric boys were done there and only fiddling with the smaller area where the range lives.

So at the end of day 2 - I have the beginnings of my new cabinets....

Looky...an actual surface that will be next to my range! Remember that "what were they thinking" list? Yup, this was on it.


Tomorrow...doors!

Thursday, June 17, 2010

Kitchen Time!

*cartwheel back-flip jump shimmy kick* and a big Woo Hoo!

I got the call last week that the cabinets were done & on their way. The arrival was going to be Tuesday & they could start the demo on Wednesday. I was crushed. I wanted to pooch & kiddo to stay with grandma & grandpa during the install. So much easier all around. But they were going down to visit my bro this week. So I scheduled for next Monday. Except the more I thought about, the more I figured it won't matter too much. So I called this past Monday to see if the Wednesday could still be doable. It was :) Then the 2nd call came. "How is tomorrow?" Um - huh?!? YES!!! But um...that's only one day to empty out the kitchen. Which also means moving the sewing out of the dining to store the kitchen daily stuff. And also means shifting stuff upstairs to put the computer area from the kitchen (which will be permanent). Yeah. I was up late.

This was my kitchen Tuesday morning when they arrived....

And during the day I couldn't always get a good peek...

This was when they left.....

There were some definite spots of grrr for them. And some that will be a grrr for me later on. More on this later. Right now I want to go peek through the window.

Saturday, June 12, 2010

Wedding Favors

I showed you the outfit I wore to last weekend's wedding and the super fun shopping trip that accompanied it...not! Now I want to show you the favors they had on the tables. I have seen some pretty cool favors before, some common but cute, and some "what the heck is this?". Last week's were fun & tasty too.

I first thought that the larger ribbon wrapped container was chocolate. I was quite excited for that too...sad, but true. On closer inspection I realized they were coasters. How cool!

Tasty treats were still there too - kisses & candy coated almonds - yum!

And I can't forget the place sitting card thingy. I am sure there is a technical name, but my mind is gooey today. They used wine corks to hold the cards. Now this was a big wedding...I wonder if they had help procuring the corks...or were there many nights downing bottles? "Only 3 more weeks honey - drink up" LOL

Thursday, June 10, 2010

Blogfire: Blue Water

This week's carnival is about anything blue or water. Sounds great right now with the heat. Actually, all the rain kind of covers the water portion more so than the swimming part of water that I prefer. So I will start with a pic of our rain and then move on to pretties from Art Fire that are much more appealing.

And now for the good stuff....

Blue Water all fringe yarn newborn baby blanket nest photography prop by Cricket's Hand Knits



Hydrodynamic metal wall hanging by Ash Carl Metalworks





Bermuda, pure organic mineral eye color by Orglamix




Ocean waves soapy retreat by Soapy Nature




Blue swirls recycled eyeglass lens necklace by F0-Shizzle Design Studios

Tuesday, June 8, 2010

Love to make them, hate to wear them

Well, I don't hate to wear them. Mostly because I'm not a fan of the naked me. The clothed me is much preferred. And I am sure everyone thanks me for that. Finding the right clothes however, not so easy.I had a wedding to go to last Saturday. A very large wedding. A few hundred people at a nice golf course banquet hall wedding. And all I own pretty much are jeans and tee shirts. All that fit anyway. I used to love wearing clothes...but that was quite a few pounds ago. The how & why of those pounds are still being wrestled. Said wrestling will soon be finding it's way on to this blog. Scary - for me anyway. I hope it won't scare you.

Anyway - clothes. My mom & I spent about 6 hours shopping for a dress. The first thing we had to do was figure what size I wore. Turns out there are about 3 sizes...and they overlap Misses & Women. Which reminds me...who came up with that? Were they trying to be nice by saying Women instead of Plus? Or are smaller sizes for single females only? Hmmm....dunno. But I do know that the segregation made it that much more difficult to try on dresses. Most of the stores had the 2 departments not just apart, but on totally different floors. Sucks when you can fit into both. I did go home with 3 dresses though - score!

I tried on all the dresses for hubby & my Dad. This is the dress I decided on:

And no, that is not me in the dress :P If I was that size still, I would not have had such a hard time shopping for a dress. The color was great & the tiers were fun...especially when swishing.

But this is what I wore....it was already in my closet...I didn't realize the skirt still fit...

Notice the bracelet? It's from Roseworks Jewelry...thanks Ruthie! It rocks!

And the hair pins - from Brown Joey Designs. Part of one bloom was folded under in the pic, but I think you can still how pretty they are.

And they matched my shoes perfectly!

I just couldn't spend the money on something I will most likely never wear again. In the last 10 years I have only needed a dress this dressy once or twice. And I hope that when I may need one again that I will have won the wrestling match & dropped these pesky pounds. Without scaring anyone. And in the meantime, I have decided to make some clothes for myself and avoid the whole shopping experience. More on that later.

Friday, June 4, 2010

Friday Feature: Rachel Quinlan

Today I want to show off one of my new handmade goodies. Well, newish anyway. I picked this up at the Flint Handmade Spring show last month, but have had my eye on one since a show in Pleasant Ridge last year.

The artisan is Rachel Quinlan and she has a shop on Etsy as well. (Be sure to check out her Facebook page also) The piece I picked out is the start of my sewing area's decoration. It is a needle & thread hand pressed and hand detailed ceramic tile piece.

Doesn't it rock?!? At the moment it is on my sewing table. I am waiting until the walls get painted before I hang it up. And then I get to go searching for more fun stuff to keep it company :)