Featured Friday

cynmb featured my Transportation Napkins in a treasury called Trains and Boats and Planes

AuntCarriesCottage included my Pink Napkins in a treasury called Spring Zing.

I created two treasuries:

Sweet as Sugar Candy

Happy Birthday

Project: Simplify - My Closet

I was excited when SimpleMom.net announced their Project: Simplify. It's an excuse for me to declutter and organize five places in my home. I am one of those people who love to organize things so after doing a few gleeful squeals, and waiting a week, the first area to organize was announced. My closet! The rules say that I couldn't mess with anything before I took my before photo. I did move my laundry basket full of dirty clothes because even I don't want to see that.

Here are my before pictures - yes, plural because I couldn't get the darn thing all in one picture. I tried twenty different angles. This is it.

Before:

After:

Now, don't make fun of me because all I had to do was tidy things up a bit.  I can't help it if they started with an easy one.

I can't wait to see what they choose for next week.  I hope they suggest I get that pantry organized! 

Ooh, boy!

Pink Satin Curtains and Kenny Rogers Roasters

I had a lot of leftover PINK costume satin from making a mermaid Halloween costume a few years ago. My daughter needed curtains. Imagine the girliest little girl you know. Times that by twelve. That's my daughter. Shiny pink and purple satin curtains seemed perfect! I made them. I even took photos for a tutorial. They were cute and she liked them. (She did think they were a little plain though...flowers and jewels and sequins and hearts would have been much prettier.)

But... do you see how they kind of glow with the light behind them?  Well, when you look into her room in the morning, the room radiates pink.  It spills onto the hall floor.  It reminds me of a Seinfeld episode when Kenny Rogers Roasters moves in next door to Kramer:

I figured my daughter would actually think it was pretty fun to be living in a pink room.  My husband and I spent about two minutes one day in her room.  When we looked out into the hall, everything looked green.  and continued to look good for a bit after we had left the room.  Now that's just not right.

The curtains came down and I made something else fancy for her out of it.  I'll show you another day.

*Update:  I made the Birthday Maxi Dress from the curtains.  You can see it here.*

Spring Bulbs

My children were playing outside and came in saying they had picked me a flower from the yard. I wasn't sure what I expected to see but it was actually a flower - a big and beautiful one. "Where did you get that?!" They showed me. I planted a bunch of bulbs in the fall. Most of them where planted to line the sidewalk up to our front door but I planted a few off to the side in a place that I didn't really expect them to grow. But they did! And early! There were probably ten of these little beauties scattered around.

Do you see my little man's cowboy boots?  So cute!

I let them each pick one (maybe they will grow back?).

Then I checked around the walkway and a few are coming up there!  Spring comes early here!  Hooray!

So as it was raining and even snowing a bit yesterday, I kept picturing this:

surrounded by all of these:

Flower photos from Van Engelen Inc.

There will also be a few surprises because my sister and brother-in-law brought me some bulbs from Holland, Michigan when they visited.  I don't know what they will look like but there are five already coming up where I planted those.

Oh, I am hoping for a beautiful spring!

Laundry Line

I have wanted a clothes line for a long time. It's been long enough. It's still too cold to put one in outside so...

I think it's beautiful.

Book Quote - Jane Eyre #2

Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte
Chapter 21

"...a more vain and absurd animal than you was certainly never allowed to cumber the earth.  You have no right to be born; for you make no use of life.  Instead of living for, in, and with yourself, as a reasonable being ought, you seek only to fasten your feebleness on some other person's strength: if no one can be found willing to burden her or himself with such a fat, weak, puffy, useless thing, you cry out that you are ill-treated, neglected, miserable.  Then, too, existence for you must be a scene of continual change and excitement, or else the world is a dungeon:  you must be admired, you must be courted, you must be flattered - you must have music, dancing, and society - or you languish, you die away.  Have you no sense to devise a system which will make you independent of all efforts, and all wills, but your own?  Take one day; share it into sections; to each section apportion its task:  leave no stray unemployed quarters of an hour, ten minutes, five minutes - include all; do each piece of business in its turn with method, with rigid regularity.  The day will close almost before you are aware it has begun; and you are indebted to no one for helping you to get rid of one vacant moment:  you have had to seek no one's company, conversation, sympathy, forbearance; you have lived, in short, as an independent being ought to do.  Take this advice: the first and last I shall offer you; that you will not want me or any one else, happen what may.  Neglect it - go on as heretofore, craving, whining, and idling - and suffer the results of your idiocy, however bad and insufferable they may be may be."

Featured Friday

My Goose Orange Napkins were featured in an Etsy treasury called Duck Duck Goose created by ladyjanedesigns.

I created a treasury in the spirit of St. Patrick's Day called Ireland.


P.S.  My creeping thyme and culinary thyme have popped up too.  Yay!

Upcycled Grocery Totes

Dana at MADE has a tutorial for reusable grocery totes made from fused together plastic grocery sacks.  These are my versions of the plastic totes.  It's an awesome idea and takes reusing to a whole new level. 

Already!

Look what I found yesterday!  It's the sweet basil.  That was quick!

Book Quote - Jane Eyre

I am currently reading Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte for the first time.  There is part of a paragraph that I just love that I thought I would share from chapter 15:

"And, Miss Eyre, so much was I flattered by this preference of the Gallic sylph for her Britsh gnome, that I installed her in an hotel, gave her a complete establishment of servants, a carriage, cashmeres, diamonds, dentelles, &c.  In short, I began the process of ruining myself in the received style, like any other spoony.  I had not, it seems, the originality to chalk out a new road to shame and destruction, but trod the old track with stupid exactness not to deviate an inch from the beaten centre.  I had - as I deserved to have - the fate of all other spoonies."

You can buy this vintage copy of Jane Eyre from rosegoldaline on etsy here.

That's it...I'm just sharing a quote that I like.  I never like to hear what a book is about before I read it.  I never even read the back of a paperback.  I like to go into a book knowing absolutley nothing that will happen in the story.  I sometimes will read the sentence they have on the front to draw you in but other than that, I like everything to be a complete surprise.  That is why I'm not even going to you who says it and or any background.  Because I wouldn't want to know.

But haven't we all been there?