by Amy | May 21, 2014 | Blog, Crafts, The Art of Art, The Art of Design, The Art of Gathering, The Art of Projects
About a week ago I found myself in Bismarck. Naturally, while there I was faced with a difficult decision: TJ Maxx or boutique shopping? I went the boutique route and found myself at a darling place called Junk Yard Chic. Their wares boast gifts of the salvaged, shabby-chic, rustic variety.
When I checked out, my goods were carefully wrapped in the cutest Popsicle tissue paper I’ve ever seen. Which got me thinking all about summer’s best treat, and how I could incorporate those fun, sweet, melty colors and flavors into my life this summer. Here are seven great things I came across.
1. I have been itching to host a summer ice cream social. But I might just do a Popsicle social instead. These invitations from Free Pretty Printables are sooo cute I could eat them up. Oh, yeah. And they are FREE!
2. There are a ton of amazing popsicle recipes floating around on Pinterest these days. I fell in love with the wholesome ingredients and easy prep for these made with blueberries, strawberries and honey. Get the recipe here. The blog, In Sock Monkey Slippers recommends this mold.
3. Dreamcicles anyone? Those are soap! Yes, soap. The perfect summer gift for a summer hostess. Get them from Sun Kid Gifts on Etsy.
4. If technology is more your style, sport this adorable phone cover this summer. Get this one and other cute Popsicle prints at Peanutoak Case’s Etsy shop.
5. These aren’t edible at all! They are crayons. How amazing is that? I found this image on Pinterest. Which led me to Etsy…only to discover that the listing is no longer active. I’m guessing you can melt down crayons and cool them in a Popsicle mold. You’re creative. I know you’ll figure it out.
6. I dig these nails from Lacq Lustre. She did them herself and shares all the colors she used. So even if you don’t make the mini Popsicles, you can still have some poppy color.
7. And lastly…I searched high and low for the tissue paper that started this whole thing. I couldn’t find it. What I did find was this adorable wrapping paper from Clementine Store. Now who do I know with a summer birthday…?
Amy
by Amy | May 20, 2014 | Blog, Crafts, The Art of Projects, The Art of the Moment
I did some walk in portrait sessions about a week ago. So I made a new backdrop.
Did I have other things I could have used? Probably. Okay, fine…yes. But I was in the mood for something new, something reusable, and something versatile. So I made a the backdrop you see above. It was insanely easy. Insanely. Let’s go.
You’ll need:
- 2.5 yards of fabric in 3 patterns
- 2.5 yards of lace {if you want it}
- Rope
- Scissors
First, find yourself a good episode of Dateline or Call the Midwife to watch while you are doing this. It’s easy…but a little mindless…so obviously, I like the TV on.
Next, unfold your first cut of fabric. I used flannels since they were on clearance the day I shopped, but any cotton weave will do. Snip along the short edge, making cuts every couple inches. I varied mine a bit to give the finished product a little variety.
After that, pull our your muscles and start ripping. That’s right. Just tear the fabric into strips, starting where you snipped.
Repeat on all your fabric.
For the lace, I accordion folded it a few times, then cut it into strips. You want all of your strips to be 7.5′ long…so be sure you are making strips that extend down the fabric…not across the short side.
You’ll be left with a pile of fabric strips. Take those and tie them onto a piece of rope. I just tied them once…no fancy knots here. This amount of fabric will create a backdrop that is 7′ tall and up to 8′ wide…more if you don’t mind sparse streamers. Once all your strips have been tied on, you can hang the ends from anything that is convenient. Whether that is a backdrop stand {if you are really legit}, a drop ceiling {that’s what I did}, or something you have laying around your house is totally up to you. I just wouldn’t use it outside on a windy day.
Then, keep your eyes out for clearance fabric that would make a good backdrop. These are a little addictive.
xo
Amy
by Amy | May 16, 2014 | Blog, The Art of Projects
by Amy | May 16, 2014 | Blog, The Art of Projects, the house
In all the commotion of telling you about the what’s been going on underground, I almost forgot to mention what’s happening above ground. We are getting a new roof. This, however is a project we felt better left to the professionals.
So, the last few days we have had a yard full of…professionals.
They seem to be good at their job. The job is getting done. There is also a fair amount of smoking, throwing cigarette butts in the yard and taking breaks on the patio going on. But who am I to judge the work of fine artists? All I know is, the shingles are going on…and these guys are braver than I am for climbing up those insanely high ladders. Oh, and I do know that their work is guaranteed–so that is in our favor {no matter what happens to their lungs, I know our roof won’t be leaking any time soon.}
They say it’ll be done tomorrow.
I’m really glad to have the basement underway that the roof almost finished, but somewhere deep down, I’m also a little bummed. While extremely necessary, these aren’t the “fun” projects. I can’t help. I don’t participate. I just sit back and let the pros work. Oh, and scrimp and save until we have the budget to take another step toward a cozy, finished, livable basement. {Projects cost money, you see.}
On another note, the weather here has been sweet.
by Amy | May 14, 2014 | Blog, Devotional, The Art of Faith
Sometimes sermons haunt me. No matter what I do, I just can’t stop thinking about what was said in church on Sunday. Sometimes it’s a thought provoking–new knowledge of a well known passage. Other times it’s convicting. Still other times it can be something else all together that causes what the pastor said to stick with me.
Once upon a time I went to a church with a very elderly, very old school, and sometimes very offensive pastor. {I think some of you may know of whom I speak.} Now, there are a few instances that have held fast in my mind. But one in particular keeps cropping up these days.
As many of you know, I’ve been injured. That means I’ve basically had to quit teaching classes at the gym…and it also means I can’t do the heavy lifting involved with my other favorite pass time: house projects. All this has left me wondering what comes next. It seems like another fork in the road. I crave a productive life. In the wake of the choices that lay ahead of me for my future {possible without those intense activities}, I’ve been thinking a lot about what I should do. What has happened to my body is no one’s fault but my own. I worked too much, I lifted too many things, I ran and jumped and challenged myself all the time. Was I wrong to do that?
That’s where the old pastor comes in. Something he said in a Sunday sermon has haunted me since I was a newly married girl, back in 2009. It made me so angry at the time I wanted to get up and walk out of church.
Now, older, wiser, {slightly} less hot headed, I’ve been considering his words again. I long to be a Godly wife. A woman who does good, and is someone God–as well as my husband–can look upon with pride. So I have thought back to that fateful Sunday morning to see if what he had said only offended me because of my young, self-centered pride. I don’t think so…but you be the judge.
What he said went something like this:
A wife should not feel compelled to busy herself outside the home. Sure, she might think working is a good idea. You might even think it could bring in a little extra money. But let me break it down like this. If she is going to be employed outside the home, she’ll need her own car, she’ll need new clothes, fancy shoes, money for gas,…the list goes on. Throw in the cost of child care while she’s away and all the money spent on meals out because she won’t be able to prepare dinner…and have you really gained anything at all? I’d even bet that a working wife costs the family money in the end.
Really. He said it. I couldn’t make logic like that up.
As his words have gnawed at me, I’ve gone to a better authority on women and wives and what we should {and shouldn’t} be doing…God. After all, he created them. I’ve decided to stop looking at the world, even pastors, for advice on what I should be–or if I have ruined myself, or if I should cut out my driven heart with a knife borrowed from Snow White’s step mom. Instead, I’ll be looking into the Word. The Bible has all kinds of wonderful advice on how to be a great wife, how God cares for his women, and why women are poised to have a unique place in Christ’s great commission. One of the places I’ve looked lately has been Proverbs 31, at the woman the Bible refers to as a “noble wife.”
The woman in Proverbs 31 is so productive, so respectable, so lovely. I just can’t help but admire her. I’m actively trying to define what she does right and apply it to my own life.
If you aren’t familiar with what I’m talking about…read the whole chapter here. If you just need a refresher, let me enlighten you. Her husband trusts her with all that they have, he knows she is smart…not only book smart, but in practical ways too. She can make wise investments, she is savvy. She uses her skills to make things for her home and family. She likes creating things to much that she uses her smarts and her talents to earn extra money for their family. She works hard and she turns a profit. She is so thrifty and lucrative {not only with household funds, but also the money she has earned herself} that she knows her family is securely provided for–in turn she gives generously and is compassionate to those with less.
I love this verse:
She sets about her work vigorously;
her arms are strong for her tasks.
She’s strong and not intimidated by manual labor. I love that.
She works vigorously.
This is not a woman who is confined that old pastor’s ideal of wives. Her husband doesn’t restrict her. He doesn’t insist that her endeavors are silly or unimportant, or costly to the household. Quite the opposite: Her husband trusts her to make big choices, to work hard, to accept physical challenges. She works, both in the home and in the marketplace. Her mate does not stifle her by insisting that the things she enjoys could never be part of their life. He doesn’t tell her that her skills should be put aside because he doesn’t want to waste his money on nice clothes or a cart to haul her wares. Nope. That isn’t in this chapter at all. Her husband looks at all she does and tells her that she surpasses all others. He likes his hard working, creative, fit, savvy bride.
I’m not saying any of this to say that working outside the home is what every wife should do. Or that it’s the only way. Or to demean stay-at-home wives and mothers. No matter what you do, and where you do it, God calls us ladies to work hard and have some fruit {whether linen to sell in the market place like Miss Prov31, or wonderful-God-fearing children} to show for it.
Will I ever be able to go back to working as vigorously as I once did? Only time will tell on that front. But I am at peace, resting assured that my drive and ambition are not out of line with what God would want from me. I think God likes girls who get stuff done. Now I’ll try to be patient {and low impact} as I wait for what He will challenge me with next.
xo
Amy
by Amy | May 13, 2014 | Blog, The Art of Projects, the house
When we moved up to Practically Canada we had a few home options in mind. Derek moved up before me, so he visited properties and acted as our eyes and ears and gut instinct. I did the searched online and sent him addresses to check, names to call, places to scout. We knew we wanted another fixer-upper, and we found this place. So we bought it and moved in.
It had a lot of good features, no wall paper to remove, it was out of the flood plane and was settled in a nice, safe neighborhood. Sure, it only had one bathroom, offered only 1150 square feet of finished living space and needed a lot of updating…but all that aside, it had an ace in the pocket that we couldn’t ignore: a full, unfinished basement. {Click here for all of our house’s before photos.}
So we started small with painting. Then we moved on to other things that made the main floor look presentable. Last summer, I renovated the second floor and did a lot of work in the yard. Which means we are finally ready {and have money saved} to start on the basement. The big goal here is to add a couple hundred more feet of living space, which will include a second bathroom…yay!
While the beginning stages of this giant undertaking are not my idea of fun, I know it has to be done to get down to the parts that I actually enjoy. First thing that needed to happen: clear out everything.
Gross. I mean, there’s a reason I left all that stuff stored in the basement. It’s like, I like that stuff, and I don’t want to get rid of it, but I don’t want in the part of my house that people see all the time, and I like, need some it of, but I don’t want to take the time to go through all of it, and I just hate looking though boxes, and couldn’t we be watching an episode of Dateline right now? You know what I mean?
But it had to happen. So slowly we’ve gone through everything in the basement. And like any good “start of a project” post, I’ve got oodles of before photos to record this occasion. Before you start judging the hot mess that you see before your very eyes, let me explain. I took these when we had started sorting through and clearing things out. All good organizers know that the mess will usually look worse before it looks better. So, yeah.
To give you an idea of size…I circled an object that appears in both photos above. It’s the same half of the basement, just from two different sides.
The basement is pretty small. But there are a lot of weird things down there. Let’s see…we’ve got faux wood paneling on the walls, some other wood nailed right into the cement on other walls, a make shift closet that Panda chose to use as a litter box for a while last summer {that was a nasty surprise to find}, a couple weird work benches that have been attached with a combination of nails/screws/bolts {yes, bolts}, not to mention the most precarious electrical work I’ve ever seen. All that stuff had to come out too.
We started sorting through our things about a month ago. At that point I hadn’t gotten any results back about my back from an MRI or anything like that. I held to the philosophy that if I hadn’t been shown proof that there was something really wrong, I could work through the pain, no big deal. Well…turns out the MRI did show some nasty news and I’ve since been ordered to refrain from all lifting, twisting, and lots of stair climbing. So while Derek has been doing the fun part of the job, ie: tearing out walls, ripping down paneling, and being awesome–I’ve been upstairs finding new NPR apps to download and working on some computery projects. {Being useless is so lame.}
We’ve contracted a company to do waterproof the space. That’s something we don’t know how to do ourselves, and it seems like a better investment to let someone else do it, who will guarantee their work. In order for them to come get the job done everything has to be off of the walls. As you can see, what we found behind the weird paneling was not the prettiest thing in the world. Damp, cruddy, yuck walls.
Even the stairs had to be taken away from the wall. That proved to be the hardest part of the prep stage. Our stairs run right down the side of the foundation, but the pros told us they’d have to be moved. So Derek set to it. Naturally, he found a few ancient layers of linoleum under the carpet. But he also found the most jimmie-rigged staircase I’ve ever known to exist. Tiny pieces of wood all nailed together, stacked on top of each other, all to fill in a small gap. Tiny nails barely holding anything in place. Long screws holding a scrap of carpet in place.
All these pieces of wood were stacked on top of each other in this little gap.
Really, it boiled down to two 3″ nails toe-nailed into the rafter at the top of the stair case.
Like I have told you before, Derek is awesome. So of course he got the stairs moved.
But it came at a price.
The first casualty. Every good project comes with one. Like this.
I heard a crash and came running to the basement doorway, only to skid to a halt, just shy of stepping off of the kitchen floor and down onto the basement foundation. The stairs weren’t there. They had fallen down…apparently with Derek on top. Yikes. He walked it off. No stitches, really he’s okay. The stairs have since been secured more safely–out just a few inches from the wall. I’m sure this is just the first of many odd stories to come from this very large endeavor…
Wish us luck. Especially Panda. All this construction noise is very scarey for her.
xo
Amy
by Amy | May 10, 2014 | Blog, The Art of Art, The Art of Living
I’ll be honest with you. {As usual…I like telling you how it is.} I haven’t had the best week. I started to write about it. But then I stopped. Because writing is a happy thing that I do. And I wasn’t being positive or happy or uplifting or having an artful day.
And, although I strongly dislike the movie Bambie {remember this is a judgement free zone}, I agree with the sentiment that if you don’t have anything nice to say…you shouldn’t say anything at all.
Thanks Thumper.
Now I have lots of nice things to say. Today was lovely. It was the kind of day that reminds me that there is art in everyday existence. In the pretty things all around us and in the way we spend our moments.
The amount of work stacked up on my computer to get done has gone down a bit, so I was able to devote a good chunk of the day to things outside the screen. Instead of telling you about this lovely day…let me show you.
I sketched and painted up some drafts for a paint-along party I’ll be hosting here at my house on the 19th. I haven’t painted in probably a full year. Once I started I had a really hard time stopping. I missed it. And I think I’ll do more. Lately, I’ve been drooling over Rifle Paper’s designs…so you can see that her work had a heavy influence on me.
Tonight Derek is having the group of high school guys he works with on Wednesday nights over for a night of food and fun. So when I was done painting…I started working on the preparations for my first cookout of the season. {Will the presentation be lost on teenage boys? Probably. But I don’t care.}
The guys are even planning to watch a movie on the screen outside. My fingers are crossed that this nice weather hangs on from here on out.
Have a lovely Friday night. Have you sent your mom something yet?
xo
Amy
by Amy | May 6, 2014 | Blog, The Art of the Moment
Meet my friend Allison, she’s the one with the belly. I’m so happy to call her a friend. She’s one of those super-cute, super-cool moms that makes me feel like I could {someday} do the whole get-pregnant, be-a-mom thing.
I had a great time taking some maternity photos for her. It was extra special that Zoe, now a full two years old, could come along. She’s a bit of a tough client. Her smile, while lovely…is usually fleeting. On the request of a professional holding a camera, it’ll only last a fraction of a second. Better hope you catch it.
In my brilliant {cough, cough} mind, I had the great idea to move the shoot to a local cookie shop. I’d give them both cookies, I could bribe Zoe with sugar and I’d get my much sought smiles.
This didn’t work so well. Now, instead of a child unwilling to smile, I had a child who didn’t want to look at me at all…and I was catching weird photos of her chewing. {#unflattering, even on an adorable toddler.} When I took the cookie away for a moment, we were met with a mini-meltdown. And a baby, crying in the street because I cruel photographer has taken her cookie…is just too heartbreaking to bear. So, sadly, I had to revoke her modeling privileges until we could get the hot pink icing out of her hair and off of her face.
Okay, enough about Zoe. Isn’t Allison flawless?
After the cookie had been fully consumed she perked up for a few photos at the end of our time. Really, I just couldn’t keep this face out of the view finder forever. She’s simply too sweet. And wanting a cookie is no crime, after all.
Thanks for letting me hang out, ladies! Everyone else…stay tuned for a new born session!!
xo
Amy
