from the mantle & ramblings

hello!

it's friday, friends.
which means i have more hope and excitement now than i do the rest of the week.  combined.

do you ever find that terribly sad, that we spend much of our time looking ahead, then spend the time we're excited about worried about making the most of it, worried it'll end?  sunday evenings are that way to me.

i'm hoping to fill the weekend with domestic things.  duh.
you know, rearrange things on my mantle a couple times, get the hang of using my crockpot for virtually all cooking, and weeding my little garden.  perhaps adding some plants to the collection as well (so that all my flowers in my house aren't of the dried variety).

oh and i get to visit with a new little baby boy. neat!

other things on my mind:

- tom & katie are divorcing and i can't help but wonder if it's because katie started wearing men's jeans instead of skirts.  you think this is the likely reason?  she really has been on a downward fashion spiral.

- what is the world coming to when ann curry gets fired from the today show?  pretty soon justin bieber will be on assignment from afghanistan.

- watermelon is so good!  holy crap.  and filling too, no?  wow, it's like the miracle fruit.

- why is commuting such an event?  and why do bikers never where helmets, never obey traffic rules and always have too small of jeans on?  (sorry for you bikers who read this blog, i'm likely not talking about you.  if you're a skinny hipster type who wears women's jeans, who has no real worry about staying alive, but would rather listen to your really cool iphone while weaving in rush hour, then i am, in fact, talking about you.  and if that's the case, why are you reading this blog anyway?)

- i wish i could afford to eat at good earth everyday.

- why aren't there more fabric stores out there?  i mean, joann cannot possibly be the one and only.  right?

- why does everything have to be so political?  why do campaigns last two years?  aren't we all really in the middle anyhow?

- adele is pregnant?  what?  today is an excellent pop culture day!

- why is 90 degree days generally considered beautiful?  it's so hot!  give me 65, anyday.

- pinterest is addicting.  but do you ever really return to your past pins?  or is it a hoarding thing, where we just keep adding to the pile without digesting what to keep and what not to.

- why do people still smoke?  i mean, isn't it the most obviously decision not to smoke?  and is it even a decision anymore, considering it's such common sense?
(i ask because i'm continually crossing the street to avoid it downtown.  smoking dens or whatever they're called are really, really sad looking.  as are the people in them.)

- i'd like to start a new with my clothes.  reinvent myself.  (with someone else's money!)

- watering your lawn gets really redundant, no?  can we all say #firstworldproblem?

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i'll stop here.
enjoy your friday to sunday!
yay!

barnes & noble inspiration

it's really scary how many times a week i find myself in barnes & noble.

magazines are such a treat, right?

especially when you don't actually buy them!

last week i found some inspiration in a better homes & gardens renovation magazine:

i love the dropped cabinets with baskets above and the beadboard counter.

we're planning to have a similar island separating our kitchen and dining room.

(a long time from now.)

planning to make a L shaped banquette... sometime!

i'd love to figure out how to create an entry storage area by our front door.

can our house "grow" more windows?  lovely.

more banquetter inspiration.  the table is a bit like our own.

love the calm blue on the cabinets... wondering if i can be so bold as to stray away from white!

do you ever wish that the excitement and vigor you feel after looking through a design magazine could last?  all your good intentions for home projects actually were actually followed up on?
maybe they could be without cleaning and cooking and working and sleeping;)

food problems

so does this sound familiar to you?  (i hope so.)

you go to the grocery store, buy $100 worth of food, get home, and have nothing to eat?

ahhhh.

we never have anything to eat.

even at the store, we buy the same things every trip.

we try to prepare by finding recipes beforehand.

or the ingredients are really specific and expensive to buy just for one use.

nothing ever sounds that great.

i'm starting to go insane.

whatever we have in the house, i'd rather still just walk to subway, which turns out, is cheaper than making food myself anyway.

and another issue is that m and i have the exact same taste in food, so when we do have something worthy of eating, we compete for it.

we're in a rut and we even actively try not to be.

cereal doesn't even sound good to me anymore.

ice cream does, but really, how responsible is a diet of ice cream?

so is this normal?  who out there has a good recipe(s) or lifechanging food solution for us?

the little garden that could

so, if you recall the loss of our elm tree, we have had some changes in the past year to the landscape of our backyard.  while the tree has been gone since last july, it's stump hasn't.  michael and his dad fixed that a couple weeks ago, rented a massive woodchipper and grinded that stump away!  now we have a clean slate to work with, rather than a sad, rotting reminder of the beauty that was.

we decided to plant a garden where the tree was.  i had intended to put a tree up in that spot, but our neighbors have a nearby linden tree that i didn't want to compete with.  so, i went to home depot and picked out plants.  i had three criteria: hydrangeas had to be in the mix, all of the plants needed to be in the blue hue family and they all had to be sun hungry, seeing as they have little cover in the afternoon.

we inherited some greens as fillers, hostas, and dotted the garden with various blue plants that i can't name besides lavendar and hydrangeas.  i'm a bit worried for our weak hydrangeas, the blue and pink ones don't really thrive in our climate, but gosh golly, mine will.

anyway, i really hope this garden survives, because i actually really like tending it and will be pretty deflated if another one of my greenthumb attempts goes sour!

wish this little garden that could good luck!  (picture pre-mulch)

next up in the yard?  a magnolia tree and arborvitae shrubs!

exciting life i lead, right?

my sewing mount everest... check!

we inherited an armchair from M's grandpa.

it's pretty cute, very 1960s mod, in a fun red.  comfortable too.

buuut, i'm kind of aiming for a more nautical, pottery barn look for our home, so i decided to slipcover it.   it's a practical thing to do anyway.

so with a couple trips to joann fabrics, i got going.  well, in the beginning i mostly just sat and stared at the chair, wondering how on earth i would make the cover.  should i make a template?  i would need some pretty big tracing paper.  from a bed sheet?  sounds like double the work.  hm.

i ended up winging it, starting with the easiest steps to the most challenging.

i figured i could use one main panel to wrap the front and back of the backrest.  the most challenging pieces to both dimension and sew were the arms and sides of the chair.  

so, i created the main panel for the backrest, lined it with piping (when i'm more gutsy, i'll wrap the piping in a contrasting fabric) and draped it on the chair.

i then cut the panel around the arms and added another panel to wrap the seat and arms.  sewing the two panels together was tricky, you need to see what you're doing on the correct side, but the seam should be on the back.  got it figured out.

then i added a panel for the very front of the chair, aka the front of the arms and below the seat.  i pinned all of my made panels onto the chair and started to form and cut the side panels around it, pinning the sides to the rest of the cover.  sewed all of it, added some dust panels at the bottom and had the main cover done.

lastly, i made the cushion cover.  everything is dimensioned big so that i can easily take the cover off for cleaning.  i'm pretty happy with how it turned out, slipcovers are daunting!  but it feels good to get a finished project and i now plan to cover our dining room chairs.  sometime.in.the.near.future.when.i.muster.the.effort.

and a couple more images of the recently finished quilt:

turns out, i love to sew!  even when it makes me think a bit :)