A Weekend Full of Projects

I love three day weekends - I get so much done around the house and I get to play!  This weekend has been full of projects. Thanks once again to Pinterest for two more great ideas.

From this pin, I created this:

Its just a tomato cage with a little bit of wire wrapped with a set of 100 bulb Christmas lights.

From this pin, this idea sprouted in my head:

I used a 1x6x8 and a 1x1x6, ring shank finish nails and walnut stain.  My plan is to layer Christmas greens and red berries in them, add a mason jar of Epsom salts with a votive and put cookies and goodies with it as gifts for family and friends. 

 I only made two, but I'm thinking I may make more.  I think they cost me a total of $5 each to make, since I already had the stain and the nails.  

I also made terrariums a few weeks ago as gifts for family and friends. This weekend, I made one for myself!  I had bought the little glass house about 14 years ago, when I lived in Canada. It'll be like a little bit of summer in the forest, but in my living room and in the dead of winter.

And I started forcing my hyacinth and tulip bulbs:

I couldn't find my bulb vases - they're somewhere hidden in the basement in a box - so I improvised with old mason jars.  I just took out the lids and tightened the bands down over tulle.  I sliced an X cut in the center of the tulle for the roots to grow through.  They're under the corner hutch in the kitchen now, where it's cool and dark.  They should be ready  just in time for Christmas!

I think I may get more hyacinth bulbs, since I only have four, the rest are tulips. I'd like to add these to the Christmas gift trays.  My plan is to cover the mason jars with Christmas fabric tied with ribbon, to pretty them up.

Besides the projects, I got the coop cleaned, the dishes and laundry done, the house vacuumed, and the bathroom washed.  Tomorrow, all I need to do is put away laundry and iron three days worth of clothes, as its going to be a very short week (I took Friday off for my birthday - yay!!).  Next weekend will likely be for making the soft Christmas gifts.  I promised my mother and aunt each one of these:

Punch Needle Sewing Case

Only one problem...I made it without a pattern (other than the one in my head) back in August, so now I have to sit down and figure out how I made it! 

Hello Snow...

Winter, you're like a lost lover. Out of the blue you show up, begging for forgiveness of past sins, promising it'll be different this time. And for the first three months it is. You shower me with beautiful days through Christmas and New Years; snow shoeing and long walks in the silent forest.

By February, the cold winds of change start to blow and you start pulling away again. Our relationship turns stormy, icy. By March, we both know its over, but you refuse to let go. It takes that good friend I have in Spring to help me through and remind me that the better days of Summer are yet to come.

But here you are, back again, and I just can't say no to you!

Are You Sure It's Already November?

It just dawned on me, as I sit before a crackling stove, thinking about how peaceful and quiet my walk with the dog was in the crisp cold this morning...it's November! And Election Day to boot! Smartly, I already voted (whoo hoo absentee ballots!!). But what really dawned on me was that its almost Christmas and I haven't started a single homemade gift. I have all these ideas in my head for gifts and decorations, plus I promised needle punch cases to my mother and aunt...only I haven't even pulled out fabric for them! And I slapped mine together without bothering to write down how I did it, so now I have to remember the process.

I guess my taking my birthday (next Friday) off was a really good idea. It will give me two three day weekends in a row to get the creative juices flowing...and give me time to go buy more wool felt!

(p.s. I've named the Minorcas Frida & Diego...he just looks like a Diego.)

New Members to the Flock

A friend of mine gave me a registered pair of  bantam Black Minorcas, a hen and a rooster. They're very pretty, and fairly sweet. After my ordeal with Cogburn, the thought of having another rooster has been the farthest thing from my thoughts, but this guy is pleasant!

Unfortunately the former owners (who had them before my friend) clipped their wings, so unlike my little bantam Brahma mixes, they can't fly up to the hopper bins and get to the roost near the ceiling. And knowing that my big hens wouldn't want anything to do with them, nor would they allow them to roost with them at night, I had to create a roost for them, up off the floor but low enough for them to jump to. Since I just took my old bookcase out of the living room and threw it on the burn pile, I realized that I could repurpose it into bantam nesting boxes, roosts and storage space.

I took the bottom shelf out, leaving long legs (which are mostly cover by pellet bedding now), boxed out the next shelf for nesting and created ledges, big enough to fit 2 bantams, under each shelf on alternating sides like stairs. The first one, just under one of the nesting boxes, is about 8" or 10" off the floor. Then next is on the other side and about 19" or 20" up. This gives them the ability to hop from ledge to ledge. I was worried that they wouldn't get it, that they'd sit on the floor like my sister's silkie frizzles and be cold all winter. Tonight, when I went out to close up and make sure everyone was accounted for, the Minorcas were on the 3rd ledge up, about 3 feet or so off the floor!

I was worried about trying to add new birds to the flock, but I think these two are going to work out well. And with a rooster in the house, I'm hoping to see some baby bantam Minorcas and maybe some Minorca/Brahma mixes!

I still haven't thought of names for them, but I'm leaning toward Gomez and Morticia or Frida and Diego.

Latest Project

Deer and tree, a photo by faerytreecreations on Flickr.

Last Sunday before the hurricane, when the potential projectiles were put away and the house was clean, I sat down for a little movie watching and a little crafting.

I had seen this little deer in a magazine and fell in love with him! And without reading the directions (we don't need no stinking directions), I set to work on him and I have to say that I'm very impressed with my final product, especially since I didn't read the directions!

He seemed a little lonely though, so I free handed a tree on plastic template stock, cut out three of them (actually I took the felt and folded into thirds, then cut it so all the pieces are pretty much identical). Then I stitched the tree up without any stuffing. Because it's a three sided tree, it stands on its own like a little tripod.

I have my next deer and tree already cut out, but I haven't started stitching them.  I made the tree bigger, this time around. I had thought about giving them as gifts, but I don't know if my hands can handle all that stitching...and I think it would be a pain in the ass to machine stitch, since he's small.

My goal this Christmas is to decorate more naturally inside with boughs and berries and garlands, soft decorations, birch branch candle holders and my village, of course. I just really love seeing nature inspired decorations and that's what I see here for this year. Not the wild colors, no plasticy garlands, just lots of little lights, some snowy sparkle and a full sized tree with popcorn, cranberries and dried orange slices wrapped around it.

I love Christmas!