Crafts and Pinterest Craziness

This house is big, folks.
So big that I get exhausted after trying to figure out how to decorate one room.
I have like 10 more rooms to go.
Its going to take a long time.

This is all probably because I get these bigger than reasonable ideas in my head and then commit to executing them. Remember the quilt?

So, what exactly have I been doing that has taken me so far away from the blog? Mostly admiring other people's craftiness on pinterest and then doing a toned down (read "pinterest for dummies") version here at home. Here's the story of the room creations so far.

 Curtains. A serious amount of curtains. The funny thing is that I'm not even close to finished in all the rooms. Our neighbors see everything and we don't even care any more. These red and black and white ones are in the office. I love them because they are so lively to me and give a home to the red things we have.

 We're not limited to window curtains. There are even tiny curtains, curtains under tables, curtains everywhere. These ones hide the ugly in the office in one of the Ikea Expedit hacks. I love the little pop of color it brings to the desk.


Then there was the basement playspace. It was dying for some color and fun, since it is after all for play. You might remember the canvas from the photos below used to be in Owen's nursery in the old house. It had a big giant tree on it. Here I re-purposed it and after months on etsy and pinterest decided on a peacock with loads of beautiful fabric feathers. I sewed each feather (and the peacock's body too) and then adhered it to the canvas.  I originally thought this was going to be an easy project, but after about 2 weeks in, I realized that sewing those feathers is a nightmare, the smaller the feather, the more annoying to sew and that there has to be a lot of strategy in pattern choice, size of feather, how it works with other feathers etc. 3 months later I finally finished the damn thing.

I like how it turned out though, and I love that it gets to show off so many of my favorite fabrics. I love love love beautiful fabrics. I probably shouldn't be allowed in fabric specialty stores alone (JoAnn's doesn't count, they have a crummy selection).

Anyway, after the peacock was done I made a bench seat to go along with it, got some coordinating pillows, and viola, sitting space in the play room.

Then, with those same fabrics, I made covers for all the ikea storage boxes that fit into the giant expedit storage furniture thing. They were all boring white before, and now are lots of various pops of fun color.

 All the while, since oh, say October. I've also been working on this afghan. I picked the three main colors I chose to use in the living room and started crocheting because I'm always cold and need blankets pretty much everywhere. Its been a labor of love that I work on only when I have time, so I'm still working on it and don't expect to really finish it until summer or so, when I probably won't need to use it at all. Sigh.

 Do you see that lovely chartruse string in the middle? Don't worry, its just an end that I haven't trimmed or crocheted into the stitches there. When I'm tying onto another skein of yarn I'm so professional in my technique, don't you think? There are about 50 of these types of leftover strings from my lacluster tying on all over the blanket right now.

And then of course, there are still many around the house crafts that I've been working on. We FINALLY finished the last of the caulking last month. I bit the bullet and spent an entire weekend in this shower caulking every tiny little crack.

 Whats that, you can't see the caulk? Fantastic, that's the way it should be. Really, though, in this close up, you can see the lines of fun I had that day. Not those kinds of line's folks. I'm not that crazy.

 So there you have it. Our list of to-do's is still long, but at least you know what keeps us away from you dear readers!

Until we meet again!