Tag Archives: fun facts

Crafting A Holiday

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Hello November, we’ve been expecting you.  You always bring lots and lots of family birthdays, time to reflect on being thankful and all kinds of Christmas prep.  You are always such a jam packed month!

Speaking of Christmas prep… I’ve been wanting to tell you about one of the things I like to do in getting ready for the holidays.  Every year I always want to do something crafty for Christmas.  But even with all my pre-planning, I end up having no time or energy to pull off some crafting genius.  So last year I took a weekend and purposefully planned… nothing.  Nada.  Zip.  Zilch.

Okay… I guess that’s not true.

I actually spent the entire weekend working on little homemade Christmas projects… and that’s it.  It was very satisfying.

I promptly put it on my calendar to take off the first weekend in November, this weekend, to do it again.

However, the trick to sharing this plan with you, is that I can’t actually tell you what I’ll be working on since a few of my readers are family members and friends that will be receiving these little goodies.

So just for fun, I thought I’d give you a peak at what I’ll be working with this weekend. After the holidays, I can fill you in on exactly what I’ve been up to.

Do you have any tricks for accomplishing all your holiday goals?  Are you working on any cute crafts?  Perhaps something that you can’t share any where else or it will ruin the surprise?  Let’s hear it… I promise not to tell.

Hope you have a productive weekend.  I know I will!

Awards and Pop Culture Fluff

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Last month, Cameron from The Stimson Chronicles generously nominated me for the Versatile Blogger Award and this week Gilit at Shoes Off Please graciously nominated me for the Seven Things About Me Award.  They both bless my socks off for not only hanging out and reading my little ramblings, but by also sharing Storypiece with the people in their corner of the world.  Ladies… you are the best!

As a part of accepting both awards, I’m suppose to share seven things that you may not know about me.  So here goes.  Oh… and after writing this post, I’ve discovered that apparently I’m fairly shallow and a tad judgmental.  Consider yourself warned.

1. As much as I wanted to see Mr. & Mrs. Smith, once the Brangelina thing hit, I went all Team Aniston and refused to see it.  I’m not sure what the statute of limitations is on being annoyed with celebrities that you’ve never met, but the clock started over for me when Angelina said that she loves watching the movie where she and Brad “fell in love”.  Bad form!  And it made me be all “A-HA! I KNEW IT!!” Sadly… I have no life.

2. I haven’t read The Hunger Games, but hope to.  Conversely, I haven’t read Twilight and probably never will.  There’s just something about it that doesn’t seem like a great role model for young girls to have when developing relationships.  I have a hard time cheering for that and I like to cheer.  Go Team Katniss!

3. I’ve never flown first class and it’s in the top five of my Bucket List.  I’m a simple girl with expensive taste… what can I say.

4. Also on my Bucket List is to be a seat filler at the Academy Awards.  Bonus points if I can fly first class to do this.  However, I’ll need a mulligan if they seat me next to Brad and Angelina because that would just be the definition of awkward.  You know… because they read this blog and all…

5. I have A LOT of useless pop culture information that bounces around in my head.  (See 1, 2 & 4)  However this makes me insanely awesome at trivia and games like “Scene It?”.

6. I’m super competitive and I WILL take you down.  You can thank my dad and my brother for that.

7.  And rounding out this list of nonsense is the fact that I don’t LOL.  I’ll “Laugh out Loud” or “HA!”, but I don’t LOL.  Also, ROTFL makes me think you threw up or something and every time I see LMAO I think Lame-O.  I might be showing my age right now.

There you have it.  Please don’t take my awards away before I get to share the blog award fest with others.  Some recent favorites that I’ve been reading include:

Victoria Elizabeth Barnes: This gal is Grace Kelly with Bob Vila know how.  Victoria and her husband are in the process of renovating a beautiful old victorian and I’m continually blown away by how this elegant lady isn’t afraid to roll up her sleeves and get down to the dirty work.

40 Is The New 13: Jennifer was Freshly Pressed a while back and I instantly knew why.  Her writing is genuinely honest and laugh out loud funny.  And she did an incredible post about “the Angelina” in her life that was really insightful.

Canadian Hiking Photography: Patrick stopped by my blog about two weeks ago and I’m so glad he did.  His blog is the perfect blend of photography and storytelling.  It’s like a picture book for grown-ups.

Elizabeth & Liz: Last winter, Tyson and I were watching a ton of Mad Men… part because of the writing and part because we love that era.  So when I read Elizabeth & Liz, I was instantly hooked.  Elizabeth analyzes the show and writes how to Mad Men up your life.  Plus she feeds my pop culture addiction that I mentioned earlier.

Family Style Living: Pam & Lindsey are a mother/daughter duo that write their blog as a way to stay connected now that they live in different states.  I love that!!  And they both are super crafty.

Thanks again for continuing to hang out here and leave comments.  Blogging has an outstanding and generous community and I’m so thankful to get to be a part of the fun.

So share… What has been the latest blog you’ve discovered and loved?  What do you think draws you to certain blogs over others? Do you find that you make weird judgements about superficial things in life? Yeah… me neither.

Lurking Under the Bed

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My last post was getting a little long so I thought I’d break it into a two parter.  This second half is just as organized, but not nearly as colorful.

Once the closet was complete, I turned my attention to the rest of the room.  Alex from North of Seven had suggested bringing in a trunk for storage. I like combining that idea with some sort of custom bench seating for under the window.  However, I wanted to see what kind of under the bed solutions I could find first.

When we moved Tessa’s bed to paint, there were several “lost” items under it.  I’m hoping to better utilize that space and in the process keep out anything that doesn’t belong.

The Container Store was a huge help.  We picked up two smaller boxes with compartments for little trinkets and mementos.

We also got a medium size box for craft supplies.  This summer, Tess has been learning to knit and she is always making friendship bracelets.

Lastly, we purchased a large container for her puppets.  Yes… puppets!

(Two points for anyone who recognizes where Tessa and her felt friend are standing.)

Both Tess and Evan were a part of our church puppet ministry for several years.  Their team of middle and high school students were an amazing group that performed in the community and at our church.  If she ever wants to revisit this talent, her gear will be available.

Everything fits neatly under the bed and she has room to add to each of the boxes.

A few tips I’ve discovered so far:

  • By re-evaluating what would stay in the room and why, we then purchased storage that would follow form and function.  Things Tess accesses all the time went in the closet; lesser used items went under the bed.
  • This is a great time of year to be looking for organization and storage solutions.  Many stores have wonderful promotions especially as students are gearing up to go to college.  We’ve been able to get some great deals on bedding too.  More on that to come.

We are in the home stretch of finishing the room and Tess and I are so excited!  We added some storage to her desk and we are in the process of adding a mirror to create a vanity look that I can’t wait to share.

So… as a person who never stores things under the bed, I’d love to hear what you think of this solution.  Am I crazy to think things will stay organized under there?  Will this just turn into a massive stash zone?  What has been you experience?  If nothing else, we don’t have to worry about bedtime monsters lurking under there anymore… I hope.

Project Notes: Secret Storage

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Well, I’m back from itch-fest 2012 and so excited to share our latest update…

I’m always captivated watching a movie where someone sneaks into a high security library or office, searching for important documents that are being stored in some sort of hidden compartment.  Things aren’t always what they seem and I love it!  Once, I had the privilege to visit a friend of a friend’s beach house and when you slid out a particular book, a secret door opened taking you down to a hidden wine cellar. I seriously about died!!

So guess who has some secret storage in their new bookcase?  Shhhh… don’t tell anyone… that’s where we are storing our secret documents AND miiiillllllions. (Okay… that’s a lie… please don’t break into our home!)

The original cut-out in the wall is really deep so that it can hold a large screen TV. Remember back in the day when you needed a big space to hold a behemoth TV with all it’s tubes and casing?  They required such a huge space.  But now we’ll be using the area for a flat screen computer monitor… we don’t even have to store a monster hard-drive. We have a ton of room just begging to become a hidden compartment.  Yay!

The plan was to put a shelf in for storage and have space for speakers and whatever else we might need to store in the studio, but don’t need to gain access to often.  Last week, we got the shelf installed and were ready to create a screen to hide the area.

Originally we were thinking about putting in a door, but decided a fabric screen would work better for the speakers.  The screen will go just in front of the wood frame here:

I picked up two tension rods and a yard of black, opaque, polyester fabric to create the screen.

I measured the opening 34″ wide (edge to edge) and determined I would want to cut the fabric 35″ across allowing for a .5″ hem on each side.

I then measured the length which is 29.5″ tall.  I have a little flexibility in the height since I’ll need to leave a gap at the bottom for cords to connect between the power outlet, speakers and computer.

I cut the fabric 32.5″ long so that there is a 1.5″ of extra fabric to fold over on each end, creating a pocket for the tension rod to slide into.  To figure out that magic number, I wrapped a tape measure around the rod to measure how much fabric I would need with a .25″ seam; much like you would when measuring and cutting fabric for piping.

Once both pockets were stitched, I inserted the tension rod and adjusted them to the width we needed.

Then my Hot Assistant climbed onto the book case to finish installing everything.

Thank you, Hot Assistant.

With the screen in place, the space looks like this.  Ta-da!

Oooohhh…. aaaahhhh…. it’s a black screen.  Okay… this may be the most anticlimactic reveal ever.  But that’s exactly the point!  You’re not suppose to see it there.

One rod hangs at the top and the other is at the bottom.  When we need to gain access to the storage area, the bottom rod can easily be moved to the top, folding the fabric in half. Of course, I could’ve taken a photo to demonstrate that, but I clearly needed to make this a little challenging for anyone every needing to break-in to the secret storage.

And once everything is in place, you definitely don’t see anything behind the monitor. The fact that the whole built-in is black helps too.

I’m thrilled to be in the home stretch of this project and have one last item to share before I give it a rest.  It wasn’t my intention to share SO much about the studio when I started this blog, but for better or worse, it’s helped keep me focused on one project at a time.  And the last project is a doozy. (Who say’s doozy?!)