Mar's Day

In honor of my grandmother {I've mentioned her a few times before} Mar's birthday today, 
I wanted to showcase pictures of some her gorgeous greenhouse babies.

Isn't it amazing that infinite God saw reason to precisely design each tiny speckle, each contour and the intricate root system of these delicate flowers?

Just as His mighty hand crafted each orchid, He sculpted each of us. And saw good reason to.

Yet you, LORD, are our Father. We are the clay, you are the potter; we are all the work of your hand. Isaiah 64:8

Kitchen Tile

What's been so zooey? you ask.

Oh, our house. We've taken on the usual project of redoing 90% of our flooring by ourselves.

It's character-building for two clean people to have total house destruction for a month.

Yep, our goal is to have the whole flooring project done in a month.

Yep. We're D.I.O. {doing it ourselves} and we have just completed our tile work in our kitchen!

{Hooray!}

There was a lot involved.

Such as spending a week worth of work nights whacking up the winyl {vinyl...har har} and carefully removing baseboards and prepping the slab.

We saw down to the bare concrete.

Cut cut cut, measured, did lots of planning, and mortared. {not in that order}

And made great progress, finishing in the wee hours of Sunday morning.

We're pleased.

What's next? you say. Well, we have already started to pull up the carpet...

To prep for laminate :) Lots and lots of laminate!

Our prayer is that God would use our home {and us} to welcome, serve, and shelter many, all along the way making Himself known. He has blessed us with much and we want to open our home to be a vessel for His use.

Then the LORD will create over all of Mount Zion and over those who assemble there a cloud of smoke by day and a glow of flaming fire by night; over everything the glory will be a canopy. It will be a shelter and shade from the heat of the day, and a refuge and hiding place from the storm and rain.

Isaiah 4:5-6

Sketch: Zoo

It's a zoo around here, y'all!

Working on a big big big project :)

I Made a Table Runner

...Well actually, I made 1 1/2 table runners (before my time expired and Christmas gift-giving began!) with the help of my new {old} Singer machine.
I had a hay day at the fabric store (which is more like a warehouse of thousands of choices) where I grabbed lots of my favorite samples. Then I picked 2 neutrals {you'll see the butter yellow and taupe} to make the runner two-sided.
I roughly cut up the samples into rectangles and added a few samples I had at home {remember my roman shade and dining chairs? and my cornice boxes?}

I sewed on patchwork blocks out of the samples at the ends of my neutral fabrics, making sure my modern:traditional and earthtones:bolds ratios felt right.

Then putting the two long neutral pieces together with the sample-sides {pretty-sides} face to face or inside out, I sewed all the way around the perimeter except leaving 6 inches open for me to flip it back right-side-out. Got all that?

Okay, now it feels like a table runner!

I poked out all the corners with my scissor tips, ironed it flat {cautious of the not-yet-sewn part}, and then sewed all the way around the perimeter.

I love that the patchy, loose look allowed me to make lots of little rookie mistakes. It has character :)

And it was a really fun surprise for my sister {this guy's mama} and mama {this one's mama}

You can make one, too. It's quite fun--and now I see see skirts, pillows, and jackets with new eyes as my appreciation for the art of sewing has increased tenfold.

{Two runners are shown, 54" x 14"}

Sewing: Crash Course

Well, it's a new year (Happy New Year!) and I picked up a new skill.

Or at least I took myself through a crash course of sewing, with the 1956 Singer manual I pulled up online leading me delicately through each step. I'm now convinced we modern-day Americans have it easy with gadgets that practically work themselves...and are much more user-friendly than the antiquity of a sewing machine I now call my own.

My great aunt was probably charmed into buying her 1956 Singer 99K by a commercial like this one:

And I inherited it!

So of course, I had to dream up a project. I had to put my Singer to use before I "lost my ever-loving mind."

Stay tuned for what I made :)