The Mantel

Hey guys....I continue to "nest" here in the house.  I can not help myself.  I'm like the Energizer bunny on chocolate lately!!!  So, the mantel.  Always a test to one's decorating skills.  Especially if yours is like 3 feet deep and has a half moon shaped window in it!  Yes, I said that right.  I totally forgot to take a pic before I filled it with my Grandmother's mirror.  But seriously it's the strangest thing I've ever seen.  And thus far, every house I've toured in this neighborhood has this window mantel thing.  It must have been the builder's "signature" mantel.  Urgh.  I've got big plans to have it stack stoned and close the "hole" in eventually.  But for now, this is my simple solution.  The trick to this mantel is layers.  So I started with the mirror.  Which I do believe weighs as much as I do.  And somehow it hung on the wall in her home until she passed away.  Dad asked me if I wanted it and I said of course!!  And now I have a safe place to rest it. 

The next layer is this adorable wooden shelf unit that was hanging in the kid's bathroom at the old house.  On it I have all our names in typography letters, a few nest and birds.  A wooden H rests against the mirror.  Just one of the growing collection of H's.  My favorite part of this vignette are the old clocks.  I saw an idea one time where you put on a broken clock the time your children were born.  I've literally had these clocks 5 years and finally looked up their birth times.  Which look.....Mailey was 6:40 and William was 6:42!  How in the world does one have two children at practically the same time?   

Shall We Play A Game?

So do you remember playing games as a child?  Man I do.  We'd head over to my friend Heather's on our bikes to play hours of Monopoly, hide-n-go-seek, Sorry and more!  I've had this memory game in my mind to make for ever.  And finally this summer I bit the bullet, chose the images, and ordered the cards.   The little canvas bags came this week so I was finally able to put the game together! 

There are 20 pairs to find.  I chose trucks, bikes, campers, birdies, birds in cages and more.  Such a fun game to play at any age. 

 I'll have these at the Country Living Fair and here in my etsy shop.  Cost is $14.00. 



The Studio Tour!!

OK.  Way too many boxes and a storage unit later, I think everything is in the studio!  Wooohooo!!  I love it down here in the basement.  And although it's an unfinished room, it feels rather cozy.  And the ceiling height rocks!  Once I get everything hung on the walls I think you'll not even notice the rawness.  For now though, I've got to get to work.  So I am done "nesting" down here and ready to go.  Let's take a peek, shall we?

So you enter the rooms through this little vignette.  Of course I had to make an entrance.  With an orange curtain.  And my mannequin Bertha with the OPEN/Closed sign from my old studio.  Love.

This room is going to be for painting and sewing.  It also has all the white cabinets the previous owner left behind chocked full of supplies for all my projects.  Everything that was in the old house garage and studio is now neatly tucked away in those cabinets!! 

I am super excited that some of my favorite pieces are now out of the garage and storage.  Like this flat file!!

I intend to use many of my display pieces in the room so I can see what I have and what I need.  Right now, looks like I need to paint.  This is all I have in stock.  Yep.  It was a good show season!

Of course little vignettes make it cozier feeling.  The pencil portrait I did as a child.  I found it in the move.  So sweet.

 Yes, I do know how insanely lucky I am.  Yep.  Smitten with this house.

Off the painting area is a giant work room.  I've set up my press area in here(because that's where all the plugs are).  Which is important to the success of the upcoming Country Living Fair.  The 250 frames I picked up and $1200 order from the sublimation company are all a part of the big picture too!!

All my display pieces have a shelf now so I won't buy something I don't need.  Well, in theory anyways I won't buy anything.  I do like my display pieces though!  It is nice having everything out of storage.  The bigger display pieces like the grids, tables, tent and shelves are in a different part of the basement.

And last, I was trying to figure out what to do with this area when it hit me....JEWELRY.  I am thrilled to not be using the painting table for this anymore because the soldering is messy.  And it's a perfect height for standing and stamping.  You can see in this photo how the rooms connect as well.  The other side of this room I've promised to my husband.  Yeah, I know.  I'll be sneaking over that way too.  But for now I am pretty contained. 

And most definitely content.



Haint Blue and Front Doors

While in Savannah this summer on a fabulous carriage drawn GHOST tour, Mailey and I learned that many people in the USA paint their doors certain colors just to ward of the spirits, or a haint.  Savannah is the second most haunted city in the USA...the stories are goose bump worthy.  One can not help but believe the tales. So in the tour, our guide said that painting your door red will ward of the haints as well as blue.  I can't remember why red, but the blue is because ghosts can not enter water.  They even place fish sculptures in their down spouts to keep them from entering their homes this way!  Anyhoo, while on the tour Mailey was very thrilled that we already had a haint painted front door.  See below our little cottage:

So when we moved into our new house, which ironically is the exact same color as the old one, the brown door had to go.

Saturday I spent near about all day patching the trim where we removed the rickety storm door, sanding, priming, painting and scraping windows.  What was supposed to be just painting the door blue ended up being an all day repair and paint job.  I told my husband he was a lucky man that his wife was a "painter".  He just laughed.  I am thrilled with the way it looks on this house.  Now, to paint the backdoor upstairs and downstairs.  And since I heard wayyyyyyy too many freaky sounding noises last night (since I couldn't sleep from excitement over the studio being unpacked!), I think I need to get the doors painted fast!!

Oh, and in case you want to paint your door this lovely shade, it's called Sunken Pool.  I think the chip came from Home Depot.  Although I always buy my paint at Lowe's.  :)

"Here Goes Nothing"

For some reason this quote is super stuck in my head, "HERE GOES NOTHING".  So I looked up the meaning of this expression and one compared it to this, "jumping out of an airplane and praying my parachute opens!!"  How funny.  Well, not really.  My Dad may have a thing to say about that too since he is a paratrooper.  No chute usually has a rather tragic ending!!  So I am thinking I may double pack my chute for the event I am gearing up for.

The Country Living Fair.  Oh my.  October 21-23rd. in Stone Mountain Park here in Atlanta.  3 days of total blissed out shoppers.  I know, I was one last year.  The booths are over the top.  I can not wait to be a part of this event.  But it's exactly 45 days from today.  I am not going to panic.  I am not going to panic.  I have a plan.  And it involves a parachute for sure.  And several friends who have already offered to come and help me assemble all the plan together.  Man, what would I do without my artsy peeps....that's a story for another day though.

Back to the "here goes nothing"....so what brought all this sudden panic about the show was my email to the show director.  You see, I've done a fair share of shows.  If you've read my blog for a spell you know this.  And I love doing shows and selling my work in a tent.  And part of the getting ready for a show is making a new business card.  Well, actually I always make bookmarks.  People like them, and so do I.  So I emailed the show director last week out of curiosity how many attendees there were last year.  I explained I'd never done a show with this volume of attendees and wanted to be sure my 5,000 bookmark order would be enough.  Well, I just about fell out of my chair when she replied, "We had 16,000 attendees last year and this year our pre-sales have far surpassed the pre-sales from last."  WHAT?????  So guess what?  I've now ordered a whopping 20,000 bookmarks.  That is going to be one freaking heavy box.  But look how good they turned out!!!!

Playing House

I can remember as a child playing countless hours of "house".  Hours.  In one house in particular Molly and I had an entire unfinished attic to set up house.  We had the best metal kitchen set...you know, the gold and brown set with refrigerator, stove and sink?  Table, chairs, high chairs, babies....we spent countless hours playing make believe house.  This weekend I have been in the total wonderment of playing 'house" again.   Unpacking boxes that have been stowed in the old house's attic for 16 years.  Um, yes.  I said 16.  I know the saying if you haven't used it in a year throw it out.  But this was important stuff peeps.  We've been hanging stuff up, making little quiet vignettes, and carefully putting our things away.  It's been a wonderful weekend of play. 

Today, I am playing in the studio.  Geesh it is a disaster zone.  It's such a big space that literally my studio is spread out in about 1000 sq. feet.  Yep.  I said that right.  My new studio, with the work room area and storage area is about as big as our old house.  Crazy guys.  And it rocks!!! 

Smitten

So, I am totally smitten with this new house.  Like freak out all I am thinking about smitten.  It's like a giant new baby.  I have to learn to love it's quirks, and embrace the challenges ahead. One.....step....at....a....time.  It took me 16 years to get the old house perfect.  Well, actually it was an evolving perfect.  Does that make sense?  For instance, I loved the terra cotta kitchen in the old house when I painted it.  And then wham!  I hated it and it had to be painted butter.  I know, it's only been a mere week and already I want it like my 16 year old house.  Full of layers, textures and cozy vignettes.  The boxes are making me nuts.  The tan walls even nuttier.  So, to alleviate the unwanted nuts (which in a mixed bowl are those ginormous things which I can only imagine a squirrel eating) I've hired a painter.  ekkkkk.....I did.  Money down thrown out the window is my old way of thinking.  I can paint myself.  Yep.  But seriously, no I can not.  Not right now.  And this artsy momma wants some color in her new house.  So, with all that being said the first walls were painted today.  Mailey's room is now 'inchworm".  Which translated means adorable green.  Her bath and my bath will be "birdsong blue" tomorrow and.......the drum roll please...........the dining room. 

Ah............the dining room.  The room I've dreamed of having because it can totally be over the top girlie fabulous.  No one really uses the dining room except at holidays.  It's a total wasted room in most houses.  So it can be fabulously decorated, because no one will be touching anything in it!!  The Amy Butler fabric above is my springboard for the room.  I will keep it a surprise until after it's painted.  But I'll give you a hint.....it's one of those fabulous colors.  But I bet you already guessed that.