The Evolution of a Girl's Room

This is what Iris's room looked like when we first moved into the house in 2009.  We reworked the room pretty quick after moving in.

She choose purple (of course).  We did not paint the room the exact shade she wanted because she wanted a really deep purple and the room does not get alot of light.

We used the same bedding that she had and decided to do accents of turquoise and neon green, but we never really got around to it.

At the beginning of the year, Iris decided that she wanted something different and was asking to rip out the carpet, repaint the walls, and paint the woodwork.  I said no.  But she could pick out some new accents and try a new color scheme.  I used pinterest for the organization of the decorating and it worked out really well.  I was able to post all the pictures of options on one page.  It was easy to compare bedspreads and curtains.  Iris was able to look at one page and instantly tell which ones she liked and did not like.  She picked out new curtains, bedding, lamps, and a new rug.

One thing on her wish list was a lamp for reading in her chair.  The chair was her 13th birthday gift.  We replaced the wooden blinds and sheers with new white roman shades.  This gives her a really nice spot to curl up with her books or kindle and read.

We left several things in the room the same.  The wall color stayed the same along with all the furniture and their basic location.  I had found the chandelier at a antique store and we installed it when we painted the room.
The light fixture goes well with the new curtains.

It also goes well with the new bedding.

We got a new rug.

And of course she will need a new throw quilt to match

I just love the focus fabric.

There are still a couple of projects that we need to do.  We need to recover the chair seat and hang the bulletin board over the desk.

We are also going to paint another flea market find black and put it over the dresser.

In the end the room looks more like a teenager's room.  Including the mess.

I Love my House: My Bedroom

I have been looking back at alot of posts and facebook albums and realized that while I have many "before" pictures of our house, I have very few "after" pictures.  I am going to take it room by room and talk about features that I love about our house, maybe a few features I do not love.  Most of these pictures are not going to be staged, just pictures of things when they are relatively clean and how they look everyday.
Some general features of the house that are very nice are: it's age, I love the character and feel of a well built older home; lighted walk in closets, for a house built in 1914 this house has sufficient storage space; the wood work and plaster, just beautiful; and lack of remodeling, this house has not seen a major remodel so we do not have to undo alot of things.
I took some pictures of things I like in our bedroom this morning.  The room is green with tan accents.  Green is my favorite color and I think that my bedroom will always be based in a green palate.  The only thing that I do not care for is the blue carpeting.  The homeowners before us replaced all the carpet upstairs to a plain tan, except this bedroom and they left the blue carpet.  We have not had the budget or time to fix this yet.  The room was painted blue when we moved in and had accents of red and white.
The "theme" of this room is branches.  It started out with the headboard that I had custom made by a gentleman in southern Illinois that came and sold at the Carbondale farmer's market.

People that see it either hate it or love it.  It is pretty tall and we have our bed on risers to compensate.  In the next picture the color scheme of the room is visible, also the picture rail is visible.  These are the kind of details that made me fall in love with the house.

The side tables are just some I picked up in a big box store and I am looking for more of a dresser type side table.  The lamps I like.  They give some sparkle to the room.
The bedding is a duvet cover from pottery barn.  I am not super impressed with the quality.  It is a looser weave and seems to rip easily.  The cats have already made several slashes in the top.  The reason that I bought it was its color.  I did not develop the color scheme from this fabric, but it fits in perfectly.

It even has the blue from the carpet!
We chose this room in the house because of one aspect.  It has a balcony! 

We did not want kids in this room, so we made it our own.  It is the smallest bedroom in the house, but that is okay.
The room has several flea market/antique store finds.  First is my favorite...the hands....

These are porcelain glove forms that I keep on my dresser to store my necklaces.  These are placed on top of an antique high boy that my mom gave me.  I also have a chair that was originally hot pink.  I got this at What Cheer.  I painted it with the leftover paint from above the picture rail.  There is an antique needlepoint pillow on the chair that I picked up in Macon, Mo.  I also have an antique side table next to the chair that came with my family over from Holland.  It was extremely messy, so I do not have a picture of that!

I found the chandelier in a store locally. It was green and white and the former owner had ripped off the flowers, so the value was greatly diminished.  I only paid $15 for it.  I painted it a dark bronze.  It fits in perfectly with the "branches theme"

I made the artwork that hangs above the side tables.  I printed antique images of birds on a vintage page from a book.  I then framed that in an over sized mat board.

I hoped you enjoyed this brief tour of some of my favorite things in my bedroom!

Two New Finishes (almost) and Show Choir Glitter

The last couple of weeks have been fairly stressful.  We lost my father-in-law quite suddenly.  Nathan did a wonderful job coordinating the funeral arrangements.  He was much more diplomatic than I would have been.  Because of this, our life has been a bit chaotic.  Nathan had to finish a drill one night because of the funeral schedule and had to work for 21 1/2 hours straight.  We had family in and out for various reasons and are just getting back to a normal schedule this week....except, I was sick last night and today the kids are both sick and stayed home from school.  In spite of this I have got some things done.  I picked up a top from the quilters.  I call it my pond quilt.  It is a traditional quilt pattern named "Jacob's Ladder"

The quilter quilted it with swirly lines in a variegated blue thread.  I am going to bind it in dark blue.

I also finished quilting a twin sized quilt called film strip.

I did a plaid type of pattern and I think that I am going to bind it in the purple.

I also did a pieced back.  I used some large scale Amy Butler that I picked up at FM fabric in Springfield, Mo.  Love that place.

I also made a sample block.  This cross block finishes at 5 inches and I think that I will make up a throw sized quilt with these.  I am keeping the color palate on the cool side, only using blues, greens, purples, and greys.

On the family front, Iris participated in her first show choir competition.  They won 1st place in the morning competition and won 2nd in the evening.  The kids have to wear all matching make up and have their hair the same.

There is alot of them.  About 60 kids are in the middle school show choir.  Iris is in the back row.

She looks so grown up with make up. It was a long day.  The kids had to leave the school, with hair done at 6:15 in the morning.  We did not get back home till after midnight.  I have volunteered to do hair at all competitions and am not sure what I have gotten myself into.  Well I am off to make binding.

Finished! Basement Sewing Room Redo

Last year when I worked on the bead room I started on the sewing room.  I never really finished.  Over Christmas break Nathan helped me move some furniture that was not working in there, and hung some shelves.  I cleaned and sorted and now it is finished!!!  It was inspired by my Christmas present from Nathan.  So far I love this iron! just the fact that it can sit for more than 5 minutes without having to wait for it to reheat is soooo handy.  I have not had any trouble adjusting to not tipping it on end when I am finished. Another project for another day is a new ironing surface...

My sewing table has not changed that much.  I found the table at What Cheer Flea Market and it is very solid.  I do not get any shaking, even when I am sewing at full speed.  I did order an acrylic table and it works well.  I can do much more with quilting without having to fight the quilt the whole time.  Above my sewing area I have put index card with pictures of my WIPs and what I have left to do on them.  I think it is working.  I have finished most of the projects I posted.

In another part of the room, I had a large cabinet/counter.  It was the original cabinet that was in this room when we moved into the house.  It was too tall for me to use effectively and It collected junk.  There was another piece of cabinetry in the laundry room that was lower and I thought it would work better.  After examining it I believe that it is original to the house.  It was a free standing dry sink that someone put a piece of modern counter top on.  The back is traditional bead board and I can see where the hardware was attached.  It was HEAVY.  I put it in the room and it works much better.  It is now my cutting station.  I hung a pendant over it for some light and now have my scraps organized.  Under the counter I have all my batting and other large bulky items.

Scraps are so pretty

I also took my fabric out of bins.  Nathan hung these shelves and I think I will like having all my fabric out for me to see.  I am not worried about fading.  It is a basement after all and does not get very much sun.

Under my fabric I have all the WIPs that I plan on tackling this year as part of our guild challenge.
I still have the couch down in this room, because this room has to be able to function as a guest room when needed.  I am hanging some of my smaller projects on the wall above it.

This room is such a wonky shape.  There is a bump out for the bay window in the dining room.  I put an old dresser from mom and dad that I painted white in the bump out.  I put some organizational cubbies on top.  In the dresser I store part of the sewing machines and other supplies.

The pink Chandy might have to be moved.  In the cubbies I put my fabric groups that I want to keep separate from the general stash.  My favorite fabric right now is Etchings from moda.

All this sorting and cleaning I hope will make my time more productive.  It is nice to have a space of my own that I can do all this with.  I am making progress on finishing things that I have started.  "Finishing" is my theme of 2012.  Here is a quilt that I have finished lately.  It got quilted with pretty leaves and swirls. 

I do not have a "home" for it yet, but it is finished!

December Happenings

Finally I got the Christmas tree up.  I did not do as much decorating this year as I normally do, because we have been so busy.  The kids have had all sorts of activities.  Iris has had her orchestra concert and her vocal concert. 

I actually caught her smiling!

I have traveled alot this winter and am glad that we are staying put for Christmas.  We traveled last weekend to Southern Illinois for Nathan's graduation.  He was one of the (very) few non internationals receiving a masters degree in electrical and computer engineering.

It was hard to get a good picture of him, since he was so far away.  While we were there we celebrated Zadok's 7th birthday.

On the quilting front, I finished two items this month.  I finished the mystery quilt that we started in a workshop with the guild.  I quilted it on the machine.  I am getting better, I can just about do a straight line!

I also finished a baby quilt for a neighbor.  I forgot to take a picture of it when I completed it, but took some when I was trying to quilt it.  The cat is soooo helpful in all that I do!

He has an expression of "This is my quilt...so back away lady"
Another fun opportunity I had this month was to set a table for a ladies dinner at church.  I used my everyday dishes and silverware so I felt I had to pump up the centerpiece and the accessories.  I used mismatched china and put old broaches on the napkin rings I made. I made the topiary, music garland, and some signs.  My theme was "Let Heaven and Nature Sing".  I used old sheet music as the accents on the votives.

Well, I better go.  I have to prepare for another birthday party for Zadok, finish shopping for gifts, and figure out what I will be making for Christmas dinner!

Finished!

We have now had a hard frost and the garden has stopped producing.  We were able to get beans and tomatoes up to Halloween, which makes up for not producing much in the middle of summer.  I have been trying hard to get some things done.  I have completely finished two quilts.  I made a lap quilt for my mom with a line of fabric called Lilac Hill.  The pattern was from a book called scrap basket sensations and is made up of 2 1/2 inch strips.  I had it quilted by a local long-armer.  I hope she likes it!

 

 I also completely finished by paper piecing project. I quilted it myself with a simple pattern of triangles.

 

 Another project I hope to complete soon is the block of the month from the Pella Area Quilters Guild.  I love the color scheme, but I did not think about the finished project when I started making the blocks.  If I was smart I would have used the same background fabric for all blocks.  All the blocks have the same range of colors, so I hope it will work.

On the home front,we had a very busy Halloween.  We had two parties and then trick or treating.  We put a little more effort in decorating the house.  I think it was a success.  Several 8-9 year old boys said the house was haunted or "creeeepy", which was the effect we were looking for.  We put a ghost on the second story.  I used white fabric and then lit it with a black light.  We also used some pillars that I picked up at What Cheer and placed it in front of the porch and put our gargoyles on it.  We used lots of candles and the effect was nice.  I did not get any pictures of the kids or Nathan.  I am a bad mom for taking pictures of my kids.

 

The kids have been busy also.  We went on a camping trip with the Boy Scouts.  It actually went alot smoother then I thought it would and we now think we will try to camp more next summer.  The boy scouts had several stations set up and Zadok had a good time tying knots, shooting guns, etc.

Iris has been busy.  She has joined show choir and is still active in orchestra.  Last weekend she participated in a festival with other middle school orchestras.  They practiced all day and then had a concert at night.  I ended up chaperoning because no other parents volunteered.  It was not that stressful.  Orchestra kids are not really known for their trouble making antics.  It was hard to get a picture of her, she was toward the back of the stage.  They sounded pretty good for a group of middle school kids.

Today the kids have the day off and we are enjoying doing nothing!