i have some very talented friends {part 1}....

tina and jerry...

they used to live next door to us.  they moved in a couple of weeks after we did way back in 2000,  newly married and fresh off of their honeymoon.  they were the most fantastic neighbors and we became fast friends. tina has an incredible eye for decor and her house was an inspiring mix of modern design and vivid color. lots of black furniture with bright reds, cobalt blues, bright oranges and charcoal grey adorning the walls and accessory decor.   jerry loved working in the yard and landscaped with the same modern twist.  lots of hardscape with just the right mix of greenery.  and he turned the pond that we shared in the yard into more than just a retention pond by cleaning up the edges, rimming them with rocks and adding a fountain.

this gave all of the neighbors who bordered the pond a beautiful view out of our windows.

  

 they had two little girls while they lived here.  i've been taking their photos since eden, the oldest, was about a year old.   london, the youngest, is the picture of her mama and eden, her daddy....

they moved about two years ago and we miss them terribly.  although they only moved about 15 minutes away, time and life gets in the way and we don't see each other as much as we should. we are working hard on changing that.  

anyway,

tina invited me over to see the changes she has made in the decor of her home. she has changed her decor style drastically from hard modern to shabby, frenchy, vintage distressed.  and it looks fantastic. 

i want to take you on a little tour of her new home. 

daughter eden has a beautiful room done in pinks, golds and greys....

the bed linens are from target, urban outfitters, joann fabrics and t.j.maxx.   the angel wings are from hobby lobby.

 she made the lampshade above by tearing strips of fabric and tying them to the lampshade frame (which she picked up at the goodwill and tore off the old fabric from, a girl after my own thrifty heart) after painting the lamp white white.

most of the other wall decor is from hobby lobby as well.

 this is the playroom, located in the bonus room of the house over the garage, so it's long and narrow and split into two rooms.  perfect for two little diva girls....

i love the tulle draped from the corners of the ceiling to the chandelier. 

 daughter london has the blue room and if you notice, this is the same chandelier that i have in my laundry room.  tina fell in love with it and because it's no longer available from lowe's where i originally got it, she scoured craigslist until she found not one, but two of them....she painted hers too!!

she also added ribbon flowers to the candlelight bottoms

and although it's hard to see in this picture, she also added tiny ribbon flowers to the letters on the wall above her window.

bed linens for this room are from target, joann fabrics and t.j. maxx as well.

 tina is so creative that she found a design on pinterest and drew it freehand to london's wall.   the little feathers holding up the strands of pearls have lights behind them and the branches are bejeweled with stick-on gems.  

 these feather angel wings were found online.  they are gorgeous....

 the girls bathroom is beautiful too.  she is currently working on finding a sideboard like this one

that we redid a couple of years ago, to use as a sink base.  she keeps telling me that mine would be perfect for her girl's bathroom....i'm not ready to part with it just yet though, because it is actually the perfect size to use in our master bathroom as a sink base!  :)

 most of the linens here are from the rachel ashwell collection at target too.  she glammed everything up with some ribbon and feathers...

 even her laundry room has that frenchy glam look.  

 just look at the light that those chandeliers throw around the room....

 the furniture in her bedroom is a throwback to the modern look in her old house.  she wanted to purchase new furniture for her bedroom but i talked her out of it.  i knew i would be able to give her the look she wanted just by painting the orange wood and turn it into the new style of decor she wanted.  we worked on it for an entire day a couple of weeks ago and by the time we finished,  it was late at night so the pictures don't do it justice.  this is a before picture of her dresser and mirror.  i will share the finished pictures of her room in an upcoming post and i assure you that the furniture looks drastically different.  i just need to get back over there and get some pictures during the day....

i love having creative friends.  

we play off of each other and share ideas.  we inspire and push each other to get things done....and we look at our changes with big smiles on our faces....
we miss you guys bunches....

busy, busy, busy...

well, i have completed 5 quilts in the past couple of 

weeks....quilts for chemo is on it's way.  

i love the way this one turned out.  it's a very simple pattern and striking in it's simplicity.  and in a homage to my vintage sheet collection, the backing is a vintage sheet.  the color is perfect and i love that it is lined up circles...

i used a black and white stripe for the border and it is a great addition to the modern feel.

i'm keeping this one but my friend lisa has sworn me to will it to her if something happens to me.... :)

these are the ones that i am donating to the cancer center...

now i know that some of these are similar because of the fabrics but i did change up the designs and and mixed the choice of fabrics in the different quilts.  the strip quilts are very easy to make because the top of the quilt is sewn onto the batting and backing at the same time.  

i actually started  

this one on monday morning and finished hand sewing the binding on that evening.  i would say that i worked on it for a total of about 5 hours.  super quick and easy....

this one was the first time i pieced a quilt.  when i cut the vintage sheets for the first quilt i made, i cut a lot of the fabric into squares.  this one is not very fancy but it went together rather quickly too, much to my surprise....

i did use some coordinating fabric that i had to border the quilt and the backing is a vintage sheet.

it's not perfect as you can see in the quilting stitches, but it's supposed to look a little handmade, right?
this one was a little different.  i found a pattern that looked easy so i used it to make this quilt out of flannel fabric.  i love how soft it is and the bright colors are very happy.  it's smaller than the others but still big enough to be an adequate lap quilt...

i also experimented with curved corners....really easy using a cereal bowl...

see that quilt stand in the background?  i got that at goodwill for $10.  it just needs a good coat of paint. that will happen soon, hopefully.
we have also been busy mounting our tv over our mantle.  we have gone back and forth about whether or not to put it there and the biggest hold up was the fact that we didn't want to mess around with trying to wire the cords through the wall where the chimney was.

 so i found this on pinterest that shows how you can make channels to run the cords through and not have to drop the cords into the wall.  it's brilliant and we have adapted our own design.

 it has taken a few days (okay, more than a few) because we have to keep adapting..... and we

have to wait until the new longer cable cords that we ordered get here, but hope to have that done soon.

because i am sick of the mess....

please don't judge.... :)
the channels will then be covered like this.

in a way that we will be able to pull the top slat off if we have to access or add to the cords at a later time.

the long range plan is to build built-in bookcases on either side of the fireplace.  i need to find a cheap easy way to do that too...i'm keeping my eyes open on pinterest for that because i know that i will find something i need.  i love that place....
i will be sharing more of this project soon....

another quilt....

I started another quilt last week.  actually, i started 3 quilts last week.  it was a busy week to say the least. my friend lisa came back to michigan from her new home in minnesota and spent a few days with me sewing and painting.  she brought a bathroom cabinet over for me to show her how to paint and fix up.  more on that later.  

i have been making a few vintage sheet quilts and i decided that i wanted to try something more modern and clean looking.  i decided that i wanted to try a circle quilt after seeing tons of them on pinterest.

it's totally sensory overload there and i was inspired to try my hand on one for myself. 

in a nutshell, i zig-zagged some circles onto some gray squares.  

so this heap of fabric was cut into circles.

because i am so incredibly lazy ingenious, i pinned eight layers of fabric together, placed a cereal bowl on the top layer and traced a circle. 

i cut them out all at once.  

and because i am so lazy ingenious,  i only screwed up a few of the circles...(that'll teach me).

then, i pinned the circles to the squares and laid them out to see how i wanted the placement to be.

after determining that, i sewed the circles to the each square.  

i got a little decorative with some stitching because i thought it would be too boring if i didn't.  

(it really wouldn't have been)

i only did this on about 7 of the circles.

 it does look cool, though...

 i used white fabric between the vertical rows of squares...which i didn't take a picture of.  

 lisa had a great old sheet in her stash that i thought would be awesome for the backing and she was generous enough to let me wrestle it away from her.  

right now i am hand stitching the binding on and will share a picture of the completed quilt when that is finished in the next day or so. 

we (lisa, my daughter shannon and i) decided that we would make quilts for the local cancer center.  it is the same center that don went to when he had his chemotherapy 7 years ago for colon cancer.  he told me that when he would get chemo, he was always cold.  i thought that with all of the vintage sheets that i have  i would make lap quilts for the patients. 

i started two of them last week too...

 a pretty flannel quilt 

 and a patchwork quilt using some of the vintage sheets...

 i asked lisa and shannon to help out and we are in the process right now of matching and cutting more fabric and bagging it up in sets to start making "quilts for chemo"....

more updates soon!!!

congrats to adele....

what a great grammy's show last night....i normally don't watch awards shows because the performers and awards recipients are usually so full of themselves it nauseates me.....

i watched the grammy's last night particularly because of adele.

i throughly enjoyed her performance

and i thought she deserved every award that she got!!

it just goes to show, you don't need all of the flashing lights, outlandish costumes and techno music that disguises your voice.  the true mark of a great singer is their ability to do so much with so little technical help....
great job adele, you rock

looks like they deleted the above video and i can't remove it unless i delete this post....so try the one below instead....at least until they delete that one too!!  :)

a vintage window.....

rummaging around in my friend lisa's parent's barn loft last summer was so amazing.  there were stacks of old windows leaning up against the wall.  I think that they were originally part of the house that they are now in the process of renovating.

i found this one...

it was so dirty that i thought that the glass was opaque and didn't realize that there was clear glass until i brought it home and started cleaning it.  

what i loved about it and the reason that i picked this particular one was that the original paint had turquoise overtones.  and because it was really dark in the barn loft, i didn't realize how really cool it was until i got out into the sunlight.

it had just the right amount of age and vintage charm. and of course, that great 1930's or 40's turquoise paint...

after cleaning it up, the glass was in perfect condition.  i guess all of that dirt helped to protect it, right?  i didn't do anything to this window besides cleaning the glass...all of that paint is the original aging and patina on the wood....it's fabulous! 

I found the perfect wall for it in my house...

the room that had it's name all over it....this wall was just begging for something to fill it.

but this window was big (57 x 24 in) and heavy so i needed to hang it carefully.  

i found some heavy duty hanging hardware at home depot.  i normally would have just used one on each end but i thought maybe i had better not take any chances.  i decided to disperse the hanging tension by adding the hardware to each pane.  

thankfully, the studs in the wall fell into the right place to center this window on the wall.  

it filled the space perfectly....

and added the perfect amount of vintage "grunge" and flaky paint patina

to the otherwise clean look of the room.

thanks again to walt and penny (lisa's parents) for allowing me

access to your treasure trove of a barn.....

and gifting me with this amazing piece of your history...