artsy-crafty babe

desire

I've spoken about this before (i'm too lazy to search my archives), and my feelings are unchanged and unsatisfied.  I desire to be more artistic.  I want to paint.  I want to create art.  I want to combine color and make texture.  I want to express myself in this way.

For a long time, my hurdle in achieving this was fear.  Art is so personal, such an expression of oneself, and I wasn't ready to face that.  Now that I am older and more aware of who I am, fear isn't so much of a problem.  Now I have to deal with time.

With sewing or knitting, I am able to do these in the middle of my family chaos.  They're mostly technical, as in I'm either following a pattern or directions.  When I exercise my creativity in creating a new bag or quilt, I can dream about the design while I'm driving or putting away laundry - it can unfold in my mind.  For me, painting isn't so.  I need alone time where I can contemplate, be introspective, and experiment.  Plus, if I were to pull out paints, my kids would be all over it!  I don't mind them painting, but not right before bed, which is when I would have the time.  And when they paint, I have to do lots of supervising, whether I want to or not.

I think I need to make time for this.  Maybe I'll set up my painting stuff in my sewing room, then declare it off limits to the kids.  Back in college, I remember assignments from my one and only studio class where we had to complete a 5 or 7 hour drawing.  Maybe I should give myself one of those assignments and commit to paint and experiment for 1 hour each day.  Of course, my problem with this is guilt.  Why do we as moms feel so much guilt from being away from our children?  I'm sure Matt doesn't feel any guilt when he plays sports one (or more) night a week.  Besides being away from the kids, there's always that thought in the back of my mind that I should be doing something else.  Gosh, why can't I just be?  I guess this is something else I need to work on.

I mentioned my personal assignment to Matt.  He reminded me of the painting class I talked about taking this past spring.  Why didn't I do that?  Well, I'm tired of dreaming about it.  I'm going to take some action.   Yes, I deserve it, don't I?  Wish me luck!

an unexpected surprise

Last week I made a stop by the thrift store.  Since the downturn in the economy, my thrifting hasn't been too productive.  My latest trip was no different.  I found a couple of less than exciting pillowcases and a grab bag of random fabric.  The bag of fabric had two ugly prints that I had no interest in (both icky synthetic stuff), but there were a few folded up pieces of white fabric that I thought may be interesting.  On one, I could see a hint of blue, like it was some sort of embroidery design.  It was only $1.48, so I bought it just so that I could see that that blue was (the bag was stapled shut)- for all I knew, it could have been some 80's country "bless this house" something or other!  I walked out of the thrift store spending less than $3 and threw the bag in the back of my van.

I forgot all about it until I found the bag while cleaning up yesterday. Wow.  What a little treasure I found!  That little bit of blue turned out to be 4 pillowcase tubes with a stamped peacock embroidery design and a large square piece of fabric (at least 54") with another stamped embroidery design.  SCORE!  I've never done much embroidery, but I'd like to try.  Being unfamiliar with this sort of thing, does anyone know if these can be laundered?  I'd like to wash the ickiness off them before I start embroidering, but I'm afraid that the embroidery design will wash off. 

Can you imagine how beautiful that peacock could be?  I can only dream that if I ever get around to completing this embroidery, my girls will fight over who gets them when I'm gone.  And that square, what should it be?  Do you think it was meant for a tablecloth?  Oh, the possibilities!  Such a pleasant surprise for only $1.48.

sew time

As of Friday afternoon I had big plans to reconnect with my sewing machine over the weekend.  It had literally been weeks since I had sewn anything, which is a LONG time for me.  Well, that never happened.  After a very full weekend of hanging out with the family, cleaning the house, and socializing with friends, no sewing took place.

Then Monday rolled around.  Again, it was a pretty full day.  We started with donuts for breakfast, grocery & school supply shopping (already!), then lunch and play time with friends.  After the supper dishes were cleared I decided it was time.  I HAD to sew.  I left the dirty dishes in the sink and let the kids watch the disney channel.

There were plenty of interruptions and refereeing involved, but I managed to make a new bag.  I stayed up waaay too late (that 4 pm cup of coffee helped), but it was worth it.

I really love the size and look of this bag - LOVE the fabrics, but it needs some tweaking.  I'm not sure if you can tell, but the front has a pleated pocket.  I think this outside pocket will solve my lost keys problem.  I tried more interior pockets on my last bag, but then I forgot which pocket I put my keys in, so that was no help.  Overall, I think this bag is too fussy to reproduce.  I hate lots of pieces and parts, and this bag has too many.  That made the construction confusing - even for me, who came up with the darned thing!  So, back to the drawing board it is, but I at least now have a new starting point.  Oh, and I'll be testing out this bag on my arm for a while :)

the big clean up

Cleaning up my kids' rooms is something that I can't stand to do.  I absolutely hate it.  All the toys, all the misplaced pieces, all the destruction, all the unknown finds - yuck.  I usually put it off until I can't stand it any longer.  At the moment. the girls' room isn't too bad, but the boy's room was in bad shape.

He has recently started doing some rearranging on his own by pulling out the storage components from his closet and strewing them all over the room. Nice.  It was time I stepped in.

On Saturday morning I sucked it up and got busy, with the help of a certain 5 yr old boy, of course.  Since he has taken so much interest in the decor of his room, I wanted his full input on where things should go.

We moved the bed from one corner to the other and totally rearranged the room. 

We also tackled the closet.  We decided that the dresser and all clothing related items should live in the closet, so the dresser was moved in there.  We then moved the toy bins out.

Now all the toys are out in the open in full view, organized, and ready to be played with.

While I was at it, I scrubbed the walls and baseboards, but I don't think that did much good because they still look pretty crappy.  The furniture and artwork on the walls is placed just so, to give a little more life to the walls.  There's no way we're painting any time soon, not until Ava gets out of her graffiti phase.

It took all. day. long.  I was exhausted in the end, but it was worth it.  I also cleaned up the girls' room, but was no where near as bad - a piece of cake compared to that.  Clean kids rooms = happy momma!

friday night with the lambert's

Friday nights are fun.  They're one of my favorite nights, really.  Tonight was no different.  We decided early in the week that we would grill pizza tonight for supper.  With a broken oven, the new grill has been a life saver.

We enjoyed some wine.  We made garlic mozzarella bread as an appetizer.

We took silly pictures...

with silly poses.

Even Ruby was in on the action.

I got the chance to use my margarita citronella candle.

We were having so much fun...

that we burned supper. Damn, that was a good looking pizza! The bottom was black. 

Good thing we filled up on that bread :)  I'm now in the process of making the kids some pasta while they take a bath (and I blog).  If all goes well, we'll get the munchkins to bed (full of carbs) at a decent hour and get to finally watch a movie together.

Yes, I love Friday nights.

oh free time, where art thou?

Free time - what's that?  I simply don't have enough of it (but who does, right?).  As much as I love these long, laid back summer days, the late suppers and even later bedtimes is killing my creative time.  For the past two nights I have attempted to work on sewing projects, and as soon as I start I have to pick everything up because it's too darned late.  I suppose battling a cold/sinus thing isn't helping much.  If I felt better I'm sure I would have not given much thought to my own bedtime.

Anyway, I tried to start the polka dot quilt.  I got my solid strips and polka dot strips cut.  Most of them.  I'm still waiting on a few dots to arrive on my doorstep.  I'm not following a pattern on this one, just doing as I please.  The dots I'm missing are some key colors that I want mixed in, so I'm sorta stuck at the moment on that one.

With the dot quilt on hold, I briefly thought about working on the red zig zag quilt, but I wasn't feeling it.  Then I decided to work on a new bag pattern I was playing with on paper last week.  I pulled some fabrics from my stash then pulled out my pattern pieces.  What the???  I couldn't remember what I was going for.  The pieces made no sense to me.  I swear, my brain has turned to mush (or maybe it was the cold medicine simultaneously hyping me up and dumbing me down).  After a while I figured it out, but by then I wasn't in the mood to cut into fabric.  Oh well, that's how it goes.

Ever since vacation I seem to have lost my groove - and I want it back!  Now!  I'm determined, my sewing machine WILL see some action soon.

yes, here we go again

*sigh*  Just as her hair was growing out nicely, guess who decided to play with scissors?  I don't think I mentioned it here, but it finally came out that it was Alex who did the original crop.  About a month ago she cut a bit of her bangs on the side, but it wasn't too bad.  Now she went and did this.  What am I going to do with this kid?

Ruby, be grateful that you don't have hair long enough to cut!

If all goes well, I may get to start on the polka dot quilt tonight - I can't wait!!

happy monday

You'll have to excuse me, I'm still smiling from the weekend :)  I also managed to get in a few more hours of sleep this morning by accidentally turning off my alarm clock, so my day has gone by super fast.  So far, so good.  Another thing putting a smile on my face are the polka dots that have started arriving at my house.  Remember?  Alex wants a polka dot quilt?  How can you not smile at polka dots? 

I haven't touched my sewing machine in weeks, so I'm starting to get a bit twitchy.  Yes, a new quilt is about to begin.  I even ran out to Hobby Lobby to pick up my solid and more dots found their way home with me.  I'm not exactly how this quilt will turn out, but I'm pretty sure it will be a happy one.  Hopefully it will make a little boy very happy.

I can't leave this Monday post without hopping on a bench like structure.  It's been a few weeks since I've played along - Happy Bench Monday!!

pretty darned good

On Saturday morning, Matt and I decided to start working on our patio expansion.  I know, that doesn't sound very exciting, and really it wasn't, but I enjoy working out in my yard performing manual labor (sometimes).  The whole patio expansion came about when Matt got a new grill for Father's day.  His precious new toy couldn't sit in the grass, now could it?  So we decided to bump the patio out a few feet and curve the sides out to the edge of the house.  Seems simple enough, right?  We worked our butts off hauling sand, gravel and pavers.  By saturday evening it was looking pretty good, but we had to stop to get ready for our evening.

Saturday night we had plans - a grown up night out with other grown ups.  We went to a dinner party hosted by an old friend who was in town for the weekend.  I really didn't know what to expect.  Yes, I knew everyone who was attending, but I don't know, Matt and I don't get to do a lot of hanging out with an adult crowd, so there was a definite unknown factor involved.  We didn't even know what time to tell our babysitter to expect us home (which ended up being way off!).  Dinner was at 7, but the conversation lasted until midnight.  I love that!!  Interesting people, great conversation, good food, lots of red wine - it was perfect!!  I definitely need to get over myself and invite people over for dinner. 

Sunday was much of the same on the patio project.   We actually finished, which feels really good.  With so many half finished projects around this place, having something finished is a major accomplishment. We even went beyond our expectations and transplanted some liriope around the edge of the patio AND cleaned up our mess. Go us!!

This weekend was one of those weekends.  I can't say that anything monumental or super exciting happened, but it filled me up and left a smile on my face.  This is how weekends are supposed to be!

thinking about

Okay, so I'm not quite ready to go through the 300 pictures I took on vacation, though I probably should before I forget what they're all about.  Maybe this weekend.  Instead, I'd rather focus on the creative energy that's been renewed within me (and I'll throw in a few vacay pics because that's all I've got!). 

Right before I finished my last quilt I played around with a few designs for another one (never-mind that red & white one I was working on).  The colors I wanted to use are on the masculine side, so I thought Alex would be a good recipient.  I showed him the schematics, which he didn't really care for (what did I expect from a 5 yr old?), but once I explained that the colors would be actual printed fabrics be seemed to like it better.  His only request is that I use polka dots, so polka dots it is.  Along with an appliqued elephant pillow made in polka dots as well.  I think it'll be darling, I can't wait to get started.  Now I need to get busy hunting down the various polka dot fabrics (fun stuff).

Also occupying my brain power had been more spoonflower fabric.  I hadn't thought about it since I printed that last batch of fabric, but the Phoebe bag renewed my interest.  I don't know if I'd have any of these printed, but it's fun to play around. Go on now, sign up, create a profile, you know you wanna :)

Last, but not least, my thoughts have returned to bag making.  I need a new bag.  I carried my Phoebe bag for a while, but it's too darned small for me, especially now that I always have a knitting project with me.  I'm thinking about revisiting this design, with the pleated pocket, but roomier.  Hmmm, maybe not, I don't know, but the wheels sure are turning!

Being renewed and refreshed is a good thing!