Christmas Decorating...White Christmas!

 We've had snow...for the first time in a long while, 

we are having what feels like a good old midwestern winter!

 I've been doing some decorating. I started the weekend after Thanksgiving but have moved slowly getting the decorations up.

 I pretty much keep the mantle the same, but add greens and some starfish and a Santa. That Santa holds a list and when ever new children are born in the family, I had their names to the list.

 An old plastic Santa on the porch.

 The cushions on the glider are very summery, so I covered them with an old, rather tattered, quilt. 

 Come on in!

Here's the house on a cold snowy night. I have the tree up now, so I'll take a few more pictures soon.

Now it feels like fall.....

Today I broke out the boots for the first time this year. Boots are one of my favorite things about winter. What's not to like about something so warm and comfy as pair of kick-ass boots?

I saw this beauty on my walk this morning. Usually we have color much earlier in the midwest, but this year our first frost was just this week.

Soon I'll be closing the shop on Mondays, and also closing at 4pm. It's our slow season, and that will give me a tiny bit of daylight hours to get something done at home. Lots of leaf raking and putting away the summer stuff is first on the list.  I also want to get my art room sorted out, and then I'll be starting to paint the kitchen.

This kitty was peeping in Mom and Dad's window one night, and we shooed it away, and when I got home, this is what I saw at my back door. It tried to follow us in at Mom's.  It's very friendly and pretty, too. Surely it has a home somewhere. I'm not much of a cat person, but I hate to see her get cold.

Art Studio Table

I just bought this awesome vintage table from one of the dealers at Old City Hall Shoppes (like us on Facebook too!). I think the enamel surface will be great with all the paint and such that gets slung around doing mixed media work. I'm working on this little room that's off my living room, and it will be my art room.

 Here is the little room right after the wallpaper was stripped.

Here it is again after I'd moved in, and was organizing. Well now that room as been a catch-all for everything, and it's time for me to get busy making it workable. I've got a commission I'm excited to start working on, and now that the shop is slowing down for the winter, it's time!

Buying Artwork from Local Artists

What do you hang on your walls? I've got family photos of course, but I've also hung some artwork I've picked up over the years. I like to find unique things made by local people in my town or places I visit.

I saw this quilt at a local art gallery and frame shop years ago, and fell in love with it. My family bought it for me for my birthday that year. It's by local artist joanE Lipinski. I think when you find a piece that you love, you can buy it with the confidence that it will bring you years of enjoyment, because it speaks to you. You can see on my mantle, I also have some of my kids' artwork.

This carving was made by Gina Gaudesi, an artist I found on Flickr. That's a wonderful place to see artwork from people all over the world. Gina's photostream is here.  Her Etsy shop is here.  I hang old maps as artwork too, and you can see one peeking out in the background of this photo. I find them at antique shops and sometimes even at garage sales!

I bought these pottery pieces at Chartreuse Art Co-op in St.Joseph, Michigan. The top pieces are by Margaret Hogeboom. If I remember correctly, the fish is by Christina Root. Art co-ops are great places to find the work of local artists.  We have a nice one here in downtown Pontiac on Madison Street.

Art fairs are also a good place to see the work of local artists. The big cities have them of course (and I like browsing those too), but plenty of smaller cities have wonderful festivals. Sugar Creek Arts Festival in Normal is a good one, and Krasl Art on the Bluff is another fun one where you can look at art all day, with beautiful Lake Michigan always in view. I've always wanted to go to ArtPrize in Grand Rapids, Michigan, but it's almost over again this year, so maybe I'll make it next year!

Route 66 Wristlets

 While I have my sewing machine out, I decided to make some wristlets out of Route 66 fabric. I've got several different prints, and tonight I started with this fun blue one. This fabric features the vintage signs I love. I boxed the bottom of these, for a little different shape.

The lining is cute. It has little Route 66 shields and also an occasional heart that says "I love Lucy." Sweet!

Sewing Wristlets

I made some bags for Colleen to give to her bride's maids. You can see those here. One of those bride's maids asked me to make some for her bride's maids as well. She is having a country wedding with lots of lace and burlap and sunflowers.

 I used some vintage lace, and some cute dotted  material to line the bags and make the handles.

Altogether I made 10 of them. Now another bride saw these and wants some for her wedding party, so I'll be making up some more!

Decorating the Porch

 Here's the porch when I moved in. I mostly just cleaned it up with a hose and broom, and then proceeded to make it home. I took off the triple track storm frame and found this, so I scraped and painted a bit of trim:

Then I moved some furniture in and hung some lights. The vintage glider was a birthday present from my parents years ago. My mom saw it at a garage sale and knew I'd love it. Someday I'd like to take it to the body shop and have it painted red. The rug is from Pier One. It's supposed to be for outdoors, and the instructions say to hose it off when it needs more than vacuuming.  That will be so much easier than having it cleaned, so I hope it lives up to those instructions! I love all the colors in it.

 Before cleaning and moving in and...

 after...that hammock is my favorite place to read. It's going to be getting cold soon, and I'll miss my porch.

Remember those little plants in an earlier post? They went haywire and got nice and big!

Bags for the Bride's Maids

 Here are some more pics of the bags I made last week. These were part of the gifts for the bride's maids. Colleen gave them each an emergency kit for the wedding day...full of things like bobby pins, deodorant, mints, wipes to get out stains, etc. She also gave them each a a zippered bag containing their jewelry to wear for the wedding.

 Colleen picked out the fabric for each bag based on her friend's personality.

It was fun picking out the material and linings and zippers at the fabric store...thinking about each girl and what she likes. This one is for Tessa...our sunflowery, down to earth, country girl.

Again, the tutorial for these bags is at So Chick. I was very happy with how they turned out and the girls really seemed to like them.

More Boxie Bags

I made some of these bags a while ago, and last night I made a bunch more. Here are 3 of them.  I'll post some more pics later. These are made from the So Chick tutorial...it's a very well written and easy to follow tutorial. I sure am glad other people figure this stuff out, because without instructions, I would have never been able to make this simple box!

Spring!

It's been such a wet spring that I'm way behind in spring chores compared to what is usually done this time of year. Oh well, I just keep plugging away at it!

 This landscaping around the side and front of the house is nice! I'm sure the section to the left of the door used to have a few bushes, but the one that is left is half dead.

  I need to replace it, but haven't decided what kind of shrub to use yet. It's the south side of the house, but always pretty shady due to the trees.

 I put the birdbath there, and planted the hostas around it.

 This is right outside my art room window, and I haven't checked yet, but I'm hoping I can see it from the window.

It's a start!

A twisty kind of grass, a trailing coleus and an upright coleus, impatiens, and vinca vine.

The bushes at the end of the porch are dwarf lilacs, and boy do they smell great!

Resume blogging...

I have decided to resume blogging at this web address. I have recently had many of my travel posts picked up by Dwellable, so in the future I want my travel posts to appear in this blog. In order to have time to blog, and make things less complicated, I am going to move some posts and go back to having just this blog and my art blog Draw Daily.

This cartoonist must be spying on me!