Life in Color Photo – Page 133 – Celebrating crafts, kids and the everyday through photographs.

Swap Update

There is just under 2 WEEKS to send out swap gifties. Make sure you are going through your stash, reading your buddies blog and communicating with them. If they don’t have a blog, or update infrequently, or you just want some more information, ask them. I know some people have given away their identity (oops) or not yet contacted their buddies. Please remember that you wanted to be in the swap and you want fun stuff. It works full circle so this weekend watch out for garage sales, go to a thrift store or rummage through your stash. Take another look at your stuff, I’m sure you have treasures in there. Please don’t hesitate to email me with questions or help. Let’s make this swap the best ever!

If you need any reminders of dates or anything, all the info can be found here.

And email me when you ship or receive the box, because there is a prize involved!!!

Baby things

Remember when I went to that crop on Friday, here is the project I made:

It’s a cute little rainbow baby book for Violet (Michele and Brett’s baby). I figured her parents could put pictures in it or leave it blank. It’s hard to tell by the pictures but this is one of those Maya Road books with chipboard pages, so it’s really thick and sturdy. I think it’s cool that our names are both colors and I’m so excited to meet her tomorrow. Baby holding here I come!

I don’t think I showed a picture of this little sweater I finished for her either. The green is hand spun silk/mohair blend. Ohhh heaven. Unfortunately I didn’t have enough and I don’t have any more fiber either, so I did cascade 220 held together with Rowen Kidsilk Haze. It worked out okay. Lesson learned I guess. I really want to spin some more but I need fiber, and I think I might just wait until I move and set everything up craft wise (man I can not wait). Things are going well over at the house. Today is a kind of house free day for me. They are still sanding the floors, and will be working on them through the weekend. After yesterday’s craziness and getting out the newsletter and everything I slept in until 10:30 this morning, it felt so great. I’m going to put up some new product on the store tonight and hopefully have some relaxing time.

Paid vs. Free – and a Picture Heavy Basement Preview

Let’s see… So having the floors sanded was like the best idea ever, thank you Brent.

Does that lighten the place up or what?!!? Man I am loving it. So professional work, ya it pretty much rocks. But I watch a lot of HGTV so I should be good right? I mean I come from a long line of builders and that should make me tough, but I think this house it kicking my ass.

They better come back and get that. Not that I’m holding my breath or anything, but a girl can hope. So tomorrow the dumpster goes away I was going to have it come back because I couldn’t fit everything, but at 262.00 a dump I’m going to call it good. It cost 251.50 just for delivery, 4 days rental, and final dump. I’m telling you these numbers not to scare you off though, I do think getting one was the right idea. I just think people shouldn’t go around dumping their crap in other people’s containers, it’s not free man! Brent’s going to help me load the rest in a truck this weekend. I did get talked into keeping the deck just for this summer, even though this is the view from one of my basement windows:

I know decks are nice, blah, blah, blah, but I want a patio and I want people to stop telling me I should love the deck. It does not fit the house at all, I do not like it. But I will keep it for this summer so the helpers can sit back there and drink beer on it (seriously that was the reason I was given today that finally changed my mind). So speaking of the basement I’m going to give you a before/during picture. If you look back on the

The only thing staying from this view is the sink. I am going to have a new dryer vent cut into the concrete wall (luckily my dad knows a guy with a diamond blade circular saw), and the washer and dryer will sit to the right of the sink. All the windows in the basement are going to be replaced. I am going to be ultra anal about the the whole downstairs because this is going to be the Ribbon Jar set up. Other to do on this wall it chip up the concrete slab (we think it was for the old water heater, not sure though), and re-route a little plumbing. Now turning right around and looking through the sink we have this montage:

It’s all wonky because of the photomerge, but you get the idea. To the right of the stairs is going to be my only personal area down here (besides laundry). It’s going to be a storage area, I just have to, you know, jack the house up and replace a termite eaten beam. Dad says he can do this all himself, should be interesting. I have an inspection Monday to see if the little bugs are alive. I hope they are long dead and that a whole stair replacement won’t be necessary, not that the stairs are anything special… That window on the right is the one under the deck. The left side wall doesn’t have any windows, that’s the front of my house.

You may notice that there is a pipe (annoyingly) running down the wall and over to the whole pipe/sink sector of the basement. This has got to go, as it stops the windows from opening fully. And as my mom keeps saying, I need egress people, egress! I am having new electrical ran down the beams in the middle, and some on the side (not sure how that’s going to work). Then I’ll frame in the beams and fix all those wholes in the ceiling. If you walk straight forward and turn ninety degrees right you get this view:

Not sure exactly what is going on over there, against that far wall. Probably back up jar storage. I think I’ll have a huge packing table in the middle of the room. Obviously I’ve decided against putting a renter down here, the bathroom was going to be too expensive and I think I can easily use all the space for Ribbon Jar. Before any ribbon even gets to think about going down here it’s going to have to be so clean you could lick every inch of it. I’m getting dehumidifiers (even though it’s really dry right now), and painting the walls with a special paint. The floors are going to be painted as well. And all of this nastiness taken care of:

A few cool finds in the basement:

The french doors that go from my dining room to the backyard. They were replaced by a slider, but thankfully someone had the presence to keep them. I hope to put these in next summer when I rip out the deck and do a nice country garden theme back there. And this weird thing:

It looks like a paper plate, but it’s metal. And it has this country scene painted on it. I took the loop tool to the picture in Aperture and it’s really pretty neat. I should look to see what’s back there, but truth be told I’m a little scared.

So that post was probably way too picture heavy. I’m on cable internet here so it loads okay for me. Is it a problem for a lot of people when I do this, or do you like seeing all the pictures. Let me know pretty please.

Two Part Post: Part 2

In between all of that I’ve been working on my house. And when I say work I mean physical labor. It think if you look back through the blog you may notice that I don’t mention labor that often, or working out either. Because I don’t really enjoy it and I don’t do it that often. Well I’m doing it now!

This cute and fun picture of Anna and her mom, Jolie doesn’t do a good job of showing how big this ten yard dumpster is, but I want you to know that I filled this thing up BY MY SELF. This is something I thought was beyond my physical limit. While I was doing that my mom painted:

So here’s a before refinishing shot. I would like to add that the trim and windows (which we have to idea how we are to paint) are going to be a nice picket fence white instead of the nasty cream you see here. So the colors will look better, have no fear. I took a shower when I got home at ten tonight and found so many scraps and bruises on me. Half I don’t even remember getting. Lots more work to do still, but the fun stuff is going to start soon – the stripping, oh ya.

Two Part Post: Part 1

It’s been a busy couple of days, and I haven’t had time to blog because we’ve had visitors, so when I wasn’t working on the house or doing Ribbon Jar stuff I was hanging out with them. The visitors were Maria and Soren from Denmark. Maria is the sister of an exchange student we had my senior year of high school, Susanne. She was placed in the same grade as me and we spent the whole fall together. She had joined cross country as an after school activity and one day complained that her knee was hurting her. My mom took her to get it check out and when the x-rays came back it wasn’t what we expected at all, it was a tumor. Her dad was here with in a week and they flew back to Denmark together to get treatment. Luckily it was successful and the that summer after graduation Brent, mom and I went to visit her and her family. We had a great time and loved all her relations. Fast forward four years and Susanne came back to the states and visited with us again. Bj and I took her and her boyfriend, Anders to Crater Lake and it was a trip I’ll never forget. Talking about high school, and how we’d changed, and what good things we all wanted to do. Plenty of goofing off and laughing around the campfire.

This Saturday when Maria pulled up in the driveway I couldn’t believe it. She has the same voice, and ease of character as Susanne. I loved talking to her and Soren they were just wonderful. That’s one of the reasons I wore myself so thin, you just never know when you are going to see someone again or what’s going to happen. We took them everywhere Susanne went, to our high school, her favorite restaurants (she got her family hooked on Mexican food when she got home so we had to take them to the place that started it all), and all around town. Sunday they went on a hike with Mom, Bill and Brent while I worked on the house and then that night we went to the drive in with Kathy. We were up way to late, and we can’t seem to piece together what happened in Pirates of the Caribbean, but it was the best night. I think the best thing was the three of us riding back to Kathy’s on the back roads laying down in the bed of the pick up truck covered in blankets just looking up at the stars as we drove along at three in the morning. It was magical.

This morning they drove off for Crater Lake and will continue on re-tracing Susanne and Anders trip south. I wish them all the best and hope to see them again soon. Oh, and the scrapbook? Well Maria asked to see my road trip book and while looking through it she said to Soren that I did beautiful books like this all the time, like the one I had sent of Susanne. I asked her about it and she said they loved it, that Denmark has nothing like our scrapbooking at all. I told her just wait, it will come.

I like wide open spaces

Okay so I still need to take pictures of the little book, but I’ll do that soon. For now lets get back to the house. The house with one gigantic room in the basement. You heard that right, the walls came down!

I didn’t get too many action shots because I was upstairs working with my mom. But Bill was worth his weight in gold yesterday. I totally had a freak out crying moment in the morning, like what did I get myself into thing, and he totally came through. Took down the first wall by himself (the one separating the storage rooms that had termite damage) and then Bj showed up and they took out more walls, then Matt was sweet enough to drive down from Portland and help tear down the big wall in the middle. Matt said he’d always wanted to sledge hammer a wall – happy to oblige Matt! Then these wonderful guys pulled back a window and got all the wood up onto the drive way, it will be a ton easier to transfer into the dumpster that comes tomorrow this way. In the process Matt got a nail through his shoe, and into his foot. Ew. Matt go get your tetanus shot!!! Meanwhile mom painted the ceilings in the part of the house that is not coved (bedrooms, and hallway) and I took every piece of hard ware out of the walls, doors, cupboards, all of it. The floors start to get worked on Wednesday and they take 3-5 days, so I want to try and get a lot of things done before hand, like wall patching, so that we can paint right after they are done.

Last night we all went back tired and hungry and jumped straight in the pool
me to Matt: "come over for a swim after we’re done working"
Matt: "I brought my suit, I’m not an idiot."
hehehe. After swimming Susanne’s sister Maria and Maria’s boyfriend Soren (should be a slash through the O, but don’t know how to do that on here) got to our house. Susanne was my exchange student in high school. I’ll go more into it later, but anyway we had a blast hanging out, playing guitar hero ("We don’t have anything like this in Denmark!"), and chatting the night away. Tonight we’re off to a drive in, should be fun!

OMG people, OMG

Dude, I pulled up the vent and found this, like what the hell?!?!?! Not even duct work, just like arachnophobia. EW, ew, ew. Cleaning day one, slow and scary. But I did get some better news, like the freaking rockin floors I apparently own. I had told the man on the phone whom I called about an estimate that I thought the floors were fir. He said that sounded right for a house built in the 40s. When he got there he looked at the floor and then said, "This is NOT fir. Do you know what kind of wood you have here?" I was like, "Um, Oak?" He said I had Pecan! How cool is that, it’s really rare I guess and it finishes up beautifully. I am so so excited about this. The two bedrooms are red oak, and I have one walk in closet that is fir. But I also learned that I can’t paint before the floors get refinished, so that will have to wait. I have plenty more to do anyway.

So after cleaning I ran home, showered and grabbed a bunch of stuff to take to the Scrapyard for the crop that Angela was in charge of tonight. I had invited Sarah there to meet her in person. It was so fun, just what I needed. Sarah was great, and I loved her stuff (2peas gallery here). I made the cutest little book for Violet, I’ll try to take pics before I leave again for the house early tomorrow morning.

It’s Official

I’m a home owner! I signed all the paper work this morning, and actually just got the keys. I wasn’t supposed to until tomorrow, but I met the seller at the house because one of the windows had fallen open and I didn’t want it left like that all night, we fixed it and he gave me the keys! I start cleaning tomorrow! And painting this weekend (should be all done by then I hope), then the floors at the end of next week. What do you think of my scheme? I’ll let you guess which goes where:

And in more exciting news, Michele had her little baby girl last night right at midnight! And she named her Violet. Ahhh! That was one of the names on my list, but I said she could have it, hehehe. I get to go meet her next week and I am so so so so so excited!

Who we were

I pretty much have Michele on the brain (no baby yet!!!) and have been entertaining her by sending emails about this and that. They always end with, "so have you had that baby yet?" Anyway last night I was thinking of something funny to write her and I came up with some Deep Thoughts by Jack Handy (from SNL years ago). I sent her a few:

Maybe in order to understand mankind, we have to look at the word itself: "Mankind". Basically, it’s made up of two separate words – "mank" and "ind". What do these words mean ? It’s a mystery, and that’s why so is mankind.

Most people don’t realize that large pieces of coral, which have been painted brown and attached to the skull by common wood screws, can make a child look like a deer.

Sometimes, when I drive across the desert in the middle of the night, with no other cars around, I start imagining: What if there were no civilization out there? No cities, no factories, no people? And then I think: No people or factories? Then who made this car? And this highway? And I get so confused I have to stick my head out the window into the driving rain—unless there’s lightning, because I could get struck on the head by a bolt.

She found these "so &^*(^%%)) funny" and not just because they are, but because we had done a project at Oregon State involving Deep Thoughts in the quad one year. A lot of the artists we went to school with were very moody and wanting to make all these statements. And of course we wanted to make statements too, but in a not so obvious way. Here was our project:

I called it Penis Envy. The assignment was a sort of mini instillation, using only our studio spaces (upper level art students have their own spaces at Oregon State so things can remain set up). Michele and I were fastidious about detail, her piece is on the right. At the very beginning of the term we repainted the entire space stark white. And we only had this desk in there. I designed this piece around that desk, made the skirt, found the shoes (by sheer luck at the local Goodwill), and carefully selected the cucumbers. I don’t need to explain this piece, you can take from it what you will.

I’ve realized that my car won’t fit in my miniature garage and have decided to make it into a "smelly studio" where I can have oil paint and pastels and all sorts of horrible messy things out. I hope that this combined with Michele and I hanging out a lot more this will help me get back in touch with the artist with in. People tell me I’m "so crafty" or "really creative" but to me it means a bit more to do a piece of art that, maybe only one person gets, but they get it so deeply that there is this good thing put out into the universe. This understanding, a connection.

Speaking of connections, go check out the old letters Alicia found over at Posie Gets Cozy and summarized. Oh! She just posted the second group, gotta go read.

and one more deep thought:

I hope life isn’t a big joke, because I don’t get it.

It’s me… The Baby Stealer.

I admit it. When I see a little baby I want to hold it so so so so so so bad. Maybe my mom can shed a little light on when this started happening, but I remember feeling this way as far back as my memories go.

Today was my cousin Jenny’s baby shower. I was totally prepared, bringing of course mini hand knits and my camera. But lo, when I got there thing I hadn’t expected, someone had brought a baby! The thing was it was sleeping all cute in its little car seat thingie, so I didn’t ask to hold it right away, but I kept my eye on the baby – so cute! As soon as it started stirring I went over to it and told it just how cute I thought it was, "you’re so cute, yes you are, you’re just the cutest little thing, you have the cutest little nose." It’s like I have some kind of baby talking disease, I don’t even want to do it, but I do it no matter what. Cute babies they have this unnatural power over me. Will this go away when I have my own children? I don’t know, one can only hope. Anyway I asked to hold it, but the mom was just getting up to leave, ack! NOOOOOO! Why don’t you just dangle candy in front of my face and then feed me beets?!?!?! I want to hold the baby, wah wah wah. It wouldn’t be so horrible if Michele would have her baby already (she was due Friday) and I could hold that one. So besides that disappointment we had lots of fun. Jenny liked the sweater.

It was one of the only non-pink things, I was very proud. My thinking was green goes great with pink and purple, oh and also that I’m on a budget and this was left over yarn from
Baby’s first ribbon, now is that cute or what?