Spring is here....

Spring is finally making an appearance around here.
Even if in little bits.
We've had the windows open, and the peas are growing.
We had our first campfire of the season,
and we attended a spring piano recital. If you would like to see an extra bit of springy check out my niece in all of her St. Patricks day cuteness.

We have been living under a big germ cloud here. Hopefully it is finally passing. In between fevers and coughs and stuffy noses, I moved. Studio spaces that is.
It was a huge job. We had been talking about it for a long time, the basement was not working out. It is cold in the winter and I could not keep my eye on the kids when I was downstairs. The new space is smaller and took a lot of organization and purging of unnecessary stuff, but is really great. I have windows, and a door! I love it! When we moved into this house we planned to make the basement into a kid friendly living space. This move was the first on a very long list of to-dos. If you want to see a whole set of before and afters check them out here.

Finally

The floor is in! It looks great, and we can walk through the house again. The finish work is slow going. A lot slower since we were hit with the flu. I have lots more to share , but have to wait until the foggy head passes. Until then, be well....

I love our house. I love all of it's charm and it's potential.

But that being said... we are officially in do it yourself hell. It didn't start out that way.
It started out as a new kitchen floor, and has turned into a "money pit" like project. Two kitchen walls and a dining room wall have crumbled. I had planned to mosaic our downstairs bathroom and document it here, but have postponed that one. Everyone's sanity is more important, and at this point just getting the house back to where we started is going to be a huge project.
I hesitate to type it here, but I think we can see an end (at least to the floor part) in our not too distant future. And yes, I do know it is an old house and will never be "done".

Matt and I keep asking ourselves, why it's taking so long to get anything done. Then someone yells from upstairs and we find them stuck in a laundry basket, and we are reminded.
I'll hopefully be back with some progress pics soon.

Questions

When I do art/craft shows I get asked a lot of questions about my pieces.
The three most common are....
Q: How do you get the marbles to stay on the bowling balls?
A: I only work on a small part at a time, and usually have a bunch started at the same time.

Q: Don't I realize that marbles are valuable?
A: I do, but I use all kinds of different marbles. I get the majority of mine by digging through the bottom of the bins, so I'm guessing the ones I find aren't the valuable ones.

Q: How do you get your spoons so flat?
A: Matt flattens them for me on big machines at his shop back in Minnesota. When he left for this last trip I sent him with a ton of recently found thrifted spoons. I asked him to take a couple pictures of the process. He decided a video was better so you can see the engineering in action.......



He is coming home later today with a whole pile of flattened spoons for me. I'm hoping to have some new ones finished and listed in my etsy shop soon. Have a nice weekend everyone....

Last week's class at the DIY lounge was one of the best ones yet. Just check out the student art work.
For those of you who mentioned being interested in the house numbers class, stay tuned. I am in the process of revising the class to make it a one day weekend workshop. I will post the details here when they are finished. Until then you can always contact me directly or check the DIY lounge website for class details.

The boys and I took a road trip to the beach this weekend. We all needed to get out of the house, and the weather was perfect. We are in the middle of one of Matt's extra long trips, which is hard on everyone. I've let things go and try to remind myself how I can't get everything done that I want to while being the only parent home.

However, this morning was one of those mornings that I was so glad to be able to drop everything. I took the boys to school where they had a movie screen set up to watch all of the events. The whole thing was bigger and more full of hope and promise, than anything I have witnessed in my entire life. I know the boys don't fully understand, but I think they will remember.
If you haven't read this before, here is a link to a letter our new president wrote to his daughters. Happy Inauguration Day to everyone!!!!