Wednesday, January 30, 2013

On the Wall

Before I left South Africa I received my ‘birthday blocks’ from the Kwetterkwilters. I posted about it here.  I mentioned that I was most likely going to frame and hang one of the blocks in my new sewing space. Marina, made a block that was so moving, bright and beautiful, that I thought it deserved a frame of its own.  

   marinas-block

Its been up for a month or so. Things have changed a bit…. while I was out of the country. You used to be able to have a mat for a frame cut at the big box craft stores, but no longer. Now they take the measurements and send it out…. and then charge an arm and a leg to stick it in the frame… It took 2 weeks to get the mat back. I opted to have the mat cut, but I did the rest. Easy enough. I stitched the block to a mounting board and then put it in the frame behind the cut mat. It looks great.

Here it is hanging on the wall with a couple of other things…. You can just see a couple of postcards in the upper right corner.

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I am still waiting to finish the space. We got the ledge out. It was really pretty simple. I still need to paint the wall and have the bare floor taken care of. Hopefully by this weekend… so I can tackle making curtains for the sliding glass door. I have tried 3 different ‘ready made’ solutions and all of them were hideous! So I have resigned myself to making a curtain to hang. The door is over size… so off the shelf is not working!

Wednesday, January 9, 2013

Times Gone By

I’m back…. It is hard to believe that we have been back in the US for 4 months and in the house for about 2 1/2 months! Some days it seems like longer and when I think about it, like now I seems even longer.

I have been busy getting the rooms in some sort of order. It has been very difficult to do, when much of our furniture has been damaged… I mean how do you set up 2 twin beds, when only one set of bed rails made the move? One of the two sofas has a leg removed, the seat of a wicker chair has a hole in the middle, the list goes on. On the other hand we have a fence so the dogs can take of business just by asking and they love it. Even though it is small, its theirs.The patio, was poured last weekend, so now the dogs are not tracking in dirt/mud when the ground is wet. On the inside, the shades were delivered and installed the week after Thanksgiving as was the carpet….

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I like the look of the living room now and our neighbors can’t see everything we do. I still have a huge sliding glass door that is in need of something. I was actually thinking of making something…. but I am still thinking!!! In the meantime, a sheet is serving as a curtain.

The following pictures are of my sewing space!!! I finally have most of the stuff put away or at least sorted. The first picture, is the center area.

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The shelves are nice, but a bit too shallow. The table is great and very solid.

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The next space is where the redo work will be done. See that ledge, along the far wall with the ironing board on it? Its going to be torn out, so this nice neat space will be changing to a mess again very soon!!! Of course I will have another dilemma- there probably isn’t any carpet under the ledge, so I will have to decide what to do about it…. the carpet in the space is in good condition so replacing all of it is out of the question.

The rest of the space is an office space… is more like a hallway… but it looks cool with the French Doors!

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The two doors on either side are to a walk in closet (right) and a full bathroom (left). Over the doors I hung the postcards. There is very little wall space and until I know where the design

n wall will be I won’t be hanging too much more.

And lastly, I thought that I would have time to myself, now that the holidays and the use or loose vacation time has been used up…. but NO, the DH blew out his knee and is scheduled for surgery next week. So I will be busy…. taking and doing that which is needed until he is back on his feet.

Hope you all had a fabulous Christmas and the New Year has started on a bright note.

More Later-Beth