Boo!

Bench

 A friend of mine was throwing this out... NOT.

A little paint works wonders.

Sweatshirt Turned Purse

This was an OSU sweatshirt.  Cut cut, snip snip. Wala! a purse! It turned out great.  I had a hard time finding the red leather straps.  I had to be patient, I went to 5 surrounding Goodwills hoping to find a red purse.  3 weeks until one popped up. This one is for sale.

Grab your favorite teams sweatshirt, leave a post. High School, College, Pro, I can do them all!

Vintage Tidbit Tuesday: Start a Health Program Today!

Your body expresses your very YOU!  What you yourself do with it shows the beauty, the development, the grace...and pose...and mannerisms you have acquired through the years.

Your personality adds the necessary polish in gaining a sparkling and popular you...but without excellent health...it is like a dollar bill torn in half: One half is worthless without the other half.

This temple of your spirit...your body...does require fresh air, sunshine, nutritious food and water...and body-building exercise.

If you study this wonderful mechanism...your body...and realize that you will depend upon it functioning properly over your entire lifetime of work and play...then you will also realize how important good health can be, too!

Start out, today, and plan a program of daily exercise.  Take a few minutes out of every day...for once you get into the swing of things it will never be missed.

If you sit for a long, lengthy period...learn to take the kinks out every so often by getting up and walking...and s-t-r-e-t-c-h-i-n-g.  If you're on your feet for long periods, give them a break.  Exercise doesn't stop after a morning's workout...it continues throughout every waking moment.

Balance your exercise so that it is just right for you...not too strenuous...and not too light.  Never try to overdo things...or you will be doing yourself more harm than good.

If you follow good clean habits of exercise, eating, work and play activity...with a good balance of relaxing and sleeping...you will keep yourself in top health.  A feeling of vigor, youthfulness, alertness and pose is certain to follow.

Breast Cancer Awareness is Year Round

This is a quilt that I made to raise money for Breast Cancer Research.

Susan G. Komen

for the Cure

It will be traveling around for a year and displayed at different organizations, you can have a chance to win this by purchasing a raffle ticket.  If you would like to help, please leave a comment and we will make sure you get a ticket. Or if you are interested in having it displayed at your Church or other organization and sell tickets I will be happy to send it your way.

Here are some pictures of the quilt in the making

Once all the squares are sewn together, you use a template to cut them up to get the pinwheel effect.

The binding and quilting aren't on yet

Antique Sewing Cabinet Drawers

I just love old sewing machine cabinets and especially the ornate old drawers that adorned them.  I have a small display in my sewing room of some drawers I took off of an old White Sewing Machine Cabinet.  I have my mother's antique child's sewing machine along with the box of accessories from the White Sewing Machine and the Ornate Wood Name Plate from the front of the cabinet.  Other than saving these pieces and the base the cabinet was in poor shape.  I also seem to like the "white" items because that was my Great Grandmother's maiden name.  Still have to make something with the old iron base, but we'll save that for another time.

Here is just a little sampling of the beautiful drawers

that used to grace the sewing machine cabinets of yesteryear.

They are beautiful any way you look at them.

And so many ways you could use them in your home.
Just something I love that I thought I would share.

Hootie Hoots!

The 2 little Hoots are about 2" tall. Fun, quick, and easy!!
Here's the how to linkhttp://efemera-ink.blogspot.com/2010/06/wise.html

The Gift of an Armoire

I was looking around at what is now going to be my sewing room, but was previously our den, and was feeling very fortunate.  It used to be decorated in a golfing theme for my husband, but he never spent anytime in the room.  It was also our catch all room, if we didn't have a place for something or I wasn't ready to take it to Goodwill it ended up in the den.  But then one day I got a phone call...............

My Uncle, who is also my Godfather, called me with "an offer I couldn't refuse!"  He had an antique armoire that his great grandfather had built and no one in his family wanted to have it.  Well naturally I was thrilled, (unlike my husband who doesn't understand why I can't say no, because in his opinion we didn't need it).  I may not have needed it, but I certainly wanted it!  Mabel and I can't say no to anything that is offered to us.

It is huge.  4' Wide x 7' High.  Nice deep drawer on the bottom and lots of storage space on the inside.  I don't have it organized inside too much, just putting stuff in there to get it out of the way for now.  Check out the neat peg hangers inside.

There are two of them and they swing out with pegs on the back side of the arm also.
Not too sure on how old it is but it has to be over 100 years.

Needless to say since my husband didn't want me to get it anyways, I didn't make him go with me to get it.  Luckily it was only about an hour from where I live so I headed off with a van to get my new treasure.  We had to carry it down from the second floor so we made a sling out of a tarp and carried it down that way.  It was sooooo heavy!  Thanks goes out to my brother and two cousins who went with me to help get it.  It is just beautiful.  The whole time I was so thankful that my husband wasn't with us lecturing me on why we didn't need this big piece of furniture that we had no place to go with.

Look at the detail on the top of the piece, that's my favorite. All I had to do was put on a new skeleton key lock which I found online at http://www.kennedyhardware.com/.  I've got something I will treasure forever.  Can't wait to have my Aunt and Uncle over to see my new sewing room.  My Aunt is a seamstress too so she will appreciate it.

Just wanted to share what started the whole "creating a sewing room" for me!  Yeah Me!

Halloween Mantle!

I was too excited to find out about Home Stories A 2 Z Halloween Mantle Linky Party that I just had to participate.  Below is a photo of my family room fireplace in it's best Halloween Attire.

I love the colors of fall and Halloween so they work very well in my family room.  When we bought the house the fireplace was only a mantle, we added the beadboard and trim to make it look complete.

As you can tell we are big fans of the
Headless Horseman and Sleepy Hollow.

Signs says on the top:

"Where You Can Rest in Peace!"

Sleepy Hollow Bed & Breakfast

The box is a Headless Horseman miniature shadow box that my sister won at a dollhouse/miniature show.  Naturally since she knows we love the Headless Horseman she gave it to us.  How nice was that!

The tree with the owls is an old Hallmark Item.  When you push his hand he plays the Adams Family Theme song and the owls go up and down and his eyes glow.  Too Cute! 

Next to the fireplace is our TV Cabinet.  The Headless Horseman theme is continued on top of there too.

 

Here it is naturally lit with the orange bulb I have hidden behind it.

So there you have my Halloween Mantle.  I hope you enjoyed your visit and a peak inside my home.  If you wonder how we got so hooked on the Headless Horseman we would go to the Ohio Village when my kids were younger for the All Hallow's Eve celebration which concluded with a storytelling of the Legend of Sleepy Hollow and an appearance by the Headless Horseman himself.  If you've never been there it's worth the trip.  Great Family Fun.  This is the same place that the Country Living Fair has been held the last few years in Columbus, Ohio.

So Happy Halloween Everyone!

A Real Sewing Room!

Now this is a sewing room in use. No where as neat as Ethel's, but then again I'm not afraid to cut up fabric. Now my shelf on the right came from Goodwill. It was a  headboard, cut the legs off and there you have it. And the one on the left is from a shelf that is suppose to go over the toilet. The bottom part of it is holding up the table on the left, that I dug out of the garbage.  Couldn't believe someone was throwing that perfectly good table away.

 Like MY mother used to say 
"Use it up, wear it out, make it do, do with out."
We were poor little Mexicans!!!

Ethel's Sewing Room

It seems like I have always known how to sew since I was a teenager.  Believe it or not I even won a Singer Sponsored Sewing Festival when I was about 14 or so.  I made a royal blue one-piece jogging suit, very stylish for its time!  All I remember is that it had a white rope waist drawstring and my mother made me wear a whistle around my neck to complete the ensemble.  She said afterwards it was the whistle that made the judges pick me as the winner (LOL).  I still have the whistle and the trophy I won, but unfortunately the jogging suit is no more.  It wouldn't fit now anyways.

My mother was an excellent seamstress and has made more for me in the past than I have sewn for myself.  But about 6 years ago Mabel signed us up for a quilting class.  I must admit I found it much more enjoyable than sewing clothing.  Little did I know that the paper piece quilt called the Quilted Village was a little more advanced than a beginner quilt class, but it was fun.  Did the quilt get finished you ask?  Well no it didn't nor did the other class we took either.  Mabel finished hers naturally and has gone on to complete numerous other quilts, but since I had smaller children I just never had the time.  Fast forward to present day 2011!  My son made the comment to me that it's a shame he'll have to show his children someday the quilt that grandma started but never finished.  That got me, so I'm slowly (very slowly) getting back into the quilting and I'm going to complete these quilts I have started and hopefully make more.  However, Mabel keeps getting me involved in so many different projects that I probably will never finish any of them!!

But first I felt I needed to have a space that I could sew other than the kitchen table.  So I've been spending my time turning our den into my den/sewing room.  I think I'm having more fun organizing the room and my sewing notions than I will have sewing!

So the first thing I want to share is the cabinet I got to organize my fat quarters in.

I picked up the cabinet at Michael's crafts and have spent all my time color coordinating my fabric stash and organizing the cubby holes.  The cabinet is a very nice quality and I was able to use a coupon to help bring down the cost.  So I was thrilled.

I don't know if I'll want to use any of my fabrics now,

because they look so cute on the shelf.

Found these cute jars at the Dollar Tree.  They fit perfectly on the shelf and I like that they are actual glass.  The jars at Michael's for the shelf were cute, but they were plastic.

So you can see I am on way to having a sewing nook.  I'll keep you posted as I organize some more.  Mabel laughs at me because I am more into the gadgets and notions and how they look in my room instead of actually using them to accomplish sewing anything!!  She knows me so well.

Vintage Tidbit Tuesday: Your Body is an Instrument!

Exercise, too, is no monopoly of the moderns.  Unfortunately too many moderns seem to have forgotten all about it.  Straining forward with head and shoulders in the struggle to live day by day...we forget to use our other muscles.

If you've been thinking appearance was just clothes, coiffures, or cosmetics...get that false notion out of your head right now.  Clothes and the others do help.  We're all for them...but your true beauty if more than clothes deep, more than skin deep.

No Stradivarius violin is as miraculously constructed as the human body...with its muscles and bones designed for useful function.

Feet with arches to support your weight.  Even your rib cage is like a cathedral arch, and the muscles of your chest and torso form a violin shape.

The most complex telephone or television communication center can't vie with the masterpiece of the human brain.  The finest camera cannot compete with the lens of the human eye.  The human body is a complete musical instrument!

Great Give-a-way and Quote of the Week

Check out the great give-a-way "Where Women Create" is having this week.  Click on this LINK for your chance to win.

And the quote of the week from them is priceless!

Vintage Tidbit Tuesday: Good Food. . .Tastes Good!

Good food means plenty of leafy greens, fruits, vegetables, butter, milk, eggs, proteins, and all the other essentials.  Unless you're on a special diet...you should be able to eat and enjoy almost any wholesome food.

Avoid crankiness about your food, and don't be a slave to taste.  Take yogurt, for instance.  Did you know it was good for you, but did you try it once and not like the taste?  Did you know there are at least twenty different ways of preparing it from salads, sauces, and fruit cups to pancakes and puddings?

The same holds for a basic food like eggs.  You can find a hundred recipes for them in one book...so it's hardly fair to say you don't like eggs.  How do you know you don't until you've tried some of these other recipes?  All this is by way of saying that getting the proper nourishment can be a very pleasant, even delightful process.  It's one of the real joys...of living!

Vintage Tidbit Tuesday: Good Health is Natural!

If you could be a picture on a wall in your favorite doctor's office for just twenty-four hours...you'd wake up to the fact that half the cases he has to treat could have been avoided by a simple health program.

Multiply what you'd see from one doctor's office by thousands...and what do you find?  Millions of people every year turning themselves into human guinea pigs when they were meant to be healthy specimens...then expecting the doctor to be some sort of wizard to cure what could have been so easily prevented in the first place!

You may have walked out on those basic health rules in fourth grade hygiene class.  If so, now's the time to tune right back in on them!

Were you expecting something spectacular like artificial light treatments or new drugs?  Those are usually methods of curing you...once you're down and out.  There are some good preventive modern helps, too.  You can buy a vaporizer from almost any hardware store which will purify the air in your home or office building...killing communicable germs.  Your doctor will recommend other helps.

But despite these modern aids, remember...good health is really a natural process.  You ask, "What about new foods like yogurt, or black molasses?"  Fine, but did you know that yogurt is as ancient as the hills?  Now you can buy it at the grocery store.  As for black molasses, boys and girls have been brought up on it for years and years.

Of course there may be new ways of canning foods quickly to preserve their freshness.  Food companies are working constantly to put out better and more nourishing products which are quick and easy to prepare.  Marketing methods bring you oranges and other fruits and foods from far parts of the world.  So in some respects you really are better off than your ancestors.

But the health program is still a must.  You can't substitute stale air for fresh...jitterbug nerves for relaxation and sleep...a gulped and scanty breakfast for a wholesome one, and expect to win out in good health...or anything else for that matter.

If you're really interested in nutrition...get books and magazines about it.. You will find it a fascinating study in itself.

Mirror

 The back side I forgot to take a before picture of the front.

Really bad gold color.

Left over paint from another project.  Perfect for a little girls, or your college girls room!!