Spring Break Project: Reading in the Sun

I haven't posted about this next week's project yet, and there's a good reason for it - we're going on vacation!  This week is spring break and Richard's parents are taking us along with Richard's brother Chris and his girlfriend Tia to Florida.

What a wonderful way to spend spring break - where the sun is shining and it's lovely and warm!  We'll be visiting Richard's grandparents and family but we're also going to Universal's Wizarding World of Harry Potter which I couldn't be more excited about!  I grew up with those books and I have enjoyed them throughly and I think the theme park will be quite fun.

I guess this is a round about way of saying that my only project this week will be reading, and I plan on getting a lot of reading done while we're in transit.  I've already finished two of the five books that Caitlin loaned to me, but I'm going to take a couple of my own books for the trip - I certainly don't want to lose borrowed books while on vacation.

The Office: Lighting Set-Up

Recently I've been working on making our office a better place to work.  The major cleaning and organizing was the first step and the second was to put together a lighting set up so I could do product photos under the window and walk a few feet to the desk and load them onto the computer to work on.  It's not perfect yet, I have another bar to hang up for better light placement, but I've gotten a few photos done and I'm happy I've finally got a permanent set-up and it's out of the way.

The entire set-up wasn't very costly either.  We already had the table, and the floor lamps were once in our living room so I can't really tally those in the cost.

- White sheet - from Ikea $2

- Four clamp lamps - from the hardware store $5 each, but one of my was scavenaged

- Four light bulbs - I use the GE indoor flood natural lights which are $5 each but promise to last a long time, plus you can often find coupons so I only paid $3 each.

Grand Total: $34

But not having to wait until I've got good light coming in the window is priceless, and it means I can get clear and crisp shots any time I need.  Here are some more photos of a Salt Box I picked up while out thrifting recently.

So much in just one week!

Well, this past week was certainly not conducive to projects even if we packed in quite a lot of other things.  Richard and I traveled up to Oshkosh to go on gallery walk last Saturday and spent most of the time talking with friends before going out to our old haunt for drinks afterwards.  It was just so wonderful to see so many friends, and really makes me miss that small town I used to live in.

Work was a little weird this week, the family I work for had a family emergency, so my schedule was a bit mucked up.  And to top it all off I seem to have "grown into" allergies again so my head has been stuffy for the past week as spring seems to have finally arrived.

I did manage to get down to the Milwaukee Art Museum for Free First Thursday and visited with Pam, one of my old university professors, who had brought a group of her current students.

We have some wonderful neighbors next door, Tom and Amy, who have become great friends.  Richard and Tom used to work together at Apple and in the span of a couple months we both happened to move into the same apartment complex, and it just so happened that the two empty units were right next door to one another.  It's been quite handy to have friends so close by, we take care of each others' pets and water the gardens.  Last week Tom's younger brother Brandon was visiting for spring break so I spent Friday hanging out with him and we bopped around to a few thrift stores to keep our day busy.

Today though, I have no work, and we spent Sunday doing laundry and all the spring cleaning so there's not much more to do around the house.  We even cleaned out the whole garden (all twelve square feet of it) and all my crocuses and iris have begun to bloom and even the tulips are peeking out!
After I talk to our building manager about checking the AC unit (one day of warm weather and the pipes in the basement are already sweating!) I'm going to spend the afternoon taking photos, which I suppose will be my project for this week.

Pillow Project Part 1 of 3

I promise I got my project done this week, really, I do!  It was just as time consuming as I thought it would be but I quickly got into a rhythm and I think the next couple should go just a little bit quicker.  But I also sorely underestimated how many buttons I would need so I may be on the hunt for a few more in the coming weeks.

Here is a vaguely decent iphone photo, because I've run out of time to take a better photo this week.  And we're off to Oshkosh today!  I'm so excited to see friends, and have great Thai food and go on Gallery Walk.

This coming week I want to sew up the "&" pillow and do the "R" monogram.

Week 5 Project

I've wanted to redo the throw pillows for our bed for a while now because, well, when I made the original ones I wasn't really sure what I was doing.  I could have chosen better fabric, and made my seems straighter and made cuter pillows.  So, using a video tutorial from The Crafty Gemini I'm going to make three new pillows that will hopefully look something like these...

I want to make monogram designs in buttons on each using the two bigger pillows for letters and the one smaller pillow for an ampersand.  The plan is for blue buttons on brown pillows to coordinate with our bedroom, so now the only decisions left to make are what font to use and whether to use our first initials, R & N, or our last initials, A & W.  I think I'm leaning more towards R & N since we've used the A&W theme before.

Because this project promises to be time consuming I'm taking it in steps and this week I'm tackling the first two steps.  First - pick out fabric and cut all pieces.  Second - sew the button monogram to one of the pillow fronts.

After some further research I found a tutorial for the button monograms at Adventures of one Crazy Lady.  I can't wait to get started!

Project 3 carries into Week 4

A little bit of last week's projects will carry over into next week...

- The Media Purge from last week continues: get rid of 5 things and take the sell box to Half Price Books

- Reading: read one of the books I borrowed from Caitlin - I'm through chapter 8 now, and I'm amending this goal to reading one chapter each night until I'm done.

- Crafty Goal: Add three rows (12 squares) to my blanket to complete the first pattern - see, even I got mixed up on this one because I managed to do 12 squares before I realized that three rows would be 18 squares, so I still have six more squares left to go.  I'm just excited to get this done so I can lay out the rest of the pattern and get cracking! 

This coming week is packed full of things to do, but I probably won't be working much this week as the family I work for have relatives visiting.  This will leave plenty of time for all these things... I hope.

Thursday is Festival of Nations at Richard's school, and we just finished prepping the dough for the spiral cookies we're going to bake.  Saturday is the Midwest Gaming Classic which we're attending with some of Richard's colleagues before we all go to the best Chinese restaurant for lunch and before I head off for a night of work.

One Project a Week: Project 3 comes in 3's

Yes, reading that book fell by the wayside last week, mainly because I was reading so much news.  Wisconsin certainly has plenty of news lately, and quite a bit of it relates directly to us.  Richard is now in his third year teaching and it seems every thing that happens puts that job further and further into jeopardy.

We went to the Capital yesterday to join in the protests, and even ran into Jeff and Jennie, so I'll post photos later.  I'll be honest - I'm having a hard time dealing with a lot of the chaos coming our way, so occasionally these projects may have to be put on the back burner.

- The Media Purge from last week continues: get rid of 5 things and take the sell box to Half Price Books
- Reading: read one of the books I borrowed from Caitlin
- Crafty Goal: Add three rows (12 squares) to my blanket to complete the first pattern

Hopefully I'll get all of these goals done early in the week so I have time to do many, many other things like go to work, scan and edit some photos, and maybe even go thrifting.  But for today?  We're cleaning the house.

Project 2: De-cluttered Media

1) Cancel daily paper and go back to Sunday only

2) Clear out 50 old magazines.  Recycle them, rip them apart, or sell them - just get them out of the house. 52 down, who knows how many more to go.
- Recycled: 45
- Box to sell: 7

3) Finish reading one of my borrowed books from Caitlin. 

4) Find five books and/or cds to sell.  My book and music collection is getting ridiculous.
- Box to sell: 5

I'm quite happy with the progress I made, especially being so busy and all over the place this week.  The one thing I didn't get to was reading the book, but I think three out of four isn't bad.

One Project a Week - Project 2: De-cluttered Media

Very simply put - we have a media overload in this house.  We are constantly reading books, magazines and newspapers, listening to music, and watching movies.  So this week's project comes in multiple parts but because this is another cleaning/organizing project I have a head start from last week.

1) Cancel daily paper and go back to Sunday only - done today!

2) Clear out 50 old magazines.  Recycle them, rip them apart, or sell them - just get them out of the house.

• Recycled: 11
• Box to sell: 3

3) Finish reading one of my borrowed books from Caitlin.

4) Find five books and/or cds to sell.  My book and music collection is getting ridiculous.

• Box to sell: 1

That's it for this week, and the creative projects start in week 3.

Project 1: Organize Office Complete

I've taken a tip from Theresa on how to keep myself accountable using my blog.  I'll make a post or two every Thursday about what I've completed and what project I plan for the next week.  So here are the pictures of a rather clean and organized office and I will post later tonight on what I have planned for next week's project.

Save for the one broken remnant of the bed that hasn't quite made it to the dumpster yet, and will have to wait until the parking lot is less icy, the office is done!

You can probably tell from the pictures that we're big Apple computer geeks, and have a certain affinity to outdated technology.  For those of you keeping count at home that's six computers and two typewriters in the office, and each one is perfectly functional.

There may be just two people in this house, but there are three desks in our office.  (And yes, that's one of my photo lamps just hanging off the shelf there) The dark wood one is our most recent acquisition and when we move into a house (one day) the secretary's desk will go in the living room and the large corner desk will make its own way to Goodwill, but for now we make good use of every piece of furniture in the room.

The two bookshelves were the first pieces of furniture that my parents owned when they started out together. There is a third shelf that my father recently sanded and stained that now sits in their den.

It may look a little chaotic on the shelves, but things are certainly easier to find than they used to be.  Oh, and that little pink traincase on the bottom shelf is the most recent addition to my suitcase collection, a gift from my dear friend Jennie.

One Project a Week - Project 1: Organized Office

I often pick certain dates to begin changes in my life or my routine.  I say I'll start at the beginning of next month, or the beginning of the year, or even on my birthday, and often these changes sputter to a stop for one reason or another.  This time, it starts today.

I have so many wonderful ideas for making things and so many projects in various states of completion.  So I'm challenging myself to finish one project a week for the rest of 2011.  My idea is to focus on one main project each week while perhaps working some on coming projects.

This week is a house project - the office.  The office has been in a state of upheaval for quite some time now.  We tried having an extra bed for guests to sleep in but it was rather hard to work around such a large piece of furniture that was usually used only two or three times a year.  So we moved the frame to storage and the bed to the dumpster (it's had a good long life) to free up that half of the room.  Even after rearranging and adding a new desk and a second bookshelf from the basement the room the room is much more open, airy and easier to breathe (and work) in.

The office is half way there, all that is left is to organize a few things and clean some more.  Wish me luck!

Be My Valentine

My Richard, he knows the way to my heart.  This past Valentine's day we kept things lo-key by venturing out for an early lunch the Sunday before.  We went to the Fox and Hound restaurant that we'd heard nothing but wonderful things about and had some amazing food.  He also gifted me with a brand new desk that we spent Sunday afternoon picking out and building.  I know I'm not the biggest fan of big box stores, but after venturing to so many office and furniture places we found the perfect piece at Walmart, yes, Walmart.  It's a Better Homes and Gardens desk with a large top, filing drawer and plenty of space.

I gave him a bag of goodies, including a tiny Marvin the Martian promo sculpture that I had found on my recent trip to Savannah, and a subscription to Netflix.  We kept things simple and lovely, which is the way I like my holidays.  And we had a nice moment of nostalgia while we were cleaning out the office and found some of the old Valentines I'd given him.

I know Valentine's Day is a week past, but I hope everyone had a lovely one.