slow progress in the kitchen

 I am still working on the kitchen,

painting slowly and painfully.

At least now the top is finished

and we even started putting stuff on the open shelves!

It is my grandmother's old silverware,

that I received after her passing fall 2011.

It is good to mix old pieces from France

and modern accent.

It is motivating me to keep working on this project,

I also managed to paint one little section on the bottom:

I am very limited on work space:

I paint on the dinning room table, so I paint just a few doors

and drawers at a time!

But I am loving what I see so far,

it is really coming together!

Now I need some nice weather to do some sanding outside,

I guess it will not be this week end,

we are supposed to get more snow!

Happy day!

Building another crate with my new toys

For Christmas and my B.day, I received a table saw, a compressor and a nail gun!

I am a lucky girl, I guess mon Cheri (and in laws) knows me well,

why bother with jewelry when you can give power tool?

(for the record, I also received some jewelry... 

but that is not what we are talking about today!)

Now I needed something to build to be able to play with my new toys,

bust since we do not have a garage, it is hard to use the table saw outside

in freezing temperature or warm rain!

So I decided on a project that would only use the compressor 

and nail gun (which would have been super useful while 

working on the kitchen!)

I made this crate to hold the puppy's toys

following this tutorial from Ana White.

I am growing tired of the many toys always under foot,

I also hope it will cut down on the amount of thieving she does.

May be she can steal stuff from her own crate instead of random things through the house!

One can always dream!

Happy Day!

link to The Shabby Creek Cottage

bedding for Kaya, the Christmas doll

Miss C. received Kaya for Christmas,

so I am working on making her feel welcome in our abode.

She has already a pair of plain moccasins,

a pair of fancy ones, and gloves.

Now she needs a cozy place to sleep.

Since we are not planning on purchasing many accessories,

Brick master and I worked on making her 

some bedding ourselves.

We took our inspiration from the AG bedding and set out to copy it.

We started with a place mat from World Market, the Asian section,

it seems close to the mat you can see in the picture.

Then Brick Master drew a pattern for the "animal skin"

to keep warm for the night.
We cut one from some fake fur (remnants from previous projects)

leaving the edges raw, fake fur does not ravel.
Since it does not cover the doll all the way,
we cut another one more rectangular shape out of a different fur.

With another scrap of ivory fake fur, I sewed a soft pillow.

While our bedding does not totally match AG's,

the cost is minimal, just $4 for the place mat.

Hopefully Kaya and Miss C. will enjoy it.

Another great addition is a fire,
after all the nights are really cold,
I followed this tutorial from Doll It Up.

Miss C. tried to sew a little stuffed animal for Kaya,
she used the deer pattern from BHG (the holiday edition)
but it was too hard, so I finished for her.
She did all the cutting and some of the sewing,
and while not perfect she and Nevada (Kaya's new name) are pleased with the result!

Happy sewing, well today may be just crafting!

slowly working on the kitchen

During the winter break, I was able to work on my kitchen update,

it is very slow, but I can share some progress...

See, there is progress!

OK, so it is obvious that there is still a set of doors to be painted,

(I work on the dinning room table so I ran out of space with all the other doors!)

but it still give a good idea how everything will turn out.

Here are some pictures of the process and a reminder from where I started:

And here is the makeover of the island:

no more station wagon!

It is coming along well, we even had time for something extra: lights!

  We installed them under the cabinets.

so about that Easter dateline?
Yes I can do it!

Happy day!

Bonne Annee

Happy New Year from our family to yours!

My mom made this embroidery for me,
snowman/woman in traditional Breton outfits,
I am originally from this French region.

Bonne Annee 2013