Tiny Cookie Treasures

 

I had so much fun making the tiny Gingerbread Houses that Julie at Tattered Threads and Willing Hands linked to on Not Martha’s Blog.   They are suppose to fit over a mug, but I must have used the wrong measurement because they don’t fit on mine.  They are sure cute though and I had a blast decorating them.  I used to like to do big gingerbread houses, but the cost of all the candy and then we through most of it away after the holiday stopped me from doing it years ago.  These were fairly easy and I already had the frosting made to frost sugar cookies so I  whipped up a batch of gingerbread and went to town creating a little town.  I didn’t have the candies I would have liked to have, but no matter I made do with what I did have and had a blast doing it.  Thanks Julie for the link and thanks Not Martha for the great idea!

  I didn’t stop there…I took another idea I saw on Martha Stewart the other day and put some of my cookies into a big glass jar I found at Target for all of $7.  The fun just keeps on happening and I could keep going, but really it is time to stop myself and get ready to feed the masses that are coming to visit Friday thru Sunday!

 

Have some fun this holiday season!

Ferne

A Finished Christmas Project

I managed to finish a project yesterday, love when that happens!  I actually had made 2 cookie plate crumb catchers for potential gifts then as I looked at my gate table and thought, “It needs a table runner.”  I came up with this idea and am quite please with the results.  I got the cookie plate crumb catcher pattern from Rosebud’s Cottage blog during the 2009 Cross County Quilt Designer's Blog Hop, and luckily I had made them both exactly the same.  It is so much easier to cut two projects out and sew them together at the same time than to do them one at a time.  The star pattern in the center I had printed out ions ago from the McCalls quilt pattern collection.  I have printed lots of these patterns and used them in my Dear Ferne quilt.  I think I actually have 2 of these started in my UFO closet.  If it keeps raining like it has been I should have lots of time to finish some of the projects in that closet, that is if I don’t start new ones.

* Why is it that after you post a picture on the internet you see something that should have been visible right in front of you.  Can you see the mistake in my my runner?  It is not big and really kind of looks intentional so I guess I should just call it that…an intentional mistake.

Today though I will tackle the last room of this house that needs to have wallpaper stripped and get textured and painted.  We already have bought all the light fixtures and towel racks so there is no excuse to wait any longer.  Besides the rainy weather is keeping us stuck inside.  Why is it that the last thing is the hardest to actually get done? 

Here is the guest bath that we finished a few weeks ago.  We are very pleased with the results.  We bought the paint solely based on the name, ‘Soft Fern’, and luckily we love it!  I want to use it in our bathroom, but it wouldn’t quite go with the bedroom color so I am using a beige color that we have used other places in the house it is called ‘Everlasting’ and we bought it for its name also.  We had good luck with our paint choices on this project.  We bought them all at a Benjamin Moore store and are quite happy with the way they cover and the lack of fumes was the best part.

The pictures above are from the kitchen.  We did the little area around the cupboards with a color called ‘Oregano Spice’ but the bigger wall we used the ‘Everlasting’ to avoid there being too much green.  A good choice I think.  The doorway in the picture above is where you walk from the kitchen to the hallway at the entry so we repeated the ‘Everlasting’ color there, too.  My camera flash makes a lot of glare on that picture, but it is a print from the Royal Hawaiin Hotel by John Kelly who designed menu covers for their restaurant.  It is a fisherman with his catch…the fish or the woman, maybe both!

Happy holidays!  Here’s to many finished projects in the New Year!

Ferne

Our Hummingbird Place

Not much time for crafting or fishing here these days though we do manage to fit in a little of both occasionally.  We have now painted the whole inside of the house except for the master bath.  It is suppose to rain this weekend so that will be a good time to tackle that room.  Yesterday however we tackled a few huge junipers that were in a bad location.  They we creating a block to the sidewalk that leads to the front door.  They didn’t come out without a struggle, but I think all the struggling was worthwhile.  We planted a little Korean fir tree that we bought from the nursery.  It will only get about 10 ft. tall and not very wide over a long period of time so it won’t be blocking the sidewalk any time soon, if ever.  The fun thing about doing projects like this at this time of year is that you just build a fire and burn the mess.  This juniper was going into the fire right from the ground and the rate that it burned was a little scary.  Had there been a fire that close to the house the house would have burned in a flash.  So we are relieved to have it gone and to be able to see the path to the front door.

                              Before            and          After

The whole hedge burned in just about an hour or less.  You can even see through the breezeway because we removed the lattice that was blocking the view.  It’s been nice having it all open to the beautiful views we have here.  There are still lots of projects coming, but nothing urgent at the moment.

I was able to spend the rest of the afternoon working on setting up the little green house.  It is a funny looking little igloo thing, but it seems to be staying quite warm inside.  I had to chase out a few black widow spiders and I can see that a gopher has discovered his way in, but I am making it a useful place again.  It seems that there must be an issue with getting water into the green house because there is broken pipe going to a sink, but that will take a little more instigating.  There is a working faucet really near by so for now that will do the job.  Soon we will be starting little seedlings and have a real vegetable garden near by, that will be the day this house really feels like “home” to us.  Michael got his beebee gun yesterday and some gopher traps so let the gopher hunting season begin!  We are tackling all the obstacles one at a time and are well on our way to growing a big beautiful garden here at our Hummingbird place.  Now I believe some well deserved sewing and fishing time are in order…more on that soon!

I am getting the urge to get down the Christmas decorations and have been accumulating some cookie recipes and looking forward to all our kids coming to visit.  Michael wants to get out his train set and run it through the house.  It’s beginning to feel like Christmas.  Now all we need is snow!

Happy Holidays!

Ferne