Sumer so far...Lots of things...

Man, time flies! July is almost gone already!

We went camping earlier this month. It was just a few days, but oh so nice to get away!

We did a little hiking (ahem, walking), 4-wheeling, lake-swimming, and plain ol' chilling.

 A bit of 4-wheeling.

Walkin'.

 Swimming. No one chose to swim with me. 

We also traveled to the east side of the state for a few events. Including my sisters twin babies getting blessed in church. They are so cute!!

I've worked on a couple projects lately as well...

I attempted my first dying job. It turned out great! I had a pink sweater that I wanted to be a yellow cardigan instead. So I got to work.

I first made it into a cardigan. Then bought some golden yellow Rit Dye, and soaked it in a cozy yellow bath.

Rinsing!

It looks orange here in the drying photo (crummy lighting), but really it is that nice mustard-y yellow seen in the former picture. I love how the color turned out! Sadly, I don't have a picture yet of me actually wearing it. 

I decided I need to have a dress form! The pre-made ones are something like 100 bucks. No thank you. I chose duct tape. Plus duct tape ones are actually made to ones own body shape. 

Let me tell you, I was really excited about making a dress form! My own personal sewing assistant!

I enlisted my husband to help with the taping. 

(Unfortunately, the photo uploader rotated my picture. How do I fix it??)

I  finally got it onto a stand! (Thank you Dad for making it for me!)

Here she is! It looks fabulous! I painted the stand a very light grey.

I think I will call her Alice.  Alice, welcome to the family. :)

She is already getting to work, what a great assistant!

As for a little update on my plants...  :)

My Plumie is doing wonderful! Cranking out lots of leaves!

If only it would flower this year. 

My orchids are doing about the same as usual. That mystery orchid that bloomed in February - it has dropped a couple more flowers. It's sad, but I noticed the other day it is also sending up a new leaf and root. At least it's still growing something.

The other one has yet to bloom at all for me, but it also is sending out leaves and roots (many roots).

That's about all for now!

Things as of late

Things have been going well:

I saw a picture of a really cute hedgehog pincushion (for sewing) on the internet recently and thought: why have I never thought of that?? I love hedgehogs!
So today I tried to make one. Here goes.

[The pins are the hedgie's spikes]  It didn't turn out perfect, it kind of looks like a mouse. But it's good enough, I know what it's supposed to be...

My plumie is still looking good and always improving.

It just opened up about 10 new leaves. Yay!

My orchid though, I am sad to say, has started to drop flowers. :(  They have lasted about 4 months though, I think that is great!

I think I will find myself buying more orchid colors in the future.

Here's some more plant stuff...

My plumie and orchid are doing quite well. I thought I would document it. :)
The plumie is still putting out leaves at a good pace...

It is over two feet across from leaf to leaf. And always putting up new leaves. I'm so glad its growing well!

And my "other" orchid that has not yet bloomed appears to be re-establishing itself in its new container. Over the last several months I've had to repot it a couple times. It was beginning to look a little rough.
But now - it is sending out several fresh new roots! That's encouraging.

Although that one on the right is going the wrong direction. Turn back!

 And two more on this side too. :)

I have had an Aloe plant years, and lately it has been looking sickly. I'm trying to devise a plan for saving that one now too. Hope it works, it'd be sad to lose it.

More baby goodies...

For more baby shower fun things, I wanted to make twin-themed onesies. Thanks to pinterest, I found a link to making iron-on stencils out of freezer paper for painting onto t-shirts and whatnot. Super easy, totally my kind of thing! I also found a different site recommending use of acrylic paint to do so (rather than fabric paint). I already had acrylic paint - perfect! Away I went! (That is once I was able to find some of the paper.)

It was late by the time I was able to work on the onesies, and tedious to cut out the stencil, so I only got a few done.  

Here they are!

I am thrilled with how they turned out! I can see many applications for this.

If I am a little more patient in the future they'll be even better.

This is what they look like once the paper is ironed on (plastic side down), and the paint applied. I stuck cardboard behind the area of fabric I was painting so no paint bled through to the back.  From there you just peel all the paper off once the paint is dry. Voila! 

Owl hats

My sister is expecting twins in the near future, and I think owl hats are really cute. So...why not make them owl hats!


They were pretty fun, I'd never made animal-themed hats before. I found a picture of one I liked and modelled mine after it.

So Lora, if you see this, these are indeed part of your gift this weekend. :)

Photo Projects...

So I've been working on hanging pictures lately. 

And working on it...

Working on it....

Finally, we got to hang some! We haven't gotten far, visually, but we feel like we've made progress. 

This is it so far.  (We had to work around the thermostat). We have more than this many frames again to go, so really we are not quite half way done.

And we hung our first canvas print! I recruited my dad to help me attach it to the frame. And he's the one with the staple gun. He helps a ton with my projects. I'm very grateful.

Here's what we ended up with. We took the photo at the Oregon coast. 

I think it looks great. It's definitely not perfect, but it turned out well.

All is Swell

Things are going great as far as my plants are concerned. :)

As of today this is what my Plumie and Orchid look like...

(sorry the photos are cruddy)

Six and a half leaves, and counting. And all five blossoms open. Yippee!

My latest project has been photos.

I like the idea of a wall-photo-collage, so I am rounding up pictures of from our various trips, hoarding frames to use, and working on the tedious task of 

selecting, organizing, editing, arranging, etc. 

I thought it would be pretty simple - yeah right. It seems like I've been working on it for a month. I just got to a point where I can actually print the photos. Trying to learn Photoshop at the same time made it a little more challenging.

Once I get this done, I can move on to all the other projects I have stacked up. 

I'd better get busy.