Brief bursts of creativity...

I've been feeling crafty lately.  What I haven't been feeling is rich.   So all my projects have to have a little more thought put into them since I don't want to spend any money.  My office chair was looking pretty...gross.

So here are the step-by-step instruction on how I made it look better.

1.  I unscrewed all the screws on the back and ripped it apart.
2.  I put new fabric on it.
3.  I put it back together. 

It took about 10 minutes.  I broke the black plastic that holds the cushions in a couple of places.  I think if I had hit it with a blow dryer, I might have been able to pry it off without cracking it.  I didn't do that.  It cracked.  I care little.

For it looks much better and I am happy.  Also the first picture I took of the chair is weird and I'm pretty sure my living room is haunted. 

Smiles from the farm,
Lisa

Strange Fruit...

My garden suffered terribly this summer from weed infestation, potato bugs and neglect.  However, my goat tree, without any tending from me,  is just flourishing.

I think this one is just about ripe. 

Smiles from the farm,
Lisa

Back to School!

Some of us are less enthused then others...

He actually had a very good day.  He was just very tired. 

Smiles from the farm,
Lisa

Summer blogging...

Yawn...is anyone out there? 

I'm looking forward to fall.  I know, I know, but there are SOOO many kids here and they all need to go places and I'm just ready to take advantage of the money I pay in property taxes and send the lot of them off to bother other people. 

I am working on a project that I'm not ready to share with anyone yet.  Don't you hate that?  I mean why mention it at all.  Well, the thing is, is that it's pretty big and if I say anything now, then the whole excitement will be gone and I'll quit and I don't want to do that...so soon I will tell you.  Other then that, this is what I've done this summer.

I made a skirt from an old curtain.  It is a skirtain.  Yes that's copyrighted, don't even think about stealing it.  Unless you say please, and then ok, go ahead.  I would have modeled it, but I don't feel like combing my hair. 

Then I made this cuff, because my bees all died last winter and I miss them.  (Sorry Kelly, I killed your bees)  I guess it was a pretty rough year for old Apis Mellifera (see how smart I am? or Google is...whatever) and even some professional beekeepers lost their entire colonies.  I'll order more this winter and try again next spring.  IN THE MEANTIME, here is my memorial for my darling Bea and also for the other Bea.

Did you know that you can print right on fabric?  I'd do a tutorial, but since I can't take the fabric away from you and sigh dramatically because you're obviously doing it wrong, I'm just not very good at them.  Pretty much all I did was take some thin muslin and glue it to a piece of card stock with one of the kid's glue sticks, smooth it down and run it through the printer.  I don't know if it will stand up to water, but it looks cool for now.  The bee is embroidered, the latin name is what I printed.  I should teach classes. 

Then I babysat my favorite basset hound, Ruby.  It was hard work. 

Haley tried out for the High School Football Cheerleading squad and Ruby helped her practice.  Well she helped her at the end of the practice, that counts you know.  Did I mention how hard it is to care for basset hounds?

Jake has tried to eat us.  Really.  He's turned into kind of a jerk. 



I castrated this goat.  Newsworthy?  Well he is about ten weeks old and has/had (will shortly no longer have) balls the size of a small planet...what?  Too much?  Sorry. 

The fun just never ends.  So, I'm gonna go work on my big secret project now and I sure do hope everyone is having a (big castrated goat) BALL this summer!  (Again, sorry)

Smiles from the farm,

Lisa

Organized!

I have a lot of sewing patterns.  Enough that they need their own place to be that isn't a cardboard box or plastic tote.  They need their own pretty little home. 

This dresser came from...wait for it...gasp...the auction.  I think I bought it for $17.00 along with a set of dining room chairs, drying racks, a 50's tin dollhouse and miscellaneous other treasures.  I tried to strip it, but it wasn't a great quality piece and looked pretty crappy afterwards. 

So I painted the drawers black and added some script to mimic vintage Singer sewing machine decoration.  The dresser didn't have any knobs, so I used old wooden spools. 

It worked out pretty well.  Except for the fact that I wasn't able to fit all the ding dong patterns into the four drawers. 

I need more storage...or less patterns. 

More storage, definitely more storage...

Smiles from the farm,
Lisa

That's What I Thought You Said...

"What are you doing?"

"Above the aroma of green that pervade's this waterway, I have captured the scent of the wild rose.  It's fragrance reminds me of you as does the stubborn fortitude as it clings to the rugged stream side--it's roots just tickling the gentle lapping waves.  The innocent beauty of silken petals protected by the sharpened thorns is but a token reminder of your strength and independance.  One would risk the wound of abundant spikes but for one small breath of the beauty within.  I would suffer the threat of mire to capture one fragile bloom to press against your palm, a testament of my love for you-the mother of my children, my best friend, indeed my wife. "

OR

"I cast my damn tackle into this christly prickle bush."



"It's a rugosa rose..."

"What?"

"A rugosa....oh never mind." 

"I got it!"

"---yay."

Smiles from the farm,

Lisa

Willows...

There's nothing . . .

absolutely nothing . . .

half so much worth doing

 as simply

messing around in boats.

Smiles from the farm,
Lisa

Appropriate dinner conversation...

Ok, this is how it all started.

We go through two packages of baby wipes a week during the school year.  The school uses them to wipe hands and wheelchair trays and, of course, butts.  When school is out we only go through one, but Husband (who does all grocery shopping) kept buying two.  This in turn created an abundance of baby wipes.  So after unloading the groceries and stacking two more packages onto the already abundant pile I turned to husband and said, "Are we stocking up for the Poopocolaypse?"  Of course this brought much mirth and merriment to...well...to me.  I amuse myself greatly. 

Well the aforementioned Poopocalypse has taken on a life of it's own.  Things such as this are being overheard on a daily basis:

"Do you smell that?"

"Oooh, I think it's an impending sign of the Poopocalypse."

And...

"Where is (insert random family name here)?

"I'm pretty sure he/she's in the bathroom preparing for the Poopocalypse."

Or just random pronunciations at awkward times such as:

"REPENT-FOR THE POOPOCALYPSE IS NIE!"

So, yeah, we are that weird.

On another note that is eerily similar...

Cy Twombly died a few weeks ago.  Our last name is Twombly and I've been told that my husband's family is related way-way-way back.  If you don't know Cy Twombly, well you're out of luck.  He's dead.

What? Too soon?  Anyway he was a very successful abstract artist known for work such as this...

Yeah, I don't get it either.  Anyway, with the heat we sometimes put boys to bed with just a diaper and sometimes they get tired of waiting for us to get to them in a timely fashion and take things into their own hands.   The day of Cy's death, such an occurence presented itself and as I put the afflicted boy in the tub I hollered to Husband to please take care of the bed....walls....floor 

Husband:  "Is it bad?" 

Me:  "Well I think Uncle Cy left Matty his artistic propensity...So there's that...yay!"

Again, we are that weird. 

Thank you for reading an entire post about poop.  Oddly, it's not my first....

Why don't I have thousands of readers? 

Smiles from the farm,
Lisa

Readers...

I wasn't a big fan of school.  The math and science and---ugggghhh gym, hated it.  If school had consisted of art, English and Home Economics, well I would have been at the top of my class.  As it was, well I was somewhere at the bottom of the middle.  Not because I wasn't capable, it was just that I didn't care about elements or wars or algebra.  I'm sure it matters, just not to me.  DISCLAIMER:  To any teenage children that I may or may not have given birth to--IGNORE this post.  Thank you. 

There were a lot of parent/teacher conferences when I was a child.  The school thought that perhaps I had a hearing problem, probably today they would assume I had a learning disability.  I entered kindergarten when I was 4.  At that point I had been reading for over a year.  Surely, I was gifted.  If gifted meant letting me sit in a room alone with a stack of books, not to be bothered by the yelling and smelliness of other children...well then I guess I was.   But mostly I was weird.  A shy, prone to bouts of unexplained tears, little weirdo, who read. 

Then I grew up.  And became...a quiet and sometimes socially awkward (I hate being called shy), prone to bouts of unexplained tears, big weirdo, who reads. 

I read quite fast and usually finish a book a week if I'm busy-three if I'm not.  I also passed these genes on to my oldest daughter.  At 6 she read Harry Potter in two days.  I'm pretty sure it weighed more than she did.  Now I'm not saying any of this to brag.  As with anything, if you do it all the time, you become pretty good at it.  And I am so not a book snob.  I like romance and action and young adult and mystery.  I've read Danielle Steele and Tolstoy.  I prefer Danielle Steele.   My daughter prefers medical mysteries and fantasy.  Our tastes rarely overlap.  Until she handed me Harvest by Tess Gerritsen. 

Tess Gerritsen is the creator of the Rizzoli and Isles series.  The TV show characters bear little resemblance to the books.  I definitely prefer the books. 

 

On Saturday we traveled 30 miles to a small book store to buy the latest Rizzoli and Isles book and to meet Ms. Gerritsen.  There were a million questions I was going to ask her.  I have never been to a book signing and I have to admit, I was starstruck.  She walked in through the squeaky screen door and laughed as she apologized for being late because she was stuck in traffic.  She talked for about 30 minutes and was so very kind and intelligent and lovely and when she asked if anyone had any questions, well the concept of communicative language joined my mathmatical comprehension and I knew that if I opened my mouth I would  just embarrass myself.  But I did get a picture of Kass and her favorite author.

Which is pretty darn cool.  Kass read the book Saturday afternoon.  I finished Sunday.  One book, two days--see I can do math.  Just don't ask either of us to join a game of dodge ball, we'll be in the corner...reading. 

Smiles from the farm,
Lisa

So VERY VERY busy...

MY MOTIVATION

I can't go to the auction.   I don't have any room for even one more thing.  Things have got to go.  This is not a pretty picture.

In fact this is indicative of a very troubled person.  I am having a yard sale.  I am cleaning out this space.  I am not bringing one single thing into this space until I have finished all the projects I have. 

MY PROGRESS

I started making a for sale pile.  It is a very large pile.  It will get much, much larger.  I'm so proud of myself.  I went to the Goodwill and bought a perculator.......wait....oh crap.

STARTING AGAIN

Ok, back to the task at hand.  My pile is getting larger, I actually have a path in my space.  Nice.  I have to run into town for a prescription.  I will not stop at a yard sale.  Oooooh, I think I just saw an aluminum Christmas Tree....damn. 

STARTING AGAIN, ONE MORE TIME...

Dig, dig, dig, pile, pile, pile...hey look a vintage Barbie Doll clothes pattern.  I have to sit down right now and make Barbie Doll clothes.  What? 

LA, LA, LA, DOOP, DEE, DOOP, DEE, DOO...NOW WHAT WAS I DOING?

Holy crap, could someone please arrange an intervention for me?  Saturday, July 8 and 9, 2011.  Yard Sale.  Unless this all collapses on me and I am buried alive beneath it all or I get sidetracked and end up making tutus for yappy dogs.  I have a pattern in here....somewhere....

Smiles from the farm,

Lisa