that's it!

all right, i cry uncle...i'm moving. flat hill farms is now at wordpress, so if you're interested, go here:

www.mrtweeds.wordpress.com

sorry, blogger, it was fun while it lasted!

mr. tweeds

pleased

who am i pleased with, you may ask? why myself, of course. not only have i completed christmas shopping for four (count them FOUR) people on my list, i am absurdly pleased with how my crafting came out.

when it comes to gifts for my father and brother i am usually at a loss...until this year. i found some "yukon king" adventure trading cards in the house when we moved in, and not only are they hysterical, i have multiples of almost all of them. they are apparently from an old 1950's tv show about a mountie named sgt preston and his trusty companion, a husky named "yukon king". while i myself have never seen this show, apparently he got into quite a few adventures up there in the yukon territory and they were recorded on these trading cards....which somehow ended up in my house. i decided to frame some for my father and brother and they came out wonderfully.

the first is for my father. i went for a mountie theme.

here's a close up of one of the cards:


and this is the text from the back:

ah, sgt. preston. what will you get into next?

the second is for my brother. since he's an outdoorsy type of guy i went for the rough living dangers of the yukon:


this frame has a card about vicious grizzlies and the dangers of going to the butchers. you can't make this stuff up.

i mounted the cards with the 3-d mounting tape so they actually pop off of the background. the background is a deep burgandy mat board, which actually sets the reds in the cards of nicely. i'm glad i did it that way because the cards really look nice with that bit of shadow behind them.

sweet...2 (usually difficult) christmas presents down. i am now ready for a cup of tea.

you say tomato....

since this summer was relatively busy with other things (such as giving birth, etc, etc, etc) i only had a small garden that was put in relatively late. it consisted of tomatoes, tomatoes, a pepper plant, herbs, basil,and tomatoes. but luckily, since i love tomatoes, it worked out well.

we were pretty much overrun by nice big, red fruits at the beginning of september, and here are some proof of my labor, lined up prettily on the kitchen windowsill:

still here...

and still been busy.

since i posted all about the sunroom project last year, i'll start with an update of that. we put in a new floor this weekend, and i also took the opportunity to reorganize and clean out some of baby girl's lesser used toys from the space. we've still got the exercise equipment out there, but hey, what are you going to do?

behold: shiny new floor!
isn't it pretty and shiny and nice looking? i still can't get used to it (and neither can the dog...he keeps slipping around on it since it's so much slicker than the old pine).

and this is my new(ish) craft cabinet, which is actually able to house the majority of my things. i never got around to putting shelves etc in the old one (which i'm not sure it could have handled in the first place) but i love love love my new one. it holds all my paints, craft books, sewing machine, fabric, beads, and various other odds and ends. sawheet.
and it also holds part of my sweet birthday present from aj, kristi and olive bean:aren't organized craft supplies pretty?

and now on to some of my projects in mind/in progress:

this is the fabric which will eventually turn itself (magically) into a blanket for finn. i copped out and bought the pre-quilted fabric, but hey, i'm willing to accept my limitations. but since i am totally in love with my new sewing machine, who knows? maybe the next project will be an actual quilt. but i also hate measuring things, so maybe not.


and i've had this project in the works for an embarrassingly long time. it's my hope that by posting it on here i'll shame myself into doing more work on it. it's eventually going to be a mini children's book. as you can see, it's about a little orphan kitten, and he's looking for a family (spoiler alert: he finds one). but i've gotten a grand total of one and a half pages done, so, you know, i'm whipping through that.
and i do have a couple of other painting projects that i'm in the middle of and a couple more on order, but i'm not going to post about them yet because they deserve their very own entry. it may take me another year to get it on here, but hopefully not.