off i go...

made it through thursday night and even had some time to veg when i got home. now, the weekend ahead, and things will be quieter by monday (or so, i keep telling myself).

this photo is from last weekend, part 2 of my photo extravaganza with marisa and the girls. the girls were not in a "lets take photos" mood, so we only got a handful. this has shaped up to be my favorite, save for one really nice portrait of the three of them together that i'm saving for marisa. i hope she likes it as much as i do.

off i go on my whirlwind weekend. wish me good focus and exposure!

much better...

all cleaned up - removed the contents, did some serious vacuuming and damp-dusting. i'll give you a little pre-renovation tour:

{living room - didn't get very far in here the "first time around" years ago}


{used to be the living room, complete with the "what was i thinking" wallpaper, but will become the kitchen because of it's size}


{the master bedroom, above the kitchen. mmmm, royal blue carpet... that's going.}


{second bedroom... white carpet, not bad - but it's going too, if not just because it has a spot on it.}


{3rd floor - this might be a real storage attic, just for fun...}


{3rd floor - this will probably be a bathroom?}

the porch is being converted into a front yard so that complicated banister came down. i've also got fresh paint on the outside, so i'll take photos of that later. i've put a lot of thought into how i want to decorate this, whether or not i want to remain historically accurate, etc. after alot of research, i've concluded that the house is of the Queen Anne Stick style, which would've been common near the end of the 1800s. i've determined not to strive for historical accuracy, however i do want to make this project more than a mish-mash of miniatures. i've decided to go with a style i'm calling "Victorian farmhouse" - set in approximately 1890, which will include elements of a traditional farmhouse with a nod toward the elegance of the Victorian heritage of the house.

that's it for me - i've set it all down until sunday after church, when life gets quieter, and i'll undoubtedly need to unwind.

mini renovations...

i love four-day weekends. i feel like i accomplished so much, and even had time to visit my family and rest too. so nice. and good timing, because this week is shaping up to be one of the busiest of the year. this weekend, i'll shoot the COTS concert, so that means I have to be fully prepared for church on Sunday before Friday. to make things more complicated, i just found out that the director of our Thursday night program at church will have to work late, which means that I'll have to run the program. so, now I have to be prepared for Sunday before Thursday, and be prepared for Thursday... well, before Thursday. wheew. trying to tie up loose ends, finish proofing photos that have been looming for a while and otherwise have my ducks in a row. how's that for three cliches in one sentence?

my dollhouse came home on friday, thanks to my dad. i started working on it as soon as we hugged goodbye, and have been finding extra minutes here and there to hide out in my studio and accomplish what i can. sometimes it's good for stress relief. sometimes it causes more stress. having done some research on the make and model, i've heard that some people have had trouble with the roof, having gaps and such. i'm encountering that now, but my handy-hubby is helping me resize things to fit

i've been taking photos as i go along, so i can remember (and show you) the phases. here are a few of the dollhouse when it arrived (we had stored much of the "stuff" for it inside the dollhouse, so i moved nothing before taking these).

looks a little like a tornado hit in there... definitely needed some love. more later.

FOs

FO: finished object.

i've had these photos sitting around for a while, doing nothing with them... and there are more to come, surely. but i'll share these for now.

{polar-fleece purses - christmas presents for three special little girls}


{fabric covered thumb-tacks. had to make these because they were just so cute. now i just need a corkboard...}


{more thumbtacks, different breed. these are topped with a glass pebble, that i backed with patterned paper. pretty awful photo. cuter in person.}


{hanging jar tealight holders, made for our back deck during our mini-makeover project last summer. sad to take them down when fall came...}


{acorn trees line the streets in downtown seattle, so i was collecting mass quantities of acorn caps for this project. made a set of these elegant+rustic napkin holders. might trade the hemp twine for a fancy velvet ribbon or something similar...}


{i know halloween was sooo last month, but i wanted to share this anyway - a "silver" (ahem, aluminum) platter, covered with a few of my favorite halloween prints, embellished with ruffled crepe paper and some other halloween yummies. the close-ups don't do it justice. i plan to make a christmas version as well.}


{another halloween project, and again, the close-ups don't really give enough detail. wooden "trick or treat" sign, covered in silver glitter, embellished with some beglittered die-cuts, ribbon and tags.}

and that's it for now. wheew, i get a little worn out just looking at this stuff.

oh, and for the record, this is several months-worth of work because i haven't had alot of time recently... just felt like it had been a while since i posted craft projects. :)

i *heart* miniature...

i'm counting down the days until my dollhouse arrives. in fact, i've begun preparing for it's arrival and wanted to share a few photos. a few of these are projects from earlier this summer - when i was first feeling the mini-vibe. a few are from the last couple of weeks. not pictured, a handmade couch - created from chipboard and "upholstered" in the same fabric as the rug below. it turned out better than expected, but missed the photoshoot. all of these creations are in 1:12 scale, which means that 1 inch of miniature would equal 1 foot in real life. i'm only sorta confident that this is the scale of my dollhouse - it's the "standard" scale - but i can't find any information online about it. *fingers crossed*

{a pint of blackberries - super-mini, hard to see...}


{bolts of fabric}


{a hutch, with wallpaper}


{rug}


{pink retro wreaths for the exterior of the dollhouse (i'm guessing on the number, might have to make more)}


{braided, rag rug}


{knitting basket, with yarn and needles}

everything was totally handmade, except the hutch which i bought unfinished and added paint and wallpaper. :)

more later, of course!

hello, new friend...

hello, new friend. i eagerly await your arrival. i've never met you, i've only read about you. i have big plans for us, and i know you're destined for great things. i just know we'll be great friends.

{my new favorite toy arrives today. can you tell i'm frothing at the mouth?}

starbucks...

allows you to design your own starbucks card... i've been playing with their card design wizard:

{yep, that's me... in the city... camera in one hand...
coffee in the other... tiara on top!}


{my normal drink order - cute huh? the quote is a new favorite:
"happiness is a form of courage" ~holbrook jackson}

sweet little girls, part 2

more of these gorgeous girlies...

we went for a stroll down an autumn-clad sidewalk...

and stopped for a hug...

then we played with the leaves...

and in the leaves...

and that pretty much summed up my morning with the girls. they're such fun. silly, but sweet. they love to cuddle and talk. and beth has finally started saying "aunt kate" - though it comes out more like "ahkaaaaaaaaaaay"... it's pretty cute.

no UFO/FO photos today...

i spent 15 minutes (more than 10!!) on my office last night, and it looks like i barely made a dent... so i think those photos will have to wait a bit.

instead, i'll post some of my favorites from a shoot i did for my sister-in-law this weekend. (marisa, if you want to wait to see these on disc, stop reading now.)

there are so many favorites that i'm breaking them into two posts. first, i present our studio-style portraits:

becca's a very good sport, and will sit right where i tell her. i can use a variety of animal noises to coax natural smiles from her:

but for some reason, her more serious expressions are my favorites:

as soon as she sat down on the backdrop, she was singing from the veggie rocks CD, so we sang together while i clicked away happily:

but beth... well, she's not a big fan of the sitting down part, she'd rather chase cats, or make funny faces:

oh, as a sidenote: it's worth noting that i met my husband 5 years ago today.

more tomorrow.

UFO vs. FO

in the craft world, these two abbreviations are used to categorize every project.

UFO: unfinished object.

FO: finished object.

i'm in full-on holiday-crafting mode - it started with the candy bowl in mid-september and will undoubtedly continue through new year's.

and that means my office is a wreck - littered with UFOs, waiting on me to take the next step, and FOs, waiting on me to find them a home. not to mention the christmas presents i've purchased and wrapped already, but have no tree under which to sit for the next 7 weeks (so they're sitting on my computer desk... which hasn't actually had a computer on it in months, because it's currently "storing" stuff). *sigh*

dad emailed yesterday to rattle off a list of stuff he'll be hauling over to my house Thanksgiving weekend. most of it is furniture i'm very excited to receive - stuff that has been in my family for years.

and then there's the dollhouse. don't get me wrong - i'm really excited about having this childhood project grace my craft room.

i just don't know where i'm going to put it, and finding room for it will require some extensive reorganization, purging and maybe some furniture rearrangement.

i think i have to make myself a little rule of 10 minutes/day until Thanksgiving. if i can spend 10 minutes in there, each day, maybe - just maybe - my office won't be a shameful cluttered mess and I'll actually have a place to store my dollhouse.

tonight, part of my 10 minutes will be photographing some of my recent FOs (despite their shameful mess of a workspace), so just maybe i'll have pictures to you tomorrow.

documenting...

i need to document something for matt.

matt's earliest childhood memory was of his grandfather's funeral, so it goes without saying that he has no other memories of his grandfather. and other than occasional things like "he was a quiet man.", matt's family doesn't talk about grandpa thaete much either. matt has always felt like he was missing out on something because he didn't really *know* his grandpa.

when matt started coming to our church, he met our pastor, don, for the first time. when don heard matt's last name, he said "thaete... are you by chance related to..." and it turned out that several years ago, don had pastored matt's grandparents' church in lynden, wa.

flash forward about 5 years to yesterday. matt was tearing down after church and had a thought - he asked don how much he remembered about grandpa thaete. don replied "i knew him well - would you like to know about him?"

so don shared a few things with matt, and the result of the conversation was some closure. matt appreciated knowing more about his grandfather.

some things we learned:

*grandpa thaete was a Bible salesman for most (all?) of his life, and he and grandma quite literally survived praying for his paycheck.
*when grandpa fell ill near the end of his life, God pressured don to tell grandpa that he wouldn't recover from this. don did, grandma got angry. when grandpa passed away, grandma apologized.
*grandpa wasn't necessarily a "quiet man" - but he was very intentional, choosing his words carefully. (and it seems, if he didn't believe that what he had to say was necessary or important, he simply didn't say it... perhaps that's why he was often thought to be a "quiet man".)

just wanted to write that down.

welcome, november...

feeling like we had a near-perfect halloween - though not as many trick-or-treaters as we would've liked. marisa stopped by with the girls, and we walked around the block with them, trick-or-treating. becca has it all figured out, but is still learning the rules. beth is not quite sure, but knows candy is involved, and is game for anything. both had fun and didn't even take their coats off when we got back to our house before plopping on my dining room floor to peer inside their candy buckets.

mike & lani came for dinner. we'd both planned something pumpkin-y and decided it would be more fun to eat together. she made amazing pumpkin ravioli with wilted spinach and gorgonzola sauce, and i made pumpkin-curry soup with fresh foccacia. all homemade, all delicious. we played apples-to-apples and ate candy for dessert (big surprise). not nearly enough trick-or-treaters - i was trying to get rid of the leftover candy from sunday's costume party, had a big basketful. we only opened the door three times (four, if you count the girls, and in hindsight - i was not nearly liberal enough in giving them treats!) so i still had half of a basketful by the end of the night. i really want that stuff out of my house...

so there goes october and november has arrived. i'm looking forward to a relatively quiet month, and thanks to some excellent advance-planning in terms of shopping and finances, should be able to finish up our christmas shopping this month. my hope is that a lovely november will lead into a more relaxed, well-prepared december.

i have an eye appointment tonight for new glasses. this is hugely exciting for me. i've had these glasses since just a few months after i met matt... almost 5 years. definitely time for new ones.

trick-or-treat!

(originally posted on my blog at the original groupee.com social networking site.)

marisa stopped by with our nieces last night so we could do a little trick-or-treating before dinner. in seattle, princesses in their finest attire must wear warm winter jackets on cold autumn nights, but princess becca did let me take a few photos of her at home.

i love trick-or-treating photos because the darkness makes them moody. it seemed like all of the houses we hit up had a perfect place in the front yard for me to stand with my camera and get a good angle.

the girls were too funny. becca's got halloween all figured out, but beth is still learning... a few priceless moments:

* when the girls got to our house, we said "happy halloween!" and invited them in... at the first house we trick-or-treated at, they said "happy halloween!" ... and the girls walked right into their house... i can understand their confusion, but i think mama will need to have the "don't take candy from strangers, etc" talk with them a little earlier than expected...
* most houses left bowls of candy on the front porch instead of answering the door. (lame! it's more fun when people answer.) some houses left their lights on, but didn't answer (a trick-or-treating etiquette no-no). at one house where no one was home, the girls climbed the stairs, knocked, waited for a moment, then turned and sat down on the steps to wait patiently for someone to answer the door...
* when the girls got to our house, i was wearing cat ears, and had just painted on a nose and whiskers. becca said "auntie kate, why do you look like a cat??" - so i replied "becca, why do you look like a princess??"... to which she replied "auntie kate, why do you look like a cat??"... this could have gone on all night!
* after every house, becca wanted to inspect the new contents of her bucket.


there were so many "quotables" when we were trick-or-treating with the girls. i remarked that i wished i had a notebook with me to write them down. of course, i can't remember any others today. :(

after trick-or-treating, our friends stayed had dinner with us - we'd planned a Perfectly Pumpkin dinner. pumpkin ravioli with wilted spinach and gorgonzola sauce, and pumpkin-cumin soup with foccacia bread. all home-made. all delicious. we forgot dessert, but inspiration was only a candy bowl away...

i threw in a picture of one of my halloween projects this year - a wooden "trick or treat" sign that i smothered in glitter (mmmmm, sparkly), and embellished a bit. this hangs by my front door, and everytime the door slams (because no one in our home can close it gently), a smattering of glitter hits my wood floors...

i feel like i'm missing some photos, maybe i forgot some at home and will have more tomorrow...