Alphabet Letters

My sister and her husband just celebrated their one year anniversary (congrats, guys!!!  We love ya!!), and I was searching for a great gift for my only sister and her great hubby.  I saw some awesome things on Etsy, but decided that I should try and make something myself.  Paper is traditional, and I stumbled upon the alphabet letter thing.  I can do that, I thought!

The most difficult part was finding photos that were not copyrighted!  Sheesh...like I had time to find and take pictures with the kids being sick 24/7 :)  I suggest Flickr if you're looking to do a project! 

I'm pretty happy with the end result.  Their last name is long, so I opted for a non-divided mat.  To have 8 openings...well, let's just say I could not find a frame long enough!

I haven't forgotten about you...

Really!  I haven't!  Just been crazy here with little boy sick again and a wedding to go to this weekend.  I've been working on tons of new projects, though, and I'll get the details up early next week.  Check back then, please...a new bag for E, FINISHED chairs, lots of new felt food, and much more!

Jody :)

Two of two...kitchen remodels

Okay, this one is not a "real" kitchen, per say.  But dare I say...it probably gets more use every day than our real one.  By a slight amount ;)

My Albuquerque peeps will recognize the little stove. Somewhere, I have the front to it. Plexiglass window and all. I do not, however, know where it is right now. I'll have to work on that. In the meantime, I finally, after two years, finished the remaining kitchen components. I'm somewhat ashamed that all E had for many years was a stove. That's what getting pregnant and having a baby will do to you, I guess. But it is DONE now! Check it out:

Table and chairs from E and G's great-uncle D:



The whole she-bang:



Detail of the sink interior. Really the only "cabinet" I made, so that's where the dishes go.  The little curtain really irritates G right now.  It might have to take a vacay.  Or be ripped off by G.



Instead of a pot rack...we have coat hooks for our IKEA pots and pans!



Inside of freezer (good place to put that picnic basket and cutting board, ya know) and fridge:






So maybe you noticed the half-finished paint job on the fridge.  Truth be told, I made the fridge out of that old particle board entertainment center of ours.  I kinda forgot regular paint does not stick to that crap.  Oops!  So the doors are already nicked up.  But it's still pretty cute.  About 100 pounds, but still pretty cute.  Going to have to secure that bad boy to the wall once I'm convinced it's done!

One kitchen remodel...of two!

Over the course of the past few weeks, we finally (!) put up a backsplash in the kitchen. Long overdue...I'm a messy cook. With the electric (egad) stove, I can't really help myself!

We hooked ourselves up with some Fastbo backsplash from IKEA. 

And we got down to business cutting the stuff to fit around all of the junk in our kitchen.  We only had two panels that were uncut!

At any rate, we finally ended up with a finished kitchen.  And, despite months of going back and forth about tile options, we ended up with no tile.  And no color!  But I think it looks cool, and really does match the kitchen.  So for those of you who told us to go with black, this one's for you!











I love IKEA!

Train table from recycled entertainment center

We moved this gigantic particle board entertainment center here to Ohio, and the movers really bashed it up. Really, it was hideous anyway, and we've had it through four moves. Time to upgrade, so we scrapped it. But I saved all of the hardware and the pieces, to reuse for other things. Here's one of the "other" things that I decided spontaneously to tackle today. A train table for the littles!







I didn't put the picture of G trying to climb on it. I need hubs to do a safety check first :)

Forays into felt food

Say that 10 times fast!

Anyways...

I've seen it around the blogosphere for awhile now...and it looks super tasty :) Yes, I'm talking felt food! So cute. And much better for the kidlets than plastic. More so due to G chewing the pretend food. Good news about the felt food - it's wool. He put one piece in his mouth today, but it promptly came back out. Yay wool felt!

I ordered a stack of lovely felt wool about a week ago from Wool Felt Central. I got the sample pack of all 90 colors in 6"x9". Really the perfect size for felt food! We got the box today and it was so exciting going through all of the colors with E. She wanted to make something right away, so I got a light brown out o' the box and made...









mmm...ravioli! These would have pinked edges...if I had pinking shears! But oh well.



I'm working on some chicken parm now to go with all of that pasta ;)

E's away, momma paints!

I realized (much belatedly) that I never posted pictures of the painting I did whilst E was away at G&G P's for a week. I had four days of lovely naps to paint something I've wanted to for some time...a harbor scene from our time in Kinsale, Ireland (honeymoon in 2004).

I combined three shots into one gigantic 2x4 foot painting. Large walls, large painting! It's done in acrylic on canvas...and I guess I can't stall any longer, so here it is:



For some reason I have no picture of it framed.  I will have to rectify that, sorry!