Spoon People

Lydia went through some of my craft books for kids. A couple are for 2 - 6 year olds but Lydia who is 8 still loves most of the craft projects in them. The books include The Little Hands Big Fun Craft Book: Creative Fun for 2 to 6 Year Olds and The Little Hands Art Book: Exploring Arts & Crafts with 2 to 6 Year Olds by Judy Press and Scribble Art: Independent Creative Art Experiences for Children by MaryAnn F. Kohl. I let her pick out some projects for us to do and the first one she wanted to do was to make these spoon people.

Lydia loves to create "doll houses" out of cardboard boxes so we made one of those as well. She decided it would be a school. She has an expensive Barbie house in her play room that we could have used but she prefers to use houses she makes out of cardboard boxes. Creating the house itself and the furniture and curtains and such for it is most of the fun for her. Sometimes her dad gets a little frustrated with her because she never throws anything away. She sees things she can create out of almost anything! I love that she loves to create like this and so I am a little more patient with all of the "junk" she collects for her arts and crafts. Her whole face brightens up when she shows me something she has made from these things.

I think we will pick out another project to do now. We are on vacation until the 4th of January so we can do that!

Office Redo Progress

I have been writing lately about the office redo we are working on. I have to give Ken most of the credit because he has been doing all of the real work like painting and hanging shelves. As you can see in the picture above, the shelves are now up! This is not how I plan to organize things. They just have everything from my desk piled on them so we could take the top off of my desk to remove a drawer. I LOVE THE SHELVES! Now that I have these, I will be able to see the top of my desk! Well, maybe.
Last night we taped off the stripes and...
...finished painting them. I love the stripes! The picture that inspired this room is in this post. The fabric I ordered is not supposed to ship until after January 1. I wish I had it now so I could start sewing the curtains! I am going to love my new office. So excited to finish it.

Christmas Stars

I made these Christmas stars this year for some friends. I stole the idea from Trey and Lucy. I thought it was a neat idea. Easy to make too.

Office Redo in Progress

We are working on the office redo. We have the lighter orange on the walls and WOW, it's orange man! No dozing off in this room! It still needs one more coat and then the darker orange stripes are going up on one wall. I just ordered 6 yards of this fabric from jcarolinecreative.com (pic above). I'll be making curtains out of it. The fabric is not being shipped until 12/31 so it will arrive when I am back to work. Bummer! The shelves in the inspiration picture in the post below have been purchased and will go up once the walls are dry.
I purchased this wall clock last night. I also purchased an old metal file cabinet and a retro end table from The Salvation Army yesterday. The file cabinet will get painted one of the blues or greens from the curtain fabric. I think the table will be flat black and I'm going to paint a peppermint on the top of it.

I am still looking for 2 shell chairs along this line--any color, I can have them painted whatever color I want. We had a few similar to this years ago and I think I didn't sell any of them for more than 3 bucks each at a rummage sale. Now?! Now, you can't find these for under $70 a piece!

Office Redo

I am going to cheer up my office and I'm using this as my inspiration. I found this photo via the How About Orange Blog. I was excited to find this blog because orange is my favorite color. It's a great blog and I highly recommend it. I will take a picture of my office before we start so you can see the transformation. I'm only going to stripe one wall because doing all of them in my 10x12 office would make the room feel too small to me. On the facing wall I will have shelves like the ones below. I so need shelf space. I'm going to pull the blues, greens, pinks, and purples for accent colors. That, and a red and white peppermint candy light that I have to include because it reminds me of The White Stripes which I am addicted to right now. I spend the majority of my day in my office so I want to make it fun.

Vintage Bracelet by Dawn Kristine

This is the bracelet Dawn made me. I think it is FABULOUS! She used some of the vintage jewelry I found for her this fall. I am so excited to wear it. I just LOVE IT. (Photo was taken by Dawn and I copied it from her blog.)

2009 Frost Bite 10 Mile Run - 3rd Place

The results of the 2009 Frost Bite 10 mile run are in and I took 3rd place in the 35-39 division. I'm on the left wearing number 1046.
(Photo taken by Doug Wojcik from the Stevens Point Journal.)

2009 Frost Bite Run

Lydia and Ken came to cheer me on for the 2009 Frost Bite Run. I ran alone and as fast as I could within my comfort level. We didn't have chips and I started in about the middle of the pack, so I'm not sure of my exact time but when I crossed the finish line the time said 1 hour and 25 minutes. So I know I did at least 8 minute 30 second miles. The YMCA hasn't posted the results yet so I'm not sure how I placed within my age division yet.

Christmas Card Swap

My friend Dawn made me one of her beautiful vintage bracelets (see some at her Etsy shop) in exchange for some Christmas cards. I can't wait to see the bracelet. I think I got the better end of this deal! :-) It occurred to me as I was leaving for her house to drop them off that I had a "bloggable moment" so I snapped these photots with my phone camera on my way out the door. If you are a blogger, I bet you can relate to this bloggable moment phenomenon. Very often I'll see or do something and think, "note to self, this is so bloggable". Sometimes it makes it to the blog, sometimes it doesn't.

Had my first run of the year on snow today. Running the 10 mile Frost Bite on Saturday.