My craft room is overflowing with wool. I really need to spin more!

This morning I finally hung the hand forged dinner triangle we bought at an art fair about 5 years ago. The sunroom was finally worthy of it.

Now we can call the cats to dinner in style. Of course, it’ll probably scare the bejeezus out of the them the first few times!

Finally finished the renovation of our sunroom (aka. the cat porch).

This was a year in the making. Our roofing contractor offered to cover the old porch siding with vinyl while he was doing the aluminum fascia and gutters last year. We took him up on the offer and rushed to replace all the old aluminum storm windows with double hung Pella vinyl windows before he hung the siding. We didn’t touch the room again until last week.  The old ceiling texture was peeling off, so I scraped the entire ceiling and painted. Then installed the wood trim around the windows. Painted walls, trim and doors. Then spent today on my hands and knees scrubbing the brick floor. I just finished sealing it with some masonry waterproofing (after this picture was taken). Tonight the cats are sleeping in the garage. They’ll get to move back in tomorrow with all new beds and new food bowls. Their new beds are wicker baskets filled with straw. They’ve already used them a few times and they look like Easter bunnies when they’re all curled up asleep. So cute. I switched them to straw bedding because the cat hair from six cats was impossible to get out of their old blankets and rugs, so now I can just throw the straw out in the compost pile when it’s ready to be changed. Problem solved.

I had the day off from work today, so I headed to an antiques store in a nearby town. I was actually there to look at large furniture pieces. I’m considering an overhaul of my kitchen, and was thinking that if they had any beautiful ‘have to have’ pieces then it would help the design along. They didn’t have anything, although a dry sink did catch my eye. Kitchens aren’t very useful without water though, so that threw a wrench in the dry sink idea. So no kitchen finds, but I did come home with this cast iron fire screen. The thing is h-e-a-v-y. I think it’s great, and it was only $45! That’s less than half the price of the flimsy things I see at retail stores. I can’t wait to see it with a nice fire behind it.

For a few moments on Wednesday my son, Errol, was a Japanese chef behind the teppan yaki grill! His dream job. Thanks Kansai!

Just a few scenes from the farm on this sunny afternoon.

Growing garlic in coffee grounds. The idea came from the college age son. He swears it works and that a friend grew some in the dorm this way. I didn’t ask what else they grew in the dorm…

The oregano that I neglect is thriving. I have found that any plant I actually pay attention to dies, so my most effective garden method is to completely ignore everything. If it was meant to grow…it will.

Auron the cat followed me around hoping for attention. He got an ear rub for the effort.

Our horizontal willow. Victim of the ice storm a few months ago. His will to live is heroic. We are taking a wait and see attitude. If he can survive the normal August drought, then the family consensus is that we have no right to deny him life just because he is vertically challenged. He will become a living art installation and we will landscape around him and post a bronze plaque with the word ‘Perseverance’ on it to honor his efforts.

The koi that lived in the fountain were not as lucky as the willow. They did not survive the ice and electrical outages over the winter. The local frogs do not seem very heartbroken about this fact. The nightly croaking chorus has reached a fevered pitch lately, and I expect lots of tadpoles to arrive very soon. And without any hungry fish maybe this year they will actually survive to adulthood. The waterlilies and other greenery also seem happier…it’s like an apartment complex where the one bad family finally moved out. Everyone just lets out a big sigh of relief and enjoys the peace.

Well after months and months of back breaking work, we’ve finally finished the master bedroom renovation…or at least 95% of it. Why are those last few details so hard? The closet doors still need to be hung, the trim where the baseboards meet the floor needs to be nailed down, and the electric outlets and light switches are still waiting to be swapped out with nice new white replacements, but besides those few things…we’re done.

I love the bamboo floor. The pictures above the bed are also a favorite. They are cut from a book that I found on sale at Barnes & Noble (on clearance for $2.99!). They are Japanese prints and part of a series called One Hundred Views of Edo by Hiroshige. The hardest part was picking just six to hang. The black and white photographs are by Gary Sendel, a photographer we met at the Louisville St. James Art Festival two years ago. They are shots of very old stone statuary in European cemetaries. Morbid, I know…but they are just so cool. The one above the small dresser is of a lady with a tree that has grown up through the statue and out her head.

We’re almost ready to start a major renovation of our master bedroom. It has been a 6 1/2 year wait to get to this point, with nearly every other room in the house taking precedence over our own. But now it’s our turn, and I decided to start slow and simply redo the walk-in closet first. It took a little while to convince the husband that the closet was the place to start, but now that it’s done I think we’re both very surprised at how well it actually turned out. I love it. The bamboo flooring was a complete nightmare to install (I’m dreading the thought of doing the entire bedroom), but I think it is actually worth the pain and agony. The glue for bamboo is so thick it’s like trying to spread silly putty with a trowel, and after just 10 square feet my hands were on fire and swelling. Not fun. I’d rather have a root canal than lay more of this flooring…but whoa, it just turned out so awesome.

After a few days of just staring at the beauty of the empty space, I did eventually put our clothes in it. Even though I was suddenly overcome by the feeling that my clothes were no longer good enough for the closet, and I ended up giving at least half of them to Goodwill. No loss.

For those interested, the closet system is an off-the-shelf set sold by Rubbermaid. $170 from Lowes, and we bought two sets (one for each side of the closet). Love, love, love the shoe racks.

I absolutely detest dry, forced-air furnace, winter air. It sucks the life out of wood, wool and me. So a few weeks ago, after putting up with ugly room humidifiers for too long, I decided that we needed some water features in the house. I wasn’t positive they would completely fix the dry air problem, but the thought of falling asleep to the sound of water trickling over rocks was enticing.

First we looked at indoor fountains in local stores and online. Most were too expensive or too ugly. So in the end we decided to make our own. We made three: one large fountain in our bedroom, a small fountain for my son’s room, and a medium size for the family room. This one is my favorite.

How We Did It:

Bought
1- large shallow bowl – $50.00 (Pier One Imports)
1- aluminum candle holder on legs – $6 (Pier One Imports) Note: this needs to be a non-rusting metal or plastic
1- bag medium size decorative rocks – $3 (Michael’s Crafts)
1- bag medium size clear glass discs – $3 (Michael’s Crafts)
1- bag small clear glass balls – $3 (Michael’s Crafts)
1- x-small water pump  – $20 (Feeder’s Supply Pet Store)
1- small piece of clear 3/4″ plastic tubing to fit pump – $1 (Lowes)
1- large bag pea gravel – $5 (Lowes)

Total: $91 (the large bowl was a total splurge…you can make this for a lot less using a less expensive bowl)

Equipment
Razor knife – to cut the plastic hose
Drill
Metal drill bit – same size as the hose

Putting it Together
Using a drill bit the same width as the clear plastic tubing for the pump, we drilled a hole through the middle of the metal candle holder. We set the metal candle holder in the center of the large bowl. The bowl selection was important – I wanted a large shallow bowl to expose as much water to air as possible, but it also needed to be deep enough to completely submerge the pump (which measures about 3″x3″x2″). This bowl from Pier One was perfect.

Next, we attached a small 2″ length of the clear tubing to the pump and set the pump underneath the metal candle holder. This pump, from our local pet supply, has little suction cup feet so it stays in place at the bottom of the bowl which is nice. We then pushed the hose up through the bottom of the candle holder and let about 1/2″ of the tubing stick up through the hole.

Then we filled the bowl with just enough water to cover the pump. Before plugging in the pump, we held a cupped hand over the top of the hose to keep it from shooting water all over the place in case it was turned on too high. Then, with the pump shooting water up into my hand, we adjusted the pump until only about 1″ of water bubbled up out of the hose.

Finally, we rinsed all the rocks to remove any dust and then placed larger ones on the metal candle holder, strategically placing them so the water would roll over them. And then added some pea gravel, larger rocks, glass disks and glass balls to the base of the bowl.

Total Time: about 30 minutes (mostly spent adjusting the pump and rinsing and arranging the rocks)

This fountain is putting at least a pint or more of water into the air each day. I know this, because that is how much I usually have to add to refill it. And the sound of bubbling water throughout the house is wonderful.

Here is the largest one we made for our bedroom.

The only difference: This very large bowl was only $34 from Lowes. And instead of using a metal candleholder I used large sticks from the yard, cut to size, to hold up the pump hose, a small piece of scrap slate as a shelf and the rocks. The group of small twigs sticking up in the back add some decorative height, but also hide the electric cord from the pump. We used the same bags of rocks and gravel left over from the other fountain, so this one only cost $55. It holds about a gallon of water too, so I only have to add water every few days.