A Pantry Re-do

I love my pantry. It was one of the things I was really excited about when we first bought this house. It's not large, but you can walk into it, there's shelves all around and a cute little window.

I painted the shelves when we first moved in, put up a few more, and have slowly been building my glass jar collection by buying bits here and there when I find them cheap. No plastic containers are allowed in my pantry. Since I'm lucky enough to have one, I want it to look beautiful too!

Now I do my grocery shopping once a month (I plan a month's worth of meals and work out exactly what I need to make them) and before I do it, and when the shelves are kinda empty, I like to give them a wipe down. Now this month, we were running out of EVERYTHING, so not just the shelves were empty but my jars too.

(No teabags left...I don't know how I survived the week.)

So what started out as a shelf wiping, turned into a let's empty the scraps out, wash the dust and gunk off the jars and hey, while we're at it, let's give them new labels too. I printed some labels with a cute border onto a sticker sheet and wrote the names on them.

While I was at it, I got this old basket,

and this old tin (that were alright when I was into primitive decorating,)

and gave them a blast of my new favourite powder-blue spraypaint.

The results really brightened up the darkness of the pantry.

(The colour is a bit intense in these photos.)

So it may not be much, but my pantry is now sparkling clean, and super-dooper organised and I love stepping into it and seeing all my jars filled up.

I love baking so I've got everything you could possibly need.

It makes me feel so rich and lucky, that come-what-may, we have enough food to last the month. Also, thanks to my new extra little freezer, I've been really, really organized and bought all my month's worth of meat (that we could NEVER have fit in our normal tiny freezer), cut it up, packed it and labelled it with the meal it's for. Couple that with the week's worth of bread that I bought cheap 'cos it was close to closing time, the well of abundance feels like it's overflowing.

And speaking of painting and brightening up, I have two of these flour sieves (from the primitive phase) that I was considering tossing as now they just look dingy.

But I dry brushed one with red for a bit of colour and I quite like the results. I think it'll look great at Christmas time with a green wreath. I might paint the other one white.

P.S. Stay tuned tomorrow for I plan to do my first give-away.

A quick stool makeover

I thought of making a silly toilet-humour joke to tie in with that heading...but thought, musn't, I can act juvenile at home but not out in public. Good breeding and all that.

Anyway, I always look in the furniture section at my local St Vinnies but come away discouraged as everything is too hopelessly vile or else they've taken to redoing the pieces themselves (NOT in my style) and charging a pretty penny for the end result. I wanted something small that I could easily smuggle home and hide from Mitch (I know we don't need more crap in our house), cheap so it doesn't matter it I mess it up and simple to redo as I have a short attention span.And it has to have definite potential. So when I saw this stool for $2 my eyes lit up.

It was gross. Rusting brass finish, plastic ends on the legs and a blue fluffy cover that was so disgusting that after removing I had to de-germ my hands immediately.

But after a light sanding, some powder blue spraypaint and some pretty new material, I was rather pleased with the result.

I'm not totally satisfied with the fabric, (actually some toile and black spraypaint could've looked rather sophisticated) but that's easily changed if I find a better replacement.

I love the blue spraypaint. Usually I would go for white, but I've been thinking about painting our fridge blue, so thought I would give this paint a go. I think I'm onto a winner.

P.S. I just realised it's been a year since I started blogging so I'm due for my first giveaway. So stay tuned, I'll be having one in the next week, as soon as I can work out what to give away. Any suggestions???

A few things I've made

I haven't been by for a while. I guess I've been busy and I'm also trying to be more disciplined around the house and build up some good routines.

But Kimba is having a DIY day and I thought I'd join in and show off a few little projects that I've completed lately.

I made this bag a few weeks ago as part of a birthday present for one of Ella's friends. They're all quite "into" their cuddly toys and so we bought her a large bear. But to make the present a little more interesting we also got some kids clothes that would fit (a dressing gown, a shirt etc) and a selection of cute ribbons for around it's neck so it would have it's own wardrobe and I made the bag from bits and pieces I had, to keep them all in. I think Ella would have liked some for her own as I had to stop her repeatedly changing it's outfit prior to wrapping it up.

Next on show is the mantle piece that I put up in the kitchen. We have a little alcove where the oven is and where the wood stove used to be. It still even has the holes in the ceiling where the chimneys used to go. Well as you can see from the below photo, it has really bad lighting and Mitch probably has to duck his head to go under there and so I can't decide whether I hate it as a nuisance or love it as a bit of character-adding architecture. I decided to play on it as the latter by putting a mantle piece on, plus I've always wanted something like that to decorate for Christmas.

I found one end bracket all dirty and chipped at the markets and asked Mitch to make me a matching one. Painted them white, put up a shelf and voila. I'm still not sure what to put up there, at the moment these are things that I don't really have a spot for elsewhere. I love my spotty teapot and creamer plus I have a matching sugar bowl. I'm saving up for the matching cups and saucers. I also love my vintage flour tin which I bought not long ago for 50c.

Next on show are some long overdue photos from the girls' bedroom. (I promise to do a full room tour soon.) Below is one of the shelves that Mitch made for me to my specifications, which I finally got around to painting and installing on the holidays.




Rosie and Ella each have one above their beds. You can also see on Rosie's bed a raggy quilt I made for her for winter out of new and vintage flannelette. For raggy quilts you are meant to normally have three layers - the top, batting and backing. I thought I'd skip a step and save money and just backed the top with an old blanket. Ella's (in shades of blue and yellow as opposed to Rosie's blue and pink, so we can tell them apart) is cut up and ready to go...I've just been waiting to find the right blanket which I think I found today.

A closer-up look.

And last up is my battered old khaki suitcase (no before photo - I never think of that until too late) which I gave a lick of white paint and some cheery ribbon around the handle.

I use it to store some of my material.

Mitch says it looks like a clown's suitcase. I don't know what I think yet...but it is better than how it started.

And talking about Mitch, I'm very proud to announce that he won the Australian Amateur Heavyweight Boxing title two weeks ago, so he now holds the Australian title for both Cruiserweight AND Heavyweight. Yay Mitch.

A scrapping money box tutorial and a celebratory canvas

How do you do pocket money in your family?

In ours, the girls get $5 every fortnight BUT $2 of that is enforced budgeting. It is put aside as "present money". That may seem a strange thing to budget for but I don't see the point of saying "Okay kids, it's my birthday coming up, here's $20 of my money to go and buy me a present."

Also, I'm all for teaching that it's the thought that counts and they don't have to spend a lot of money to show they care. Otherwise they'd have grandiose ideas for what they'd want to buy and expect Mitch and I to fork out for it. This way they might have $5 saved up and they'd have see what they could buy for the amount they have, rather than the other way around. When I was a kid, our pocket money was pitiful (sorry, Mum and Dad, put it's true). We got whatever grade we were in at school, times by 10c per fortnight. So in Grade 5 I'd get 50c etc.

BUT however this was a good thing. We learned that it wasn't about the excellent presents that you gave or recieved, it was learning about the good feeling that you got when you gave someone something, anything, and also about recieving, when you knew that a sibling sacrificed their whole fortnight's pay to buy you that packet of Fruit Tingles (a favourite present of mine, you got more in the packet than in a packet of lifesavers AND it was 3c cheaper - see I put a lot of thought into it - and, okay, I admit I still have those frugal tendancies :D).

Anyway back to the topic at hand. Ella had 2 piggy banks, by way of birthday presents, in which to divide and store her money. Rosie, however, had none, and couldn't see why I said "no" to buying her some really cute ones for "only" $20 that she had seen.

When I found these empty cream of tartar containers in the pantry, the potential straight away hit me, although Rosie was horrified by the idea of using these as money boxes. But of course I intended to do some prettying-up first.

I got out my stash of scrapbooking paper and odds and ends that don't see the light of day often enough, and with instructions that the boxes had to have purple on them, chose some of this for my equipment.

First I traced around the container as I rolled it along, to get the size,

and cut out a pice of floral paper which I glued on with craft PVA. Using the first piece for a template, I cut out a piece of spotty paper and likewise glued it on, overlapping the first. On the two different containers, I swapped the order in which they were positioned.

I then proceeded to decorate them using a torn paper strip and purple ribbon which was actually the hanger straps from a new shirt I bought yesterday.

I used 'S' stickers on one for 'Spending'

and on the other I cut out some plastic 'Ps' for 'Present'.

The plastic was from some tags that a parent had donated a whole boxful of for collage and I'd kept a few as I knew they'd come in handy one day. I then painted over all of the paper with more glue to help preserve it and cut a coin hole in the plastic top.

Rosie is very happy with them.

(And there's another successful lesson in 'make-do with what you have'.)

Also this week, I was asked to paint a canvas for a colleague's 21st birthday party as a momento which everyone could sign. I had previosly done one for another colleague's bridal shower, which had their initials entwined with vines and "May your love bloom and grow forever" in the center. As Amy is a shoe afficiado of course I had to put one on, which just happened to look like Cinderellas shoe so I gave the whole canvas a fairytale theme.

Here's some details.

She loved it even though everyone unfortunately signed on the front instead of the back. (It was designed to have that choice, but I personally wouldn't want to have a picture hanging on my wall that everyone's scrawled over.) I've now got an order for a friend's 25th wedding anniversary celebration which is coming up, and someone else has expressed interest so I might have a little side business in the works.

Letter to a Kindred Spirit

Today I recieved this email.

Hi,

My name is E. I found you on my friend Marcia Meehan's blog "Bees in the Antipodes". Marcia is an amazing person and I am blessed to know her. Of course we've never met face to face, because I live in the USA in the state of Mississippi. Even though you are 31 and I am 61, you are a kindred spirit. I can't tell you how alike you and I are. I love old time crafts and learning about how to knit, sew, crochet...I just love to learn.

I grew up in the country in Alabama and know a little about old time skills, ie. gardening, sewing, knitting, crocheting... Right now, I'm trying to get a movable chicken coop made so I can have a couple of laying hens. Supermarket eggs can't compare to fresh. There's a real difference.

I like the rug you made. I just read about cutting old tee shirts and making rugs out of them. My grandmother had braided rag rugs that she had made.Well, anyway, I just wanted to tell you that I enjoyed reading your blog and listening to the music. (Also my kind of music).

Keep up the creative work. What would life be without the thrill of making something ourselves, or the thrill of discovering something new in nature or a new skill or new friends.

Life is a wonderful adventure if we never lose our childlike wonder.

Thanks for sharing your knowledge with others. Knowledge is nothing unless it's shared.

I wish you well.

E

Dear E,

Thank you for your lovely email. It really made my day. It's nice to know I can make a little difference in someone's life. Sometimes I question whether its worth having a blog as especially lately, I seem to have little time to update it, and I know it's vain, but I don't have that many people looking at it or commenting. But it's connecting with people like you that make it worthwhile and I guess even if I didn't "make any friends" online, I'd still feel the urge to share and connect.

I know that I can be a bit different from most people around me and always have been with my love of old things and old ways.

Sometimes it's a bit hard being true to myself when I'm surrounded by people at work and in society in general that place such an emphasis on modern tastes and accumulating bigger and better things. I'm sure they think of me as a bit strange and daggy, especially when compared to others my age, and sometimes in weaker moments, I feel ashamed of my little rundown home and unconventional decorating. But the stronger side of me embraces my uniqueness and tries to remember that I not only embrace this lifestyle because its a reflection of who I am but its also a choice that I conciously make as a reaction to the modern lifestyle.

I want to teach my children that they don't need "things" to make them happy in life,

that an hour spent outside in the yard,

or reading

or drawing or playing games can bring them joy,

that their imagination can build castles where there are none,

that it's being with people and the memories that are made, or in being happy and content in being alone, that can bring true satisfaction in life, which the latest toy or fashionable house doesn't truly fill. These can be nice (we've just had to replace our old microwave and phone out of necessity and I admit that I love my new toys BUT its also nice to know that because we aren't extravagent in our lifestyle and spending that there is always money there to do those things when we need to, without having to get them on credit.)

I like the old-fashioned life because people worked harder but lived more simply and it was easier to find and appreciate the real blessings in life, to know what you really needed to be happy. I love Little House on the Prairie and how excited they got because Pa built them a door or made a fireplace so Ma didn't have to cook outside anymore.

It is why I love living in the country. It's going to the shops and having the time to notice the bird poking its head out of the hedge,

it's hearing the geese honk over at the ponds,

its having a main street of shops that you stroll up and down rather than losing your way in a giant, busy shopping centre,

it's driving 5 mins out of town and being surrounded by green hills.

I love the fact that the shops are closed here on a Sunday. I love the fact that my butcher knows who I am and cuts meat up specifically for me. I love the fact that when the girls play with their friends, it's doing things like catching yabbies at the dam or exploring the paddocks, avoiding the cows and the kangaroos, or dressing up

or playing Blind Man's Bluff.

So thank you for the affirmation. It's nice to not feel alone and its given me the lift I needed when I was feeling a little flat. Writing that has helped me reaffirm what I want in my life and the next time I feel down or embarressed about the peeling paint and cobwebs in my life, hopefully I'll remember it, and that while it's nice to have a fancy house, if it stayed unpainted and unpolished it doesn't really matter

because we're lucky to have a comfortable roof over our heads,

food on the table

and laughter inside.