So what do you need a custom frame for? You need a custom frame for a gorgeous piece of delicate family crochet, gifted to me by my grandmother. I measured the piece and realized that nothing short of a 24×24 inch frame would be adequate. I built a frame, as described yesterday and got ready to […]
Projects
How To Build Your Own Frame
Have you ever needed a very specific frame size that’s not available off-the-shelf? I have – and I’ve also been appalled at the cost of having a custom frame built. Then I discovered frame kits. You simply select the length that you need (remember to buy two sets so you’ll have a full frame). If […]
Scenes from Saturday
The Boy played in a golf tournament yesterday, so I hung out at home with our best friends and the furbabies. Those of us around the house stayed pretty busy with grading papers and working on projects. I must say it was super-nice to have someone else’s husband available to help me with honey-do’s. All […]
Quick and Simple Pillows
I love easy projects, don’t you? I wanted a quick and easy set of pillowcases to gussy-up our sofa before having guests over. Pillows can totally change the way a room (and your back) feels. Enter dinner napkins, found on $3 clearance at Target: Using a pencil, I marked my seam lines and button hole locations. Why buttons? Because they are […]
A Dirty Secret
I’ve been hiding a terrible secret in the backyard. That’s right. I have a hot mess mini-garden. Just six feet wide and two feet deep, the bed was filled with mini rocks…rocks you could barely see underneath the mass of weeds growing in the bed. To be fair, the weeds were primarily wild strawberries, but still. Weeds. […]
Fixing Up an Old Lady
A friend gifted me with a little project: She was in sorry shape (the dressing table, not my friend) – missing hardware, deep water rings and a variety of nicks and dings. But still there was that great mirror… Instead of stripping, patching, sanding and staining (the only way to rehab the dressing table from its […]
Putting the Personal in Personal Gallery Wall
After a month and a half of looking at this: I decided it was time to make the personal gallery wall in our master bedroom a little more personal. That meant it was time to replace the store images with things that were meaningful to the Hayleys. A few days of digging through photos and […]
Stop the Madness
We have gotten very tired of coming home to a door littered with advertisements, political ads and business cards. Not only does this advertise when we are (and aren’t) home, it’s hard to tell if people working the neighborhood are using their door-to-door time as an opportunity to case our home. No more. Did you […]
Take That, Pinterest
I’m trying to keep Pinterest from taking over my life by using it to Organize my (formerly kept in hard copy form) idea file Spur creative thinking Pin good ideas and recipes that I want to try. As far as the latter is concerned, I’m forcing myself to actually implement the good ideas or try […]
Help in a Helpful Way
Like most people, I struggle with how to help panhandlers. When I lived in Kenya, my car would be surrounded by street kids begging for money. Many of these poor little ones were terribly addicted to inhalants – money wasn’t a help for them. I would carry bits of bread and other foodstuffs to hand […]