I still have not recovered from the trauma of the last time I saw snow. BUT…………

Hazel Mae.

Luca Andres.

Knitting scarves for kids before handmade scarves become uncool: priceless
New snow shovel: $9.95

Actual progress was made today, friends! Actual physical construction progress on The Kitchen! We didn’t touch the fridge or painting or any little details, but took apart this and this and reconstructed them into the main body of the kitchen. Both from the ReStore, remember. The nightstand and the bookshelves will both be used almost completely to make the oven, sink / range, two sets of side shelves, and a backsplash topped with a wee ledge. I am so freaking excited that we can salvage almost every scrap of those white shelves and make them into something – I didn’t expect that to happen, and thought we’d just be cutting the sections of side shelf that we needed and junking the rest.

The top of the nightstand is really thick, and when the “sink” fit into the first cut attempted I think the whole Cheat River Valley could hear us yelling excitedly and taking turns giggling while we just stood and admired and “aww”ed. This is going to be one damn cute play kitchen.

A good day. Now that Walt has lent us hours and hours and hours of his serious carpentry skills (if you look at the below photos and think “wow, it looks like he did most of the work”, you’d be right), Mikey and I can tackle a bunch of the other stuff. More photos to come. More bouncing off the walls to be done.

Bow-tie-pasta factory: $.36 x 4 sheets of felt
Vintage glass cabinet knobs: excavated from a coffee can in Pa’s workshop (um, what can I make with the other 10? I have lots of ideas…)
Daydreaming & attention to detail: cost of graph paper & beer & hours spent browsing flickr
Backsplash tiles: $.15 x 9 tiles from the ReStore; $.83 x 2 sheets of scrapbooking paper; resin that I already had
Mini-colander that I’ve been unable to find used for months: $6.99 at Marshalls
Actual skills & attention to safety: cost of lunch at Black Bear; patience of a saint

…because of bowls. Mixing bowls, not the smoking kind.

It’s genetic. I blame my mother. She does mixing bowls. Her best friend does chairs.

Both of these things gave me near-death-experiences in goodwill this week. I spotted each one from far away when there was another customer equidistant from and approaching The Bowls in the opposite direction. In both cases the person wasn’t even looking at the same side of the aisle, nonetheless, I freaked out internally and had to make myself walk calmly towards the prize instead of making a mad dive to close the gap. My heart stopped beating for those few moments. I swear. I don’t want to end my lifetime record of No Broken Bones over a mixing bowl, but I might have some heart issues that need addressed.

On the left is a delicious green pyrex for $2.99. I want a set just like my Ma’s (it’ll make my cooking better, right?) and I already don’t have the right colors in the right sizes but that’s okay. The green bowl’s maiden voyage in its new life was whipping up some blueberry muffins and they already tasted better than any blueberry muffins I’ve ever made (i.e. more like Ma’s.)

On the right is a 49-cent stainless steel beauty that is going to be… if you can guess… perfectly in.every.single.way what I’ve been scouring thrift shops for all summer…

…Hazel’s kitchen sink! Yip yip!!

I daresay that, aside from some accessories that I can’t resist, I might actually pull of the entirely-thrifted-destashed-or-handmade-kitchen. So far so good in the construction department. I have thrifted or pilfered every single thing.

Sometime shortly after we moved home last November I started noticing that Hazel played with her toys more if they were organized. I couldn’t just keep everything jumbled in a couple of open bins – she would ignore them unless all the blocks were together, yada yada (surely this is surprising no one – she is my child in SOME ways.) I started scouring goodwill and other places for some low shelves that were deep enough to work well for toys and found nothing. I suppose I could have built something but I would have just gotten very angry in the process, which was not a good thing to do during Shining Time up on this mountain. So after christmas when things were way on sale, I bought a set of these shelves in white and some fabric bins for them on the cheap.

I don’t even know how long I stood in target looking at them and feeling disgusted with what I was about to do, both because I was buying something I knew I could probably EVENTUALLY find used or make with some effort, AND they were boring. But whatever – I bought them.

And then I bought some spraypaint. And scrapbooking paper. And these wee adorable frames from the dollar bins and Michael’s. And ribbon. And I spent way too long obsessing over all of it. And I went home joyful about my big box-store purchases.

A week later we had an astounding thaw, and so one night after dark I put the garage door up, assembled the shelves, and started spraypainting them right at the edge of the rain pouring from the sky. The light was pitiful down there, and I didn’t even think about it, I just went to town with my petrol blue destashed from Erin, and had another new can waiting on deck. After about ten minutes of bliss I realized that some of the paint was beading up. I almost lost my mind. I left the whole thing in the garage and didn’t touch it again until… two days ago.

In the meantime I picked up a can of plastic primer for the cheap plastic-ey veneer – totally ingenious – and sanded off all of the bad paint. (Dear mouse sander, I love you forever.) Second paint attempt went on like a dream, I wrapped some ribbon around the bins, drew some labels and covered them in contact paper, then popped the (painted-to-match) mini frames on top. After the spraypaint was dry I cut the scrapbooking paper to fit the four cube openings that had backs, and after Hazel went to bed… I organized. Organizing might be more fun than spray painting. I just don’t know.

Either way – Hazel’s boring target toy shelves are no longer boring. And I only had one fit of anger.

Hazel pushed aside her “I don’t totally enjoy getting my hands dirty” attitude to make you some art :)

After months of scouring the ReStore, every Goodwill in my path, various other thrift shops, no less than 50 yardsales and innumerable trash drivebys, I finally found the perfect piece of furniture to revamp into a tiny kitchen for Hazel’s second birthday in October. A tiny kitchen that I’m hoping will be almost entirely thrifted/repurposed/handmade, with some ideas stolen from this retro pottery barn kitchen and a few other places (I hate it when a company like pottery barn gets something so damn perfect!) I have been finding little details for months, I have fabrics picked out and felt food planned (and crocheted food hopes using this book from VD), I have a piece of furniture to make into a tiny fridge, but I’ve been missing the main component – the sink and stove. I looked at this piece at least three times before realizing how perfect it actually is. As soon as the lightbulb came on (while standing in line at the post office) I drove back to the ReStore, strapped Hazel onto my back, wrestled this puppy into the front seat of my car and brought it home. And then spread out a few of my favorite little details to photograph and feel like I’m actually accomplishing something other than spending money and shoving things in a box and daydreaming.

nightstand = $15.00 @ the Habitat for Humanity ReStore
faucet = $5.00 @ the ReStore
mixing bowls = $.50 each at Goodwill
tiny bamboo utensils = $.25 each in chinatown
tiny wooden mixing spoon = $.25 in chinatown
egg whisk = $1.00 at a yardsale
most perfect plates = $.99 each at Target (and I kind of want four more, but even though this line of picnicey stuff is still out the tiny polkadotted plates are gone in every store I check – please grab some for me if you see them!)

We are back at the 433, and happy to be “home”. Mikey did well on his exam he thinks, Hazel cut the last of her teeth (until second-year molars, that is), and I was mildly useful for over a week as a single parent. I napped almost every day with Hazel, and I plowed through the last half of The Poisonwood Bible (omg), and did silly things like paint my nails and let them dry all the way and watch bad lifetime movies while my mom bathed my child. I am still trying to get my bearings and try to figure out how to catch up from being away. I keep puttering around, floating from task to task, and not completing any of them.

My friend Jenn got married over the weekend, and asked me sometime last year if I’d create jewelry for she and her girls. I happily obliged, excited to have almost totally free rein. This ended up making it a lot more difficult to decide on a design in the end, and I have spent A LOT of time bead-shopping over the past several months. I’m super happy with the finished products, though:

More importantly, Jenn’s face lit up when I handed them over two weeks ago at Panera – where we met for old time’s sake – and they all looked stunning on the big day. I’m not used to making such fancy things. Her photographer, Amberlee Christey, did a MUCH better job of making the jewels look pretty than I did, so I emailed her to ask if I could use this photo on my blog. She didn’t mind at all, and casually mentioned that I might know her brother and sister-in-law. Of course I do, because I live in the smallest world ever.*

*I am still working on blanket information, but have so far gathered the following tidbit: the priest Mikey thought of when we discovered the woman’s name on the label? The one who I found out is the cousin of the blanket-maker’s husband? Someone very near & dear to me got drunk for the first time at age 15 at that man’s ordination. Am I allowed to say that on the internet?

Listening: Hank Williams
(I am) Reading: Last Child in the Woods
(Hazel is) Reading: Each Peach, Plum, Pear and a bunch more yardsale books
Working on: trying to organize my life

A week of sewing: five pairs of shorts for Hazel, a mei tai for she and Alice, and three toddler art aprons for three kids just entering toddlerdom. Well, almost three. I need about five more inches of brown thread – the third will get finished up after next week, since I’m vacating this house on Friday afternoon so Mikey can write his second comprehensive exam in peace and then take off in our car to a few-day conference.

(New year’s resolution week 20: these are upcycled from goodwill-bound pants of Maggie’s and a shirt of mine.)

I also picked up the first component of Hazel’s kitchen today. By “picked up” I mean it’s in Walt’s van, waiting for Mikey to go get it when Hazel’s carseat has been relocated to my mom’s car and there’s space in the back seat. Excitement: barely contained. Barely.

Listening: The Freight Hoppers
(I am) Reading: The Poisonwood Bible
(Hazel is) Reading: Fox in Socks (More like I’m reading it, forty times a day – when the beetles fight these battles in a bottle with their paddles and the bottle’s on a poodle and the poodle’s eating noodles… <— I think I mutter this in my sleep.)
Working on: wedding jewelry; baptism gifts

Her name is Alice. Get it? They’re super cute together. Today they ate a pretend meal for forty minutes.

Alice is very cool. She is cuddly. She is ethically made. I feel like her wardrobe could use a little tweaking… and I want to make a tiny sling or tiny mei tai or both…

I’ve had the shorts that Hazel is wearing in these photos cut out for at least a month. I think more like six weeks. I finally sewed that pair together yesterday, and have four more cut and ready to be assembled before I can start making clothes for a doll.