Baking, Decorating for Fall, and Camping or How to Overcome the Isolation Blues

 Rick and I may not come out of 2020 without having gained a few pounds, but baking this time of year is one of my favorite things to do.  We are enjoying each and every bite too!

Yesterday I made these Candied Pecans from Lauren's recipe that you can print from her blog. 

"Tastes Better From Scratch"

I quarantee you it's fabulous and tastes exactly like the warm Candied Pecans you purchase from vendors at festivals!  It says to let them cool completely and store them in a tight container, but they were extra good while they were warm.

I also made some very yummy gluten free pumpkin bread the week before.  I used my regular recipe but substituted Bob's Red Mill Gluten-Free 1 to 1 flour.  I've used this recipe for years and it makes one bundt cake and a loaf.  It's perfect if you want to gift one!  I don't think this happended this time though, Ha!

A rather large crack developed in the center of the loaf, but tasted great!  

My only fall decor has been limited to my crocheted items and a few other pieces.  This black and white plaid pumpkin I crocheted a few years ago goes perfectly in my kitchen with my new curtains, therefore I placed it on this old scale.

My living room had a few more pumpkins made with yarn wrapped over cheap pumpkins from 

The Dollar Store.  Simply cut a hole in the top and bottom of the pumpkins removing the stem.  Wrap the thick chenille like yarn through the top and bottom all the way around and add a stick for the stem.  

 I did crochet a Halloween pillow for myself and my daughter, Amber.  You can find the pattern for the pillow here at TLB Patterns.

This cute plaid garland came from either Michael's or JoAnn's.  Isolation is messing with my memory!

These little wine cozies were crocheted using a pattern from 

The Midnight Stitcher.  I got the leather "Wine O'Clock" and "Whine Not" tags from

Angie & Britt.

To keep us from losing our minds this summer we got out and went camping at local state parks every month.  Even though the last trip this fall was rather rainy, it was still good to get out of the house and into  nature.  Get creative, bake, or get out and enjoy the beautiful parks around you.  You'll be amazed how much better you'll feel.    

We like everyone else have had some tough things to go through lately and I won't dwell on that here, but how are you doing and what are you doing to overcome the Isolation Blues?

Refinishing Our Hardwood Floors

 Life has changed so much this year.  Back in the middle of January we had our floors refinished in the dining room, entry, and living room.  We lived like hoarders for a little over a week with all our furniture piled up in the kitchen and the family room.  It was crazy trying to watch our KC Chiefs win the Super Bowl over the piled up mess.  We rearranged everything so that we had full view of the  television screen.  What an amazing game!

I must say that I'm so happy we went through this ordeal and that it's over!  It's an amazing difference.  I will never let them get this bad again.  It was practically dust free!  The only dust we really had were from the boards that had to be pulled up and replaced.  

This is what Daisy thought about it.    We found a wonderful dog sitter just down the road from us and she stayed there for a few days while they were applying the varnish.  Thanks Marianna!  

Have you gone through this process before?  I must say I was amazed we were able to stay in our house every night and just left during the day to help work on our daughter and son in law's new home.  

My little corner of the world where I sew, knit, crochet and dream up new projects.

I've been working on this little corner of my bedroom for a while now.  There used to be a big chair and ottoman here that I never used and I decided to make some changes.  I had this old table that my dad made for me many years ago for my art room and it is well used.  It has been moved from room to room for many years and I couldn't decided it's true purpose until now.  Yes, it has heart cutouts on the side of the legs and I've tried to come up with ideas to cover those up, but have decided to leave well enough alone.  The table was built with love and it's very special to me.

This will now become my sewing/quilting, all things yarn, and a corner to dream up new projects.  Most of my really good yarn is in my art room, but these large skeins fit better in large baskets. I must confess that I have a trunk full of hand dyed yarns too.  This corner will probably continue to evolve because I'm not sure that this is the most comfortable chair but for now it works.  The biggest advantage to this corner is that I can look out the window onto my flower garden if spring ever truly arrives!  

Art Room Organization

I was so excited to find these little fabric organizers that came as a set at Ikea and they fit perfectly into my Ikea cabinet drawers.  Yes, that's my chocolate stash in the upper right bin!    This set comes in a flat package.  You can kind of see the white zipper in the bottom of each container that runs diagonally.   When they are unzipped you can fold them and lay them flat.

I've been trying to decide what to use my bike and basket for, and went with this look for now.  

Sorry about this poor image from my phone, but this is a new painting that I started this week.  I'll get back to the autumn painting I started later on.

.....and yes my Christmas decorations and tree are still up!  How about you?

Plaid Crochet Pumpkin

I finished this plaid pumpkin this morning and these are my only autumn decor so far.

Plain and simple decorating has become my style now and I'm not sure if it's age related or pure laziness.

But if I were truly lazy, I would just go and buy some pumpkins.

Art and Craft Room Makeover

I'm finally back!  I've been away from blogging for so long that I was rather embarrassed to start back up.  I also couldn't figure out where to start.  I was posting on Instagram because it was so much quicker and I could do it from my phone.  During the time that I was away from blogging we've been busy putting on a new deck (the last post I did), had new treds and risers put on our staircase, new floor put in our family room, had a large crack cut out and repaired in our kitchen ceiling, made the attic into my husband's listening room and office, and redecorated my art room.  Needless to say, I've been exhausted and couldn't keep up.

These are not the best pictures because I took them with my phone.  My husband, Rick, and I shared this room for several years and it's just a tiny room.  This was in such disarray for so long that I had quit painting entirely.  

It's nothing fancy but it's organized and it's all mine!!  I started out by painting the room with Benjamin Moore Coastal Fog.  The blinds are from Blinds.com and the rug is from Ikea.

The desk belonged to my sister and brother in law and was gifted to me when they remodeled their home.  

All the storage is from Ikea and my favorite is the 6 drawer unit that even holds my large canvases.

Rick made the apron holder for me.

I didn't want to share the before first and scare everyone away.  

This faze was actually during the time that we were moving Rick's office upstairs and he was trying to figure out what to get rid of and what to keep.

This is definitely my "happy Place" now and I'm ready to get back to work.

I'm picking up a brush for the first time in over a year and can't wait to see where it takes me!

Remodeling the Staircase

I just spent hours trying to figure out where my blog disappeared to.  I learned a big lesson from a major mistake on my part.  When I purchased my google domain name last year and dropped the "blogspot", I never thought any more about it until recently when I tryed to get on my blog and it was no longer there.  Finally I realized that I hadn't gotten my yearly renewal reminder for my domain name.  I checked my email again and several hours later remembered that I had to set up a gmail account when I registered my name. Having never used this email account for anything else, there the reminders were sitting in my gmail account waiting to be paid.  It was due the middle of March and after 30 days they dropped my blog from view.  Luckily I found out what was wrong before 60 days when it would have been deleted.  It only costs $12 to renew each year and I now had to pay $112 to restore my blog.  That was a whopping $100 mistake on my part.  Lesson learned!    

In case you were wondering, this is where we are at on the staircase remodel.  The stairs are all in, I filled all the nail holes, and sanded.  They are now ready to be stained and varnished.  I'm waiting for a string of nice weather for at least 3-4 days so I can open the windows for ventilation.

Our Old Home Remodeling Continues

In a previous post I alluded to further remodeling that would be going on in our home soon.  This project actually started several years ago and we simply lived with it for a while.  Our stairs are the first thing you see when you enter the front door and the old berber carpet on the stairs had seen better days.  I have terrible allergies and getting the pet hair out of the carpet was driving me crazy.

One day, while Rick was out of town on business I decided to remove the carpet.  I do these things while he's away and I'm sure he's afraid each time he returns to see what I've done.  Needless to say I was very disappointed to see plywood on the landing and a staircase that was meant to be covered with carpet.  The two stairs at the top were the only two oak treads.

The wood wainscot didn't meet the stairs in severals places and there were lots of gaps.

I filled all the holes the stapes left in the stairs and cleaned these up the best I could and removed the paint spills that were all over them.  

After all this work, I was not going to recarpet these though.  I knew that someday we would get these replaced.  I have no idea what year this was done but we moved here in 2001 and I lived with the old carpet for 2 or three years.

Rick was more than a little shocked when he came home.  But, thank goodness he is good natured about my remodeling efforts.  

They were at least clean and easy to dust away the pet hair.  The lighting in the above picture is deceiving.  They did not look this good.

I generally avoided taking photographs of this area of our home.  I painted the risers white thinking they would look nicer.  Sorry about the Christmas picture it's the only time I took pictures of the railing.

Let's get up close and see how bad these really were.  Nice!

But, there is hope!  New stairs in progress as you can see here.

I was so excited to watch as each new tread was placed into position!  Our carpenter and friend, Patrick Grass did a beautiful job.

This is what it looked like by the end of the first day.  

The stairs are now completely in and I will be painting the risers white one again because I had them faced with wood that I could paint to save a little.  I've been sampling stains on some scrap wood and hope to start staining soon.  I will share more pictures of these as I go along and when they are finished.  My knees will be killing me by then I'm sure!

In the mean time we are still finishing up Rick's listening room on the third floor and my paint room once Rick gets the rest of his office moved upstairs.

Layer Cake Quilt

Today was a dreary cold day, so I decided to drag out my sewing machine and add the final 4" border around the edges of this quilt. 

When I first bought this layer cake of 10" squares I couldn't figure out what kind of quilt I wanted to make.  The designs on this fabric, Bumble by Free Spirit, were a bit large and cutting it up into small pieces for a quilt just didn't set right with me.  I loved the bumble bees in various shades of aqua, light green, and coral.  But, my favorite from this fabric line are the tall striped trees.

I really wasn't comfortable with cutting it up.  As you can see, I chickened out and simply sewed the 10" squares together.  Now I have to decide how I want to quilt it.  I could just go with yarn ties in the corners of each square,  free motion quilt it on my machine (which I've never tried by the way), or take it to my local quilt shop to have it machine quilted.   It measures 71" x 80" and will make a great throw for the bottom of the bed or over a chair.

I will be backing it with the green and gray tree fabric that's in the plastic bag.  This whimsical fabric on the reverse side may be my favorite part of this quilt when it's finished!

What are your ideas about how I should quilt it?  Yarn ties might mess up the symmetry of the trees on the the back.  What do you think?

New Industrial Light

Today my husband, Rick, will be helping our son put in an over the stove microwave and will be putting in a new sink and faucet for our daughter.  Before he heads out he decides to hang my industrial light that I purchased from  Decor Steals.  

Rick used an antique pulley to wrap the long cord around and attached it to our barn wood ceiling.  I love it!

Thanks Rick!  He's a keeper!