Saturday, August 18, 2012

Family connections

This building has a family connection
 and a special place in my heart.
My great-great-great grandfather and his family 
had a jewelry and watch repair 
(and also some expensive knick-knacks)
store in this building from 1884 to about the mid 1960's. 
I vaguely remember going into the store with my mom 
when I was a little girl to visit my great-great aunt. 
It was a treasure house, but mostly forbidden place for me. 
A small child in a store of breakable knick-knacks was not the best combination!
 LOL!!!!
These aren't the best photos, I only had my phone with me.
They show how the newest owner has renovated the 
building to its former glory. She spent a lot of time
using old photos to get the place to be historically correct.
Using some of the same fixtures found in the building or 
having reproductions made. She saw us taking photos of 
her building and came out to find out why and was quite
pleased to find out that we were relatives of the original owners.
I think she told us that the large glass windows were original. 
They let in lots of hot and cold air so to keep the look of the windows
 they added new weather proof windows on the inside so she wasn't heating and cooling
the town!



 She explained some of the detail on the top floor, and how the buildings on Main Street each had
trim work to balance out the others. 
On this building there are carved hearts with scrolls. 
You can barely see the heart
on the right hand side at the very top in this photo. 
My brother was taking photos with a "real" camera, 
I'll have to check to see if he was able to get this detail.


Friday, August 17, 2012

Strange things you see walking down the street

Last week I was in a small rural town visiting family.
My siblings and I were checking out the 
"downtown" which consisted of about 2 blocks of storefronts.
We were going down memory lane looking at the town
where we spent many summers as children.
I was looking at the architecture of a town built
at the turn of the century. 
Beautiful storefronts, some have seen better
days and some have been lovingly renovated.
I stepped back to take a better picture with my 
phone and almost fell over this jeep.
I guess whoever owns this really, really loves
John Wayne!!!!

Monday, August 6, 2012

First Halloween card of the year

With the new found table space I found since I cleaned up my desk
 I decided to make a card.
I tried to use the scary trees I found in the Oct. 31st, and the Happy Hauntings cartridges
but they wouldn't work on so small of a scale. 
I found a couple of stamps and decided to use them.
Cutting around the images was a challenge, but I think it turned out ok. 

Sunday, August 5, 2012

More organizing!

Since I organized my Cricut handbooks 
I decided to tackle the rest of the room.
My sister suggested putting the boxes of handbooks 
on a shelf next to where I sit.
Well, in order to do that I had to move two stacks of Thirties prints I had been using to make a quilt two years ago! I'm a slow mover, I guess. So I tossed them to the other side of the room (until I get a bin for them!)
 :)
 and tried out the boxes on the shelves! Perfect! Like it was made for it! 

I also decided to place my cutters there also. I am a very happy camper. 
Then I looked at the rest of the desk.
Boo Hoo! Gotta clean this up! 
So I dusted, tossed, rearranged, read a few interesting articles I found and reorganized to my hearts content. 
Voila! It's not perfect, but it will do until I have more time.
At least I can sew or make cards with out having to move junk out of the way.


Look! I see carpet!
And look to see who helped me clean! He slept the whole
day in his little drawer!
Now I have to clean the rest of the room! 
I won't show you pictures of the way it looks now!

Organizing my Cricut handbooks

I have made a mess in my sewing room.
 It is hard to do anything, sewing or paper crafting. 
I have to move one mess
over to make room for the other and
 then I have a huge mess on the floor, 
stacks of projects all over the place. 
So I decided to tackle one thing at a time to get myself more organized.
One of the first projects I want to tackle are my Cricut handbooks. 
I haven't been able to find a good way to store them 
without having them flop all over.
The binding wire on the top makes the books top heavy and 
they are wider on the top than on the bottom. 
Most of the time my books would flop over on top of each other, making 
it hard to find the right book when I want it. I know.... life is hard! :)

I also didn't care for the dividers I made 
using some old alphabet stickers
I have had for years and just wanted to use up. 
They didn't want to stay on the paper anymore.
 Begone!
 I need a new system!
So on the way out the door to Office Max,
 I threw them in the filing cabinet, er, garbage can!
My sister went with me to Office Max and
 I was afraid we would never leave. We could
both spend a whole day in there if we could. She came up with the idea to use a mini sorter in the baskets to help keep the books upright. Yeah! So we bought a couple to take home to try out.
Light bulb moment, while we were at a local craft store later in the day. 
Would the sorters work in a photo box?
 The plastic baskets were a little flimsy, so I bought a box to check out.
Well, when we got home we tried it out and it was a perfect fit!
The books stand up and the dividers work perfectly. This makes it soooo much easier to
find what I need in hurry.

So off we went to buy more of the mini sorters and the boxes. 
Ended up going to 3 different Office Max stores to get enough. 
And visited the craft store
again cause I wanted my boxes to "match". 


She put them in alphabetical order for me.

See how they are all lined up now?
Beautiful!
Thanks, Theresa!
:)