Glass Table Top!

When I set up my craft room a few years ago, I purchased this high black table. I love the table and use it all the time, but it gets very tedious scraping adhesive off of the painted surface. I planned to have a glass top cut for it but hadn't managed to get that done...until last month! As it turned out, the company we used to make shower doors for our bathroom project is the same company that cut glass for our dining room table a few years ago. So while they were measuring for the shower doors, I asked them to measure my table, too!

When they installed the new shower doors last week, they brought along my new table top. Secretly (well, not so secretly), I was more excited about the table than the doors. I love the new work surface, and it is much easier to just spray the glass with an all-purpose cleaner than to scrape adhesive from the painted table!

 

Favorite Things Party

This past weekend, the gals at the store where I teach held their third annual "My Favorite Things" party. This is an idea first shared by Heidi Swapp in which you gather with a group of friends and each guest brings one (or a few) of her "favorite things" to share with all the others. It's a fun way to get to know people...and to discover new things you might enjoy. We've also discovered at least half of the fun is seeing all the lovely packaging. It's really interesting to see what such a creative group can do!

This year, I had a hard time thinking of anything I love enough to call a "favorite thing". It seems like many of my favorite things cannot be packaged! So I started to look at the everyday items I really value -- or buy over and over -- and voila! Three of my very un-glamorous favorite things emerged: preserves, lavender soap, and Cottonelle ribbed toilet paper!

After I bought 17 of each item (one for every guest), I thought about how to package them. It soon became clear that I needed to stack them like the "Tower of Treats" from Harry and David. After that, the rest was pretty easy! 

I wrapped the jars of preserves in tissue paper (more on that in a bit). 
 
I wrapped the lavender soap in kraft wrapping paper I had on hand. The toilet paper needed no wrapping, since it fit my color scheme! :)

I really enjoy woodland-type color schemes so I decided to use wide green ribbon to bind the three gifts. When I'm doing a project, I always make a prototype with scrap materials first, so I cut leftover teal ribbon to figure out the proper lengths and how many spools of green ribbon to buy.

I cut the ribbon into two lengths, one shorter than the other. The first length I just wrapped around the tower and taped together at the top.

I cut the second piece of ribbon a bit longer and tied it in a snug knot at the top. I think Harry and David are on to something...this is a fun and easy way to wrap unrelated gifts!

 

I worked in assembly line fashion until I had all 17 "towers" wrapped and tied with ribbon. I should mention that at several points during this process, Spouse asked..."You're really giving them TOILET PAPER?" :)

For the "topper" I decided to cut felt poinsettias and greenery to go along with a small pinecone from our yard. Again, I made a prototype flower to see which colors of felt I needed to buy.

 I LOVE felt, and it cuts beautifully with a die cutting machine. If you haven't tried it, you should! I glued the flowers together and let them dry, then added a brown button threaded with twine to the centers.

After cutting the greenery, I decided to make a tag. So I quickly cut out 17 tags and came up with a simple decoration for the front.

On the back side, I attached this text -- especially for anyone who might be wondering about the toilet paper!

I hot glued the pinecone and the tag to the top of the tower. Then I hot glued each flower to the opposite side, and tucked the greenery pieces around the edges.

After I finished attaching the tags and the toppers, I realized I had forgotten one important detail about the tissue paper wrapping, so I attached it to the side of the top layer.

 It was really fun coming up with a creative way to package these completely ordinary and unrelated items!

 

 

 And I'm pleased to say that I made it to the party with all 17 towers still intact! The party was a big success and everyone enjoyed sharing a few Favorite Things!

Thrift Store Find

Last year about this time, I became sort of obsessed with glass domes. I already owned a domed cheese plate, which fit perfectly on this round of wood from Hobby Lobby. It was perfect for my woodland creatures from Germany.

 

 I kept my eye out for smaller domes at thrift stores all season long but found nothing of interest...until this past week, that is! On one of my quick thrift store stops, I ran across these two mini domes which fit perfectly on a small saucer or plank of wood. At 99 cents each, this was a SCORE! 

I already know what I want to put under the domes...now to make it happen before the snow flies!

jp

Feline Friday with Rory

We recently visited our daughter -- and her kitty -- in Texas. It was great to see Bailey, and I was excited to meet Rory for the first time! I'll admit I took more pictures of the kitty than the daughter!

I knew Rory was tiny, but she is much finer-boned than I envisioned. Her whole body is very narrow. She makes Tinsel and Lily look like sumo wrestlers!

Immediately after Bailey adopted Rory, she discovered that something was not quite right. After several trips to the vet, it turned out that this poor baby had a somewhat unusual intestinal parasite. EWWW! Thankfully, Miss Rory responded to the medication very quickly and is doing fine. Since coming to live with Bailey, Rory has gained weight each week but now that she is parasite-free, I'm guessing her weight will start to pick up a bit more quickly.

 Bailey is being very careful with her food so she doesn't develop bad habits. Can't imagine which of our kitties she might be referring to! HA! Still, Rory loves her treats!

YUM!

Rory has a keen interest in running water and while we were there, she had almost figured out how to drink from the sink. This is an important skill for an indoor kitty!

 

 And she loves to climb!

  

This girl already knows who is in charge and is clearly surveying her kingdom!

Happy Feline Friday!

jp

Feline Friday

I swear, Lily contorts herself in the cutest ways possible!

I know I take too many pictures of her, but who could resist this extreme cuteness?

Hope your weekend is this relaxing!

Happy Feline Friday!

Turkey TALES

  One of the workers helping with our bathroom project noticed I have a few old pheasant and turkey feathers lying around the house for the kitties. He's an avid hunter and offered to bring me a few feathers. I'm not at all in favor of hunting, mind you, but I agreed to take a few for the girls.

Imagine my surprise when he arrived a few days later with not just a few feathers, but TWO ENTIRE TURKEY TAILS. YIKES!

In my politeness, I seriously did not know what to say. Especially when he told me that there was still a little bit of turkey attached. EWWW!

The feathers are really soft and beautiful. After stressing about the fate of the poor turkey, my next thought was that we should use some of the extras for crafts. That was before I realized that they were firmly implanted in turkey body!

 The contractor guy offered to pull out the feathers with pliers but forgot to do it before he left for another job. So I put the turkey tails outside on the patio hoping the "body part" of the tail would dry out.

Finally I decided to work on the tails myself. The small feathers are pretty easy to pull out, but the long feathers are really stuck in tightly. I could only pull out a few before I was completely sickened by thoughts of what had happened to the poor turkey.

Note: These feathers are still in the garage. I will wash them with soap and water before letting the kitties play with them!

So I left the tails out on the patio. Each time the feathers flapped in the wind, poor Lily and Tinsel went into high alert!

 After a couple of days on the step, something very strange happened.

One of the tails disappeared! Did a person come by and take it? If so, that gives me the creeps. Did a predator take it? That also gives me the creeps! 

So now I'm down to one turkey tail. That's one more turkey tail than I ever expected to have!

Bathroom Remodel: Finished Tile

 Hey, y'all!  

(I've decided to start saying that because I've been watching way too many episodes of Fixture Upper. And because our daughter is now a resident of Texas!) 

Anyway, the tile phase of our bathroom project is done! I could not be happier with how everything looks. Our contractor did an amazing job with the installation! 

In the shower, we have creamy white subway tile on the walls, with "natural" or cement-colored grout. The shower drain has been installed but we still need to add the bronze-colored fixtures. The glass shower doors should be here in a couple of weeks!

Here's a close-up of those wall tiles. I love this tile so much that I think I will set up shop in the shower! There's even a tiny corner shelf for my crafting tools! :)

 The floor of the shower has the same hexagon tiles as the rest of the bathroom. I absolutely love the shower drain! It has sort of an old-style industrial look. I had nothing whatsoever to do with choosing it. One day it just appeared, so I'm really glad that I love it so much!

 

The "curb" of the shower is topped with the same material which will be on our counter top.

 

 It has sort of a chunky look which I love.

Here is the completed floor with the cream-colored grout installed. I love how it turned out! I would say that the lighter grout makes the entire floor "read" a little lighter than I expected it to, but that's OK. And it looks more homogeneous now...a bit less "busy", if you will. But you can definitely see the geometry of the floor tiles, and that was our goal!

 The green wallpaper is still a huge visual distraction, so here's the floor with no wallpaper and only the bottom half of a cat!

 As part of the tile work, we had a heating/cooling vent relocated from the floor to the vertical area which will be under the cabinet. Lily loved sitting over that floor vent, so she's still getting used this little change. "Aire iz comeen out heere naow, mommie!"

This project will be on hold for a couple of weeks, then the contractors will start working on the walls. We'll be adding wainscoting around the perimeter of the main bathroom, then putting a dark brown-ish wallpaper above it. I'm excited for the next phase of this project to start!

Thanks for following along with our progress!

jp