In the works.

Over the past few months, we've been making a great deal of progress around the house -- cleaning out, decluttering, organizing, starting to paint and finally starting to decorate. It's been a long process combining three different 'families' worth of stuff: from my home, from Jonathan, and things from his parents'.

It's the fine balance of deciding what's useful, what's meaningful, and what needs to move to a new home.

At times, it feels like there are a number of simultaneous projects going on. We just remember that things will never "be done". Everything is a work in progress. :)

I have hopes for an awesome mud room in our garage, with a spot for a big freezer + big fridge + big sink and lots of storage.  Last weekend, Jonathan tore out all the old shelving and cleaned out everything in spot for the mud room.  He found mincemeat canned in 1984, lots of old papers, and a ton of random things in the process.  :)  I was busy sanding down a very awesome old filing cabinet that we found (!) in the garage.  Pretty sure it was a military cabinet, and it's the coolest organizing metal cabinet I've ever seen.  Simple + useful.  Cannot wait until that's done too.

Onto little projects to celebrate right now...things that I love around our house right now.
The black frame.
It kills me that I didn't take a "before" photo.  Jonathan actually had two of the same images hanging in the house - one in the front room and one in the nursery.  We left the one in the nursery, and I took apart this one.  Saved the glass and primered the wood.  Sprayed white primer, then the same metallic silver paint that i used on the lamps below.  After it dried, I sprayed a flat black paint, and used a paper towel to sponge back some of the paint to antique it and bring out the silver below.  Totally love how it turned out. This will probably end up over the piano between the two silver lamps. 



The cross-stitch from Mary.
Jonathan's mom was a fantastic cross-stitcher.  We have a number of pieces by her, but this is my favorite.  "Spierewka" was the surname that our family had before reaching America, changed when arriving into the States, as "Sprouffske" would be easier to use.  (huh?)  Anyway, I love this farming scene -- it's nearly 4 feet wide.  It greets everyone who comes into our home through the front door.

The candlesticks.
Beneath the cross stitch, in the entrance.  A handmade gift from Matt and Lisa, when I was in their wedding nearly 10 years ago. 

A frame from my mom.
My mom doesn't get the itch to 'craft' very often, and she usually skips the crafty projects and leaves them to me.  In 1997, before I started my junior year in college and Mike began his freshman year, our family went to Art & Soul in Gig Harbor, for all of us to paint pottery.  If you know our family, you can only imagine what that experience was like with my mom, dad & brother.  :)  But it was a great afternoon of bonding and laughter, and this frame from my mom is still one of my favorite things.  I am going to find a photo of her + Thomas to add to it now.

A handmade bowl.
This is probably one of the coolest Relay For Life gifts I've ever received.  One of the volunteers in Phoenix, Arizona was a ceramics teacher, and his class made a ton of these bowls for all the participants in the Phoenix Relay Regional Summit.  He shared a very cool personal survivor story and everyone received a handmade bowl. 

Silver frames.
I found these frames probably 10-12 years ago at one of my old favorite stores, Import Outlet, before they went out of business.  At my old house, they had the frame mats with lots of little openings and tons of photos.  I wanted to simplify them with bigger images, and searched all over to find mats with larger openings.  After searching several stores and not finding anything I liked, I decided to just design the mat right into the photo.  Using Photoshop, I made a thin keyline around each image with rounded corners, and converted them all to a milky black & white.  Saved $$ by not buying mats, and really love how they turned out.  They'll all be hung next to one another shortly.  And I love the duo from the wedding -- the coloring contest pic + us holding the pic. I had them finished as metallic prints, and they have a gleam that I adore in black & white.  All of it just makes me happy.



Silver mirror + frames. 
These used to hang in my front living room, on the plum colored wall.  Both images at the time were tinted plum to match.  Now, there's an image of Thomas.  The plum shaded image that I took in Italy will swapped out sometime soon.  Not sure into what.  We need as much light as we can get in the house, and the reflection of the lamp into the mirror  helps brighten things, especially at night.

And that's all for now.

More projects to come.  :)