little BIG pants

still painting so...

still painting...making some headway, before and after pics to follow soon (i hope!).

The above adorable "tiny house" is from here, via hoping for happy accidents.  great inspiration to replace the below building on our property that   a) is blocking our view to a pretty meadow and b) comes complete with a 25 foot hole and rotted out floor, that every time h. runs past i think "jessica mcclure" disaster.

i miss our hummingbirds. this winter has been weird for birds, we have way less and the pretty grosbeaks we used to get haven't come back. why?

all quiet on the crafting front. stumbled on this precious blog "while she naps" - love the name and her work is very cute and cuddly. ok 10-4 good buddies.

paint and pasta

my project for last week and this week is to get the front room painted. i've spackled and sanded the windows and have begun the prime coat. Oh Joy! UGH!!! but the sooner i get done with this the closer i am to getting my studio worked on. at least thats what i keep telling myself.

h. fell asleep at 6 pm tonight - that means i'm going to be in for it at about 8 pm. so i took the time to cook up the above dinner from the latest Domino Magazine, zesty tagliarini. essentially its cream, zest of lemon and rosemary. MAKE IT!!! it is soooooo good. this is a pasta that really sticks to your ribs! my hubby surprised me with a small bag of meyers lemons (of which i had never tried and only read about the glories of this fruit). so if you can USE MEYERs lemons, they are FABULOUS. as you can see i paired it with a beer. but i would have liked to have paired it with a vinho verde. hubby is working late so i made dinner and read through the new issue of dwell, isn't the cover soooo cute! damn cute couple. ok later gators!

fabric love

here is my latest fabric acquisitions. The coral reef is by phillip jacobs- and I LOVE IT so!!! I'm thinking pillows but perhaps it will sit in an organized box just beckoning me for months. my project at the moment is spackling my windows in my front rooms of my house then i can paint, which will in turn put a bug in my hubby's behind to finish our kitchen- countertops always add so much, don't they? later gators...

chicken pot pie

i made this last night and it was yummy and thought i'd share the recipe. J. and I enjoyed it with a bottle of Cline Viognier. The recipe is taken from "America's Test Kitchen" Chicken Pot Pie. I double the carrots and celery and garlic. this makes two traditional pie sized servings. Bake one and freeze one!

4 TBLSP unsalted butter
3 carrots, peeled and sliced 1/4" thick
2 ribs celery, sliced 1/4" thick
1 onion, minced
Salt
2 garlic cloves, minced
2 tsps minced fresh thyme or 1/2 tsp dried
1/2 c. all-purpose flour
1/4 c. dry sherry (i use red or white wine)
3 c. low-sodium chicken broth (3 cans)
1/4 c. heavy cream (i use 1/2 and 1/2 or whole milk)
2 bay leaves
Pepper
3 lbs boneless, skinless chicken breasts, trimmed and cut into 1" pieces (i use a broasted chicken and cut up about 1/2 of the meat pulled from it)
1 c. frozen peas
2 TBLSP fresh parsley minced
pie crust for bottom and top (i use pillsbury-in the refridgerator isle)

1. set oven to 425 F. in dutch oven combine carrots, celery, onion and 1/4 tsp salt and cook until softened (about 7 minutes)
2. stir in garlic and thyme and cook until fragrant, about 15 seconds. stir in flour. slowly whisk in the sherry, scraping up any brown bits. stir in broth, cream, and bay leaves. simmer until mixture is thickened, about 10 minutes.
3. season sauce with salt and pepper. stir in chicken. continue to simmer until the chicken is cooked through, about 10 minutes.
4. discard bay leaves and stir in peas and parsley. pour mixture into your pie plates with dough in them.
bake for 20 minutes, let cool for 5 to 10 minutes. if baking the frozen, double the time and cover the edges the last 20 minutes with tin foil.

the above plate is taken from the website Cul de Sac Design. Isn't it lovely! (this link came via the blog bloesem) it is so serene.

M husband hipped me to an artist that does photography of his dioramas David Levinthal to understand more of what i'm trying to capture when i'm going to start doing these myself. his work is great, a bit dark in theme but still brilliant.

i leave you with my little pic of my deer on a "cliff" its actually a log but that is the whole point of dioramas...it always looks like something is what its not, even though this isn't a diorama per say.

sewing with purpose

i love this deer so much. isn't he regal. H. plays with him all the time in the tub. i bought him to do photo shoots. i plan on some outdoor shots and then maybe make him into cards???? below him is the material that i'm using to make a block quilt.

i've tried to start sewing with purpose- enjoying all the steps, the cutting, the pressing, the actual sewing. normally when i am in the midst of a sewing project, i'm just hell bent on the finished product. but since i've changed my outlook- i've been really enjoying it-especially pressing the newly sewn rows. i love the way the fabric changes character from a plain cut piece into a thought out sewn thing. however this one wasn't so thought out. i sort of had a pattern in mind and just started sewing and ended up with an ok finished quilt but it just goes to show that one needs to do proper planning before sewing and cutting. happy friday and have a great weekend!

 

Tornado inspiration

This is how amazing google is. the above photograph was made by artist Susan Graham in 1998. I saw this I believe it was last year on the website mixed greens and I loved it. This is a silver gelatin print (i don't know what that is- but for any of you photographers out there...) anyway I have recently wanted to find this image again. didn't remember the artist name and mixed greens didn't have her in their archives. so i put in a few key words and BINGO. some article review in NY posted it. amazing...so here it is. The tornado is made of cottonballs- amazing again. Exactly what I want to replicate- is that copying??????? no i believe not just inspiration. So i bought some cotton balls and am dying to get my little mitts on them.

wip-baby blanket

So i'm in the midst of making a baby blanket for a friends baby girl due in feb. i think i'm over the whole stripe sewing thing (i've made about 5 baby blankets like this). i'm not in love with how the fabrics are interacting, is it because I'm not in love with the puppy dog fabric? and does the green look ridiculous???? i'll show the completed quilt when its done.

I'm really into making dioramas lately and have thus far have only done a bit of research. the blog Bloesem featured these cool Pure Nomade boxes, perfect to create adorable dioramas in- but $25

Love this artist Aida Millett's pics of her doll house dioramas 

 

woke up to a fresh blanket of about 6 inches of snow. Finally winter is here

Happy Friday

So H. (my baby boy) woke up at 5:30 am this morn. What is a mother to do? How about put on Wizard of Oz and see if i can get some inspiration from the twister scene in order to construct my diorama. That movie still creeps me out. But i love the beginning in black and white and how -in itself - looks like a diorama. I guess all old movies have that feel, certainly "Its a Wonderful Life" does, especially the scene in the beginning where the kids are sledding. Those old sound stages must have been so "magical" to construct and work on.

Anywho- I love the scene in Munchkinland where the "Lollypop Guild'" welcomes Dorothy, with their striped socks and shorts and there screwed up mugs...too cute. Then I went to Turkey Feathers today and she made these cute little elf booties.....TOO CUTE!!!!!

I don't watch much TV but J. (my hubby) was flipping channels last night as I was nodding off and we started watching "30 Rock" . Well I love Alec Baldwin as a comedic actor. Quote so far of the year....

Actor 1 asks Alec "Do you like Phil Collins"

Alec Baldwin "I have two ears and a heart, don't i?"

hahahahahahahahaha

Crafting news: UGH! None. spent my "free time" cleaning, my life story

pic of the day- Had a friend over tonight. He is all outfitted to go ice fishing. So I dug this one out. This just proves how gross our house is...pink sink complete with stains with H.'s toy swimming ever so happily. we are going to frame this when the bathroom is all redone and bask in just how far we have come.

things i make

Baby shoes - need to crank more of these out. I've been thinking that I should focus on 3-6 months instead of 1-3 months as that is when babies are in onesies and footie thingys

Penguins based on a stuffy my Grandma made me when I was a wee thing.

Letterpress of a recipe of a family favorite - as my sister says "Its the gift that keeps on giving" I did this piece like 4 years ago and was supposed to be a christmas present framed for the whole family. This year i got the closest yet by buying matte board and foam core but my hubby needs to make the frames...

"Cigar Circus" I love dioramas. I'm including this because although its not great, it has been pulsing through my brain lately to do a cigar diorama of a farm yard, including clothesline, with a tornado in the background. I figure if I put it out there, I'm much more apt to make it happen. This would be so much cuter with 3 D objects instead of stamped images, don't ya think?

I also love to make cards but need to take some pics of them to post here. over and out!

the truth shall set us free

If you haven't seen "An Inconvenient Truth" queue it up, go out and rent it, watch it at a friends house, check it out at the library. HOLY CRAP! it is so SCARY!!! Its amazing to me that all these scientists and POLITICIANS know and little to nothing has been done- america is still making huge suv's and we are still driving them. Obviously there are other things that cause global warming but i have to wonder if gore would have won that darn election how different the world would be right now. check out the "official site". 16 years ago I lived in New Zealand and there was all this buzz about the hole in the ozone being right over them. Well good ol' Al addressed it and guess what - WE FIXED IT!!!!! as in AMERICA- We legislated to stop producing all the harmful chemicals that destroyed it- Aquanet suffered greatly  (thank goodness!) Junior High Bangs lost their height (can i get an AMEN!!!!) and hair stylists' lungs lost a coating of varnish (insert smoker cough here).... IF we can reverse that - we can change this global warming thing too. All the snow from New Years Day is gone...its bizarre weather indeed. It seems we never just get normal snow, its always in storms.

craft news: ugh...none, worked on getting my blog all nice and pretty (don't tell my hubby-shhhh) he thinks i'm crazy to be doing a blog. oh well - C'est la vie.

baked once...no good

OK - I was supposed to get this blog up and running by January 1st and post 5 times a week (what day is it today???? ) set up my etsy store...so far have got a half baked banner up - needs work but dog gone photoshop is rearing its ugly head- making a straight line with dashes ain't that easy- UGH! also trying to figure out if I need to charge tax??? here is a picture of my grandma's cook book that now is home in my mom's house- I love the way it instantly shows her personality "Baked once no good"- she was such a character

to blog or not????

so this is it....the start of something big or something that I will just let peter out. I sincerely hope not.

OK a little about me.

Name: Terra, mother of one 21 month old son, the love of my life. Wife to an artist by "education" and a cabinet maker for a living. He makes everyone look lazy. All work and no play makes hubby a Dull boy- he's anything but dull. I stay at home with my son and have been since last year January '06.

We have lived in an old house on a few acres in a small Minnesota town for about a year now. We gutted the place when we moved in and its just now finally becoming somewhat livable. We cooked on a Coleman stove for a year and our "kitchen" consisted of a laundry sink and a bunch of plastic folding tables. It has been quite a journey but I know it will be worth it when its finished (we joke when Henry graduates from High School and somehow that is probably true). I love being back in a small town - coming from a small North Dakota town myself - this is the only life for me. PLUS its super close to the twin cities so good sushi is never far away!

I received my French Education degree and have since not used it, but am happy I did it. I've worked as a bank teller-ick, a software troubleshooter-way over my head, a "french accounting specialist" (aka 10 key for 8 hrs), a secretary to a mad scientist, a copyrights specialist in a intellectual assessment company, an invitations designer at Paper Source- a very good experienceand still one of my favorite stores and finally a project manager at an advertising company of which I was layed off last Dec '05. Which brings me to staying at home with Henry-the best job I've had!

My crafting history really started when I was in High School and my best friend and I would get together and cut up magazine, collage them onto folders and cover them with shelf liner clear sticky stuff. We had so much fun and I would always joke "Can I major in COLLAGing in College". I took a few classes on book making, letterpress and graphic design and love to make books, cards, and sew. However, with a toddler, the stolen moments are few and far between.

What I Love nowadays... WINE, reading other crafters' blogs (its amazing how much one finds in common with like minded women), gardening (although not in the winter : ) bathing Henry, the hour after Henry goes to sleep (aka MOMMY TIME), beautiful fabric, cooking yummy meals, going to my favorite store in my little town (FULL OF GREAT FABRIC), great customer service, Lost on ABC, Daniel Craig, Guacamole, my Latte in the morning on our fabulous Rancilio espresso machine, looking foward to a date with my husband (we've been on like 3 since baby).

What bugs me nowadays...the fact that I can't seem to wean my son, insincerity, figuring out photoshop, britney spears, the new hollywood craze of no panties and short skirts, that LOST is taking a 2 month holiday, the fact that I can't get my son to sleep through the night (it may have something to down with the above), the exzema around my eyes (I fear I need to give up wheat in my diet).

OK I'll end on a positive note. HAPPY NEW YEAR ! I'm really looking forward to 2007 and all the great things that have the potential to come to fruition.