Crafty Katie

Lately I have been working on spending more time being creative. I have finished several projects that have been in the works for a LONG time and have discovered some new crafts that are very fun!

One project I have been working on is reducing the amount of oak wood in our house. We had this awkward little shelf in the kitchen that basically ended up holding junk. I decided to paint it and make it a bit more useful.

Here is the before:

I took out a few of the middle shelves.

And here is the after! Much cuter, I think. We can display all of our cookbooks and we have a place to write notes. The little shelf above the chalkboard (which is my first use of chalkboard paint) is for placing our holiday decorations. I'm all ready for Valentine's Day!

My next project was finishing up sewing the curtains for the dining room. I love the fabric and it makes the room so much cozier. I'm really happy with the final product.

This next one was a quick project that I did on a rainy Sunday morning. I never liked the old napkin holder, but it was still functional. Here is the boring before....

And the fabulous, decoupaged after....

My friend Christy and I have been very crafty lately. We had a craft day a while back where we painted ornaments and made soap. This time we made scarves. We had tons of fabric and yarn. I bought old dresses from the Salvation Army to cut up and turn into scarves.

Here we are, looking like homeless people wearing ALL of the scarves that we made! It's good to have a crafting buddy!

And here was my piece-de-resistance for the holidays. I have lots of bird ornaments, so I decided to make a tree with just birds and nature things. Luckily Fran found the last tree at Kmart (thanks Fran!), so the bird tree dream was realized. Here is Eleanor standing in front of the bird tree...

And you will notice that cardinals (my favorite bird) are DECORATING THE TREE! Amazing! They were quite the workers, as they looked like this for the entire month the tree was up. =)

I still have several more projects in the works, so I will post more as I finish them!

First Bluebird Activity!

Yesterday we saw three bluebirds checking out and entering the bluebird house!!

We can't believe they are already setting up shop. We're not sure why there were three instead of two, maybe Miss Bluebird hasn't chosen her mate yet and is seeing how good each of them is at building a home.

We also wondered if these bluebirds were actually born in the house last year - pretty good chance!

Christmas 2009

Katie's family came to Birmingham for Christmas, so we had Loren, Sally, Ben, Steph, Eleanor and Ada in town for a nice long visit!

Birmingham was in the grips of a record cold spell, so we found lots of indoor activities to do. Aunt Katie helped Eleanor do lots of sewing.


Ben made a great batch of monkey bread. The theme of this trip was definitely eat, eat some more, and when you can't possibly eat another bite, pile into the car and go get some ribs.


Ada also got in on the cooking action, she made us breadsticks to go along with dinner one night (she'd be great at senior centers, everything was extremely well seasoned!)


We scored a great deal at the bowling alley, where we not only had lots of fun, but won back almost all of our money in the raffle!


We celebrated Christmas on New Years Day. We gathered around our live tree for the festivities. Everyone really enjoyed all the great gifts!








Towards the end of the trip it finally warmed up and we ventured out for some geocaching. Steph was "en fuego" as she was the first one to spot both of the caches this time. The girls then swooped in for the find!


And as is customary for Richards family gatherings, we took the requisite group photo, only this time we hammed it up for the camera.


A great way to close out 2009 and welcome in 2010. Happy New Year!