I found something I like. The rest of the list is good too, but this is my favourite:

102: Have the audacity to be content. It takes courage to be content with who you are and where you're at right now. Millions of advertisements will try to talk you out of it, stay strong my friend.

our home

*A little background: My mum is away this weekend. *

(Cleaning up the living room)

Dad: I hate to think what would happen if the children in this family were left alone in the house for 24 hours. It would be terrible! It would be like Lord of the Flies in here!

(From the kitchen)

*Crash!* "ELI!!"

(A hasty investigation revealed a broken bowl and quite a bit of yogurt on the floor)

Sigh...

facebook fun

Dad had a funny thing happen today.When I got home from youth group, he told me about it. Then he said, "I'm going to post this as my facebook status!"

Observe:

Albert Gillespie

Used Victoria is hmmm?? What is the word? I had someone call tonight wanting to purchase one of the six man hole covers (don't ask) that I have for sale. He was trying to figure out if it would fit his particular hole. So I said "give me your number, and I will go out and measure the exact dimensions and get back to you." To this he responded "I am calling long distance... from Italy!?!"

*A minute or two later*

Dad: Hey! I have three notifications!

*Checks them* 

Dad: Whoa, three people commented on my status already...they all think it's hilarious...I'm going to get tons of comments!

Me: This is what happens sometimes when you actually *do* something on your facebook, dad.

 Dad: Huh...this is fun!

okay these are cute: morning glories

I found a 'recipe' online for these and thought they were adorable, and as I already had little faery lights up in my room for ambience, I thought these would add to the decor, and they were super easy to make.

So to make them you have to have the kind of egg cartons on the left in this next picture...the taller, pointy looking kind. It works way better.

Then you cut them up and you can paint them if you so desire. I painted mine white. Then punch a little hole in the bottom and stick them on a string of little christmas lights, or faery lights, whichever you call them. The little kind.

They look very cute :)

 

The simple pleasures...

A few days ago, we got a truckload of wood chips delivered to our yard. Being the creative geniuses they are, this is what the came up with:













Because, really, it doesn't have to be snow. A pile of pretty much anything remotely slippery is sledding material.














Yes, this next photo is my dear sister dumping wood chips out of her boot. I bet that was pleasant.

Oh, the fun we have...

A realization

Today, as I was going through my music, I realized I have recently purchased my fifth cd of the title 'Favourite ballet classics' or something similar. Perhaps this is a habit I need to address.

I'm back!

Hallelujah! My photo uploader is working again!! In honour of this momentous occasion, I am posting a few photos of one of my earlier projects. This project was inspired by a lovely chair at Winners which I saw but FORGOT TO TAKE A PICTURE OF! Gah. So, I remembered what it looked like but can't share the information. Anyhow, it was $198 and I thought 'I can make that...come on.'

I started with this delightful chair which has a story of its own. When my parents were on their HONEYMOON, they picked it up on the side of the road, brought it home and put new fabric on it. It's been in our house forever.

I ripped the fabric off the seat to find this delightful scene. Hmmm.
One of the springs was all bent and not fixable so I ripped all the spring out and my dad cut me a piece of plywood to make the seat instead.

Oh...but first I actually gave it two coats of paint and then distressed it a little bit to make it vintage-y and cute.

The fabric I used to recover was SO pretty. Blue and green (being my first and 3rd favourite colours :) with BUTTERFLIES (I love) and gold sparkly parts (but nice sparkles, not ugly tacky sparkles.)
The fabric was in the bolt-end basket at Satin Moon (a favourite of mine). And I had barely enough to do the whole chair, but the piece only cost $8! So the cost of my chair was $8 plus a free chair plus some extra stuffing to make it comfier and a few staples....but someone gave me those...so probably about $10 in total? Yay!!!

It looks so cute in my room, along with another recent project that I will document tomorrow.

I'm glad to be back!

Just so you know...

I have not fallen off the face of the planet, nor have I left the world of creative endeavors. I have a few projects waiting to be posted but my silly photo uploader thing has gone awol on me and they just aren't the same without the pictures! I'll be back with them as soon as I get it working.
See you soon!

Why I love to repurpose...

I love to repurpose. It's so much fun. I love the creativity it requires, and having something beautiful that I have made. But more than any of that, I love to repurpose because I think Jesus loves to repurpose.

He loves to find us right in the mess we're in. He loves to dig us out from the bottom of the pile. He loves to find us in all our ripped, torn, grease-stained glory.

Man, we were expensive.

His sacrifice puts my dollar rack purchases into perspective.

My point is, I wasn't worth much.
But he paid everything for my mess.

Because he saw something. A splash of colour. A beautiful piece of fabric just sewn into an awful shape.
He sees the potential. He has a trained eye. He knows what he can do with us.

He has to scrub our stains, sew up our holes, rip out our proud padded shoulders :)
He has to pull out his seam ripper and carefully pull apart those ugly spots where someone else put us together. He does it so much better.

He pulls us apart and shapes us differently. He hems us up a little, fixes up the sleeves, adds a few ruffles.
He gives us new life, new meaning, he repurposes us.

And then he looks at us with the same joy I look at my projects with and says "See how beautiful you were supposed to be?"

Just like it feeds my soul to create something beautiful, it delights His Father heart to keep working to perfect me.

I'm so grateful to Him.
And so, I continue my search for repurpose.

well, I had fun

My pirate name is:

Captain Anne Flint

Even though there's no legal rank on a pirate ship, everyone recognizes you're the one in charge. Like the rock flint, you're hard and sharp. But, also like flint, you're easily chipped, and sparky. Arr!

Get your own pirate name from piratequiz.com.
part of the fidius.org network

#3 MJ

There are plenty of nice pictures of this guy, but I thought these would be more appropriate. A few lovely self-portraits.

Miles is...well...I don't really know how to describe him if you don't know him...

He lives to fish. No seriously. It's like he speaks this whole alternate language that nobody in the universe speaks except people who fish.

For example - "A good way to trout fish is to get a woolly bugger and attach it to a gang troll, then you troll at about 5 miles an hour."

And "Buzz bombs are quite heavy lures that are mostly good for jigging. They're mostly for salmon and rock cod, and sometimes you might catch a small halibut with them."

I may have quoted him incorrectly, my fishing lingo could use a little work.

He lives as if his entire life is on a comedy show. He's good at being hilarious. He'll strike up a conversation with anyone, anywhere. He's super charismatic.

If he doesn't grow up to be a comedian, he'll probably be an entrepreneur. He's been selling stuff his whole life, from beans and tomatoes from the garden, to wooden carvings, to painted rocks and bouquets of greenery from the yard. One time he set up a stand at the road to sell buckets of water which he collected from the potholes in our driveway. When I asked him what they were for, he told me people could save money by buying it to water their plants with. He was charging $5 for a large gallon bucket.

Well, that's Miles.

Rebar Madness: Day 1

I have a wonderful challenge. I am going to attempt to cook my way through the entire Rebar cookbook. I'm not sure how long it will take me, and I'm not going to worry about that part...let's just say it will be less than ten years...or so. It'll be like Julie and Julia, only Rebar and Emma...I guess. ANYWAY,

My first recipe was breakfast this morning. I made fried eggs and potatoe latkes with hollandaise sauce. It was actually suppose to be poached eggs, but we don't have an egg poacher and the egg I tried to poach without one kind of exploded.

The hollandaise recipe had dill in it and it was TO DIE FOR.












Paired with a yummy blueberry smoothy, this was an excellent breakfast.

For supper I made 'Lotusland Linguini'. Super delicious stir fry with bok choy, snow peas and peanut sauce...ahhh...

My favourite part is that it was so colourful! I love having a rainbow in the kitchen :)

A very tasty day all round :)

#2. Flip Dawg

Aaron is my oldest brother. He's been my best friend since forever. At 3 and 5 we played endless games of our own invention. Our two imaginations worked magic together. He was an excellent little brother, almost always willing to go along with whatever his bossy big sister decided :) We're still bff's. We're in the same choir this year and it has been super fun to see him loving the things I love best too.

He's insanely talented. His art is incredible. He spends hours upstairs creating stuff out of lego, which he has adored since he was old enough to hold it.

The only pictures I can find of him are wearing his perma-toque...hmmm....but underneath it, he has fantastic hair.

I can't wait until we're grown up and get to be the cool adult siblings to our younger kiddies' friends :)

This dude rocks my socks.

1000 gifts - I'm in

Ann Voskamp of 'A Holy Experience' has written this book '1000 gifts', with a challenge to find 1000 gifts and record them. Pen them down publicly and in your memory. So, I begin.

1. My sweet Jesus. The lover of my soul, and the giver of life. I am ever so grateful for him.

I will take the next 6 days so post #2-7 :) I'll give you a hint. They all live in my house.

Scrap happy tree pillow

I got the idea for this super cute pillow from Cluck Cluck Sew. I am not great at following directions (hehe) and am more one to see the picture and then go make one on my own. If that's you, feel free to ignore the rest of this completely. If you like directions, read on :)


The infamous scrap happy box. I think I might move them out of this little storage unit thing and put them in a basket.

You will need:
- Your scrap happy box, whatever it may be :)
- A pillow form
- Fabric for the background


1. Start by picking out the fabrics you want to use and cutting the petal shapes. I cut 16, I think...mine were about 2 inches long and one inch wide, and in a petalish shape. I'm really not good at this...

2. Find a suitable brown fabric to be your trunk, and cut...er...a trunk shape out of it. My brother bought this lovely camo to sew himself a case for his flyrod. No joke. I never dreamed I would be using it for a project of mine...


3. Cut two squares of whatever you want your background to be about 1 inch around bigger than your pillow-form. If it has been sitting in a box for awhile like mine, you may want to iron it.

4. Arrange your petals on your fabric however you want them and pin them down on one of your squares.

5. This step is optional but I highly recommend it :)

6. Set the gauge wrong on your sewing machine and make a mess of your pillow front. A few times. Wait, that's just me.

7. Using the zig-zag stitch if you have one, sew the petals down.

8. And...the step where I forgot to take pictures. There's always at least one. Ah well. Sew your two squares together right sides in on three sides, turn it right-side-out, put your pillow form into it and sew it nicely shut.

9. Tada! Put your pillow in its new decorative spot and take a picture. 

10. Well, there really is no 10th step, but 10 steps is a good number. I know! Eat some ice cream.