Projects Archives - Page 113 of 216

15 Days of Happiness :: Rearrange Something

May 28, 2013 jennifer Decorating, Musings on Life and Beauty

Today’s happiness task is closely related to my post about painting something.
Sometimes we get going and the beautiful things in our lives become part of the backdrop. We love and appreciate them, but because they blend into the landscape of our days we fail to really see them. When we no longer see them, their power to bring joy is diminished. We can do this both with people and with things, and when it happens it’s easy to start looking around at other people, other things, and think we need THOSE to be happy.

I caught myself being tempted to think this way recently when I saw this picture in the Wisteria catalog:

I love the bright blues against the white. The painting, rug, lamps and vase I particularly like, but I don’t really need any of them.

I do have a white living room that I love, so I decided to pull a few things from other places and see how it would turn out. This is what I did:

I moved a pillow from another room and placed my Water and Sky quilt over the arm of the couch.

I pulled vases from other rooms to make an arrangement I liked, then cut my first peonies of the year.

That was it, but it was enough. All of a sudden I had a splash of the color I wanted, and doing something different gave me new motivation and pride in having my house look nice. Sometimes that is just what I need to feel energized and willing to clean. Rearranging things makes me notice them again, and restores the pleasure I find in them as well. I didn’t need anything new; I just needed new eyes to see what I already had.

What will you rearrange today? A room? A shelf? Or will you do something far greater, like rearrange a schedule to restore a relationship to it’s proper priority in your life? Whatever it is, may it bring happiness!

Jennifer

15 Days of Happiness :: Paint Something

May 23, 2013 jennifer Decorating, Musings on Life and Beauty

With the change of every season, I often feel tempted to go shopping for pretty new home accessories. Stores and catalogs are transformed by seasonal color and designs that make the coming season feel even more exciting and beautiful. They plan it that way, and while I believe it’s fine to update things now and then, I also know that if we update our fashion at the rate the retailers hope we will, the result will bring pleasure at first, but will end up robbing us of happiness in the end. There is nothing wrong with liking pretty things; the fault comes in buying too many of them. Falling prey to retail therapy brings more stuff into our already cluttered homes, gives us more to store/maintain/care for, and usually ends up being a roadblock to our long term dreams by pinching us financially.

One of my strategies to benefit from the gorgeous advertising without sacrificing my goals is to paint something. It’s usually the color that sucks me in, and I’m particularly vulnerable to the colors of spring when they hit the stores. My favorite pictures this year came from the Wisteria catalog that arrived in my mailbox covered with every shade of blue – my favorite.

Wanting something new, and wanting it to be blue, I decided to “shop my house.” In the basement I remembered a votive candle holder that my sister gave me 3 (yes, three!) years ago. The plan was to paint it all along, but I never got around to it. I used paint I had on hand from another project and got started. My candle holder looked like this:

Pretty, but not me, especially with the metal inserts. I decided to simply paint over all of it, and a few coats later I had this:

I also decided to put it to use with flowers instead of candles.

This project allowed me to be creative, to use something I already had, to display the flowers from my yard indoors, to save my money, and still feel like I had something new and exciting to enjoy.

Isn’t it wonderful what a little paint can do! Perhaps you’ve got something you can update, too. Making home more beautiful – and doing it with self-discipline – is a happy thing!

Have a great day!

Jennifer *This post is part of a short series on happiness. You can find the complete list of posts in the series here . To read the previous post, click here . For the next post, click here.

Leave a comment beauty, Decorating, flowers, happiness

Modern Medallion Border 5

May 22, 2013 jennifer Quilting and Sewing

The Utah County Modern Quilt Group met last Saturday morning, and I stayed up ridiculously late Friday night, determined to finish another border in time to share it at the meeting.

In these photos the quilt top is hanging over a window, so the back lighting shows all the seams and makes the colors look more saturated than they otherwise would, but I think it looks kind of cool.

One of the leaders of the group did this border on her quilt and I really liked the mosaic feel it had. My measurements are different than hers, but construction was the same. To make mine, I needed 28 – 6.5 inch squares. Each square is made up of a nine patch block, and the “squares” in each block are two rectangles.

To make my border, I cut 30 – 1.5 inch wide strips of fabric (averaging about 41 inches long). I paired the strips, starched them carefully so they wouldn’t begin to curve, and sewed them together. This gave me 15 strips of fabric that was now 2.5 inches wide.

I then cut each strip into 2.5 inch widths. I then started laying the squares out in three strips of three blocks, with the blocks alternating in a horizontal and vertical orientation. I pieced these together until I made 28 of them, then made two rows of 6 and two rows of 8 blocks. They were then sewn to the quilt and it now measures 48.5 inches square.

Now I have decisions to make. I want to keep adding borders to this quilt, but I also need to start deciding how large I’m going to let it be. One thing is certain: I am loving this project!

Jennifer