Look what I got in the mail today!

It's a swatch of my new custom geranium fabric from Spoonflower!

The print turned out really beautifully.

It is now for sale here.

While I like Spoonflower for the ability to browse others' designs, I don't like the length of time it takes to receive orders (almost a month!).

I managed to find a different printer that charges slightly less, and ships 4 times faster. So, if you don't want to wait the month to receive your fabric from Spoonflower, I will gladly accept pre-orders for the other printer and immediately put in an order for you. You should receive it in at least HALF the time.

Let me know what you think of my fabric!

Just wanted to show you a puppy photo to keep you happy.

I have things to post, but Typepad is having some coding issues preventing me from posting more than one photo at a time without severely messing up my layout. That's why my last post was lacking in the photo category.

They assured me that they were working on fixing the problem, so I hope that at some point I can bring you some more photo-laden postings.

Violet says she's sorry.

This little quickie is a great way to add unexpected interest to your home without the torture of making holes in the walls and is pretty cheap to do.

Try hanging ornaments, crystals, candle holders, chimes, or any other dangly items from the ceiling in unusual locations. Using new or vintage lace, ribbons, or string, you can tie them to your item of choice and thumb tack them into the ceiling.

This little hand-blown bird to the left was a Christmas ornament that was just too perfect for my kitchen. It was strung with baby blue ribbon, a small bow was made around the tack, and then it was pushed into the ceiling.

The big glass crystal was part of a gift to my husband several years ago. It was strung with vintage lace, the lace was wrapped around the tack so it would be hidden, and was stuck into the ceiling at a shorter height.

What makes this grouping unusual is that it is placed right in front of my kitchen nook window, where the sunlight can stream through them during the day. What I really love is that you can see them from outside, as it breaks up the monotony of the cookie-cutter homes around me just a bit.

Try using this quick idea in hallways, doorways, over bar cut-outs, or even outdoors under porches.

I would have more photos to show you, but Typepad seems to be having photo posting problems, and I can't seem to post more than 1 photo at a time.

I would love to see where you implement this quick and simple idea.

I am very much enjoying honing my skills on my graphics tablet to create new custom fabrics.

In fact, I have a new design I just completed:

That being said, Spoonflower is taking FOREVER to ship my first swatch. I am 2 weeks in, and it's still processing. Assuming it is 3 weeks lead time for a required swatch for each new fabric I add to my collection, and it is 3 weeks to produce the fabric, it will be a month and a half before I can offer a new fabric for sale.

This isn't going to work, especially if I plan on adding coordinating patterns to existing fabrics.

So I am on the lookout for a new fabric printer, maybe with a smaller client load, or a larger production floor, capable of cutting that time down to something more reasonable. I have found one business that I may want to try out and the prices are comparable. They also seem to have a more diverse color printing ability.

Do you have any recommendations?

I love when it gets to the point of the year where everything is in full bloom, the sun is shining, and it's so hot, that you want to do yard work in the buff.

It is also the point where I want to have the prettiest feet in the town.

Okay, prettiest feet and sexiest legs...

I just happened to be in a beauty supply shop about a week ago, you know, picking up hair dye and such, and stumbled across OPI's "Summer Flutter" collection, sitting on the counter as I was checking out. I immediately snatched up "Wing It" and "Catch Me In Your Net". If you have seen these on the OPI website, let me tell you, they are 1000 times prettier in person:

 
So far I have only used "Catch Me In Your Net", and I have to say , it is beautiful. It shimmers a deep teal, and in certain light, shifts to green. It matches quite well with my new sling-back wedges. The camera makes the polish look more true blue, but I assure you, it is a perfect match to the teal in my shoes.

Okay, okay, I know you want to see the shoes better:

 
You can enlarge any of the photos by clicking on them so you can see these babies in their full glory.

As soon as I decide to change polish colors, I will photograph "Wing It" for you. It is a bright pink with a salmon tone, and yes.. it shimmers.

Okay, so I didn't order a proof of the red design, but I did order a proof of this:

I still don't like how it doesn't show up in the repeat when you embed it, but you can go HERE to see it in all its glory.

Once I am satisfied that it doesn't look like crap, then I will order some yardage. I will then be having a contest, and one lucky person will win a fat quarter of their very own.

I just hope shipping doesn't take forever, I am an "instant graitification" kind of girl.

I am finally getting the hang of my graphics tablet, to the point that I am able to start making some custom fabrics with Spoonflower. It took me a bit to figure out how to merge my art with the way Spoonflower does repeats, but I think you will be pleased with the results:

This pattern is called Retro Diamonds, which doesn't look like much here, but has a great diamond pattern when properly repeated. It is also a larger scale, this is about a 7" by 4" piece

I can't seem to figure out how to embed the repeats into my blog, so bear with me.

I also have this one:

This one is called Hippy, this brick is about a 2" by 4.5" repeat. It looks like a white with blue plaid, and, of course, also looks better in the pattern. Seriously, I have no idea why you can't embed the fabric in repeat!

I also did this one as a test of how geometric mirror repeats would work:

Surprisingly, this turned out really well on repeat. I call it Vertigo, and it is a 4" by 7" repeat. I have noticed that sometimes the simpler designs have the best impact.

You can see my profile for Spoonflower HERE.

I will be ordering a swatch of Retro Diamonds shortly, so it will be available for purchase after that, but if you happen to be interested in the other patterns, let me know. The other two were practice designs and I had not intended to put them up for sale, I just left them so my profile didn't seem empty.

More patterns later!

I live in a pretty nice neighborhood. My husband and I worked really hard to be able to buy our house and work even harder to make it a beautiful and happy place to be. It was our dream to have an amazing yard with water features, beautiful flowers, gardens, and unique structures. We wanted the wildlife to flock to our home. And while we are a long way away from having our backyard finished, we DID complete our front yard this year. It was big accomplishment for us, seeing as we did it all by ourselves, with the exception of the path that runs through the gate to the backyard.

 
Nathan and I love getting our hands dirty and beam with pride at our finished work. So, it is a little disheartening to us to see that none of our neighbors share our enthusiasm. With little exception, all of our neighbors have done no personalization of their front yards, other than to pay landscapers to throw out the wood chips to lay down beige rock and have a path to the backyard put in.  When I say "little exception", I mean that an occasional potted plant will show up or a 6 pack of petunias will get planted around the tree to be neglected.

I find it to be unfortunate that this is becoming the norm in so many places. My neighbors aren't too busy or unable to take pride in their front yard, seeing as most of them do their own upkeep. It just makes the neighborhood a stuffy and unimaginative place to visit.

Here is the front of my house, as it is today:

And this is what it looked like the day we bought it:

 
I am sure you can see a marked improvement. These two pictures were taken 2 years and 1 month apart. The second photo illustrates the barren, default landscaping that came with all the houses. Take out the brown bark ground cover, replace it with beige rock, and you are pretty much looking at most of the homes in my neighborhood. The rest of them didn't bother doing even that.

Maybe I just think it is unfair that my neighbors get to look at the result of our pride of ownership while we are stuck looking out our perfect bay window at default landscaping.

As you can see, the plants are a bit anemic right now. We had an insanely cold Spring, which delayed the growth of most of my plants, and killed a few that dared to come out early. I just barely managed to save one rose bush that kept dying back every time a freeze came. In fact, I was about to yank it out and replace it when I discovered a new branch coming out of the stub. It is now thriving, and threatens to be a giant bush this year.

I also have a lovely new tree (third time's the charm!) that should bloom white lilacs. I can't guarantee it will bloom this year because of the bad weather, but it already has promise that it wont just up and die back to 4 bare branches like the golden chain did.

All the front rock work only took a couple of days to complete. Instead of filling in everything with rock like the neighbors, I opted to make layers of larger rock borders mixed in with areas of larger decomposed granite. The far right corner has a thick curvaceous border that mimicks half of a boomerang. It provides a safe place to walk while hiding the unplantable (concrete-like) border of our property.

Where that part ends, a border of rock starts and an area of clean DG begins that leads to the water faucet. That area used to contain the last two remaining default landscaping plants, which were removed a few weeks ago and replaced with rose bushes. Now it looks very clean on the side, and even though I can't see if from the inside of my house, my neighbor now has something nice to look like, and I no longer have to deal with unruly plants.

My front pond has also come a long way. We filled in the area around it, and made it more of a focal point. I still have to replant the top planter every year, so it allows me to get in some early color when my perennials are still dormant. I took out the center water feature, since all it does is blow water out of the pond when it gets even remotely windy. And while it is quieter, it is also stays cleaner.

It has also allowed me to amass my own fledgling frog army:

 
I appear to be an oasis in my neighborhood. While I am not the only person with a pond (there is one several streets down), I am the only one with TWO ponds, and therefore the frogs have ample space to mate and croak and not feel crowded. At night, my yard is quite the chorus. I just need to wait until they grow up to affix laser beams to their little froggy noggins.

Now, I have gotten eggs and tadpoles in my larger back pond, but the water is much more active and the koi find them to be a tasty treat. Instead, it is a haven to water plants:

 
This plant blooms tiny periwinkle flowers, andd I am shocked that little Miss Violet hasn't tried to eat it. She did drag out another plant that had to be put in the middle water basin on the waterfall:

 
The whiter plant was originally in the stream but Violet wouldn't leave it alone, so now it has made friends with the papyrus. We seem to be in the midst of an algae invasion that won't quit, no matter how much we treat it. It is pretty going over the waterfall but it is relentless, and grows so fast. I have already removed a bucket full of the stuff, and it seems to be time to do it again. I do have a couple dozen snails that eat algae, but I think they have given up. 

I have some more things to show you, and a video to make on decorating rental homes, but I think this post is long enough. So if you have any questions to ask about dealing with rentals, feel free to ask, and I will try to include it in my video!

Until next time...