School Holidays are over

 

For me anyway.  No more kids for me this week.  They are a handful and quite frankly exhaust me, but when they leave I miss them. They just seem to fill the house with life, laughter and of course fighting.  I remember fighting with my brother when I was a kid, sometimes with real intent to wound but it's different looking at it from the otherside.  I tend to let them work things out themselves most of the time, but yesterday I had to turn the xbox off midgame and separate them before it came to serious blows.  Keeping them busy and being organised seems to be the key, so with this in mind I prepared a project for yesterday, they of course got bored with the time it was taking but more than happy to share credit when their Dad showed up.

I would have posted these last night but my camera batteries needed recharging.

I started with a dozen toilet rolls.

 Which we started painting red.

 Left to dry under the heatpump, they didn't take long before the second coat.

 Cut into two cm slices, I painted the insides (notice I said I not we).

I tried a few different patterns and we (back to we again) decided on the following. And proceeded to glue them together with a mix of glue and red paint, so that any paint showing blended in.

For what I want it needs to be bigger, but this is a great start and gives a good idea of what the finished look will be.  The boys thought it was awesome considering it started out as toilet rolls and yes they looked at me like I was crazy when I asked them to paint them.  Now I just need to start saving up more toilet rolls. With just two of us in the house, this could take a while so don't hold your breath waiting for pictures of the finished product on our bedroom wall.

Jen

Friday's Finds

Check these out!!

I found seven of these jars at the Salvation Army.  The two in the back are plain white and cream, but the five in front are great,  I love the labels.  I haven't seen these before and with all 7 for $5 I wasn't going to risk them going to someone else while I thought about it.  I think I'm going to use them as decorations in our wedding, that at this stage is going to be in December.

This one is definitely my favourite, along with the........that's right.........green one.  I'm so predictable.

Jen

P.S.  Sorry about the blurry photos

Made By Me May - Day 28

Moving Day - Well moving back into the bedroom anyway.

Our Bed - New duvet and my great aunts green velvet bedspread, which I think is approx 70 years old.

My new reading corner.  I bought two of the footstools for $10 on TradeMe with the view to recover, but I actually like the colour.  Maybe because it's green.

My Bedside - The birdcage stand was in the garage when we moved it, not sure where I'm going with that yet

My Duchess -  That lamp needs some serious help,  but in the meantime I love how the frames on the wall turned out, may add some material to the inside of the white frames.

Corner Cupboard -  Where we keep all of our linen and my shoes.  I have my jewellery stands up here and three of my jewellery boxs (I have alot of jewellery) the other is on my duchess

Mantle -  I love the red on the fireplace tiles and had to add some red around the room to match.  I think the splashes of red really make the room, I need to add a few more.

Bench painted red below the freshly painted windows and new curtains.  I'm on the lookout for some more material, possibly in red to lengthen the curtains.  I still have a bit of dressing to do,  will be playing around with things for the next few weeks until I'm happy with the placement of things.

And this is Theodore Edward Bear or Ted. E Bear, he was a gift from a very close friend of mine when I was 21 and always has pride of place on the bed.  I've even taken him on travels with me, he's been all over New Zealand and once to Sydney, Australia for a bit of sun. 

Jen

Made by Me May - Day 25

"So how is the bedroom going?" I hear you say.  Well since you asked.  I have now finished painting the furniture and am pretty happy with the result.

My Drawers before paint

After one coat

The Mr's Drawers Before

I've had my draws since I moved out of home, they were my mothers before that.  I remember when she bought them, I think I was 8 or 9.  So, they are approx 30 years old.  Two bedsides and one duchess are all that remains of a large bedroom suite.  I hated the look of them and have been wanting to paint them for an extremely long time.  For the time being they do not have the new handles they deserve, but hopefully they won't be too far off

Mr's Drawers After

Where did everything in the draws go to?  Well that would be here

Plus some bags of clothes in the spare room.  That chair in the corner with everything piled on will make it's way in to the bedroom as well.

Here's a quick wee look at my new bedside light.

A really really large jar I got from the shop one month filled with two strings of christmas lights.  I can turn on one string or two depending on how much light I want and can even get them to blink if I want, although I'm not sure why I would want.

Jen

Made By Me May - Day 24

 

Just a quick one today.

My favourite colour is Green, you may have noticed that already as nearly every room in my house has been painted green including the lovely green you can see in the photo below, that is on one of my workroom walls. I think it runs in the family my Gran's favourite colour was green as well.

I used this frame to display one of my favourite items out of my Gran's sewing box.

Close Up

It still has some of the original needles in it as well.


Jen

Made by Me May - Day 23

You may have noticed in the hallway earthquake pics all the books, well that photo was taken 15 months ago, here is the Hallway now.

That's right I'm a reader.  I'll read almost anything and find it impossible to walk pass a book display without having a look.  I once read 31 books in one month, it must of been a really slow month, I generally get through about 4-10 a month.  All the books here are secondhand and mainly unread and these aren't all of them.

More books

Books I haven't even unpacked yet

 
I generally only keep a book until I have read it, then it makes it's way onto it's new owner either via the charity shop or bookcrossing, I've even given books to random people I've seen reading on the bus.  I try to always have a book on me, you never know when you'll get a few minutes or a hour if you're waiting for a doctors appointment. 

One of my favourite authors is Catherine Cookson, and I still have a few of hers that I have read before, one of the only authors I have kept, others being Jodi Picoult, John Grisham and Robert Goddard.  I made a special bookcase to display my Cookson collection, a set of 5 kitchen drawers I got for $1 on Trademe.  The woman selling them wasn't sure that anyone would want them and was fascinated when I told her what I had planned, I send her an email with photos when it was first done.

That photo was lost, and this one is from after the quakes.  The top draw fell off and the bottom is a bit off kilter.

Close Up - Bottom Two Draws

Close Up - Top Two Draws

I lined the draws with pages from an old book that was falling apart (I couldn't of sacrificed it otherwise, plus I read it first) but other than that the draws didn't need much added to them.  I couldn't let the 5th draw go to waste, so now its a cat bed for next to where I sit at the computer, although they don't seem to appreciate the effort.

Jen

Made By Me May - Day 22

 

My mother picked me up from the Airport and she drove me home.  It was midnight Fri 25th Feb and I had no idea what I was coming home to.  The power was still out and once I had coaxed Mr Wobbly out from under the house all I could do was go to bed.  The next morning I was shocked to see how little our home had been affected, we live on the edge of the city central, the footage of which I had been watching for days.

Fallen items in the kitchen

Buttons everywhere in my workroom

More Buttons

Hallway

Close Up of  DVD's

Top of Hallway (more buttons)

After only 1 hour of tidying up, the house looked like nothing had happened. Non essential travel was not recommended, I was now stuck in our home.  Looking in our kitchen cupboards I found all our wine glasses had fallen over but remained intact, for the first time in my life I was furious, I wanted to smash everything, it all seemed so unfair, instead I sat down and cried and cried.
Luckily our power was restored that evening, I don't know how I would have managed on my own in the dark.  The Mr came home a few days after me and we set about seeing how we could help.  But didn't know what we could do, and that's when I went onto TradeMe and ended up with these guys

Here are five of the six kittens we took in, in early March.  Then while our heatpump was being installed, the kittens were overheard and the installer mentioned the earthquake had left him with a new cat who had given birth under his house.  The shelters were all full and he didn't know what to do with them.   Now guess what I said?

That's right meet the new four. Luckily the others had found homes by the time these guys showed up. Except for Jack that is.

We consider ourselves to be very lucky, everyone we love is safe, our home is ok and where we live life is reatively uninterrupted.  I'm proud of the way we came together, everyone reaching out to the neighbours they had probably never met.  I love Christchurch even more now than ever and I have no plans of leaving.  I'm in this relationship for the long haul.

In the top earthquake photo you can see that we had a huge lack of storage in the kitchen, we used this bookcase until I could get my new shelves built.  I bartered for these shelves with a builder friend by babysitting his son's.

As you can see, I painted this wall a deep green, I so love this colour.  He built the shelves from odd pieces he had stored in his garage.  The original idea was to paint them white, but I liked the rustic feel of them.

I filled the shelves with all the eclectic pieces I had collected.  The scales my Gran used to bake with (far right), the mismatched glasses, decorative plates as well as practical items.  The basket on the bottom shelf holds our cutlery, we don't have any draws, that's weird right?

Jen

Made by Me May - Day 18

We turned the heatpump on for the first time today, Man it's getting cold!  For me to say that you know it's true.  The Mr and I are so different when it comes to temperature tolerance, he can be sitting with 2 jerseys and a jacket on complaining about the cold and I'm sitting next to him in a t-shirt feeling comfortable.  So, when to turn on the heatpump is always an issue.  We were lucky enough to have a heatpump installed by EQC (Earthquake Commission) for free just before last winter and I have to say I don't know how we would have managed without.
It's been long enough that I can show you more pictures of our fur babies right, don't want you to get sick of the sight of them. I took a photo of each of them today and have to say they encompass who they are quite nicely.

Here's Jack.  Sleeping in Mr's suitcase, which I refuse to unpack and has been sitting in our lounge until it's empty.  Jack loves to climb into things to sleep, we have found him in some weird places.

Mr Wobbly, looking regal and giving me his usual, "What do you want?" expression.

And lastly Kitty, who as soon as she saw the camera wanted to know what it was and wouldn't sit still. I usually have to sneak up on her for a decent photo.


About a year ago I found an old mirror frame for free, I had a vision and grabbed it.  I filled the space where the mirror used to be with some old wallpaper I had grabbed from my Granparents house, it had been left over from decorating their bedroom and stored in the top of their wardrobe for I don't know how long (that wallpaper was up when I was born).  The frame still had the metal tabs on the sides that held the mirror and I used them to criss cross some string over the front.  I used pegs to hang some black and white photos plus other bits and pieces to decorate.

This is one of my most favourite free items ever.

Jen

Made by Me May- Day 16

Thought some of you might be curious to see how the bedroom makeover is coming.  We moved into this place in Dec 2010, we were looking for a temporary place and weren't too concerned about the looks of the place, as long as it had plenty of room.  It's definitely an interesting place, the outside desperately needs a paint and the garden was a bit overgrown before we weeded. The Feb 22 earthquake changed our plans a little and as places to rent are hard to find in Christchurch we plan to stay put.  Now the inside was a bit of a shock the first time we walked through, hadn't been cleaned in who knows how long, paint was peeling off the walls and there was even some lovely graffiti in the bedrooms. But I saw it's potential and we forged ahead dispite others concern.  We have done a bit of painting throughout but the room that is our bedroom was left until now, I couldn't stand the colour anymore

This is a pic of the ceiling, that's right the ceiling!!!  I have now painted over the walls but they were this dark blue colour also.

Now this shows you a bit better, the large blue diamond that hung above our heads every night. As you can imagine it was like a cave in there

 Now, here is the window I finished painting today, a crisp clean white instead of the dirty cream it was before.

And a better look at the new colour, a gorgeous soft green. The diamond is still there for now, but not for much longer. 

Now why paint a rental house you may be thinking,  Well I have plenty of free time at the moment and I find it great practise in decorating and design besides so far this makeover has only cost me $26 and I'm figuring the total will be about $40. We get the bnefit of a beautiful cosy room without the rental price to go with it. And we can use the before and after photos when we decide to start looking for a new place, whenever that may be.

And a quick refashion

A new pair of socks made from the sleeves of an old unwanted Jersey, aren't the buttons just so cute.

Jen