Blog Archives
Family Updates!
Hey, y’all! What’s up? 🙂 🙂
Wow, I could write a bajillion updates (or at least 8 posts) at this point with all of the photos I’ve taken in the last month or two!
I will show you a few highlights, though; it’ll be a condensed overview of what could be 8 individual updates.
(I may double back at a later date to show you actual step by step tutorials on each of the 8 the projects and step by step recipe details, in individual posts.)
1) We made a fun, colorful “puff quilt,” by following this tutorial link: http://handmade-europe.com/2011/11/22/tutorials-quilts Remind me to tell you the backstory of these fabrics sometime!
2) Garden:
a)My garden, especially the pepper garden, has been flourishing!
b) I submitted one of photos of my peppers to P. Allen Smith’s #ArkansasGrown photo contest and was selected as one of the weekly winners. I received a great prize package in the mail shortly thereafter!
c) I sure enjoy late season rose blooms and playing around with photo editing apps!
3) One of my favorite herbs this year is Pineapple Sage! I bought it as a little starter Bonnie plant, and it has grown to 3′-4′. I’ve especially liked using it in “Brown Butter Sage Chicken!” I cook it until the Sage gets crispy! Yummm! I follow this recipe link: http://www.kevinandamanda.com/recipes/dinner/5-minute-brown-butter-chicken-and-crispy-sage.html
4) In house decor news, I’ve purchased a new pair of long sofas for the living room and a new coffee table. I posted our old sectional sofa on Craigslist and Facebook to sell, and it sold the first day. However, it’ll be 6-8 weeks until the new LaZBoy sofas arrive! Oops! Haha! The coffee table has arrived, though:
5) We also decided to paint the ceilings in the foyer, living room, and office a dark green! It doesn’t darken the room, but it does make the 10′ ceilings seem even higher! The Living Room has windows that are almost floor to ceiling spanning one wall, lights in the ceiling fan, and a pair of wall sconces, so it is sufficiently bright! Here it is:
6) Our 3 girls are all flourishing! We received their benchmark standardized test scores from Spring testing; Caroline and Abigail have “Wow’d” me again! They both scored hundreds of points above state averages in Literacy. They also BOTH scored in the upper 90-99th percentile in every subject, nationally. Amazing, just amazing little girls they are! Caroline, 7th grade, has been invited to participate in Duke University’s talent identification program (TIP!) YaY!! Veronica, 3, stays busy playing with building blocks, puzzles, and her Nabi tablet, patiently waiting to be old enough to take standardized tests, too! Love:
7) What else? Oh, yeah! We reupholstered another chair! I asked Baby Veronica to me find something green in Hancock Fabric Store, and she picked this green butterfly upholstery fabric, so we went with green butterfly fabric for the chair that sits in the foyer. It’s kind of an entry way into the library. We also covered the desk shroud! See:
8) This morning, Mitch got up early to make Cinnamon Sticky Buns from scratch for us girls! Lucky, lucky girls we are!! I sure love him! He used the recipe from this link: http://m.allrecipes.com/recipe/21461/ooey-gooey-cinnamon-buns
So, that’s what’s been going on around here!
I hope autumn is going well for you and yours, too!
Your Friend,
~Amber Hamilton Henson
Abigail’s Room, 100 yards of Fabric Later!
It’s been really hot (for Arkansas) during the last few days with heat indexes over 100* and intense humidity, but we’re having some sort of unusual cold front today and tomorrow with temps only in the 80s. It’s so nice! I’ve turned off our AC, turned on fans, and opened the windows for the day!
My 100 yards of sheer “butterfly” chiffon/voile fabric that I ordered online from Ronnie Home Textile for daughter Abigail’s windows and canopies arrived. (Abigail is nine years old.) The fabric is even better than I anticipated it to be from the photos online! It’s soooo soft and drapes splendidly! Abigail LOVES the vibrant butterfly design that repeats up both sides of the fabric!
Then, our project began! Lol! Oh, my!! I totally underestimated just how much time it would actually take ME to cut and sew all of these panels! (We covered one big wall of windows, and made floor to ceiling canopies for the two daybeds in her room! = 15 white butterfly panels that are floor to ceiling length, 4 solid hot pink panels of the same length, and 4 turquoise butterfly canopy panels at 27′ each!) Wow! Not having a proper studio space, I scooted our dining room and laid it all out on the floor and then took to sewing on the kitchen counter. We were destined to eat fast food for dinner a time or two, but the outcome was worth the sacrifice! I made pretty good time, though, and got it all done in less than three days only working sporadically with three daughters underfoot. That three day time period also included making the three long wall curtain rods!
I used glass doorknobs and electrical conduit as curtain rods to mimic the ones I liked at a Bedding and Bath big box store. Theirs were like $129 each for the lengths we needed; we made them for about $12 each! The conduit came in ten foot lengths, we left one full length and trimmed two of them to eight feet, spray painted black satin (in our driveway) to cover the steel and brass, then epoxied the door knobs into the conduit! Yay! Easy, peasey, and saved hundreds of dollars!!
Her room is actually painted a vibrant purple, which only shows here and there. Her room is mostly fabric, now! It’s amazing! I told her it reminded me of the inside of Jeannie’s bottle. She had no idea what I was talking about. Apparently, she’s never seen the show “I Dream of Jeannie!”
In her room, she also has a few other neat features, particularly her neon sign from my dad’s (her Pop’s) sign shop, a purple dollhouse that we’re still working to complete, shelves of photos, … 🙂
So, what do you think of our new 100 yards of fabric we’ve added to her room this week?
I think we’re going to add l.e.d. twinkle lights to the canopies next, and add a few big plants on either side of the white shelving. I’ll update this post with photos when we do!
Your Friend,
~Amber Hamilton Henson
This post will link with some great blog hops this week!
Pop into the parties at these links:
ArkansasWomenBloggers ~ Sunday Link Up
my1929charmer ~ Sunday’s Best Par-Tay #64
SavvySouthernStyle ~ Wow Us Wedsnesdays #181
FromMyFrontPorchToYours ~ Treasure Hunt Thursday
SweetBellaRoos ~ Pin It Thursdays
MyRepurposedLife ~ Catch As Catch Can #175
FunkyJunkInteriors ~ PJ 259