Hello, Dear Readers, I hope this post finds you all well. I know, a lot of you are no longer reading. I’m so sorry this travel blog has sort of fallen off course. We will return with interesting places we see and things we do after we pull out in November. I hope most of you will return then.
How have I been spending my time while we sit in Utah recovering from the cost of traveling and medical bills? I’ve been doing a lot of crafting for one. We’ve been doing a lot of minimal repairs on our RV ourselves. And I’ve been doing a little bit of writing. I’m hoping to get back to that more often soon.
I’m getting ready to go through more craft items we have in our storage unit, so when we head to Oregon for Christmas this year – I still have to let my beloved brother know we won’t make it to Colorado this year – I’ll take what I have left. My child and I plan to do some crafting together and see if we can get a local shop to let us sell items or have a little craft sale at their apartment complex. We’ll see what can be worked out.
Why aren’t we making Colorado, our home state, this Christmas? Well, our child has saved up for years to make a trip to Japan. They took Japanese in Middle and High School, and they have always wanted to go. We couldn’t come up with the money on short notice for a year to study abroad, so they have planned this trip for a very long time. They will be gone for a month and are not returning until December 18th. Their boyfriend will be staying with Cinnamon, their cat, while they are in Japan. Shiloh is not allowed to be away for more than thirty days without possibly losing their apartment. So they can’t travel for Christmas. It will be hard for all of us, but Shiloh was born and raised in Colorado, so they look forward to the trip, and we all love spending it with my brother. When we leave Oregon and head south, we’ll be driving through Colorado and stop for a week or so to visit him.
I pulled out some yarn and styrofoam cones. Jay hates styrofoam. For whatever reason, it gives him the heebie-jeebies, like nails across a chalkboard might for me. He won’t touch it if he can avoid it. Same with cotton balls. Although he’ll do it, I usually offer to take cotton out of pill bottles for him.
This is what I started with:
I also used this yarn:
Next is what they looked like before I embellished them:
And the finished product:
And what they look like on the tops of each one:
Shiloh wants me to make more of them. Obviously, I have no place to put them in our RV. I do have plenty of yarn left, so I will be doing so when we prepare to craft together in December and January. Just the embellishments might be different.
Then it was on to organizing the dining table, aka, my desk. It’s been a bit of a mess. This is on the table:
And this is on the small shelf above the table/under the window:
Messy. Unorganized. Frustrating. So….
I love working with wood. Here are photos of what I started with:
Jay had to really work at it, but he got the bottom out of one of the round pencil holders so I could glue one on top of the other. I also had these items to work with:
I did not end up using the Balsa wood. It’s just not strong enough for my purposes. And the large piece of wood I used my mini table saw on to cut for the bottom part of the organizer.
Here is a photo of the next step. Gluing it all together with wood glue and some E-6000 (and a bit of Gorilla Hot Glue for an immediate hold so I could move on to the next step). Oh, and you can see my corn nuts in this photo. I have an addiction – LOL:
The bottles in this photo are of white chalk paint and clear wax. I changed what I had planned and didn’t need the wax. Here’s why:
Burlap and lace! Very pretty to me. A little country, a little shabby chic. But too plain. So I added some embellishments:
I love buttons. They are so cute. And the cylinder, which holds my rulers, a lighter for burning frayed pieces off burlap, and some glue sticks, ended up looking like this:
Now it looks much better, and I love them so much!
The background in the photo is a throw. Our clamp that came with the RV broke where the blind was attached. Honestly, they are hard to find, but we’re looking. Oh, the joys of RV life! A little sun, a little lot of rain. In the meantime, I bought some curtains we’re supposed to put up tomorrow. We’ll see. It’s a two person job. I can’t wait to get rid of that thing!
In a couple of days, I hope to post a few other items I’ve worked on. And I hope to finish a couple more that are in progress.
Until then, Dear Readers, I hope you are all well, and we will touch base again soon.
On Hummingbirds Wings 