Colour Me Happy

I'm back. And I've been mucking around with maps again. In aid of Colour Me Happy: a year long, monthly challenge to inject a little more colour into life. Starting with yellow, in yours or your kids bedroom. With cool prizes.
All month I've been thinking "ugh, I'm not putting any yellow in my (pale blue and beige) room, it'll have to be Clauds".  But yellow, with the apricot of Claud's walls is also seriously ugh in my book. And Clauds no use on the topic. If you ask Claud what colour anything is she shrieks "pink" (erm, also pretty ugh). You can see how I might benefit from this colour therapy thing.
Anyway, in an effort to guide our Claud towards an appreciation of colour her mother simply does not possess we came up with a little something...

 Proudly made from 'pure stash' ie I didn't shell out for a thing (a relief after the never ending expense of dolly housing, although I might have to break my resolution and buy a little orange ribbon) I made this yellow mappy do-dad as part of a cute colour id chart whatsit, as yet not completely finished. You see that's the thing about colour too. You add a bit and it turns into a flippin rainbow before you know it!

Hello Yellow 

How d'ya do blue 

G'day green, 

Hey! grey

 I'm a bit stuck on pink ("put it there pink"?) and orange ("enchante (with accent) orange?), and have enough op-shopped embroidery hoops and maps to add white ("alright white"?) and (possibly "pleased to meet you" purple. So any ideas on salutations for these colours gratefully received!

I think this shalt also suffice as an Our Creative Space too.

           

Still here, just...

I might not be blogging 'bout it much, but the op-shopping and making stuff continues.

Kids chair-op-shopped (it's swiss according to the woman donating it)

 Cushion-made by moi from op-shopped table cloth (it even has a zip!)

Meanwhile, claud (the chrysalis) is getting cuter every day 

Righto, off to resume gardening, have a great week folks x

Feeling more beachy than bloggy lately

                                  Been feeling more beachy than bloggy lately

 Tsunami fears not withstanding-I kept my car keys in my back pocket the whole time and parked the car pointing to the exit, we still relaxed and had fun digging holes and chasing seagulls.

Yes! The weather is good at long last, and what with the earthquakes keeping us all awake I can't be fagged blogging or doing much else other than having a good time with my whanau.

The river feels safe, although i have heard since heard a rumour that Tsunamis travel up rivers...

Nothing, of course keeps me out the oppy.

I found this cool Alaskan doll this week. Now I'm not a doll person as a rule, but I am a fur person. That, plus a combo of the creeping effect of having a little girl, renovating a doll house, and being in the midst of reading Kathryn Harrison's The Seal Wife made me certain I should take her home. 

Not sure what I'm going to do with her now she's here, though apparently they're quite collectible. This one isn't signed on the bottom and has a darker skinned face than most of the ones I've found on the net so far. 

I'll be looking out for more Kathryn Harrison books though-there were some gorgeous, lyrical descriptions of people and place in it that I kept going back to re-read and savour, though the story itself didn't really grip me. Re: reading, I've just signed up to Goodbooks, to get some book recommendations after a short, but frustrating-when-lying-awake-all-night-alarmed-by-earthquakes, drought of decent reads. 

I did read about half of Ferenc Mates enjoyable-if-a-crock book on about what the Italian village lifestyle can teach us about happiness: grow vegges (check) and talk to your neighbours (check) and all will be grand apparently (erm, really?), The Wisdom of Tuscany. Motivated, I lurched out of bed the following morning and made some redcurrant jelly from the meagre pickings on our bush after the bird had had their share. 

Can't say I noticed any radical improvement in my happiness quotient, though the neighbours did wolf down the tarte aux fraises I made for Claudines bithday party in December, glazed with last years batch of redcurrant jelly, which looked wonderful thanks to the colour intensification effect of the redcurrant jelly. 

They didn't taste that flash to my taste though, due to over-mixing the dough I think-kinda gluey, though everyone was too polite to mention it.  Last years were too crumbly and needed to be eaten with a spoon, in a bowl. 

If anyone can point me in the direction of a good, tastes like the crushed biscuit base on a cheese cake but sticks together, recipe, or a good book for that matter, it would make my life much happier.

Happiness is  nearly completed dolly house project.

I did a bit of work on it over the Christmas hols, though I've since resumed a state of doll housing inertia and am unlikely to have it totally completed to my exacting satisfaction for the I'm a Giant Challenge extended deadline. Copying the colour scheme of the mini doll house I painted the exterior  in Resene's Athens grey. 

AFTER

BEFORE

It looked ace, if a bit prim, so I added a few hand-painted embellishments

                                  And, in another pin-ing real life moment, this time in miniature,
       
                                                                         inspired by this

I made some circular shelving for the ball bedroom from those little freebie pots of gunk you get from The Body Shop.

I'm really want to do something similar in Claud's bedroom to house the soft toy overload that's driving me mental, but I haven't found anything suitable down the oppy...yet! 

I also made another tulip table. And a giant eyebrow. Hmm. 

And a mirror and pot plants for the once-a-jewelery-box chest of drawers.

And in a final bit of second hand joy for the week I found something on my 'dream finds down the oppy' list at today's Riccarton market

A fabulous old school roll up wall map, of Paris to boot.

Ahh, maybe that's the secret sum for happiness:- family+veggies+neighbourliness+oppyshoppysuccess!

Pin-ing Real Life

 I thought for ages that "Pin Real Life' meant, 'don't waste you life surfing pinterest, go do cool stuff and then stick it on there for other people to waste their life mooning over'. I liked the 'get off the 'puter' and go do stuff but then get back on the 'puter and upload it' encouragement it suggested. But it didn't mean that, so life went on as usual aka very little time for anything but childcare, books and a wee bit of craft, so no telly, no newspapers, no pinterest.
Until very recently, when some cake-spiration was required.

                                                       And so, here is, my first 'Pin Real Life'

                                                          

                                                                    My version

Rainbow cake with a little doll house/bunting embellishment

The Pin-Pic Inspiration

It is a great expanse of white cakeness that begs decorating in this fashion. I was going to make edible bunting to grace the sides of mine but ran out of time.

I made cream cheese icing for the white between layers, and used royal icing (thickly so as to hide the rainbow colours inside) for the outside. And half bottles of food colouring. Sickly and e-numbered up like all the best birthday cakes!

Claud and her mates were mad for it.

The birthday baba herself, beautifully dressed in Rowantree

But I still like my other idea of 'pin-ing real life' better, so I'm uploading some of the crafty stuff I've did last year on there (someone pined me doll house bookcase already *faints*.  And since the husband is still on his work hols and sharing the Claud rearing, and since it is wayyyy better than google image, I have made the occasional, specific, project inspiration foray there since the cake. 

ie there will be more 'pin-ing real life' round here shortly!

Are you a 'pin-up' too? 

How do I find you so I can surf your cool pins?

A sign of op-shopping things to come?

New Year Resolutions (2012),  no 1.

Curb magazine addiction; after long and painful deliberation making an exception only for BBC Home and Antiques.

Always at least  a couple of months old by the time it gets to NZ, always out of season, it usually has a wonderful, alluring cover, but I bought this one anyway.

Being a fan of traditional welsh wool patterns: I had a welsh wool coat at an impressionable age, in red and black with a pixie hood and a zip up the front, I loved this article. In particular I fantasised about that pink one, to the left, imagining a pair of girls bed with one of those blankets apiece, with the cute wee kiddo's holding hands across the gap.I always have detailed fantasies (tee-hee!), and we're planning baba no 2, and are hoping for another girl...

Isn't it gorg!

Two days later...thank you Gods of the op-shoppy Universe!

Just one, easily fixed, pull apiece, they appear never to have been used.

Imagine if this always happened? See something in a cool magazine, then it appears in an op-shop for not much the very next day (or thereabouts).

You wouldn't give up your magazine addiction then would you? 

My first share at Soph's of 2012.

Righto...off to read World of Interiors and hope for the best...