Projects for the New Home

I am getting really excited, folks- because in a month or so my family is finally moving into our own space! This means our homesteading dreams are about to come true. Once we are settled, we will be looking for used beekeeping equipment, building a chicken coop and raised beds and much much more! We are looking at some homes on Friday and one in particular sounds like everything we want!

In my excitement, I have started many projects to embellish our new home. (Many of these I have pinned on Pinterest.)

What sort of projects am I doing?

Isn't this awesome?

Right now, I am doing a latch hook rug for our new bathroom- made from old tee shirts. Ecological and chic! I am having it match our new shower curtain and really cute toothbrush holder (that I got from Etsy).

I have to say, while the project is cheap (Half the tees were free (stained, bleached spots, ripped, holey), the other half were irregulars for a quarter a piece. The latch hook tool (I didn't have one) was $3 as was the latch hook backing. I am using the tees to latch as well as the parts that could not be made into latch strips to make a few other crocheted rugs as well. So for less than $10, I get many several handmade rugs. The main expense is time. The crochet rugs won't take as long, but that latch hook is taking hours!!!

This is what the non-latch tee shirt rugs
will be like.

I am doing some embroidery and cross stitch. I am embroidering tea towels for the kitchen- all kinds of designs and sayings! Like a true kitchen Witch, I have one that will say, "This is where the magic happens." Another will have chickens on it and say, "I dream of a better world when chickens can cross the road and not have their motives questioned." Still another will say, "The happiest people don't have the best of everything. They make the best of everything that they have." And of course, lots of doodle-y drawings of vegetables and such will be on my towels!

And Rowan will eventually get an amazing cross stitch in his room of Where The Wild Things Are. Remember that gorgeously illustrated book- on the page where Max declares "Let the wild rumpus start!"? That is the illustration I am cross stitching. It is mind-bendingly complicated, let me tell you- all that shading!

I am also making some wall art. I bought a small square canvas and am painting it a bright color, and having Rowan put his hand print on it in a contrasting color, kind of like Warhol-esque pop art. It will be displayed amongst pictures of the Boop on a wall. We have lots of Boop pics to frame!

And we inherited some hand-me-down furniture and things from Rowan's great-grandma- among them are two ugly plastic pictures of nobility in faux-rococo plastic frames. I am telling you- the pieces are bad enough- but they are 100% plastic! I am re-purposing them by taking them and spray painting them with a special spray paint made for plastic. One of these will frame our family initial, K.

Kind of like this.

The other will house a cross stitch that has already been completed. It has the Donnie Darko rabbit skull thingie and says, "Sometimes I Doubt Your Commitment to Sparkle Motion." Silly and fun!

We will have new (to us) furniture (we didn't take any furniture with us from California) and Rowan will finally get his own room! He has a new big boy bed to start experimenting with as well as a separate space for all his toys. (which mama is thrilled about- no more stepping on legos!)

We hope to find a great place with a fenced in back yard- and then Rowan can use his new tricycle back there. We also plan on building a sand box and water table for him when we get warmer weather.

Wish us luck for Friday!