A- Z Activities

Thanks everyone for the support yesterday. I wasn't sure if I should post my feelings splayed naked like that but I also wanted to keep this blog real and right now everything isn't moonlight and rainbows.

A-Z has been awesome. A lot of days I've wanted to sit still and hurt but A-Z has got me engaged. To be honest, I had written myself a pass until "C" fortnight because of the whole back surgery business but I'm terribly glad I didn't use it.

Here are some of our A-Zs so far:

Antiques: We went to the coolest antique store I ever saw. It was very Indiana Jones with towering piles of chairs at least 20 feet high (they looked like they'd been pushed together with a front-end loader), fertility gods, animal heads, pieces of docks... it was AWESOME! I wanted a little bit of everything. We bought the neatest drawer insert. It looked like a modern clipboard but came from inside a huge credenza type of cabinet like a business or post office would use. I'll post pics once I take them :-)

Armature: We made clay creatures with wire skeletons. The boys made up wild tales about each of their creatures and maimed them accordingly.





Arranged Furniture: I'm third shortest or third tallest depending on how you look at it. With all these big people in my house now, our little couch didn't fit everyone. If we wanted to watch TV we'd have to move everything and it was really annoying. But, due to the budget, we don't have spending money for new couches. So I took the couch from our formal living room and made a cute U-shaped family room and then moved our big dining room table (Chris had been using it as an office desk) into the former living room making a dining room. The old office now houses our chairs and is a lovely sitting/reading room. We're all pretty thrilled with the changes.


Altered Item: We went to Re-Store which is the thrift shop run by Habitat for Humanity. It's a wonderful, dangerous store. I bought a selection of drawer fronts for a dollar each and used three of them to rescue to a favorite old print of mine that has suffered some injustices over the years. I really like the effect and we now have a large piece of wall art for three dollars. Yay for Mod Podge.


And finally, unrelated to A-Z, I was reading the Oh, Fransson blog and decided to dip my toe in joining their Quilt-A-Long. Basically everyone works on a similar quilt at the same pace. I used to quilt about twelve years ago. Then as I was finishing the binding of a very time consuming Bargello Quilt, my house burned down. I never felt the urge to quilt again. This Paintbox Quilt is tempting me though. I made a sample set to see if I want to take a crack at it. I'm still on the fence. Fortunately, quilt squares wait happily in zip-loc bags so I can come back to this later if I don't do it now.



Well, I think it's safe to say I've talked your ear off. Hope you join us doing A-Z. You can start anytime.