Two Frog Home

Think the cat likes watching and being near me or just the warmth of that lamp?

I’ve been struggling with my breathing again.  It seems that while I have kicked the pneumonia, I still have some asthma like symptoms hanging on.  I’m getting winded very easily and for the most am just tired.  I feel well otherwise, but I did take a ton of naps this past weeked.

I woke up at one point and noticed the cats napping all around me.

Meggy’s paw is outstretched because she swatted at me after I tried to pet her.  I love her sleepy eyes in this photo.

Patches is rather blurry in this photo, seems I was more interested in the quilt I was laying under when I snapped the picture.  This is the quilt I made for Jeff a few year’s ago.  It’s a nine patch design, the center square in each block was handpainted by either one of his grandkids or kids.  The other fabrics, I picked out meant something very specific to Jeff or our life together.  I did love the particular block in the photo because I had picked out the baseball fabric before I got the squares from the grandkids and when I opened the envelope and saw this block Jake had painted, well it was just too perfect.

As a general rule, I use cloth bags when I go shopping.  I rarely use the plastic or paper bags the stores provide.  Earlier this year, however; I picked up a few of these brown paper sacks from Montana Coffee Traders.  I had them saved in my sewing room, just knowing I’d re-use them eventually.  Yesterday, I finally found a purpose for them.

I give alot of gift basket type gifts at Christmas time.  Usually we fill the baskets with home canned goods, some homemade treats, and maybe a few other bought items.  In the past, I’ve made tote bags, used second-hand buckets, flower pots, and of course baskets.  This year, I was a bit stumped about how to package all the goodies when I looked up and saw my stash of saved brown sacks. 

I rummaged through items I had in the sewing room and decorated the bags with colored paper, some very old (& thankfully still liquid) glitter glue.  I’m not a scrapbooker or a stamper so I don’t have many supplies on hand and I’m not very good at cutting paper into nice shapes.  However, I’m happy with this little bags in that they are simple, re-used and full of the holiday spirit. 

It’s a blustery, cold winter day here.  I’ve been watching movies and wrapping my jars of canned good for Christmas gift giving.  I keep a shoebox full of fabric scraps for jar tops, its such fun to open that box and see what tidbits I saved for my gift wrapping purposes.

I’m involved in a “secret santa” style swap and this is part of what I made for my package.  The receipent loves purple & writing.  I created a patch for several pens as well as a small notepad, that rolls up and ties for easy carrying or stowing in a purse.

A few envelopes from a set made from recyling a children’s book.

I try not to use my blog as an advertising space, but I did want to mention that I updated my etsy shop today and will be adding more items over the next few days.  If you’re in the market for some handcrafted goods feel free to take a look, even you don’t buy from me, etsy is a great place to surf around.

I made these stockings for Jeff and I several years back.  I was tempted to make new stockings this year, but I’m not quite ready to part with these yet.

Two or three years ago, this sweet stocking arrived in a box from my dad & his girlfriend, Paula.  I’m sure Paula, the crafty gal she is, put my name on it.  As a dead head from way back, this is an absolute treasure and a wonderful addition to my Grateful Dead memories and collectibles.  For the record, only the patchwork stocking gets filled, this one is used for decoration only.

Its a cold day here in Northwestern Montana and I’m on vacation, so I made a nice warm lunch for my sweetie (he only works 1/2 mile away and comes home to eat).  We had a salad and individual pot pies (made from the leftovers from our birthday celebration on Saturday which are leftovers from our Thanksgiving Turkey.

 In the sewing room we have these works in progress.

Traditionally, we start decorating for Christmas the day after Thanksgiving.  However, I got a small head start yesterday.  

We don’t do a ton of decorating here, its just not my thing really.  A small tree and a few little holiday accents - no giant inflatable snow globes or lights everywhere.  I was inspired by the discovery of a new blog recently, however; and decided to make a wreath to welcome visitors to Two Frog Home.  I did a few things differently than the inspiration source.  I didn’t have any foam wreath frames around, so I made one by tracing a plate onto some scrap cardboard.  I glued some quilt batting scraps onto the cardboard and wrapped it all with some green fleece scrap strips.  I used a hot glue gun to keep everything in place.  I then wrapped some gold & red ribbon around the fleece, glued on a frog (of course there had to be a frog accent), added a ribbon for hanging and, voila my new wreath.

That’s the main door to our home.  The tree garland was the one I bought at the gifts festival a few weeks back.  The curtain, I made from some fabric I found at the thift store.  I was originally going to use it for a table cloth, but couldn’t resist using it as a window dressing for our holiday decorations.

My dear friend, Margaret, gave birth to a beautiful baby boy (her 3rd) on November 4th.  I’ve made a quilt for the two older boys and, of course, had to make one for the newest addition to my extended family.  I just love the colors in this quilt and the “hippy” aspects of the tie-dye as well.

A few weeks ago a high school friend of Jeff’s gave us an old table that he and his wife no longer wanted.  They have too much stuff and not enough room from which we’ve benefited a few times, frankly.   It’s a gorgeous oval table with an extra leaf.  It is a larger kitchen table than the one we’d been using.  (The old kitchen table is now serving as my cutting table and the old cutting table is in Jeff’s shop - we know how to reuse around here.)

All of my old tablecloths don’t fit this new table and since it was new anyway, I thought it deserved its own new cloth.  I scrounged around my scraps and made up this beauty.  Both Jeff and I love it… It’s a bit “off” because of available scrap pieces, but for some reason it makes me love it more.

I’m looking forward to making a few other tablecloths too, one for Christmas out of some fabric I recently thrifted, and just some basic every day ones.