Kitchen curtains

Here are the kitchen curtains I made for the kitchen door. They match the curtains that I bought at discount for the kitchen sink window but it was the only set they had, that left me in a dilema, they were the color I needed for the kitchen (my boyfriends fav color), they were simple (something my boyfriend wouldn't mind), and the price was right...but what about the door window?...I'll make them and I added lace for privacy! The only thing I didn't have lurking in the house for resources already was the white bias. I have made other curtains in the house too and will post them here soon.

Here are the curtains I made for the stairway window. I made tiebacks for them but the porch is on the other side so we don't use the tiebacks.

Firewood? OR Rustic Country Ornaments?

Again, looking at the firewood...umm...yeah, I spend a lot of time helping cut, split, stack, and burn our firewood :) So, I might as well be creative and have interesting thoughts while doing a needed chore. So, back to the creative thought - What if I took one of those 2" diameter hunks and used the table saw and cut off 1/4" slices, drilled a small hole in the edge, printed off personal or meaningful pictures to both of us and hung them on the Christmas tree...so here they are: (oh, I happened to have 14 of them with tractors, pics of us and our dogs, my kids, etc...but I also used the backs of them for my jamonkeyschwap name at the top of my blog laying them on the xmas tree branches before it was decorated).

Porch Swings

Looking out upon our big beautiful pasture towards the rustic little German Church that borders our fenceline I told my boyfriend that it would be nice to have a porch swing...I told him I could build us one. Then the neighbor gave us a huge amount of wooden dowels

and my mind went to work.

So, here is the vision that was in my head as I looked at the dowels above.

And so began the starting point of our swing...something special for the two of us to enjoy the rest of our lives. As for the dowels, our neighbors would always be thought of as an important part of our lives.

In progress...the arms with cup holders. I surprised my boyfriend by cutting a case IH symbol in the headboard and painted the inside the IH red and black. The finished chain to hold it up is painted the IH cream and red.

If you look closely you can see a bit of the white church on the middle edge on right side of pic in the trees just above the railing. We have to replace our porch railing and floor but since 8/09 we have been trying to fit in plaining the larch boards for our siding that we had cut off of our land...actually that is what I made the swing out of.

WELL...I have found that this has started a desire for porch swings. I have been working on one for my boyfriends sister and I am sooooo excited about it. I also do paper cutting and had the great thought of using a paper cutting design in the headboard. What made it even better is woodburning details in the cutting...so below is the progress as of 12/09.

Below is the finished swing.

Firewood Snowmen

I couldn't help but see creativity in this plain

pile of firewood. The round chunks caught a

spark inside my craftiness.

I needed christmas decorations for the house.

I got creative with the firewood and cut 1/2" slices from three different size round chunks of wood. I painted them white on the tops leaving the bark sides for the rustic, country look. I hot clued them to 8" pieces of old lathe board. cut some scrap wood for little buttons and painted them black, used buttons for eyes, cut small squares of material for the mouths, and cut the carrot noses out of old orange plastic from the cell phone package. The hats are little restaurant serving dishes(like coleslaw or dip would come in) and painted them black, cut the scarves out of red felt and hot glued everything. I used coat hangers for arms, hot glued the two sections together and used wire then to make it look rustic/country. I used them on my wreath that I made from our pine trees and on the porch post pine decorations. My initial intention was/is to have my boyfriend use the chainsaw and cut bigger slices to make big snowmen(maybe 3') to put out by the end of the drive by our dairy farm sign...maybe I will have those done for next Christmas.