family – Page 78 – Karla's Cottage

Temporary Studio Makeover and a Dog full of Glitter

Dorkies (Yorkshire Terrriers), Etsy Goodies, family, flowers, Food and Drink, give away, Hand Painted Furniture, vintage paper/collage art

By Karla Nathan / July 11, 2007

Entertaining at the cottage is going well this week. We had 21 for dinner tonight and my studio was set up as a dining room, all the kids craft projects and my work was hidden away.

I have discovered that when you are feeding a bunch of people, it doesn’t pay to plan too exactly, you need to go with the flow. Tonight I made the mistake of setting a big table up for all the adults, and a couple smaller tables for the kids. But of course, people just sat wherever they wanted and adults had kid silverware and kids had white table clothes under their BBQ! Oh well, you do what you can, but the most important part of a dinner is making everyone comfy and not bossing them around, so they can sit where ever they want. It is casual here at my cottage. People fix thier plates at the stove and carry them to the table. I keep it as simple as possible so I can enjoy the day too.

Flowers from the gardens, along with some china flowers from a flea market are on the table in a variety of vases, with votive lights in teacups for atmosphere. Very few of the chairs match each other, and neither do the salt and pepper shakers. The room itself is a bit of a hodge podge of stuff.

Here are a couple of my guests, Emma (who is so dainty and tiny, I call her a Mini M & M) and her baby sister, Rosebud, who seems to have glitter all over her somehow.

Speaking of glitter, if you look carefully, you can see just how much glitter Twinkle and her "trainer", Luke, have on them too. Click on the photo to enlarge it to see better.

Don’t forget to enter the drawing for a Cottage Collage Kit! Just leave a comment to enter.

I decided what to offer for the July Giveaway!

antiques/junking, Books, Dorkies (Yorkshire Terrriers), Etsy Goodies, fairies, family, give away, vintage paper/collage art

By Karla Nathan / July 9, 2007

Well, we have a houseful of people, kids, and dogs (Twinkle is still being "trained" by Luke), so I am not able to do any craft or art work. But I did manage to put together a few more Cottage Collage Kits (or scrap packs) to sell on Etsy.

Here you can see Twinks getting a lesson in going down the blow up slide in the wading pool. Luckily, she seems to be enjoying all of the so called "dog training". Her feet haven’t touched the ground since the kids arrived.

This visit has been so busy, that we all forgot that we were supposed to have an ice cream buffet last night!! There is a lot going on, when kids forget ice cream!

Once the kids were tucked in, and the guys were settled into a card game, I went to the studio to play with paper (my cleaned up studio!)

I made up bundles with over 30 items in them, including sheet music, vintage wallpaper, copies of my art, pages from old books, a page from a steno manual, a millinery flower, some posies, old buttons, vintage gift wrap, and on and on.

Its so fun to pick through my stash and try to find goodies I think someone might enjoy using.

This tone on tone wallpaper is actually silk.

Anyway, I listed 6 of these on Etsy last night for $14 each. I got to thinking, that maybe a similar one would also be a good giveaway for July. So, if you are interested in a variety mix of a Cottage Collage Kit, leave me a comment and I will enter you in the drawing at the end of the month.

Here is one of the old wallpapers, pretty, huh?

These are from packs I made last week with a blue theme, that have already sold out.

I’ll be sifting through my goodie cabinets and finding some pretties to add to the giveaway, when I get a nice packet together, I’ll show a photo.

Now, I’d better go and see how Twinkle’s training is going!

Rose Moss, Red Birds, Cleomes and Rosebud

family, flowers, how-to projects

By Karla Nathan / July 8, 2007

Most of our houseguests are here and the visit is in full swing. My brother-in-law and his family, including a 5 year old who has decided to be Twinkle’s trainer (they have met their match in each other, both are constantly in motion) and a 5 week old baby. Life is exciting around here right now!

I did get all the cleaning done in my studio and transformed it into a dining room before they arrived. But barely! I was up til 4:30am, and they showed up at 7:30, after having decided to drive all night instead of stopping at a hotel. At least we were all equally tired!

While our cottage guests are out doing a bit of visiting, I took a calming, quiet breather in the garden and watered some plants. I was happy to see how big the rose moss in the bird cage was getting.

The rose moss has some filling in to do yet, but is getting a good start. I chose that to plant because I knew it could tolerate heat and didn’t need a lot of moisture, since this was a shallow planter. I always plant rose moss in my vintage cement swans for the same reason.

To make a bird cage into a planter, all I did was line the bottom with coconut fiber and fill it in with dirt. I dug up some good compost from the garden, added quite a few plants, maybe 10? and then put in a couple of old cement red birds, one is missing a beak, but I still love him. I could easily become the crazy old lady with too much yard art and more junk in the flower beds than flowers if I am not careful!

And look, my cleomes have started to bloom! Definitely one of my favorite garden flowers. They are so sturdy and easy to grow, and always reseed themselves. Yet, they have such a dainty look about them.

Here is a photo that Sissy sent to me of her cleome garden. Doesn’t it look like a fairy land??

Well, I hear the sound of 4 small children and a baby getting out of the car, the guests must be back. I get to go and hold the little 5 week old girl now. Her name is Sydney, but she has such a sweet little rosebud mouth, that of course, I have to call her Rosebud. She still has that little old man look about her, but with that mouth, I can tell she’ll grow up to be beauty. And she is a cuddly girl. With 4 older sibs, she gets passed around a lot!

Madison

antiques/junking, Etsy Goodies, family, Sugarwings, vintage paper/collage art

By Karla Nathan / July 7, 2007

Remember how I waited till the last minute to clean my studio and turn it into a dining room for company? Well, something else came up and it still isn’t done.

But it was a very good excuse for not cleaning, Madison (named for Madison, Nebraska- hometown of the Nathans) was born tonight! We spent most of the afternoon and evening at the hospital waiting for our niece to give birth.

The whole family was there waiting for her arrival. We played cards, laughed, made bets on who’s family would have the first baby, ours or the other people waiting that we made friends with. (We won!!) We had baby races with Sugarwings and another baby there with her family.

Finally, Madison came, and we all went back to see her. Sugarwings is enthralled by her new cousin.

So, do you think I’d clean the studio when I got home??? Nope, I fixed up a spice rack that I got today at a garage sale for $1 (including all the bottles) so I could use it to hold all the glitter that I bought today at the same sale (a bagful of glitters, sequins, buttons, and bows for $2).

I used a lot of the goodies I got in the mathcbox swap from Debra at http://www.hophopjingleboo.blogspot.com/ including the doll baby at the top (appropriate for today!). Whenever I glitter something up, I will think of Madison and the day she was born.

Hey, organizing the glitter was a very important part of cleaning up the studio!! How can you have guests over if your glitter is in plastic bottles and laying around helter skelter???

Well, maybe I should try cleaning up a bit now. No more excuses.

PS- All of the vintage paper packs I had listed on Etsy have sold, but I will be making up more soon.

ppss- Thanks for all the feedback on the loading speed of my blog. I’m glad to hear it is faster. If anyone is still having trouble, would you please let me know

pppsss- I really will have a give-away this month. I am counting all comments made in July and will let you know what the drawing is for as soon as I figure it out! (open to suggestions!)