Our New Home | the beginning

The time has come! We're almost settled in our new home. Before I share some of the changes we've made to it and its current state, I thought I should give y'all a peek at what our house looked like the day we got the keys. I made a little video tour (if you can handle my walking and talking while video taping), but also have some pictures below to share of our new oasis.

This is the sunroom and the main entrance we use into the house from the back door.

From there, you can walk straight back into the master bedroom. It's HUGE!

The previous owner had the room decorated in a Tuscan-theme, Check out the wine bottle applique that was on the wall! Those two rooms are the master bath (left) and closet (right).

The applique came off easily, but the little shelf was made of plaster and raised off the wall. (not as easy to remove)

Here's the master bath. It needs some serious updating, but we can live with it for now.

Oh, both the sunroom and the master bedroom are additions to the house, so they both have brick walls along one side. Interesting, right?

From the bedroom, you can walk right into the craft room.

There's even a cute little half bath in the craft room (the main reason I chose that room.)

Across the hall from the craft room is Pat's office. It's got better light (with two windows) but no bathroom.

Here's the guest bathroom. It's tiny and that wall technique HAS TO GO, but it's workable!

The guest room is pretty small too. The duck border is awful. But, it's a project for another time.

There's a large front room, what I'm guessing is supposed to be a formal living room. However, we're going to turn it into a dining room eventually.

This is my kitchen as you walk in from either the hallway or the sunroom. 

And, here it is from the living room. (Double ovens!!)

We've got a large living room with split brick floors.

The huge, custom-built cabinet was in there too. EEK!

So, that's a bit of a tour of the inside for you. However, if you want to see a bit more, check out my video tour.

I still plan on doing a video and picture tour of the pool area and some of the property soon, especially now that the grass has been cut. We've already made so many changes in the two weeks we've been here that I'm glad I took these before pictures to remember where we started.

I hope you enjoyed this little peek and hope you hang onto your hats as I begin this new adventure. You are coming along for the ride aren't you?

Altered Playing Cards for Motivational Deck Swap

In all the chaos that's been my life for the past few months, I've really missed y'all. It's time for a little update and eye candy. So. . .Sometime tomorrow we should be getting the keys to our new house! For now, I need to finish packing, picking out paint colors, and freaking out. I am really hoping to share the whole process with you, but the piles-of-boxes phase that we are in now is really not that interesting, so I'll spare you those details.

In the meantime, let me go ahead and show off something I have created. I mentioned a few months ago that I'm participating in a motivational deck swap. We're swapping six altered playing cards at a time to build up a whole deck. I thought I'd show you some of the ones I've created as I'm kinda proud of them and they are a ton of fun to create.

One set of the cards I sent to my partner.

Here's a closer look at these cards. Clicking on them should make them bigger.

And here's another set that I sent out.

And again, a better look at the cards.

I have another couple sets that I've mailed out, but one of them I forgot to take pictures. The other one, I recorded the process so I'm hoping to have a video for you soon.

Right now, I'm just delaying the packing up the rest of the little bits and pieces around the house. I guess it's time to focus and get down to business. I can't wait to share this with y'all!! Stay tuned for all the excitement! Remember to follow me as CraftyHope on Instagram and Twitter for little peeks and quick updates at what's going on.

Creative Spark Summer 2015 contribution and other news

Things are finally starting to fall into place and settle down some in my corner of the world. I can see once again and things with the new house are coming together - now to actually pack for the move in a few weeks.. .and pray that our current house sells soon! I was also able to finish the e-magazine for ZnetShows.com. This Summer 2015 issue features their cultured sea glass beads and is packed with a ton of inspiration. You can totally see all the hard work the designers put into this issue. I so appreciate all their time and effort!

Creative Spark Summer 2015

I also contributed to the e-magazine's upcycled jewelry section (surprise, surprise!). I picked a simple palette of teal, clear, moonstone, and black.

The beads I picked out from ZnetShows.com

Knowing that the Summer issue focused on sea glass, this brought thoughts of the beach to mind. I instinctively pulled out my (large) selection of seashells and selected a few.

The handful of shells I decided to use in my first piece for the magazine.

I cleaned the shells and tried to make the jingle shells a little more sturdy with some nail polish. From there, I made a chain with the small sea glass beads, Chinese crystals, and silver non-tarnish wire. Using silver tone jumprings, I hung the fabulous sea glass marquise spindles and diamond-shaped pendants from the chain.

For my next piece, I was inspired by my key collection. I picked one at random and shined it up a bit. Next, I plunged into the bits and bobs of broken jewelry I have stashed and picked out a piece of filigree that matched fairly close and fit over the key well.

Found key and filigree piece

Once I had the filigree attached to the key, I wire-wrapped the 4mm moonstone opal cultured sea glass around the key with 24g dark annealed steel wire. The chain is made from more of the sea glass beads and Chinese crystal rondelles with 20g steel wire. As well, I used gunmetal headpins to create a few dangles of all of the beads to hang in front of the filigree.

It's elegant and fabulous!

Finally, I was compelled to pull out some buttons. I sorted through my button cards to find some with summery, cute character.

Aren't these adorable?

With some antiqued brass jump rings and handmade ear wires, these became great earrings with the crystal sea glass diamonds.

Beachy and unique too!

I included some tips for working with upcycled materials and more information in Creative Spark Summer 2015 that you'll have to go there to read. I'd love to know what you think of it and/or my contributions.

Hopefully, I'm back. . .but with the big move and all the renovations we have to make, I can't promise anything. Though, I'd really like to keep y'all in the loop. Stay tuned to see what happens next!

Complications and Keeping Busy

I have been much more absent than I even expected. Life's complicated yo!

Because this whole seeing and making words things is hard, I created a video yesterday to explain a little of what's going on with me.

With this little bit of an explanation, I do hope you understand if I don't respond to comments, questions, etc. very quickly. Right now, I'm just trying to keep myself engaged! I hope YOUR summer is going well!!

Oh, the excuses just keep rolling in. . .

I've been a very bad blogger lately. And, it's not that I don't have anything to say or share - it's just that there's SO MUCH going on right now!

• Pat and I put our house on the market
• We've been in a mad rush to get the house and yard looking. . .show-worthy
• We're looking around for our own next home
• I've had a sinus infection for weeks
• We're having a yard sale this weekend
• I'm going out of town most of next week
• I'm gearing up for the next issue of ZnetShows' Creative Spark e-magazine
• I'm supposed to be planning a baby shower for one of my best friends

Everything is just so insane right now that I can't even focus long enough to read blog posts, never mind writing my own. I have not forgotten about my blog, but I just can't make it a priority right now. I hope you understand.

A lesson I desperately need to learn right now!

Oh, and if you've got any tips on selling a house or moving, please share!

A Peek into my Craft Room

I got in one of those cleaning grooves and spent a few days cleaning, organizing, and purging the craft room. I'm pretty happy with the results and now have all kinds of craft grab bags for our upcoming yard sale. Here's a few peeks at what the room looks like now.

Straight inside the room is this bookcase and my bead cabinet

Off in the right corner is this hutch that holds most of my button collection

To the right of the door are most of my art journaling and papercrafting supplies

Next to and behind my desk is an array of supplies within arm's reach.

If you really want a good a look at my craft room, I did a video tour. It's much longer than I anticipated, but covers so much of what I've amassed.

I do love peeks inside others' creative spaces, so I hope you like this one from mine.

Me Gardening? It's True

As you can possibly tell from my sporadic posts, my attention span has been a little. . .sparse lately. One of the main attention grabbers lately has been my little container garden of fruits and vegetables. Take a look.

Bell Pepper (it's much smaller than it looks)

Cucumber (We've got several with this shape. . I'm not sure if it's natural)

Grape Tomatoes ripening 

More grape tomatoes (These babies have been plentiful!)

Better Boy Tomatoes

My poor, sad herbs (rosemary, dill, and basil)

A wee jalapeno

Squash

Zucchini

A snail in the zucchini

A single, lonesome strawberry

I actually took the pictures for this post a few weeks ago so the garden's not quite the same. I've always had something of a black thumb so I'm pretty surprised that I'm harvesting anything from these pots. The zucchini and squash seem to be failing, and those were the ones I expected to boom. However, the grape tomatoes have really flourished.

This was my little window plate the day I took the other photos

Monday I sliced up all the ones in the window (they were overflowing the plate) for roasting

Yesterday, I used the sauce from the tomatoes on a homemade cheese pizza for lunch. It was delicious!

Let me tell you how I made the sauce. It was so, so easy! I simply sliced the tomatoes and threw in a few peeled garlic cloves (6). I drizzled EVOO over the top and tossed it all together. In a preheated 400 degree oven, I roasted the mix for 30 minutes, stirring every 10. Remove tray from oven and let it cool for just a little while. Blend the whole thing in the blender. Done and delish!!

I am disappointed that we aren't having much luck with the squashes, but I think we simply planted too many plants in single pots and overcrowded everything. Lesson learned for sure. I'm just happy right now that I've been able to grow something.

Is your garden producing anything yummy? Do you have any tips?

Thrift and Craft Store Hauls

Y'all, I'm just popping in real quick to share a video I made last week with some of my latest thrift and craft store hauls.

Of course, right after I uploaded that video (with two separate hauls), I found this stack of goodies on the library's free shelf.

There were travel brochures, a neat couple of books, and that small catalog that has great old ads in it.

I apologize for this being a short post, but I am trying to get back on track with the blog. I've got a huge list of ideas. Now if I could just commit and post already! This is a start.

Anyway, what goodies have you found thrifting and shopping lately?