Slight detour....

So what else is new?

Marie and Rob will be here tomorrow so I decided to work on the bird cage garden for Lorraine and Gary (although I don't know if they'll be seeing them this weekend).

Have temporarily put away the kitchen roombox and furniture.

I'm using 1" thick builders foam for the base of the garden. The gadget on the right is a foam cutter that BIL Grahame gave me when he gave up his railroading setup. It's great for cutting through foam (the wire across the top heats up and slices through the foam) but the throat of the tool limits how far you can cut. And I don't hold it steadily enough for really straight cuts although the edge will be hidden so that's not a great problem. Between the tool and a serrated knife, I was able to cut a piece to fit in the bottom of the cage.

Grahame had also given me a LOT of railroad landscaping materials, including several different colours of turf. I combined four different colours in a Ziploc bag and mixed it thoroughly.

I covered the top and sides of the builder's foam with Weldbond glue and spread it evenly with a foam brush.

The mixed turf was then spread very thickly on the foam and left overnight so I would be sure the glue was dry.

All the excess was tapped off the foam

 and returned to the Ziploc bag.

Here the 'lawn' is in place.

I printed out a template of the lawn to help plan what I'm going to do.

I took the bird bath vignette from my 'house street and the circular plant holder with the geraniums from the "Petal Pusher Shop" and the furniture from the "Scoop or Two" (both from Little Fair on the Prairie).

I've added a fruit tray, pitcher and glasses to the table and roses in the upper left hand corner and green plants in the lower right hand corner.

I spoke to Marie and they won't be seeing Lorraine and Gary on this trip  so I don't have to have it finished by tomorrow.....but since it's so close, I'll finish it and have one more project completed.

I thought about covering the umbrella over the table but decided not to in order to keep the scene open and everything visible. Think I will put pads on the chairs, however.

In honour of their faith, I've added a statue of the Virgin Mary in one corner as they have one in their own garden.

This is unlike their own award-winning garden but I hope it will give them some pleasure.

I'll finish transferring everything to the cage and post pictures of the final work tomorrow.

Framing workshop, matboard

Our former chairperson, Tina, taught a workshop tonight on framing. She is a wonderful teacher!

We had earlier given her pictures, certificates, etc., that she resized for us in miniature. My choices were: (1) a picture of Vern and Sean on our first camping/fishing trip, (2) Vern as coach of Leanne's softball team, and (3) Vern's parents. In the upper right hand corner you can see the miniaturized copies of each picture. and in the lower right hand is the first frame I made.

And here is the framed picture.

I'll try to expand on the framing tomorrow.

MEE member, Sandra, announced that she had LOTS of matboard available to club members and, in fact, brought in a stack of it for us.

I picked up these:

The top piece is 19 1/2" x 8 1/2"

 Was pleased to have those pieces, then spotted this one:

This piece is 9 1/8" x 9 1/8". 

I think this piece will make a wonderful counter top and top for the island in the kitchen room.

Christmas box for Val's friend

Oops! I just assumed that both runners were exactly the same. The second piece is not quite as wide as the first. Fortunately the corner shelving unit will cover the joint so it won't be noticeable.

I had some nice cream fleece for the carpet. I glued it to cardstock before installing it. Much easier to handle the cardstock than the fabric alone.

Think it looks pretty good.

The original plan was to use green leafy garland but it didn't handle well so ended up using this string of gold beads then glued the wreath in place. Added a dish of squares to the third shelf. In this picture, the corner shelf was glued only on the feet but I ended up putting glue on the back of the top shelf which made it sturdier.

And here's the final project. Val was pleased with it.

Even cleaned up after myself and put everything away. Like that's going to happen on a regular basis. LOL.

Starting on the Christmas book for Valerie

I had two of these long rug strips. Originally I had thought I could use a piece for a carpet in the book box but Barb R. suggested that it might work along the wall. Great idea!

It will take one strip plus about four inches to do the wall so I cut the ends off the first piece and glued it in place and clipped it against the "door". I didn't glue it at the door 'hinge'.

Here's the corner piece of furniture with a doily and Christmas tree on top. The second shelf has a red and a green gift box. On the third shelf is "A Visit from St. Nicholas" and there are three rolls of wrapping paper and a roll of 'Merry Christmas' ribbon. Everything but the book is glued in place.

Christmas wall hanging in place.

Tentative placement of the furniture. Still have to install a carpet and hope to put green garland and a wreath on the three walls of the back....and finish the wall treatment behind the shelving in the corner.

The shelving unit was originally going to be on the left side but because I had left the carpet unglued at the corner, when the 'door was closed, the loose ribbon pushed the shelving out of place.

Think it's coming together well. Hope I can finish it tomorrow.

FINISHED!!!!!!!

It's almost too clean to use!

I did get a bit of a second wind on Thursday and did a bit more. Took yesterday off and went at it today.

Going around the room in a clockwise direction:

Between the door and the hall to the bathroom.

Hall to the bathroom with closets on either side.  The bulletin boards are in the left hand closet and  boxes of fabric and hanging carpets, wallpaper and various and sundry other things are on the right

Books and old projects are behind the bulletin boards.

Huge stack of boxes in the corner - for someday use. LOL The dollhouse is on back to back bookshelves that contain  boxes of dollhouse electrical and my sewing machine on one side and glues, beads and binders on the other.

The three-room roombox is upside down as I added molding around the ceiling in one room on Thursday (it was already cut) and I still have to add it to the other two.

Now I have to go down to the condo library and shelve books. That's something that I've really neglected lately.

BTW, you know how every once in awhile my computer goes wonky and I can't use an apostrophe or write fractions such as 1/2. It happened again this morning in an email to Tina and she told me  how to fix it. On the lower right hand side of my monitor, there's a choice of language for the computer. Sometimes (who knows how), it slips out of US ENG into ENG CMS which gives you a multilingual keyboard and changes the appearance of several keys. What a relief to be able to fix that problem.

I am weary....

I had really planned on finishing my workroom tonight but I'm just too tired. If you had seen it when I started, you'd know that it's about 3/4 finished. I am feeling good about what has been done though.

There was a pile of magazines in the workroom bookshelf. Only four of them belonged there. The rest were duplicates so I took them upstairs to Barb R. Most were Nutshell News so should give her some great ideas. In return, she gave me three chocolate cupcakes which was great because I had no chocolate left in the apartment.

I just noticed that the right door on the kitchen island was out of whack.

Turned it upside down and realized that the pin was missing so I found a half inch pin that will fix it.

Clipped off a bit of the pin and pushed it in and fixed it!

Found this chrome table and chairs in my stash. (from Liz at Grandpas Dollhouse)  It might work as a kitchen nook as the room will not be big enough to include a dining room area. Have to think about it. I am not wild about the colour. If I use it here, I might want to change the colour to red.

WAY off topic: Tonight KSPS (Spokane Public Television) began re-showing the  British version of House of Cards. While I have seen and enjoyed the American version with Kevin Spacey, this is a favourite and I recommend it.

How the bulletin boards are hung and....getting away ahead of myself

These are inexpensive bulletin boards from WalMart and Superstore. Think they were about $8 - 9. A couple were picked up at garage sales also. I also have five others that are used in front of shelving for a total of 26 bulletin boards so the total cost is not particularly cheap but on the other hand I bought them over a period of probably 10 years so it wasn't too bad over all.

Basically, you centre a clothes hanger over the top of the bulletin board, drill a hole through the bulletin board close to either end then wire the hanger to the bulletin board.

Stainless steel hangers work well if you can find them.

These plastic hangers are about 3/8" in diameter and they work well also.

Two problems with this one: (1) the wires should be closer to the ends of the hanger and (2)  the hanger isn't heavy enough.

I'm jumping the gun here but just couldn't resist. LOL.  This roombox was from Bonnie's estate sale. The hole in the back is for wiring and the piece in the back corner fits in it to make it smaller. It does have a fairly nice wooden floor.

Here's most of my collection of kitchen furniture.

Don't particularly like the sink. Fridge is good (also have two more in the stash). Choice of two microwave ovens. The stove on the left needs work but not wild about the one on the right. Needs thinking.

Plan on painting these pieces white with chalk paint.

But that's for another day...