Tidy Brown Wren, bringing order to your nest

On one of our "snow days" I was happily crafting myself into a tizzy. I pulled out an old box of Great Nana's lace and trims. Some of the trims are from the 50's and 60's but some are from 20's and 30's. I love to look at all of the variety. I thought this zipper was a lot of fun. Notice that it says, "This style not practical for corsetry". It's copyrighted 1936. I love this wooden spool with lace wrapped around it. I'll post the project that started this tizzy tomorrow.

Storage is a problem in my house. We have very small closets and not much wall space to place freestanding cabinets or shelves. One thing I find very hard to store is poster board and large sheets of craft paper. I don't want to roll it or fold it because it will get damaged. When I purged and cleaned my craft room/office, I decided that I HAD to come up with a solution. Well, here's the solution. This is the rug on the floor of my craft room/office. I simply tuck the paper under the rug. It lays perfectly flat. My rug is just large enough and heavy enough to not slip around even though the paper is under it. If you try this idea be sure to give your rug the "slip" test. Walk over it several times to make sure the paper doesn't make it slip and slide. It probably helps that my floors are not completely smooth and shiny.

As Valentine's Day approaches we start looking for ways to tell others we love them. Of all of the things my husband has given me over the years, one reminds me daily that he loves me. No, it's not jewelry (but I do love my jewelry). It's an ugly, black, shiny binder. But inside the binder is a collection of important info that my husband has compiled. The compiled information is everything I would need to have at my fingertips if something ever happened to him. Depressing? Macabre? Not really. Loving? Absolutely! You see, he loves me so much that he wants me to have whatever I need during what would be the worst thing that could ever happen to me. In our binder, hubs has compiled the following things: 1. copies of our wills and where the originals are kept 2. copies of our life insurance and where the originals are kept 3. name, phone, email, address for insurance contact 4. copies of investments with contact info 5. copies of everything in our safety deposit box 6. bank a...

I want to send my family out into the world with warm goodness in their tummies. Whole wheat waffles seem to fit the bill today. I love using my new waffle iron. I actually bought it at a thrift store. It was brand new, still in the box for $5.99. Krups! Yups! For $5.99! Of course, I have to serve them on my snowflake plates. I love the top them with cooked apples . If you want to print out the recipe, click HERE .

Okay. I love snow, but I'm done. I'm very done. I'm over it. I'm very over it. If I don't get out of this house soon I think I'll go crazy. It's a good thing we don't have curtains or drapes in our home (we have wooden shades) because by now I would have made us all matching lederhosen and head scarves. I mean it. Look what my cabin fever has done to me. I had this perfectly cute (but not perfectly fitting) skirt in my closet. I LOVE black and white hounds tooth check. Any hounds tooth check, really. I saw this in my closet and the next thing you know, I turned it into this. . . Here's the up close and personal look. And then, because I had some left over fabric, I made this brooch. Stop the madness! After all was said and done, this was all that was left from the poor skirt. I will reuse the zipper and strings in some other project, but now I'm just too exhausted. Now, I hope you'll jump over to my Etsy shop and check out my items for sal...

One thing you need to know about goats: they hate getting their feet wet. Poor Gus-gus and Bubba. They'll just have to wait for the white stuff to melt.

This is evidence of what happened here over the weekend. Boots, coats, hats, mittens. Thank goodness we have the supplies we need even though we rarely need to use them. If you ever get the chance to watch southern weathermen, it's really a hoot. The network makes them stand out in the snow and ice for hours to give live reports about this weather phenomenon. It's too funny. We're hoping the roof of the barn will hold up under the weight of 7 inches of snow. No swinging on the tire swing right now. The wind chill is 9 degrees!