Redecorating with a purpose!

So in August we did some redecorating in our living room (again) and downstairs.  The last time I redid the living room was for Christmas, 2010, and I put my desk in the corner of the room near the sliding glass door.  This was great when my work was occasional and the kids were at school.  But as my business picked up during the summer, I discovered how difficult it was to concentrate with the work space in the main part of the house.  Also, we got a piano, and there just wasn't enough room for all that big furniture in that part of the room!

This is in progress, the filing cabinet was pulled out of the corner first.  You can kind of see the top of the piano behind the filing cabinet.

Unfortunately, moving the desk means losing my "finishing" space.  This was a lot of cleaning up, most of the things in this space had been in place for about 2 years, when we moved in!

Worth it! This is the first day of school pic.  We still need to get the piano tuned and have the key cover put back on - because free is never really free!  But I love having my 1910 Warner - I'm excited to get the girls piano lessons!

Here's how my workspace looks now - I've upgraded to a laptop, so you can see the "void" where it lives normally. On sunny days the light in this space is so great, I hardly ever use my desk lamp!

And because we don't have a fireplace in the living room, we used the piano for the stockings.  Love the way this looks!  Will love it even more when the cover is on the keys!

Friday Finishes

Just stopping in quickly to post some pictures of finishes from a couple of weeks ago. (Sorry!!!!!!!)  I've picked up another GhostStitchers assignment, so it's been occupying my time.  So has a baby shower gift.  The baby shower is tomorrow, so I will post pictures of that later.

I'm also working on something else on the Work From Home front, and I will update all of you on that as it develops.  It's a good and very exciting thing.

Okay!  So I mentioned before that we had our Secret Sister reveal at church on Mothers' Day weekend.  My Secret Sister loves the color green, and is a busy mom.  So I decided to make her a spring-y tote bag.  I used the same pattern as I did for the straps on Katie's dress (I know, I know, you still haven't seen the finished product - I still blame the husband for that) - you can find the pattern here.  (It's a free download, but you do need to register with your e-mail address.  There are a lot of beautiful, simple crochet projects on this site.)

I used a dark sage green as my main color, and made the centers of the flowers out of different colors in my stash (almost entirely Caron Simply Soft).  I used brown as an accent color for the base, the edging at the top, and the handle.

Instructions for attaching the flowers to each other are included in the downloadable pattern.

I lined it with a khaki cotton, and sewed it together on the machine, catching the straps as I did so.  I'm really happy with how it turned out.

The other finish is the gift I made for my mom.  She has to park a long way from her office, so she likes to carry a tote bag with all her things in it.  She also has a lot of tote bags, and changes them often.  So I made her a little purse that has a snap-handle - it can be fastened around the tote bag handle for easy access, and it's easy to remove!  I'm proud of myself for that little innovation.  There may be a tutorial coming on it soon.  When I do that, I will definitely credit the sites where I got my inspiration, even though I modified the designs a bit.

In this bottom picture, I'm showing you the lining, and also the roomy pocket I made inside.  Yes, I made pockets.  And yes, that's an orange hair elastic with a blue button for the closure.  Go Broncos! ;)