Projects

I've been away for 4 days helping my mother clear house. After living in the same house for 45 years, this will be the third house in the last ten years that she has moved to. It's absolutely awesome what a person collects in a lifetime. When my father-in-law died, it took a month & a mountain of garbage to clean out the house. Being a packrat myself, I hate to think what my kids will have to go thru.

I'm going to take a break from finishing the Orchid interior to make some roomboxes, two of which will serve as a birthday present. My daughter-in-law's birthday is the end of August & since I work by gosh & by golly, I figured that if I start now, I might finish by then. As she's travel crazy, I'm making a travel roombox inside a suitcase for her. As well, I need to work on one baby, one gardening & 2 birthday roomboxes.

At the same time, for the past month, my house has been turned upside down due to a roof revamp. The new roof is built, most of the metal cladding is up & all that's left to do is the ridge, soffit & facia but half the kitchen ceiling needs to come down so it can become vaulted, 2 skylites still have to be installed and the new mud room enclosed & finished. What all that means is that half my kitchen is being stored in other rooms and since we had already downsized to move into this house, I really, really can't find anything.

At least the weather is finally cooperating; it was 27 degrees today. Last year we missed the fabulous fall weather, waiting for our building permit. When we finally got started this year, we had to deal with rain that managed to invade & leak thru every ceiling that didn't need work done to it. Ain't renovations grand!

On a happier note, my purple hyacinth & white anemones are in flower & looking great together, and our dock is back in the water. There is nothing nicer than drinking your morning coffee on the dock overlooking the lake.

So now that I've brought you up to speed with my real life, let me tell you about my mini life:

What you're looking at, are my first attempts at making clay fruit. Since I'm going to need 2 birthday cakes and several clay makings for the garden room, I figured I'd better get learning. To my way of thinking the easiest fruit to create has to be apples & pears.
I know, I know.......what's that got to do with cake? Nothing but it's better to start slow.
I worked from a CDHM tutorial by Barbara Dezza & I can't remember being this nervous doing something new before. I'd read so much about noxious fumes if the clay burns and about underbaked clay crumbling that I got myself a toaster oven & baked the clay outside.
I'm pleased with how they turned out and if I ever want to stage a fruit stand, I'd have enough apples & pears even if every doll in the neighbourhood went on a buying spree.
I'll have some roombox photos soon.....