The quintessential 1970s owl.
This type of craft is known as paper filigree, or quilling. A neat little hobby, if you've the patience.
One of the greatest things we put in this house are the heat lamps for the bathrooms.
They have a timer, I guess so they don't overheat, but I often use the timer like an alarm in the mornings. When the heat lamp goes off, it's time to be done in the bathroom.
I only wish they came in some kind of cool, retro finish. This plastic doesn't really say bungalow to me.
Mostly I wanted to go out of curiosity. Actually there have been many open houses I've wanted to see over the years, but I've been too timid to go since I am not actually house hunting. But this time was different. First of all, I talked mom and Lewis into going with me. Secondly, they are asking almost twice what I paid for my house just five years ago, and I wanted to see how Oliver's Bungalow would compare. We've put a lot of money into our house, and I've been afraid that, at least right now, we have more money sunk into the house than it is worth. Market value worth, not, you know, what it is worth to me. I know that most of the improvements we have made were necessary, long-term investments. But it is interesting to see something so similar, in our neighborhood, on the market for this price.
Stuff Oliver's Bungalow has that Open House Bungalow doesn't:
Mom marked all the recipes she wants me to try from the book that came with the breadmaker. Then she and I went to the grocery store Saturday afternoon and bought nearly every kind of flour known: whole wheat flour, bread flour, rye flour, tapioca flour, almond flour, brown rice flour, garfava flour, sorghum flour, brown rice flour...
Plus a couple of box mixes, just to get started. Saturday night I made my first loaf of bread from the honey wheat berry box mix. I followed the directions carefully, then once all the ingredients were in, I realized I had forgotten the mixing paddle. Oops. The directions say that the yeast must not touch the water, but I had to scoop the whole business out to put the mixing paddle in, and it still came out just fine.
Not too bad, but I think I would like a lighter crust. Next time.
Twelve sets of pillowcases. There would have been fourteen, but I'd already given two sets out a few months back. One of our extended relatives had a house fire back in October, an almost total loss. So while they were in rented housing, with someone else's furniture, and getting hand-me-downs from everyone, including me, I thought it would be nice for them to have something new, made just for them. I had hoped to get two more sets done for them for Christmas, but I just couldn't stitch fast enough. Oh well.
This is Tall Flowers from Bucilla.
As usual, I didn't follow the directions. I used stem stitch, back stitch, and French knots only. It called for other stitches, including satin stitch, but I didn't want to see filled in spots, so I treated the whole thing like an outline. I also used stronger, bolder colors than usual, and I'm very pleased with how this set turned out.
At first I wasn't sure about putting a fourth color in there, then I wasn't going to do the butterfly at all, then I did him with a pink body and purple wings. When I got to the second pillowcase, I decided the whole butterfly should be purple. More whimsical. The first one bugged me so much, I just had to tear out the stitches and do both butterflies in all purple. Probably an hour's work. For a few moments, I felt a bit like Greg from Petch House.
