I've been working on all of these projects dealing with the house and creatively in general, and they seem like such large projects. There is the seat cushion I custom made for our kitchen built in bench. The cover for it. The cushions for the wall. The large 7 by 1 foot picture panorama of the valley, several other smaller paintings like the one of Phil and I. 

     Now milk painting. I have been researching it for a long time now and finally got all of the materials together for it. It is a slow process as I now have to add a second color over the first color. A tutorial is soon to follow. But I had to take a break from it, because the weather turned bad at the same time as the quark that was supposed to go into the mixing of the other color. So now I am waiting for Phil to come home with skim milk (I'm on spring break) so that I can begin the second and last part of the process. 

      I have decided to take a necessary break from delving too deeply into those larger projects, i.e. the large painting panorama that was going well, but is now lacking depth of field, to work on small whimsical and medium gratifying projects. Today I am working on the cushions for the back of the built in bench cushion. I had originally thought I would use buy a neat fabric for it, but messed up in the original design of the cushion, so now I have all of this leftover oatmeal canvas. What isn't going to be used for floor cloths, is going to the cushions. And I just got a new sewing machine, so I am excited!

I wanted to do a screen printed image. I was reminded of how beautiful Ikat (eye-kat) fabric  is (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ikat).  But since I don't have a loom and I don't have much cash to pay for Ikat fabric, I thought I could make it myself.

Luckily there are great resources for how to make an Ikat print. One such is located on the The Mustard Ceiling Blog. I finally settled on a SIMPLE image. And believe me it took awhile. I figured for the first time it would just be easier. Instead of coral, it is going to be brown to match the blue seat cushion and not overwhelm my already colorful kitchen.

The first step I have completed is to print this pattern from The Design Sponge. Rather than doing the image white, with the background colored, I am cutting out the white part to make the image brown. Gotcha? I have had to make some minor adjustments so the middle doesn't come out, but I think it will still look great. 

 From there on I followed the very clearly set out steps from The Mustard Ceiling Blog.

Photos to come.

My fiancee Phil and I had been searching for land to buy together for 2 years. We had given up temporarily when I picked up the newspaper one Saturday and found a house with land for sale with an advertised Southern exposure. After calling the number, "Kathy" told us to go check it out. That afternoon we let ourselves in. While the 100 year old house was in extreme disrepair, it had such a wonderful and welcome feel. The work was mostly cosmetic, as the windows were all intact and the walls were constructed of durable rock and adobe (a mix of dirt and clay).

I can't believe it EVER looked like this!

How we first saw it

Definite need of new plaster and paint

Amazing wall in what is now the utility room

Seeing the house across the road

view of the "guest house/garage" and one of the hills behind the house.

     We decided to take on the challenge of fixing it up, as we are both interested in sustainability and DIYing. From late June until the end of October, we spent weekends getting it "Move in Ready". What an incredible process: exhausting, exhilarating, wonder-ful and what a meaningful labor of love that brought us closer and allowed us to see how we react to stress, what our work styles are and what our values will be as a married couple.

     We finally moved in mid-November. While I had wanted to blog, I was so exhausted and am still getting used to my hour commute to Santa Fe. I finally feel that as we are somewhat settled, it is time, before more exciting things happen and I'm even further behind. One thing is for sure, when I am at our house I feel so much at home. I am calm and appreciative. Looking up at the hills behind our house, as we did yesterday while digging a large flower bed with Phil, I am so humbled by this process and can't wait to have a little farm and learn daily about self-sustainability and small community sustainability.