Remaking the Kitchen ~ Chalkboard Spice Jar Labels

 I have been busy learning this week, all about how to make editable PDF's. I can proudly say that I figured it out and it wasn't so difficult. So I can now happily offer you my spice labels I made for my kitchen. I hope you all enjoy them as much as I did. They sure did brighten the place up! These are all editable with whatever you want to put on them, there is one sheet with a single...

Art in Life

Each day when I wake up it's like waking up to a monster.  This beast in front of me that I must conquer.  It's size is overwhelming, it's complexity perplexing and it's depth is monumental.  What beast do I speak of?  My house. I am an artist first and foremost. I think, eat and breathe art.  If I must do something I want to put all of me into it.  It...

Overhead Light Rescue

Hello, I hope you are somewhere warm and cozy! Today is cold and gray and I have a nice fire going here next to me. We are having a bit of a cold snap right now but I know spring is hiding around here somewhere!          Most of you know that we are in the middle of remodeling our little chalet. We built the addition on this last summer and went out...

A Day Trip to Colmar

   Hello Everybody, I hope you had a wonderful weekend. It was a bit cold and gray here but today made up for that with clear blue skies and lots of sun. We took a trip over to the valley next to ours...the Munster valley and I will show you pictures of our trip soon enough but I promised you I would show you a bit of Colmar first. &nbs...

Remaking the Kitchen ~ Spice Jars and Rack

Hello, I hope you've been having a great week, the weekend is upon us and I don't know about you but here looks like we will be getting some nice weather. We will be enjoying our last weekend with Ryan, my son, who will soon be back on a plane to return across the big wide ocean. I will miss him so but it has been good to spend some time with him! I am almost done with the vest I am making...

Mother Earth News Vegetable Garden Planner

     I wanted to write to you today about a wonderful application I found last year at Mother Earth News . I don't know if you have ever heard of them but I remember them from way back when I was much younger. My sister lived out on a farm in the backwoods and she was all about raising her animals and living off the land. they had beehives and goats, chickens and rabbits. She...

A Day Trip To Kaysersberg

        Descending down from the mountains where I live, I slowly leave the snow behind. The fields pick up a bit of green as we get closer to Kaysersberg. A 20 minutes drive takes me from being perched on the side of a mountain in a chalet above a sleepy little village to the beginning of the great valley where Kaysersberg lies. ...

Remaking the kitchen ~ Improving Storage

  I have been quite busy this week with various projects. My son is traveling back home in less than two weeks and I am trying to finish up some alterations for him. I also have a few gifts to send back home that need to be finished also. But I found a little time to work on my kitchen. This is what I did this week: ...

Rosehip Facial Serum

     I am not such a spring chicken these days and so I find my skin requires a lot more care than before but, oh, how I wish I would have shown it a bit more when I was younger. I was more of a wash my face and go kinda girl and had a devil-may-care attitude about any kind of skin care. These days I like to pamper myself and I am starting to see results. Maybe with a little forethought...

Small Cotton Tassel Tutorial

  I recently finished making one of my treasure bags. I wrote about it here and mentioned that I would make a tassel tutorial soon. Well I was a bit delayed because I realized after I took all the pictures that the colors of the tassels were way too dark for people to see what I was doing. So I remade one with lighter colors. I am a thrifty person and hate to throw anything away....

Rethinking the Pantry

   I have been busy this week working on my kitchen with all it lacks. I have come up with a great new project that I think will help a lot with the storage problem I am having. Earlier this week I gave you a peek at what I am dealing with in my post Kitchen Woes. Since then I have come up with a great strategy for dealing with a lot of these problems. My first problem will be to tackle...

Orange Cuticle Cream Recipe

I am a long time sufferer of extremely dry skin. Since I am hypothyroid it comes with the territory. I decided to give some cuticle cream a try and whipped up this lovely batch of Orange cuticle cream. It's quite simple, requiring only 3 ingredients and smells heavenly! Orange Cuticle Cream Ingredients:  5 parts castor oil  3 parts shea butter  orange essential oil Heat...

My Kitchen Woes

     Most of you know that Frenchie and I recently bought an old chalet up in the mountains of Le Bonhomme, France. This is in the Alsace region. It is an old vacation chalet that was built back at the beginning of the twentieth century as far as I can gather. It was much smaller than it is now, basically half the house that we have. Sometime later they built on the second half...

Finished Bag

So here it is, all finished, soon to be on a trip across the sea. I hope she loves it as much as I do. I plan on doing a short tutorial on how to make these simple cotton tassels soon so be on the look out. ...