My life is to make everything around me beautiful.

Sunday, March 4, 2012

Castles, Cottages and Roses for Show Off Your Cottage Monday

Welcome to Cielo's Show Off Your Cottage Monday. I like participating but these are not photos of my cottage, a very humble home in Idaho, but filled with love. I'll try and get some vignettes from around my home for next week but I'm redoing the office and that's taking a bit of time at the moment. I just thought I'd show you some people's castles and cottages. Click on the logo below to visit other participants. Enjoy.

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When we went to Ireland in the mid-80s I saw enough castles to last me a lifetime. Ireland is FULL of castles. I love them, but they are very, very cold inside. Ireland is a rather cool country and very rainy. It's a relatively small country with 6 million people. California has about 15,000,000 people alone, so you can imagine how small it is. But it's a very beautiful and friendly country. You would not enjoy living in those castles though.




Isn't this cute? What a clever idea for a party.



Not a castle but a rather delightful home of someone.


"Someone's" castle.


Each woman's and man's home is their castle. Tiny but adorable.

A tropical castle.

Staircase to a castle bedroom? :-) Sure looks majestic to me.

Two of the most gorgeous bottles I've ever seen. I just had to share this with you.

Castle on the water. What a view.
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No one wants advice - only corroboration.
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Coffee Filter Pompoms

Do you ever get caught up in what you should do, what you are expected to do, what you want to do and whirl about until you're just sobbing? That was me the other night.

I'm not sure why; maybe it was just melancholy. Hubs had to go out to a meeting and I was crafting for the first time in a very long time. When crafting I usually think a lot about life, not particularly about the craft I'm doing. So the sobs just hit me...BOOM!

You would think at my age life would be uneventful and easy but it rarely is for anyone actually, at any time. We're all pulled in several different directions at any given time in our lives. I'm the same as you, blogger chicks.

So after painting these little hanging lanterns I decided to put some coffee filters that I had dyed pink—various shades of pink—to some use. I have several hundred of them hanging in the craft room on a string. And it took a LOT of coffee filter! I still have a lot left though so I'll be making a tutorial on the roses I make from them to send to a woman who wants to learn. I'll post it on here at some point so you can make them also. They are easy, trust me.

Here I am just starting to glue them to the lantern.


It doesn't look like I've put many more on in this photo but I have. It's "filter" intensive; believe me.

Looking more like what I'm wanting in this photo.

Here is the completed lantern. Since I dyed these with red food coloring and the filters are very absorbent, there are many different shades of pink. Plus these are the round scalloped filters but when subjected to the dye water they aren't ruffled anymore. Next time I'll use them straight from the package, white and scalloped. It will definitely be a different effect but this is what I had at the moment and it is acceptable to me.
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