One Man's Trash Is Our Treasure

I'm still weak to report for work today or do anything productive. I don't want to stay in bed either so I just spent most of the day in my craft studio for some serious reading.

When hubby and I decided to make this room as "our niche", we divided it into 3 sections: our books on one side of the wall, my card/stamp area facing the middle wall, and my scrapbook/sewing area on one side facing the window.

Lately, I'm spending a lot of spare time on the card/stamp area like today. As I'm sitting here, I realized that most of the things in this part of the room are "treasures" from garage sales and thrift stores!!!

We got this unwanted solid table from the sidewalk of a local thrift store for almost nothing. Like a pumpkin transforming into a beautiful carriage, this unwanted table turned into a useful and sturdy working area for my stamping projects. That was after scrubbing it with half a canister of Pledge furniture polishing cream! This coming July when it's hot and sunny, we will paint it to match the rest of the furnitures in the room.

This old spice rack came from one of our garage sale expeditions. For it's second life, it is now a happy home for my little ink pads!


It was love at first sight with Monsieur Owl when I saw him on a shelf at a Salvation Army store. He was so lonely and aloof. Brought him home and gave him a new look with these Memorial Day Poppy Flowers! Now he's happy and proud looking after me and my husband as I work late at night making these cards....


while JV relaxes on his favorite corner of the craft studio playing with either his laptop or his camera.

Truly, one man's trash is our treasure ... no make that treasures!

Flowers on a Cold Day

In two weeks time, students will be enjoying Spring Break. This is a misnomer! There's no sign of Spring in Ontario. Instead, we are in a deep freeze for the past 4 days and this is expected to last until the end of this week. Enough already! Really, 25 degrees below 0 is getting the best of me :-(

My dear husband must be sensing my misery ... he brought roses for me today to cheer me up!

Lovely, sweet and timely ....thanks!

You love the roses - so do I. I wish
The sky would rain down roses, as they rain
From off the shaken bush. Why will it not?
Then all the valley would be pink and white
And soft to tread on. They would fall as light
As feathers, smelling sweet; and it would be
Like sleeping and like waking, all at once!

-George Eliot

Trading Places

In our household, there's no doubt I'm the cook and Jayvee's the handyman. But yesterday we just found ourselves 'trading places'.

It all started with the cardboard storage boxes we bought from IKEA. If you are a fan of this store you know very well that every package comes with the wordless instruction sheet which I love to hate { can I use love and hate in one sentence?} and several little knots and bolts. I'm not usually good at following IKEA's instructions :-( but this time I'm determined to make these pieces of cardboard nothing but the same cute little boxes I saw on display!!!

After a couple of hours, I made it! Woohoo! I assembled

8 of these for my craft studio......

While I was so engrossed playing Bob the Builder in our home office,
my husband was in the kitchen trying to be "Chef Mario Batali"!

And look what he made us for dinner .... yum-O!

The end. Chow!