1 year later, lots of changes, and lots more coming!

Wow,  I haven't updated this blog in over a year. So much has happened, and by so much I mean SO SO much! Where to start? I guess where I left off is a good place.

My last post was in May 2012. I was recovering from foot surgery, dating a little here and there, living in Gentilly, and working as a social worker. Since then I have moved twice, first to Metairie (July 2012) and then to Thibodaux (January 2013). Not only did I move to Thibodaux, but me and the three dogs moved in with my parents and their two dogs! If that wasn't enough, my boyfriend and his dog moved in with us in April. So if you're keeping count, that is FOUR adults and SIX dogs in one house (oh and my parents have a bird too, his name is Dammit). And to make it more interesting my pitbull and my boyfriend's pitbull don't get along so it is a constant dance of keeping one outside while the other is inside and separating them at night in different rooms.

Another major change...I'm no longer working. I've been out of work since December 2012 and couldn't be happier! I was really starting to hate my job, the way social services here was going, and all around I was a crabby person. I'm now about to start my third semester of Graduate school getting my Masters of Arts in Teaching. My mom, dad, and boyfriend have been big supporters of me during this process, and thankfully my parents love him and he loves them. We are just one happy family around these parts. Sure living with your parents at 30 years old is tough, but we mostly have fun. That brings me to my next point.

Boyfriend and I are talking about marriage...TALKING...there is no ring, there is no date, there is however an idea of what we both want. I'll save that for when things are official. But, we're talking and in that talking we realized if we're going to be married we don't want to live with my parents. Don't get me wrong, no rent or bills is kinda nice, but we would like our own place to start our lives together. And that brings me to my next point.

In talking about marriage and where we will live we've begun talking about purchasing a building a family member (my brother) owns and moving it to the back lot my parents own. So really, we'd be leaving their house but staying on the property. I was fortunate enough to grow up with 4 acres of land in the "city" and my brother and his wife built a house on one side of the lot and we'd like to build on the other.

I feel like I also want to mention that not only have I completed two semesters of graduate school living with my parents and boyfriend but I've managed to rock a 4.0 GPA! With all of that said, I'll leave you with a picture of what I envision the floorplan of the house to be. (because every blog post should have at least one picture.

pretty much to scale 40x40

Insomnia

Insomnia is not fun. I woke up yesterday morning for work and haven't slept since. I tried and tossed and turned and finally realized sleep wasn't happening and got up and decided to work on my quilt. I was sort of productive cutting out a couple hundred white 2.5" squares (not anywhere near the total I need) and pieced together my first two quilt blocks! The third block is laid out and I think I can get it together before I decide if I'm going to work or not.

The dogs have been great sleeping at my feet and on the bed in my craft room all night. I'm surprised at how they're not bothered by the sewing machine one bit.

$0, Given, Trash

free/frē/ -

without cost, payment, or charge

I want to share with you the free things we got yesterday. Yes you read that correctly, FREE, quite possibly my favorite word in the English Language. Taco and I are pretty thrifty and like a good bargain, but I don't know that either of us has ever passed up something free. If you've ever been to either of our houses (or come in the future) you'll notice how much crap I mean totally awesome  stuff we have. Anyway, I got a hook up on some exterior French doors yesterday thanks to my new friend Jesse. Can you believe people throw out perfectly good slightly rotten French doors? Me either. Check these beauties out!

 

We only picked up 4 (or 2 full doors) yesterday because the Hyundai Santa Fe is not meant for transporting doors...Just ask Taco.

She might kill me for this.

She's a trooper!

The seat is pushed up as far as it can go and leaning forward as far as it can go (we pulled the headrest up so she didn't end up with a crooked neck). The drive was about 10-15 minutes but I definitely have the best mom, I mean who almost gets choked by a seat-belt for that long for free doors besides her? Also for the record I am a little shorter and smaller so I offered to let her drive and I'd sit like that, she didn't take the offer. Bet she was regretting it after we got home. I'm still trying to figure out how we're going to get the other doors he's set aside from us on Saturday with me & him in the car. I don't think at 6'1 (I think that's how tall he is) he'll fit in the seat Taco sat in.

I also snagged some free old bowling pins from Jesse. By old I mean they were replaced in December (I think that's what he said) with new ones and had been sitting in the back of the bowling alley since then. Jesse got us 3 boxes of 10...yes I am the proud owner of 30 bowling pins. What exactly we're going to do with them will be another post but I wanted to show you what we got.

The last free thing I snagged yesterday was free labor! Somehow after working all day (seriously like 14 hours) Jesse was nice enough to not only give us all that stuff, carry the bowling pins into the house, get my sewing table and machine from the van Taco came in, he also hung curtains for me! 

Did I just hit the lottery or what?

I'm off of work today to rest and keep my foot up so I'm hoping to start the daunting task of cutting nearly 1200 squares of fabric from 55 or so different pieces of fabric. Sounds fun right?

Till next time, 

Green

My lovely sister-in-law Courtney's favorite color is green (mine is purple for future reference should anyone care) and whenever I see something green I always think of her. This time when I saw this adorable green nightstand I didn't think of her, I thought of myself (sorry Courtney). I decided Thursday or Friday that I want to redo the decor in my bedroom because I don't have the time or money right now to get a big tattoo. Also because it is really all I can change in the room since I'm still a renter. I headed over to Mr. Craigslist and found this nightstand and inquired about it.

Sadly it was already spoken for, but the current owner assured me that should the first buyer fall through I would be given the option of taking it myself. Well guess who has 2 thumbs, is on crutches, and received an email that the first buyer fell through ...you got it(that seems to be a common thing here in New Orleans, is it anywhere else?)! This will be mine. I'm hoping the fiance of the seller is a nice guy and offers to put it in my car for me tomorrow! I mean how can you really say no to someone on crutches? Especially if they're taking a piece of furniture off your hands and handing over money in the process. I don't love the doors on it so they'll be the first thing to go. The other thing I don't love is the color so it'll be the second thing to go. I got these knobs below at Michael's on sale for $.50, yes that is 50 cents, and they're porcelain.

What a steal right? Sadly, I don't love the designs on any of them (I have about 15 of them in 7 or so different designs) so they'll have to be painted too.  Also please say hi to 1 of my 3 "kids" Dunbar he wanted to make his blog debut. I have been collecting ideas from Pintrest for all the things I want to do to my room, and believe me it is a lot of projects, but sadly I don't have any idea what to do to this nightstand. Not yet anyway. I think for now it and the current nightstand will get a good sanding and a coat of some oops paint I picked up a while back and they'll end up being the last project for the room.

The plan for the room so far (I am about 96.2% it will change somewhere down the road) is to do these projects in no specific order:

• finish the dresser redo I started over a month ago
• learn to quilt and make this quilt

via Etsy

• turn my boring old metal ikea bed into a bed that I can sit up and read in

• create a wall of pictures (which includes making a few custom frames & pictures of me and my friends)

via Johnny In A Dress

• figure out how to transform the lampshades I have now into something that matches the decor
• make map art similar but not just like this (the atlas I ordered should arrive this week)

via Kayla Danelle

• put pillowcases on all the pillows on my bed
• create some type of painting to match the decor

And one last picture, the dresser before I got it out of goodwill, I will have to dig through and find pictures of the during. Thankfully I took pictures along the way to text to Taco before we even decided to start this blog. 

The veneer on the top, under the basket and wreath, was pealing up pretty bad and in the process of pulling it off I pulled off the first layer of plywood or whatever kind of wood it was under it, but not all of it will come off so stay tuned to how we're going to fix that. I also pulled the veneer off the drawers and the layer of wood under it which came off easy. More on the dresser later though. I'm excited about this decor redo. Can you tell yet that it is going to have a DC, MD, VA (or DMV) style to it?

Till next time,

Welcome To Our World

I wanted to write a post to introduce us to the blog world. My mom is a stay at home uh grandmother now, a semi-retired professional volunteer, and a devote mom, friend, religious adviser, wife, grandmother, all around awesome person. She has been crafty as long as I can remember and before I was even a thought in her mind. She's done it all in her time from decorating baby rooms, making new slip covers, deciding she wanted to paint her entire icebox with chalkboard paint (10 years before it was popular), helping renovate rooms in a house, covering up the marker drawings on my bedroom walls with material, to making outfits and bibs for my niece and nephew. I know from watching her that she can do anything she sets her mind to. I don't remember a Christmas or birthday where there hasn't been some sort of homemade/handmade gift from her among the other gifts received. Her one downfall? Her creative juices start flowing at about 1am and don't stop till the sun is up...something she's passed on to me! She's always up for a new project no matter what time I text her my new crazy idea of what I want to try. I can go on for days about her ideas, accomplishments, mishaps (nobody is perfect), etc but I'll stop it here...for now. Too bad she's over in Thibodaux, LA and I'm in New Orleans...or maybe not, we'd be dangerous if we lived too close to each other, it would be crafting 24/7!

I live in New Orleans and work as a social worker but in my spare time I love to create new things, pretend I'm a photographer, collect tattoos, paint, learn a little too much about the Saints and football in general. I've been on a painting kick for the last year and a half and am ready to dive into more projects. I don't have as much talent to execute ideas as my mom does but I'm learning (hey she's has a couple years head start on me). Obviously it is easier for me to toot Taco's (oh yeah, we call my mom Taco by the way) horn than it is to toot my own, maybe I'll have her write something about me one day instead of writing it on my own?

 The name of the blog...Taco came up with that after someone suggested we use a play on our last name (that isn't anything close to gumbo by the way) but she took the food idea and ran with it, or hit it out the park, or whatever. Craft Gumbo because just like one of the famous dishes from our lovely state our crafts have a little bit of everything in them...and maybe the kitchen sink too!

Anyway, that is just a little about us. I hope you follow us on our creative successes and blunders and learn why I say we're a crazy crew of a family along the way. We hope that this blog will act as a guide to creating new things, we hope to do some tutorials, figure out how to knock off some awesome ideas that are just not budget friendly, and help each other and everyone who reads this get those creative juices flowing, no matter what time of day it is.

Please sit back and relax and laugh at us as we go, Lord knows we laugh at ourselves when we goof up. Just a heads up I wanted to create the blog and get it out there but please be patient with us as we are new to the blog world and it might take a little while before we really get in the groove of things. I am recovering from a minor foot surgery and not up and walking yet and I need to teach Taco how to log in and post among a few other things so she can photograph, write, and post on her own in the very near future. Feel free to leave feedback (we like constructive criticism and new ideas a lot) to help us better ourselves, our crafts, and the blog in general.

For now enjoy this goofy picture of this mother daughter duo!

Margaret