Jot Thoughts Box

My office/studio space is always a work in progress, mostly in terms of trying to stay organized and keep items in their place when they're not immediately needed. I always need a place to jot a quick note for an idea or a shopping list, but can't always locate my note paper when I'm in the midst of a project. This lovely jot thoughts box began as a candle box for a beautiful and wonderful smelling candle that I received for Christmas. The box was too elegant to just toss and I found it perfectly housed a 4-inch memo cube! I took out my container of corrugated cardboard coffee sleeves, added some silver ink, trimmed up some old paint chips that coordinated with the box colors and trimmed them in silver too and lettered "Jot Thoughts" in silver paint pen on a couple of them and attached to the box. Now I can always easily find my notepaper!

Printable weekly menu planner

My husband and I are trying to improve planning out the meals for the week so we're not making constant trips to the supermarket, making better use of what we already have in the house and be kinder to the environment! So, to make the process a bit more fun (for me, anyway!) I whipped up these cute menu planner sheets that coordinate with my Set the Table fabric designs available at Spoonflower. You can fit two on one letter sized sheet of paper, and to be even more environmentally friendly you can print on both sides of the paper and just flip it over for the next week. You can download the file for the menu planner here.

Ribbon Rose Necklace

Completing this ribbon rose necklace has taken longer than expected (as usual) but I'm so excited it's finally finished. I think it turned out beautifully and can't wait to wear it out on date night this weekend! The finishing touch was the cording which I picked up while my husband and I were in Savannah, Georgia. I stumbled upon this fantastic little shop called The Paris Market and though I would have loved everything in the store, I had to limit my purchases, but one of the items that intrigued me was a little spot filled with grab bags for $5. The bags contained all sorts of old jewelry and beads and I spied this one with some other fantastic beaded cords and a fabulous bag of tiny turquoise beads!

Placemats

Finishing up placemats was a bit more difficult task than I had hoped but eventually got all stitched up late last night in the midst of watching the Golden Globes - all the movies I have yet to see!!!

Stitching them up was put on hiatus for a couple of trips - the first was searching out Christmas dishes that mom fell in love with that are now on clearance, so she called up my sister and I who live in two different states across the country to head out to the department stores and search for Johnson Brothers Friendly Village dishware of which I managed to find four place settings; then I was off to pick up a few office supplies!

Once those errands were taken care of, I could finally focus on sewing the placemats from my own fabric design and printed by Spoonflower! After cutting out all the elements, I got to stitching. I'm thinking that I'm still going to add a bit more hand embellishment as I did around the circle applique once I get to the craft store and pick up some greenish perle cotton - I think they still need a hand-stitched border around the whole thing...

Full Yards of Set The Table

My grand plans for the weekend are to finally begin transforming the full yards of my Set the Table fabric in green into actual placemats and other fun kitchen stuff, since the fabric finally arrived from Spoonflower!!! Although I would like to get all of my sketches for the fabric into wonderful objects, I'm trying to be more reasonable in setting my goals! You can also see the blue and yellow versions of the design. I hope to get the red version all sorted out this weekend, but let's not get ahead of ourselves!