Catching up.

Hello Friends! Long time no see! I am so sorry that I didn't post anything for ........ a month! I had some health problems ( I feel much better now ), and also got pretty busy as usual since its getting close to the end of the school year. Nina had many activities going on in May as well. This post is going to be a summary of the last month for myself. Not much about crafting, but I hope you'll stay with me a little while.

We had lots of rain and storms. Our house was once surrounded by mushrooms!

That means it is the time when plants grow and have lots of blooms. This is my little flower bed I built last Summer. Herbs like Sages and thymes are propagating like crazy! I probably need to expand the bed soon.

A little bouquet of herbs.

Gorgeous arrangement of Common Sage flowers.

Speaking of rain, one evening before a stormy night, We saw this spectacular double rainbow above us! It was a quite big event in this area. I saw many pictures and posts of the rainbow on my Facebook news feed.

Oh, it was something. It didn't look like real. I was so glad I noticed this and able to share this wonderful moment with my family!

I needed to take the photo in panoramic because the rainbow was so huge.

Reflection in our window.

Nina turned eight on May 15th. I am so grateful that she has grown very healthy by now. She is a big girl so she is getting helpful more and more for us, but honestly, I sometimes wish that she would stay eight years old forever. Have you ever thought like this? I love you, Nina. Happy birthday.

Recently, Nina is interested in acting pretty much. She took a drama class at Civic theater and had a performance at a little community theater in the town. The theme of this session was fairy tales. Her role was a wolf and she had many lines to memorize. She did a great job on stage, and I think that gave her more confidence to be in front of people. She really enjoys acting.

Also, she was in the play for the school talent show. It was a back stage story and her role was a director of the show. She had long lines again and she did great. The finale was a dance of "ONE" from "A Chorus Line" by all the kids in the play. They all did a wonderful job. I feel very pleasant every time when I see kids trying their best on something.

Time for autograph!

Ballet school observation day! The lessons are getting harder. It finally got they look practicing real classic ballet. I like that.

School final project. Researching about sea animals. Her animal was Beluga. She worked hard and the finished report was very informative. I learned a lot about Belugas from her report! This is the poster for here report.

Tomorrow is the last day of the school year. Nina and I did a secret project for the surprise party for some one we want to celebrate. I cannot tell you whom this is for. But many people in the class are working on this event. Hope we'll make it successfully!

I am planning to post some tutorials in June. And there will be a fun blog tour and giveaways coming soon. I am working on projects for those. I will be announce that when I am ready! Please come back and check it our. Thank you for stopping by. And Have a wonderful day.

Embroidered Mother's Day Messages

I finished two Mother's day embroidery items last week. Embroidered messages in hoops for hanging on walls. Using hoops like frames for hanging on the wall is very popular in the crafty world now. I am sure that's because they certainly look cute!

The technique I used is Dye & Stitch. I drew and colored the design with fabric markers on the fabric first then added stitches along the outlines. I also sanded and painted the embroidery hoops. I hope that makes the finish a bit more professional.

These hoops can be purchased at my favorite vintage shop Junk Evolution in South Bend. (They also have some more of my items like these and those!) We finally have beautiful Spring days here in South Bend! This is my most favorite time of the year! I hope you are enjoying your day too! Thank you for reading.

Language issue / Sakura (Japanese cherry) Blossom

I always appreciate that I live in this amazing internet age. There are more than two hundreds people all around the world following my blog, almost three hundreds people liking my facebook page. That is truly amazing and that definitely inspires my creation, my life and myself a lot! Those good crafty folks from everywhere on the globe encourage me so much and spreading my world so much wider! I would like to yell to all of you THANK YOU! today and also want to apologize for an issue. It is the language issue. The languages I speak and write are only Japanese and English. And my readers are from all over the world. I love love love you to leave comments in my blog, my facebook, or Flickr. I am always looking forward to hearing from you. But unfortunately, I cannot read French, Portuguese, Russian, Spanish, Chinese, Korean, Finnish........whatever except the two I mentioned above :ﾍ:
The point is that I am not able to approve the comments which are wrote in those languages I cannot read since I cannot recognize what is written in the comments. I know that those readers wrote something very nice and maybe very useful information. So I feel so very sorry about that. If possible, please write your comment in simple English. So we all are able to share your valuable information together. And again, I am so sorry if you posted your comment in your language in the past and I didn't publish that because of the language issue. I hope you understand my circumstance.

Changing the subject, my Sakura (Japanese Cherry) trees are in full bloom! This Spring they got more flowers and its beautiful. I love Sakura soooooooo much. I hope you like them too.

Have a great weekend!

Dye and stitch

Embroidered message surrounded by sweet flowers. 

Almost finished.

I doodled flowers on the fabric using fabric markers. Then added simple stitches on it.

Doily mini clutches for Mother's day!

I finished six mini clutches for Mother's day sale today! They are all different, one of a kind!

Pretty Spring colors and feathery hand crocheted lace doilies.

These mini clutches will be sold at Junk Evolution from next week. You will find so many cool gift items in Junk Evolution. (That is one of my most favorite shops in the town!) If you live close to South Bend, you should check it out! I am going to make some more things for Mother's day. It will be embroidery projects. I am going to share the process of the project. (I don't have any specific pictures of the design in my mind yet, though.)

We had a pretty heavy thunder storm last night. This morning when Nina and I were waiting for the school bus outside, we felt that the storm brought warmth of Spring. I wish it would stay like that from now on. We will have some more cold days this weekend. But my Sakura (Japanese cherry blossom) trees have lots of buds getting colors in it :-)

Thank you for reading. And please have a happy crafty weekend!

Mother's Day Gift Making Sneak Peek

I am preparing items for Mother's day gift sales. Right now I am working on small clutches which have crocheted little doilies on them. I crocheted the doilies in different patterns and with different fibers. I am having fun playing with colors of fabrics and zippers. I am sharing  some sneak peek photos today. Hope you enjoy them.

Have a happy week!

My thrifty home decor #2

Hello everyone! We came back home from Washington DC Thursday morning. It was very very short trip to walk through DC but we surely had a great time. Unfortunately the weather was way too cold for cherry trees to start blooming. There were few trees had flowers on them but mostly the buds were just getting pink on tips.
I will write about our adventure on the trip some other time. Today I need to finish sharing some more photos of my thrifty home decor.

These are more Origami unit wall hangings in our dining room. If you want to try making these, there is my tutorial here. It will take some time to make numbers of the units, but the process is pretty simple. I hope you'll enjoy making them.

More wall decors. I save Nina's good drawings and paintings in the folder. I have a bunch, or boxes of her art. It is nice that you always have a variety of art works when you want something fresh on your wall. It is like you have your own artist in your house who works only for you! So I can refresh my wall with different art works occasionally.

Home made wall quilts and a bunting from Nina's lemonade stand at our yard sale last spring (we might be going to use this bunting again this spring?).

I like to use fabrics of big scale prints as a wall decor. These were my favorite textiles a couple years ago from IKEA. Since my husband runs house related business I put up this house print on his office wall.

In the bath room.

In our master bed room I have this re-purposed shelf. I glued some Japanese Kimono fabric in the back of the shelf. It is hard to tell from this picture, but I use old harvest basket as my jewelry storage. (Hanging necklaces from the basket handle. Rings, pins and earrings in tiny bawls on the basket tray.)

 

From here these pictures are all taken in Nina's room.

Cut out colorful tissue papers make a pretty pattern on a plain lamp shade.

There is another tissue paper craft. Children's books are very nice items for decorating in fun colors. You see many children's books in my house.

A glittery wire garland from a party store is good to embellish a girl's room. Nina learned to make Origami cranes and she hung them from her ceiling. (We just use colorful masking tapes to hang things from ceilings.)

And some more junks and treasures on the shelf and the wall.

What home decor idea do you have? I would love to hear about it from you! Thank you for reading. Happy Spring!