Where's Becky Been?

I looked at my last blog post and saw that it was just over a month old - my goodness gracious, what a blog slacker!

But folks, I have to say it - I just don't feel like blogging about all the things going on in my life these days...and there is a lot going on. (mostly all good too, but some quite sad)  I rarely even carry my camera around much any more. I guess I've been taking a hiatus without even realizing it...perhaps I've even lost my mojo a bit for now...

I will say for certain though that I will keep blogging, because even though I don't always feel like it, I want to keep an honest visual and written record of my life.  But because my life is filled with peaks and valleys, so too will my blog...

So here is a brief recap of the past 6 weeks or so, including some things that began before that but I never mentioned here....

Mom and Johnny, Easter 2008

• My sweet mother-in-law passed away on October 8th, on my husband's birthday. She was 85. It wasn't unexpected as she was under hospice care for a while, but it was still a blow to the family.  Her suffering is now over and she is in a MUCH better place...
  
• My nephew and his wife had an early arrival on September 22, precious Presley Kate, who came a month early and only weighed 3 lbs. 12 oz. On October 9th, her Mommy's birthday, she finally left the hospital and is now more than double her birth weight and doing great! Life goes on...

• I took a part time job as a painting instructor at Pinot's Palette in the Woodlands, a "Paint and Sip" studio where the painters bring their own wine and goodies and paint a 16 x 20 acrylic painting. It is a truly fun job and I am loving it, but it was an adjustment to head off to work outside my home, and mostly nights at that. But it is a great part time job, pays really well, and I have met THE nicest people at our paint parties. I wish you could all come - we would have a blast!!

• I attended the Quilt Market right here in Houston at the end of October and was in "hog heaven" as we say around here. My-oh-my the fabric and quilts and yumminess was just almost too much!! This was a trade show for fabric and trim companies, quilt pattern vendors, sewing and quilting machine manufacturers and more. And no, I did not take one single photo. I was under the impression that photography was not allowed, and although that is true at some booths, plenty of folks were taking plenty of photos...  Oh well. But I picked up a lot of business cards from some wonderful people at various fabric manufacturers' booths and even got to show my portfolio, so it was time well spent!  (You can check out True Up's blog and see a series of reports on the this quilt market with tons of photos, plus many other similar markets and a lot of other fun fabric-related goodness)
• In preparation for the Quilt Market I created many new coordinated fabric design sets using existing and new images to add to my portfolio. Here's a little sampler of some of my latest work...

• We had a "Grandma Shower" at my house for my sister-in-law a few weeks ago - her dear friend coordinated all the details and Mom and I got my house ready and provided many of the goodies and flowers. It was a great success - so fun! (have you ever heard of/been to a Grandma Shower?  It's all about making sure the new Grandma has a good supply of baby stuff for when her sweet grandbaby comes to visit - fun!) Once again, I didn't take any photos with my camera (slacker), but I got copies from others. This is a shot of the dining room. You can see my cool metal floral chandy ($10 garage sale find), and the wall shelves that are actually a hutch from an old desk that I picked up at a thrift store - it was orphaned from its desk and was pretty cheap. (see before photo below) It's hard to see in the photo, but the hutch has a soft pink back. We have since made more modifications to the hutch (added a quilt rack at the bottom), and we also added 2 corner cabinets to the room, plus the rest of my china collections that were still at my other house - so I WILL take photos of the newly completed/accessorized room very soon and share here on the blog...

• We've added 4 Christmas Inspiration kits to our Just Bee 'n Me Boutique on Etsy, and we'll soon be adding one more Christmas kit plus a fun vintage sewing notions kit with a ton of cute, sweet goodies...

(coming soon - Vintage Notions Inspiration Kit!)

• I'm working toward opening a Zazzle shop...soon!!

Cute "Wise Woman" journal - just one of the many things in the works for the Zazzle shop...

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Well, I think that's enough of a recap for now - I'm getting tired of writing and I'm sure you're getting tired of reading...

I can't thank you enough for coming by to see if I'll ever post anything again! I really appreciate your support and love, caring and encouragement!

Have a fabulous week friends!!  HUGS and much love!

What to Wear?

Struggling with what to wear today? Can't find anything in your closet that you like? We might want to try these clothes on today - they always fit perfectly and never go out of style!

"Clothe yourselves with compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness, and patience."

Colossians 3:12

Just Bee 'n Me Girls Calendar - November

Here's Sadie, my November Just Bee 'n Me girl. She's a fabulous cook and is blessed with the gift of hospitality. She loves all things vintage and has a great set of vintage Pyrex serving pieces that she loves to use when serving her guests...  Pumpkin pie and hot coffee are ready and waiting!

This image is what the basic layout of the Just Bee 'n Me Girls calendar will look like...each month will feature one of the colorful, creative Just Bee 'n Me girls with a Scripture and encouraging words, plus coordinating "accessories" that reflect each girl's personality. 

Can't wait to get them all together so I can share them with you - still hoping/planning to have these ready by Christmas!!  I'll keep posting little sneak peeks as I get them ready...

Hugs to you my dear friends...thanks so much for stopping by!

Meet "Maggie"!

Meet "Maggie", my October Just Bee 'n Me calendar girl! I'm so happy to finally be moving forward on the Just Bee 'n Me Girls 2013 calendar! I have lots of fun creative girls waiting in the wings for their  calendar debut - I just have to get them from the sketchbook to the computer where they start to really take shape and develop their "personalities".

Maggie is herself quite a doodler, filling one art journal after another with her bright, colorful sketches and mixed media pages. Her personal style is a little bit Boho, a little bit Romantic. She loves to laugh and spread a little joy whenever, wherever she can...

Can't wait to introduce more girls to you soon!

You'll be seeing these girls make appearances in the new Etsy shop soon too...should be fun! 

(yikes, we're sold out in our shop right now but we are working hard to restock it with more Inspiration Kits by Wednesday evening 9/26!)

Talk to you soon - have a great week!

Etsy Shop is Open! (belated blog post)

We opened our Just Bee 'n Me Boutique Etsy shop right on schedule on Friday, August 31st - yay! (and already had a sale) But, after posting about the grand opening on Facebook and pinning some of the Etsy photos on Pinterest, I completely forgot to update the blog. Poor old blog - never gets much respect anymore...  

Have any of you bloggers experienced this - interacting with more people, spending more time, and posting more stuff on FB and Pinterest than you do on your blog sometimes?  I really don't mean to - I love this old blog, and although I don't post here a lot (I've never been a super-blogger), it really has become a little scrapbook of my life, since June 2005 anyway....

I find that I don't go and read blogs as often as I used to...and I miss that...

Pinterest is an awesome way to see LOTs of inspiration in one fell swoop, and I LOVE it - don't get me wrong...But I find that I miss the back story behind the image sometimes... It's like flipping through a magazine to soak in the pictures but never reading the great stories of how they came to be...

I miss keeping up with the snippets of our lives that we weave on our blogs...I follow many of my blog friends on Facebook, so I do see many updates, but not nearly all...

Am I the only one experiencing this...?

Just saying all this to whoever may still be reading this old blog...  I'll post this on Facebook when I'm done and I suspect that the folks that follow me there will see it there first...maybe I'm wrong - maybe it's just me...  None of this is a rant or even a real lament, because I have met and interacted with so many people outside of actual blogging and have experienced tons of inspiration on FB and Pinterest, but I just kinda miss the "old" days sometimes...curling up with my blog roll and a cup of coffee and reading away...  I'd love to hear your thoughts...

Oh, I would be terribly remiss if I failed to mention that these photos are of the 6 remaining Inspiration Kits available in our Just Bee 'n Me Boutique on Etsy ($10 each). They have been lovingly gathered and coordinated  from my stash of quality vintage upholstery fabric, vintage buttons, pretty trims, and cool old costume jewelry pieces. They're perfect for small crafting projects like altered journals, pincushions, mixed media collage, scrapbook embellishments, and much more...

And this is just the beginning - so much more to come. I have enough stash to keep these kits going for a while, plus I am planning to make prints of my artwork available as well as some vintage treasures and handmade goodies too! I hope you'll check us out from time to time to see what's new...

...and if you want to see a bit more than what I share here on the blog, I invite you to follow me on Facebook and Pinterest...I seem to be spending a fair amount of time there these days... :o)

But I have a bit of extra free time and a cup of coffee, so I'm thinking that some blog reading may be in order...see you there!!

Thanks SO much for stopping by! I love you guys...

Etsy, Here We Come! (1 week from today)

The Grand Opening of the Just Bee 'n Me Boutique on Etsy is just one week away!! Wanna know what we will be selling? Yeah, me too! LOL!  What I can tell you is that we will be starting out with supplies to inspire you. We'll be pulling together some ribbon...

...and bits of vintage jewelry...

...and vintage trims...

...plus bits of vintage linens...

...and fabrics...

...and we'll combine them into cute coordinated inspiration kits for you to use to make whatever fun projects you want!

That's just for starters. I have lots of ideas and plans for more, including art prints and journals, plus some small hand crafted home decor items like these we have made in the past...

I'm really looking forward to making all these types of items available for you and your family and friends in our little boutique! It should be a lot of fun!

I invite you to follow Just Bee 'n Me here on the blog plus our Facebook Page, my Pinterest Boards, and my Twitter page for all our Etsy store grand opening details as well as future updates and specials!

Can't wait!!!

Have a great weekend y'all!

Our Cottage Coffee Bar

9/28/13 Edited to add:  I saw that Donna of Funky Junk Interiors was hosting a link party featuring Creative DIY Coffee Stations, so I immediately knew I wanted to feature our fun coffee station that we put together from vintage finds and junk - so, even though this post originally posted about a year ago, I thought it was worth revisiting...enjoy!  Here's the link to the party so you can see a lot of other inspiring coffee stations as well as a host of other creative ideas:  http://www.funkyjunkinteriors.net/2013/09/party-junk-206-creative-diy-coffee-stations.html

---ORIGINAL POST BELOW---

It's hard to believe it's been almost a month since my last post - wow! The day I posted all the photos of my studio for Where Bloggers Create 2012 was also the day we left for a week long trip to Orlando to attend the International Christian Retail Show and meet with gift manufacturers about licensing my art. It's been a bit of a whirlwind around here since that day - after the trip I had a lot of follow-up to do (my meetings were very positive and promising!). Plus it's summertime with family get-togethers and home projects and so on and so on.

But things have leveled out and as often happens in August, I am gearing up for the Fall with a great amount of energy and anticipation! In the midst of all the activities, we have continued to make progress with decorating the Woodland Cottage, and I wanted to share one of those decorating projects with you today. This is our Cottage Coffee Bar...

(click any image to enlarge)

This is located on a small wall that is just past our foyer on the way to the kitchen - it is open to the living room and dining room as well. I got this wonderful black and white enamel-topped cabinet from my Aunt - it belonged to my Grandmother and was in her kitchen for many decades. I have very fond memories of it from childhood...

I knew I wanted the cabinet to anchor this little nook, but I didn't want this space to become just another spot to put collectibles or knick knacks - I wanted it to be functional (and adorable of course) in some way. One day it hit me - how about a coffee bar? We love coffee, we love to serve coffee to our guests - how about we make a central place where we and our guests can easily get coffee any time...? So, the next step was to go to Pinterest (of course) for some coffee station inspiration. I ended up creating a pinboard called "All Things Coffee" where I pinned all the cool coffee goodies I found. Then I began to look through all my stash and pulled together what I had in addition to the cabinet...

This was a start, but I wanted height and color and much more coffee cottage-cuteness (but for little or no $$) so I had to get creative...  

I had used these 1 x 6 boards to make valance shelves at our mobile home - since I didn't need those anymore, I took one that was already painted, and had my hubby cut a piece of scrap beadboard to fit under it and we added side trim boards and scolly iron shelf brackets that we had laying around and combined it all into this shelf structure to go on top of the shelf I already had up.

I was pretty sure I wanted to incorporate a chalkboard into the design, so I went to my stash of garage sale frames and found what I hoped would be the perfect candidate - a nice oval frame without the glass - it just had a print glued to a piece of masonite - great for holding chalkboard paint...

I just had to make sure it would fit...and it did!

So we combined the existing shelf, a few coffee collectibles I had...

...like these vintage cups, my mom and dad's old coffee pot, and this coffee grinder lamp that we used to have in our shop space...

...moved things around a bit, added more coffee collectibles I had here and there...and painted the oval frame and picture with heirloom white spray paint for the frame and chalkboard spray paint for the picture. Then I used acrylic paints to paint the lettering ("Anytime is Coffetime") and the coffee cup...

I am really pleased with how it all came out. The shelf unit looks like one unified piece and works well with the oval chalkboard and collectibles. I also like the way the hanging coffee can storage worked out - I just took the paper wrapping off two small coffee cans I had, spray-painted them black, use a tin punch to punch two holes, then threaded black and white gingham ribbon through the holes to make a hanger...then I hung them on the shelf pegs - easy-peasy...

The cans hold sweetener and hot chocolate packages now, and when I create two more matching ones they will hold little creamer containers and other coffee add ins...

Someday we plan to buy a Keurig single-serve coffee pot to put here and we'll add a bunch of K-cups in a cute container of some type...it will be nice to be able to grab just one cup of coffee at any given time without having to make a whole pot...

This was such a fun, easy, inexpensive, and very gratifying project. We are really looking forward to getting a lot of mileage from this coffee bar for our guests and ourselves!

Thanks for stopping by to check in friends! There are lots of fun things in the works around here, and I can't wait to share them with you! It's shaping up to be a busy, but good, Fall season - I'm really looking forward to it! (especially the cooler temps...please...?!) Take care and be blessed in the sweet fading Summer days - we'll talk again soon!