Art to pee by

Here are some close-ups of our bathroom art:





I purchase those two paintings at St. Vincent's thrift store last month and paid $50 - more than I'd ever paid for art from a thrift store before. I just had to though. I fell in love. The detail is amazing and the egg imagry goes so well with a bird theme we have going around our house. The trees reminded me of the view in our backyard in Bedington, WV too. The colors in these paintings soon became my inspiration for the bathroom.

 This screen-print on fabric is from Ikea. It was hanging in our downstairs hall and while I was shopping around the house for more bathroom art, I realized it would be perfect.



This is a painting Sage made when he was 5. It's a snail. I love it.



I got this tile in San Antonio when I was 8 months pregnant with Sage and it's been in hte bathroom of every house we've lived in ever since.



This is a collage I got at All Aboard! in Atwater Village. The top got damage in our move so I added the sunshine at the top to cover it up.

 

Thank you for visiting the VanHorn family gallery bathroom. Don't forget to flush!

Bathroom Redo - Down with Brown, Up with Glitter!

Happy 4th of July! This time last year I was still in Los Angeles. I even braved the traffic and took the kids to Hansen Dam to see the fireworks. Erik had been living in Seattle since June 1st and we talked to him on the phone while he watched fireworks explode over Lake Washington. I'm happy to be together for the 4th of July this year.

A little over a year ago was also when we found the house we live in now. I would research houses via the interwebs and send Erik out to check them out after work, then he'd upload the pics and call me to describe the tours. We both fell in love with he house we finally got, but spent all last summer fighting banks and lenders for it. I'm so excited that this summer will have none of that drama. This summer, we're happy to have projects to work on that don't involve uprooting everything. Compared to moving, a little bathroom renovation seems easy.

I love this house, but I've never loved the front bathroom. Here are some pictures Erik took when we first got the house inspected:





It's like a step back in the seventies. Brown town. Welcome to wood grain. The pictures don't do it justice because in some parts it was peeling too. Erik didn't seem too bothered by it but I was. I said, "Mark my words, within a year this will be looking much different."

Peeling wallpaper just begs Rip me down!, so I did. As I ripped, I kept thinking of Charlotte Perkins Gilman's short story, The Yellow Wallpaper, feeling like a crazy lady obsessed with picking at the walls...


... It is stripped off -- the paper -- in great patches all around the head of my bed, about as far as I can reach, and in a great place on the other side of the room low down. I never saw a worse paper in my life. /One of those sprawling flamboyant patterns committing every artistic sin.../The color is repellent, almost revolting; a smouldering unclean yellow, strangely faded by the slow-turning sunlight./ It is a dull yet lurid orange in some places, a sickly sulphur tint in others.... Then I peeled off all the paper I could reach standing on the floor. It sticks horribly and the pattern just enjoys it! All those strangled heads and bulbous eyes and waddling fungus growths just shriek with derision!

I even took my clothes steamer to it, which helped with the stickier pieces. Charlotte Perkins Gilman didn't think of that one! It took a few months and resulted in a pathetic looking bathroom that I was embarrassed to let people see. So last Saturday I set out to paint it.

Sage helped... for 5 minutes. The rest was all me. Erik was busy building a staircase in our backyard and the kids, well, they had to entertain themselves for a few days. Thankfully, they're at an age where they can do that.

It must be all the HGTV remodeling shows I've seen that inspired me to try a racing stripe. Here's the tape I used to make it.


And here's the paint, "Navajo Clay" textured with sand...

and glitter!

Here's how it looks on the wall...

The glitter is very subtle. Compared to the semi-gloss "Golden Mushroom", this paint is rough. Erik says it reminds him of an emery board. That stripe didn't come out nearly as perfect as it appears there, I had to spend a day carefully touching it up with a tiny paint brush. One week after I started, I was finished. A room's not done until the art is hung though, so I shopped around the house for art that I thought would work in the room.


I even painted the cabinets, inside and out. I hope I never have to paint another cabinet for as long as I live.
I also organized the heck out of the drawers. Never mind that the rest of the house was being torn apart by my tornado children, all the dental flossers and ponytail holders and band aids are neatly in place.

This is my favorite spot...

It's in the corner by the door and such a cheery way to leave the crapper.


Even George (the frog) and Jelly (the beta fish) like their newly remodeled room. They don't like each other much though.

Whew! It's done! I keep going in there and staring at it, admiring my nice straight racing stripe and remembering how I was up on the top step of the ladder painting the skylight. Occasionally the kids wonder where I am and find me in there and ask, "Why are you just sitting there staring at it?" I guess it's time to obsess over another spot of the house now.

It's Yard Sale Season in Seattle!

After living in Los Angeles for the past few years and being spoiled by the year-round yard sales, then living without them during the cold and moist Northwest winter, I'm super-excited for the start of Seattle-area yard sales. Last weekend, when we had zero obligations and I saw the forecast predicting sun and mild temperatures, on Friday night I hit up craigslist for local garage sale info and together with Mapquest mapped out a route close to home. Here's what I scored...

Embroidered linens, $2.50:


Various sewing notions including an unused herb-themed Irish linen, $3:


Books for McKenna + handmade barrettes and pony tail ties, $2:


A Henry McKenna whiskey jug, $1:


A shirt, gameboy game and Nerf frisbee/ball for Sage, $3.50:


Handmade hummingbird earrings for me, $1 (she gave me a deal):


And, my favorite deals of the day because they're hard to find and sell for way more on ebay...

Return of the Jedi sheets and pillowcase, $1:


I'm still torn between letting Sage have them and cutting them up for kokoleo clothes.

Also, 3 Butterprint Pyrex nesting bowls, for THIRTY CENTS.

The sweet old lady up the street had no idea they were worth more so I ended up buying a few more things, all priced ridiculously low, and gave her $5 just because seeing those bowls for THIRTY CENTS made my day.

Thrift Thursday - Avon Calling

When I was a kid we had a frog-themed bathroom. It had frog wallpaper, frog-appliqued hand towels (I mean, frogs didn't applique them but there were frogs appliqued on them), a framed needlepoint frog my mom made, and a dish of frog-shaped soaps that we weren't allowed to use because they were just for decoration. I loved playing with those soaps and smelling them and scratching the bottoms of them to carry their scent around with me under my fingernails. It's funny the weird childhood details that stick in our brains.

I also remember my mom bringing home Avon catalogs from her substitute teaching jobs (the cafeteria ladies sold Avon). I couldn't read, but I liked looking at the pictures of shaped soaps in fancy packaging, eyeshadows and lipsticks (I vividly remember once getting tiny lipstick samples, I loved those), and jewelry like jumbo owls and lockets that held perfume-scented disks. Oh, and the elaborately shaped perfume bottles! My friend Cindy Kellenberger had a shelf full of those perfumes. We would dab a little of each on on our necks and then feel woozy for the rest of the day. I'm pretty sure some of those perfume molecules are still stuck in my nose.

(Photo mosaic by m kashahara in flickr)

Occasionally my mom would let me pick out one thing from the catalog - a bath toy or fancy soap or jewelry from the kids section. Waiting for it to arrive made it all the more special. I coveted the jewelry and took special care of it so I could give it to my daughter. When McKenna was 2 I gave her my frosted glass snowman necklace with a tiny gold top hat. That was a poignant moment, putting my old necklace on her, a moment I'd looked forward to for 30-some years. Less than an hour after I put it on her I noticed all that was hanging from the chain was a tiny gold top hat and the snowman was gone forever. Sigh. I held off giving her my other favorite Avon necklace - the mama and baby ducks - until today when writing this post reminded me of it.


I'm sure she'll lose it soon.

So why am I thinking of all this? Because earlier week at St.Vincent's Charity thrift shop, as I was checking out, these caught my eye:


I would have purchased them for the packaging alone, but after a quick inspection I discovered they still contained the soaps. For only a buck each I immediately bought them and waited to completely unwrap them at home. How cute are these?

Hansel and Gretel!

and these:


Three Little Birds! And a soap dish... shaped like a nest! Be still my thrifty heart.

If you come over to my house you'll find them sitting by my bathroom sink. Don't use them! They're just for decoration. I'll let you scratch their bottoms though.

Oh boy! Shirts!

I know how it is when you're a mom of a boy and it seems like all the cutest kids clothes are made for girls. When Sage was little it seemed our only options were sports, trucks, and dinosaurs, so when I started kokoleo some of my first items were boy clothes with funkier things like monsters, skulls, and stars. Then I started making sundresses and girlier things and they became my best sellers so pretty soon the boy section on my kokoleo rack dwindled. At the last couple craft shows I've done I've seen that look of disappointment and frustration in the eyes of moms of boys when they look around and say, "All the cutest stuff is for girls! No one ever has boy stuff!" I remember feeling like that and I realized I need to bring back the boy clothes to kokoleo, so I started by uploading these to my Etsy shop:


Skully and Starry Armsies, genuine mechanic patches, and a Department of Corrections embellished shirt (which may or may not be legal to wear, I don't know). Plus I made a few other Sesame Street embellished toddler tops and appliqued tree shirts that could cute on either gender. Heck, skulls and stars and patches and monsters are cute on girls too. McKenna loves wearing her brother's hand-me-downs.

From one patch to another

I have something I want to admit. I've been seeing another blog. Please don't be upset with me. A patchwork world will always be my #1 spot to blabber my thoughts. It's just, the opportunity arose to be a part of a new local journalism endeavor and I jumped at it. I'm blogging for the Renton Patch. It's part of the Patch Network of hyper-local on-line journalism run by Arianna Huffington. So you could say I'm kinda sorta writing for the Huffington Post. (Ha, I wish). My posts don't deal with late-breaking hard-hitting news though, just notions of local interest that pop into my head. I've only written a few posts so far and already I've been recognized twice around town. I'm famous! Okay, not really, but it has helped me feel like less of a newbie and more connected to my new found town.

Sometimes, if I think my Patch posts would be of interest to my patchwork world readers, I'll repost them here. Here's my latest, entitled "Musings on happy delusions..."


When I first moved to Renton I was excited to see a downtown that wasn't dying. This is happening to so many smaller cities and towns these days – the businesses migrate to the suburban strip malls and once-active main streets and city centers become ghost towns. When I saw the Piazza, the Farmer's Market, several restaurants, antique and jewelry shops, clothing stores, galleries, and options for coffee on 3^rd Street, I was relieved. But finding happy delusions is what really got me excited. I told my husband, “That means artists live here!” Any town can have a Wal-Mart or a Hallmark store, but a shop that showcases one-of-a-kind handcrafted items by local folk is a sign that a town values its artists.

I have to admit, I'm biased. As someone who makes a modest living off making one-of a kind kids clothes and home décor, I was excited to possibly have a venue for my items (Google “kokoleo” and you will find them). When you're an independent artist or craftsperson it's not like you can simply walk into any Wal-Mart or Hallmark store and show them your work in hopes that they might like to sell it. The idea of doing so is laughable; that's just not how things are done these days. Besides, handmade one-of-a-kinds would look out of place next to their mass produced factory-made (in China, most likely) items anyway. This is why independently owned businesses are so vital a town's unique identity and sense of community. Sure, the prices aren't comparable to what you would find at the Dollar Store, but thankfully, neither is the quality.

The first time I visited happy delusions, I knew I wanted to one day see kokoleo in the shop. When I spoke to the owner Mary Clymer, I casually mentioned that I made things and gave her my card. She looked at it and immediately said, “Kokoleo? I know kokoleo!” It turns out she had seen my booth at one of the first indie craft shows I did in Los Angeles years ago. At the time she was living in the city as well and working at Handmade Galleries in Sherman Oaks, a shop which later served as the model for happy delusions. Small world, indeed. I took this is a sign that Renton was going to be a good place for me. In fact, my first purchase was a screen printed I Heart Renton t-shirt.

Fast forward six months and I hear my neighbor say, “I saw kokoleo in the window at happy delusions!” This made my heart swell for so many reasons. First, because my stuff is in the window in the coolest store on the most popular street in downtown Renton, and second, because after years of living in a neighborhood where people kept to themselves and didn't so much as wave hello, I now have friends, not just causal neighbor acquaintances, but real friends who know a kokoleo when they see it and are happy to point it out to their friends and family. How often when you're shopping do you come across something and think, “I know who made that!” At happy delusions, you just might.

EtsyRain Spring Show + Space Needles

It's been over a week since the EtsyRain Spring Handmade Show at the Intiman Theater but I couldn't let the event pass without posting a little recap. I was busy in my booth for most of it, but I did manage to snap a few pics. Here's the entrance:

and my booth, outside in the corner:


Here I am in my booth with a furry frogmonster peeking out from behind me:


It was great to finally do a well-known Seattle show and get to know some of the local indie crafters. I doubled the money I spent to participate and sent some kokoleos out into the city. I did some great trades - a kokoleo kid dress for a Public Market screen printed tee by tomato-tomato and a plush bunny for a squirrel pillow from Alise's Pieces, plus I bought some delicious gourmet lollipops from This Charming Candy (but don't tell my kids because I ate them all.) Also, the owners of a couple shops in Seattle gave me their cards, so that's encouraging. Still, I felt kind of like the new girl in school, not really knowing the cool crowd and missing my craft friends from L.A. I just need to get out and do more shows and attend more EtsyRain events.

The forecast called for rain but thankfully it turned out to be a beautiful day, if only a tad chilly. I had a view of the courtyard fountain:


and looking out from the entrance I could see the Space Needle:


Speaking of Space Needles, I designed a new Space Needle applique and have been having fun attaching it to things. In addition to the sundress I showed a few posts earlier, I also made some totes:





and pillows:

(I sold this one at the show)

(This one sold at Happy Delusions, but I made another just like it.)

and whatever you would call this:


A skinny pillow? A plush? Whatever it is I probably won't be making any more. It was pretty darn difficult. More pillows and totes and sundresses are in the works though since people seemed to really like them at the show. What can I say? I've got a thing for needles.