Itsumo Mawaru

I’ve entered the period of my life where my next goal is pretty much buying a house and land, so that I can get started with many of my other goals such as having a large veggie garden and various farmyard animals, trying my hand at all sorts of crafts and skills and trades, having the ability to set up a little comfy outbuilding to sew or spin, making the walls into a home where I feel comfortable all the time.

The first step is of course to establish the down payment. Since I don’t spend a lot of money regularly, this isn’t too hard of a thing for me to work towards. When I’m out and about and have a thought about buying a drink or some other item, I find it’s very easy to ask myself whether I’d like this item or whether I’d like to be that much money more towards a house. Every week I’ve been transferring over a bit of money into my savings account.

I will also start thinking real far ahead in terms of what we’ll be eating, so that we do not waste food, and so that we have meals ready for taking with us. I’ve never really been an ad-watcher kind of person, but I think I will find links to my local stores’ weekly fliers and keep an eye on what things go on sale.

I’m also starting to think about the qualities I want in my purchase. I’d like it to be close to Ottawa as we’ll still need to come into the city for work, but at the same time the land must be zoned for agricultural use so that I can have animals on it. More importantly it needs to be large enough to run a farm on, and a suitable distance away from neighbors. A somewhat secluded hobby farm is what I’m looking for, preferably with a stream, a barn would also be awesome. And it must have access to high speed internet. Luckily my odds of finding a property that satisfies these conditions are not bad at all, and get better for each half hour I go further from the city.

There are a few places which may be interesting to go and visit when I return from my trip to London this week, so hopefully there will be a part 2 and onwards in this series soon

I was putting this box away when the top flap flipped up. Immediately I thought of a long and narrow wall overhang in this same room that this very shape could occupy perfectly.

Then, for some reason I was reminded of Cthulhu, so I separated the length into five portions with little baby Cthulhus. I’m not sure what I’ll put in each of the sections, but I do think it will be with the pink and blue house paints I have.

I am pleasantly surprised with this art form, of course due to the total monetary investment (none), but more importantly I think it’s the fact that I’m putting these buckets of paint to use after years of existing in the basement. No can contains enough to paint a room, some have barely enough to paint all the trim, yet they kept holding out for a time to shine again. Well here it is, long forgotten house paints, and box that would have been discarded without a care! You shall now shine forever. Even if you break or become sold or disappear otherwise, we influenced each other, we combined to create something that didn’t exist beforehand, and now you are documented and shared with others via this blog post. What more could a cardboard box want in life!

Here it is, the painting I did on the cardboard box shown in a previous post. The gesso primer was perfect to cover up the red ink on the box. Most of the paint on the piece is house paint, though the green is light blue house paint mixed with yellow and green acrylic paint. I was a bit hesitant to mix up different paints, but the final result seems to be quite solid. Time will tell!

This will be a back drop for these guys:

And seeing only these two occupying the scene will certainly motivate me to make more of them! I think this will be a great way to display these horses – sadly their home on my bookshelf was not a good one due to gusts of wind knocking them down.

I hope this back drop will inspire the horses to be all they can be! Without a doubt it will put a smile on my face every time I look at it.

Because I really need a new craft! Haha!

The wonderful ladies over on the Down to Earth forums introduced me to the paper craft called quilling. The library had a surprising number of books on the subject, and I’m using whatever paper and glue I had lying around. My goal with this craft, you see, was to not spend money unnecessarily. I was even hesitant to buy the simple forked quilling tool, and for that I’m very glad, because I learned that I can use a tool that is already in this house, a scratch awl, the long needle-on-a-handle pictured above. Sure it’s probably not as quick as using the forked tool, but the book does say that only with this needle style of tool can you create shapes with no holes in the center, so there’s a pro!

Yesterday over the course of an hour I was working on creating a raspberry scene (shown in the lower right hand corner above), as I love raspberries so much and these ones look just like the super yummy ones I find in the wild. In that hour I made… one raspberry and one leaf. So slow!

Today, to help speed up my production, I’ll be creating a quilling template (which looks like this) using some of the cardboard box in the post before this one. Yes, I decided to paint only one of the sides of the Bravia box, because that other side of corrugated cardboard is more valuable in other projects, such as this one! It makes for a perfect quilling lapboard: pins stick in easily, I can put glue right onto the board and use a pin to get it into the tight spots, and it’s the perfect size cause I cut it the perfect size! And now more of it will be used to further the quilling cause. Thanks, Box

My new project is quite a surprise, something I have totally not planned for in advance whatsoever.

The box pictured above has made its way into my possession. I couldn’t let such a wonderful box go without being used! It measures 55 inches by 33 inches. I have a few spots in my apartment that could use such a large piece of artwork, and considering the box is really flawless (no creases or other problems), I figure it will be a perfect canvas.

I will be spending tonight priming one of the sides with my handy dandy container of gesso. Haha, I think this is the largest thing I’ve primed with my seemingly endless container of primer which has been used for all sorts of priming, I’m guessing I’ll need to get a replacement after priming both of these canvases!