Flower Power Napkins!

My mom sent me this picture a while ago of some lovely embroidered napkins that a friend of hers did using my “Power Flowers” embroidery pattern. I think they turned out beautiful!

Maggie

For 2012, a new blog site for Papaver Studio.

I’ll be posting here as I figure out just where Papaver Studio is heading! You can watch me figure out what I am doing, since I’ve got lots of ideas, and I need to narrow them down a bit into a new, manageable arty, crafty business. Hope you enjoy it as much as I will! Maggie

Hello world!

Welcome to WordPress.com. After you read this, you should delete and write your own post, with a new title above. Or hit Add New on the left (of the admin dashboard) to start a fresh post.

Here are some suggestions for your first post.

1. You can find new ideas for what to blog about by reading the Daily Post.
2. Add PressThis to your browser. It creates a new blog post for you about any interesting  page you read on the web.
3. Make some changes to this page, and then hit preview on the right. You can always preview any post or edit it before you share it to the world.

Merry Christmas Everyone!

Its an old picture, but a good one, Cassady under some undecorated Christmas Trees. Happy Holidays everybody, hope you are all spending it with people you love, and can stand! If not (as in, you can’t stand them, but still love them) hope you have fun making fun of them behind their backs!

We’ll be hosting my family and Jonah’s at my place this year for dinner. We are gonna make a Roast, and lentil soup, and drink lots of homebrew, and probably some Whiskey. I may even put on White Christmas, for an impromtu sing-along (by me and my mom, mostly).

We’ll also be hosting my dog-niece Ruby, who often joins us for the holidays since her dad’s family is out of town. So my house will be full of dogs and family, just the way I like it!

So Merry Christmas everyone, and Happy New Year too!

Its been how long since my last post?

Really? Thats just embarrassing. I mean, I’ve been busy, but I think mostly when I do get a chance to poke around on the computer I’ve been on that dang Facebook! Who knew I’d turn into such a convert to something that I thought I’d never even sign up on?! Oh well, I also thought I’d never get a DVD player or a cell phone….

So, this post will be sort of a round up of what I’ve been up to in the past month and a half, starting with: The Turkey! Below is a picture of Turkelton with Martha and Henrietta, who are both probably very happy to not have been born meat birds. They are egg birds. I did manage to make good with my promise to myself to allow Turkelton to be made into the friend’s Thanksgiving day dinner. She was a sweet bird in personality, and a tasty bird to eat. I really recommend raising your own Turkey someday, its an amazing experience, and I will do it again next year!

And, in case you were wondering, it really is more humane to kill and eat your turkey than to keep it as a pet, because the breed of turkey that Turkelton was was created to be eaten. Which means they grow to full eating size in under six months, and most likely if left to continue on, may become to big to walk. Not a real good life for a bird huh? But in the six months I had her she had a great life. She was pretty much free-range, got to eat all sorts of interesting things, had bird friends, got stuck on the greenhouse (and then fell off it), and got pet by tons of people.

Below is a picture of a couple of the twenty people that got to enjoy Turkelton on Friendsgiving day. Iris did an amazing job of cooking the turkey, and Senna and Forrest did a great job killing and cleaning her, and they learned alot in the process! Thanks guys!

Moving on in the month, we made beer! Jonah and I made a couple of dark winter ales for christmas presents. An Old Style ale, and an India Black Ale. We just tried both this weekend (cause they are all finished at this time) and they are delicious! Not sure we can part with them now… They were the first recipes I tried off the internet, and I am SO glad they turned out! They were a big hit at his birthday gathering this weekend. And yes, we are wearing chicken aprons.

His band Sudden Anthem (check out their myspace page to hear them!) played at East Burn on the 4th of December. We had a nice big table of friends there to hear them play for the first time. Iris graciously went up and took this picture for me, so I didn’t look like a total crazy girlfriend taking pictures of her boyfriend’s band. Nice of her.

Hmm, seems this is a pretty Jonah-themed post. Here he is reading my FAVORITE christmas story to my housemate Ayla and my dog. Christmas comes to monster mountain. Its about count dracula kidnapping santa so he can win an election, and a teddy bear who saves him and brings christmas to the mountain. and dracula wins the election, btw.

So, yay Christmas! I am looking forward to it so much! Think its gonna be the best one ever! Happy holidays everybody!

Maggie

Rainy weekend

Yay! The rain is finally here! I will probably be less happy about it once Thursday rolls around and I am stuck outside building something in the rain for my Pre-apprenticeship program, but well, for now, I am a happy camper.

I skipped the Saturday market to paint my dining nook mint green. Its bright and cheery, and I adore it. It is a smidge more intense than I was going for, but who cares! Its clean and happy. I spent most of the day washing all the things that live up on the wrap around shelf in there first. Cause well, its a kitchen and so things up there get that awesome goopy dust that is such a pain to get rid of. Then the walls and ceiling and floor got washed. I think you could eat off any surface in that room right now.

Jonah helped me paint it green. He seemed to enjoy it for the most part! He hadn’t painted anything since he was a kid, and I guess the experience left something to be desired. After a few pointers from me he was off and painting. I’m gonna have to get him his own brush though, I’ve only got one good one these days, and he was goodnaturedly complaining about being stuck with the crappy brush.

Slept in the loft last night to listen to the rain falling on the tin roof. Sigh, I love that sound so much! Fell asleep to the soft rain, woke up to a friggin‘ monsoon! It was wonderful, and it continued all morning. I had fun watching it while I spent the morning putting the nook back together. Ayla (my little housemate) helped by playing with the nails and screws, Jonah cooked us all breakfast, and Ann took advantage of us amusing her daughter and filed all her papers!

Now Ayla is napping, I’ve got the house to myself (okay, and four dogs, cause Ruby is hanging out for the day). There is a fire in the fireplace, rain falling outside, and I am about to put together one of the two birthday cakes I baked today. Then tonight its off to dinner at my parents, and birthday movie night (not mine, though!). This has shaped up to be a pretty nice rainy weekend.

Hope you all had a good one too!

Maggie

Unusual Life Blog

I just discovered this blog while looking for animals made out of seashells on the internets. No joke, there is a house built like a giant seashell and it caught my attention, and it led me to here. Its my new favorite blog! Check it out! http://unusuallife.com/ so much fun…

A bit o this, a bit o that

Hi everybody! Just a note to let you know I haven’t disappeared, just had a busy life these days! I’ve been spending lots of time with my new boyfriend or as they call them on Anchorman, my “gentleman lover.” Which cracks me up ever time I hear it, even if it is slightly inappropriate. I’ve also been in a frenzy to get my house ready for the winter. Just today I had the last cord of wood delivered, and Jonah has been coerced into coming over and helping stack it this evening with the promise of frozen pizza.

The rundown on what it takes to get my little place ready for winter:

Yard Cleanup: this has been started, the back is pretty ready, the front I have to wait until the last of the sunflowers are done blooming, and the tomatoes finally ripen. Hopefully the nice weather this week will make that happen!

Kindling: I borrowed a friend’s chop saw and cut up any and all scrap lumber floating around my house. There was alot. Its all getting stacked under the trailer.

Canning and Brewing: I made up blackberry/raspberry jam out of berries from my house and Iris’s place. Delicious. We made 15 gallons of homebrew in the last couple months, Jonah and I are going to make a batch in the next couple weeks with hops harvested from my plants! There they are below.

I painted my bedroom pink a couple weekends ago! Its a bright bubblegum/50′s pink, and I love it. Pretty girly, but warm and comfortable, like the orange it had been before. I also found these great black velvet horse portrait paintings that now hang above my bed. Great stuff I tell you. Check that off the list, now I just need to paint the dinning nook a deeper, 50′s sort of green…

Its pretty fun and crazypants around here with all this going on, and housemate and her daughter too! I love having them here, that kid is constant entertainment, and a constant challenge. I may have mentioned this before, but I seem to thrive on constant motion around me. And having them here means something is always going on!

Oh, seems my short note I was going to write turned into a full-fledged post! Happy Fall everybody! Hope you get your projects done before the cold sets in!

Maggie

Grandkid’s room mural

I painted a buggie mural this week for one of my mothers (I have several, including my actual mom, this one being my friend Carrie’s mom Sue). She has five grandchildren with another on the way. Each grandkid has a different buggie nickname, and she thought it would be sweet if their bugs were painted in the room that is now theirs when the spend the night. I thought it was a great idea, and fun to paint. I came up with the giant vine for them to all hang out on.

Its a cute little room that used to be the guest bedroom, but now is furnished with bunkbeds for the kiddies. Lets see, there is a dragonfly, a damselfly (below), a butterfly, a bumblebee, ladybug, grasshopper, and a garden spider.

I had a blast painting this. I kept it loose and brushy and child-like, which makes for fast and fun painting. Sue loved it, and I can’t wait to hear what the grandkids think!

My July as it stands

Tomorrow is moving day for my new housemates Ann, her daughter, and their dog Leafis. For me, its the culmination of a couple months of frantic studio remodeling, yard clean-up (and child proofing, cross your fingers, that kid is smart!), and house clean out. A good house clean out and spiffing up is helpful at the end of any relationship anyway, so it was good to have a really great reason to be through: I need to make space for my new housemates!

Its been fun, and tough. I likes me a good project though, and working on your own house is the best project a girl can ask for! It has kept me from tending to my blog and my business though, so sorry about that folks. Sometimes you just have to tend to yourself first!

The garden is growing (after a late start, stupid wet cold spring!), the birds are laying eggs, and that turkey is getting larger by the minute. I think I can watch Turkelton grow. He isn’t getting any smarter though. He has started sleeping on top of the henhouse with the girls, its sort of adorable. My friend Charlie caught him sleeping on the roof of the henhouse, with his head draped over a perch the other night. I’ll post the pic below, its funny.

I spent last week at the beach with my parents, brother, and the dogs. It was also my 31st birthday week! It was four days of reading books, embroidering, shopping (i love shopping in Manzanita and Wheeler), and running the pups on the beach. They were in heaven, I think beaches were made specifically for dogs. There are gross things to sniff, water to jump in, sand to dig, and balls to chase. They made friends with a Husky, and Opal tried to get every person we passed to throw the ball for her. Unfortunately, she got nervous every time and never let them take the ball! She’s a silly dog, and to smart for her own good.

The night before I left for the beach my good friends from High School Wes and Ce’Anne threw me a “dirty thirty” birthday party. It was a re-creation of the 18th birthday party we all threw for ourselves in high school, except this time we could all hold our alcohol and picked WAY better porn. Back in high school only two of the 20 or so of us were old enough to go to the porn store, and well, its rather hard to decide what to rent when you are new to the whole porn rental thing! All we can remember of the movies we watched back then was a housefrau with dishwashing gloves on. And the suggestive foods and drinks we made. It was a fun night.

This one was fun too! We decided to keep it small and only invite high school buddies and their partners. It was hilarious. The cake Ce’Anne made was the greatest thing ever. Those two are just as creative now as they were 13 years ago, and well, about as mature. Okay, who am I to talk, I had a porn themed birthday party! The movies of the night were parodies of real movies: Batman, The Big Lebowski, and True Blood. I would recommend the Lebowski one, those guys really loved that movie, and it shows.

Check out that cake below: freaking amazing!

And below is a no-so-great picture of me, it looks like I am going to sneeze! Wes brought that awesome fake mustache, and we passed it around. It was hard to smile with it on, it kept coming unstuck when you moved your lips!

Anywho, sorry if my party offended anyone, it was all in good fun! Happy summer folks, and check back, in a couple days there will be pictures of my studio up too!

Maggie