Talk about a huge change, right? I’ve been basking in the airiness of my little kitchen. The cabinets were done in a white lacquer (which meant a lot of spraying as well as all being fully cut off from the kitchen). It took about 2 days for a handy crew to come in and do it.

The last cosmetic change is to have the counter tops removed and changed out. I’m thinking of having them done in a slab of absolute black granite. Right now this surface is red-dyed concrete…and no matter how faddish it is, it does not keep up well. Acid from lemons and limes soak into it and the seams create cracks that water can drip through.

Ya. It has to go.

It will take me a couple of months, but I plan to getting around to this sooner (rather than later:).

And then there’s the issue of a curtain. I believe some fun fabric is in order. Pictures to come!

Cheers—Carina

And that would be a Bertoia chair. I’m a bit intrigued with Mr. Bertoia himself and his affiliations with those Eames folks and any other number of other mid-century modern designers. Almost makes me want to take a semester at Cranbrook (I said almost!). What an era!

So I purchased said vintage Bertoia chair as an early birthday present to myself at a dealer called the Green Ant (cue Siri—”If it’s call the Green Ant, why aren’t the letters green?”).

It’s the perfect addition to the studio since it visually doesn’t take up much space, but is still comfy in front of the sewing machine tables.

It was the perfect gift to celebrate my day of birth and I now see the beauty of giving yourself a gift for your birthday. I might have to make it a yearly thing…

Better photos to come! We are working on getting up some fab wallpaper from my Songbird fabric line (not due out until June 2012). The wallpaper was printed by Great Wall Custom Coverings and I’m on pins and needles to see it!

By the way, the picture up above is simply because i heart pink Christmas trees, and I had to show off one of the many fabulous photos from our Christmas card photoshoot (photo taken by Susan Haglund).

Pushing ahead to December…

XOXO-Carina

Thank you to everyone who entered the Baby Safari Giveaway! Reading what everyone was doing this holiday season was so inspiring and touched my heart! I had a horrible time deciding, and I implore you to continue to enter the giveaways during this month since I wanted so badly to give every one of you a fat quarter set!

Here are the winners from the blog:

Rosemary says:

This is THE BEST pumpkin pie I’ve ever tasted. It’s the one my family requests to have for Thanksgiving from now on. Happy Baking {Pumpkin Praline Pie Recipe in the comments! I might have to give this one a try! Thanks for sharing Rosemary!}

________________________________________

April says:

This holiday we are trying to have a homemade Christmas. One of my daughters is helping me make quilts for almost everyone . . . a big project. It is hard to find things to make for men so we are really thinking hard on that one. We have a new baby in the family so I thought your fabrics would be fun to do something with. Have a great holiday and thank you for sharing your creativity with us and all your fun ideas and art work.

That’s a big project April! Men’s fabrics are so DIFFICULT (Believe me as I have been trying to work on a fabric line for “big boys.”) Hopefully, these fabrics help a bit with the “little boys” in your life!

________________________________________

Vanessa B says:

A few years ago we started a new family tradition in the spirit of giving and the holidays that each one of us would do at least 1 good deed and then speak about it during Christmas Dinner…so Im looking forward to the holiday meal and hearing what each has done out of the kindness of their hearts for someone they know or a complete stranger. Turns out my family is very kind, even to strangers I would luv to win these fabrics, Thanks for the chance!

Vanessa, your family tradition melts my heart! Oh, if we all could just be a little kinder during the hoildays (and throughout the year!). What a sweet tradition!

________________________________________

Martine says:

Hopefully ithis year it will be a fertile Christmas…Just before Christmas our IVF program will end, maybe next year there will be a small family under the tree!

Martine, I’m wishing you the best of luck in this!!!

________________________________________

Here are the winners from the Facebook Page:

Jasa Clos  says:

We will just be enjoying having Jake home this year, he was in Iraq for Christmas last year and opened gifts over skype. I have a new little neighbor that sure would enjoy a new quilt and the fabrics are just great.

Bless your heart! So happy for you will have Jake back and I hope you enjoy the fabrics!

________________________________________

Gemma Robillard says

Beautiful – what a nice giveaway!! I would love to give these to my mom since she’s a new quilter and making gorgeous quilts. Hey, that’s a nice Christmas gift! .

How sweet are you? I hope you both get to enjoy them!

Winners: Please email me at carina@carinagardner.com with your address and we will have these sent out ASAP!

Thank you again for all of your comments—for sharing how you plan to slow down, your recipes (Meg, I WILL be trying to make that apple crisp!), how you are going to cuddle with the ones you love, travel, and play in the snow! (We are also enjoying the recent downfall here in SLC.)

It was so hard to decide on who to choose for this last giveaway, that the rest of the upcoming freebies will be chosen by the random number generator:). lol. Less pressure on me! Just keep those wonderful, inspiring comments rolling!

This week I’m giving away two FULL sets of Dress Up—yep, that is 11 juicy fat quarter fabrics in each set! This giveaway will end on Friday. (That would be Nov. 25, Black Friday, Sale Day, National Standing-in-Line Day, Left-Over Turkey Day, and any other name you can give it..)

Tell me your favorite Thanksgiving Food in the comments below to be entered!

Last year, we did a thankful tree on Thanksgiving day. This year, the girls have a jar of leaves that they can write or draw on whenever they want to add to this banner in our kitchen.

I’m hoping it’s a great way for them to see what their parents are grateful for and encourages them to remember to be thankful too.

This is the simplest banner to make, and it changes as you add more leaves or birds! I hope ours is squished to the brim when the month is over.

I threw on a little glitter mist because it was lying around (so it’s completely optional). I liked the Forever Red Perfect Pearls Mist for the brown and orange leaves and the Tattered Angels Glitter Mist in Sweet Clover for the olive green leaves.

If you aren’t into the Glitter Mist, just let your little ones scribble away to add their “thanks.” Get bigger kids to help you cut out the leaves (or sit in front of your favorite show as you cut them out).

Hang the banner in a place that you’ll see often (ours is in the doorway between our living room and kitchen) so that you’ll see it often and remember to add to it.

I’m hoping ours is an opportunity to really remember what this month is about (rather than a jump start on Christmas). If it’s successful, we may just change up the colors for Christmasand use it place holder for “good deeds done” during December to encourage friendship and giving.

Here’s the full tutorial plus pattern for you to download! Hope you have fun and are able to give thanks at the same time!

________________________________________________

I’m a sucker for fabric all lined up, ironed, and folded pretty (who isn’t?). So I took this picture of some freshly cut fabric my lovely new intern cut up for me to send to my mother. My mom, who is an amazing seamstress and quilter, is (thankfully) testing my next quilt design for our January newsletter. Doesn’t it look pretty all ready to be sent off and happily quilted? Lucky fabric.

And now I’m going to drop a hint. Next week begins a really wonderful, really giving kind of thing on this blog. You are going to want to watch for that post…

It’s the time of year when I scramble to make sure our family Christmas card photo is taken. I’ve been organized on just about everything…but actually getting the photo. Susan (yes, Susan does our family photos:) and I had tentatively scheduled a fall photo, but I kept pushing it back since we were fighting some major deadlines in the studio.

Here’s how excited I have been about our family photos this year. I already bought this AMAZING frame all the way back in September to hang over my ever-so-popular antique piano. I custom order my frame from Sweetwater Frames at Swiss Days in Midway, Utah for the sole purpose of trying to put a family photo in my living room.

The frame is hung…

with nothing in it.

Sigh.

We are now thinking about a snowy family photo. I just hope that Siri and Flissa agree.

The frames are really just as amazing in real life as they look in these photos. I bought  a 24″ x 36″ antique white Powell frame. I promise to show you should we ever get around to that photography shoot!

and this

and this

and I seriously had to share.

Love. Sigh.

So here’s a question—I have an outlet behind one of the dressers and I use it as my main plug. Because of this, it pushes the entire dresser out an inch or so. I only have one other outle,t and I would prefer not to use it (because it means running a cord along 3/4th of the room). Anybody know of a three-pronged plug that doesn’t make a piece of furniture push out too much? Right now I’m using the Ikea plug set (that I bought so long ago that I’m not seeing it on the site).

I’ve been slowly adding things to my studio, moving things around, and generally dealing with the space.  I contemplated moving Josh and me into the studio space and moving the studio into the master bedroom (Josh nixed this idea. I can’t imagine why.). We’ve considered finishing the basement and making the family room my work space (I nixed this idea because I don’t have great access to the kids and light).

So that has led me to try to think creatively about how I can get better use out of what I already have (and it saves me the trouble of having to call a electrician to move my red chandelier, which I can’t live without). Which has led me to this. Messy. Studio. That I am currently sitting in the middle of. Writing this blog post.

Updates on the progress soon. Lucky for me, my bright turquoise desk makes the mess not feel so bad.

Be sure and check out the calendar at the end…it’s a sneak peek into the “big stuff” coming up the next few months here in the studio.

Here’s you link to Newsletter Issue No. 5:

http://www.carinagardner.com/newsletter/carina-gardner-newsletter-issue-no-5/

Enjoy!

Carina