My latest craft projects- Part I: Paintings

I tend to go through phases when it comes to crafts. One month I'll be into scrapbooking, the next month all I'll want to do is knit scarves. I've had to scale back on my crafting time considerably since Juliana was born, but recently, what with my dad and my mother-in -law retiring, I've had a lot more time to dedicate to making things. Earlier this year, I found a blank artist's canvas in a box of my old crafting supplies. I had just seen an episode of Martha Stewart, where she decorated a plain canvas tote bag by painting leaves and pressing them to the canvas (tutorial here). I thought it sounded like a great idea for my old blank canvas, so I gave it a try with some paints that coordinated well with our linens in our bedroom- green for the background, with gold and chocolate brown pressed leaves.


I thought it turned out pretty good, but the canvas looked too small to hang anywhere in our room by itself, so I bought two more in the same size and painted them both in the same color scheme, but opposite- chocolate brown background, with gold and green leaves this time- and hung them over the bed in a row.

When I had gone to JoAnn's to buy the canvases, I found that they had a really big selection of canvases for pretty reasonable prices, so I thought I'd be brave and buy a 16"x24" canvas- the biggest I'd ever gotten. I had colors in mind, but that was about it. So I searched Google Images for bamboo, cherry blossoms, trees- anything that was drawn as a silhouette, because I'm not the best painter =) I found a great drawing of a kind of African-looking tree, so I enlarged it, cut it out, traced it onto the canvas and painted it. Cam had the idea for making the sun rays fade out and Tawnya had the idea to off center the tree. So it was a bit of a collaboration, idea-wise. I'm pretty happy with how it turned out.


Since I thought that painting was kind of Asian-looking, plus we have a lot of other Asian art in our room, I decided to paint something representative of my background: Swedish. So I thought I'd paint a phrase or saying or something simple in Swedish, along with the famous Dala horse, and some other folksy-looking decoration around the border. I started googling Swedish prayers and found a wikipedia page with the Lord's prayer translated into many different languages, including Swedish. This prayer was something waaaaay longer than I intended to do for this painting, but once the idea was there, I really wanted to do it. I remembered seeing a long, narrow canvas at JoAnn's that would be perfect for this. The problem was that I have terrible handwriting, so how would I make this look nice? I finally came up with the idea of buying a large pack of alphabet letters intended for scrapbooking, sectioning off the canvas where I wanted the lines to be, and spelling the prayer out in the letters. I then painted over the stickers in the barn red color I'd picked out. Once it was all dry, I peeled off the stickers, did some touch-ups with white paint, and voila! Perfect lettering! I used the same method to paint the Dala horse as I did with the tree in my last painting, added some fair isle stars and I was done.


I made a smaller painting for my Grandma Gerhardt after this one- just a short, Swedish table prayer with a border of small Dala horses and Swedish hearts, but I didn't take any pictures before I gave it to her.

And thus ended my painting phase (for now). Next time......Sewing!

Winetasting in Yakima

My parents, Tawnya, Nick and Beth had been planning a wine-tasting trip to the Yakima Valley for a while, but I didn't think I could go, so I just jealously listened to their plans. Then I remembered that my mother-in-law just retired and would relish the opportunity to have Juliana for an entire day, so I decided to join them last Friday. Of course, since it was a Jelly-less trip, I didn't think to bring my camera, so, sorry, no pictures- at least, not my own pictures.

I went over with Tawnya, Mom, and Dad in Tawn's car. We got there about a half hour before Nick and Beth, so we went ahead to our favorite Yakima restaurant, Miner's for lunch. If you are ever in Yakima, I strongly recommend stopping by for one of their huge Miner's burgers or delicious shakes. I had a cheeseburger and shared some curly fries and a Snickers shake with my sister. It was insanely delicious. Not only do they put chunks of Snickers in there, but extra peanuts, peanut butter, and chocolate sauce. I think it's also so good because they start with chocolate ice cream instead of vanilla with chocolate sauce added. I don't even want to think about the calories in that shake.


After Nick and Beth finished their lunch, we headed first to a winery called Piety Flats. It is operated inside an old-fashioned mercantile. They have lots of fun wine related products, like cute wine glass coasters, wine glass charms, bottle holders, things of that sort. We tried several wines there including a Black Muscat, which I purchased on our last wine tasting trip a few years ago- very good, but I think I'm starting to like drier wines now, this was a bit too sweet for me. Hey, maybe my tastes are maturing! My mom and dad bought a bottle of the Black Muscat there.


Next we went to Silver Lake- a favorite of my mom's. I went to this winery on our last trip a few years ago, before reading the Twilight series, so for some reason when I read New Moon, I pictured the vampire city of Volterra to look something like this winery. There's something kind of Italian looking about the vineyards, plus it's up on a hill, and the first time I went it was hot and very windy, so this probably contributed to my mental picture of Volterra. Maybe I'm just silly. My parents bought a bottle of Roza Rose there, it was a couple dollars more than it might be in the store (which seems screwy to me, since purchasing straight from the winery cuts out the middle man) but they got it anyway because they haven't seen it in any store for a long time. I think Beth got something there too, but I'm not sure what.


We called a couple vineyards next before we went anywhere because my mom was looking for a wine barrel to make into a table and we didn't want to have to drive to all these wineries if they didn't have any. We didn't have any luck, so we drove to one of Beth's favorite wineries next, Eaton Hill Winery. We spent the most time there, tasting about 12 different red and white wines. We also purchased the most there, too. I bought a bottle of their silver and bronze medal winning 2004 Reisling. Mom and Dad got two bottles of the same, along with a bottle of their Sun Glow. Tawnya got a couple bottles, I'm not sure what of, as did Nick and Beth. Since we were getting so much, Tawnya decided to get a passport, which would give her a 10% discount on bottles and a 15% discount on cases on wines at any of the participating Rattlesnake Hills wineries. All of our purchases together were a case, so we got a 15% discount. Pretty sweet. The passport was only $10, so it paid for itself right there. It doesn't expire either, so we can use it again next time.


Since we had gotten kind of a late start on our wine tasting and most of the wineries close at 5:00, we decided to drive out to Prosser to Chukar Cherries before heading home. I'm not a big fan of cherries, so I just bought some chocolate covered ones for my mother-in-law as a thank you for watching Juliana. Then we headed back to Yakima to go to one of my favortie fast food restaurants, Sonic! It was just as wonderful as I remembered it. I had a junior breakfast burrito, a small chili cheese tots, and a small cherry slush. Heaven. After dinner, Nick and Beth headed for home in their car, while Mom, Dad, Tawnya, and I went to Tahoma Cemetary to pay our respects to our various grandparents and great -grandparents there. We placed flowers on my Grandpa and Grandma Barrett's, Great-Grandma and Grandpa Mears', and Grandpa Nordberg's graves. We decided to skip going to another Yakima cemetary where my Grandpa Gerhardt is buried because it was getting late.

Then we drove home to good old Western Washington. I missed my Jellybean so much! It was weird, I'd been away from her for longer periods than that, but it was something about knowing that distance-wise I was farther away, that was just way harder. Not planning on traveling that far away from my baby again any time soon, it's just too hard! So all in all, we had a pretty fun day of wine-tasting, fast-food eating, and general family fun. Yakima wineries have tastings all year round, so I would absolutely suggest heading over there sometime. If you're not someone who likes the intense heat, though, I would suggest waiting until the fall sometime =) It was pretty sweltering.