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All Things Home

All Things Home

ruffled-edge farmhouse crochet dishcloth tutorial (for beginners)

I’m so excited to share another crochet tutorial!  I know a lot of you are learning crochet or dusting off that skill to keep your hands and minds busy during this time at home.  I, for one, thought I would have so much extra time, but it just hasn’t turned out that way!  What I need to do for my business day-to-day hasn’t slowed and Jeff and the boys are home, which requires more help on schoolwork, cooking, feeding, and tidying-up.  We’ve also been more intentional about spending quality time together – playing games, going on walks, and just paying attention to one another.  Teen and pre-teen boys aren’t the best at expressing themselves, so them asking you to come watch them do pull-ups might be their way of asking for reassurance.  In a way, this time has been so sweet.  We haven’t been running from one thing to the

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All Things Home

Furniture Dilemmas | Connie’s Queen Anne Highboy

Let’s talk about furniture, shall we?  That seems like a welcome diversion! Today, I’m going to share the step-by-step how-to for painting and finishing a piece like Connie’s Queen Anne highboy…. Here is how it looks in the context of her room…   Isn’t that a lovely space?  It reminds me a lot of my Opa’s house.  And I mean that in a good way, not in a way like it looks like an “old person’s” house!  It looks welcoming and traditional, but tasteful and stylish.  It’s collected and comfortable.  I think it also has something to do with the fact that they had a similar rug and an almost identical gooseneck rocker.  Anyway, I love her room! The dresser in the corner was a piece handed along to her and she feels like it’s a little dark in the room and just another heavy wood piece next to that

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a slice of life

swedish & german brushes

I am a brush-lover and have been for many years.  And my soft spot for brushes goes beyond those used for paint.  I love pretty brooms, dish brushes, make-up brushes, basting brushes, new brushes, old brushes…you get the idea.  When I sold in a retail space and at markets, I was on a mission to find some pretty brushes to sell beyond the antique and vintage brushes I would pick up here and there.  I imagined bouquets of dish brushes in ironstone pitchers.  I eventually found and started carrying Redecker brushes from Germany.  Not only did I sell them online, out of my studio, and at Lucketts… …but, I kept a whole hoard of them for myself to use in my home.  I’ve slowly been working my way through that stash, holding onto each brush until the wood is split and the bristles are nubs.  Now that I’m down to

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All Things Home

studio shelf reveal

Hey, everyone!  I’m sitting down to write this post as events this weekend have been canceled and, what was going to be a busy weekend is occupied with playing cards, making a chicken pot pie, housekeeping, and listening to the boys play Toby Mac in next room.  Jeff is taking a rare Sunday off to go fishing with a friend.  The quiet morning is welcome in this busy season, but it is a reminder that things are not normal. Friday was our 21st wedding anniversary and Jeff and I ate breakfast out together and he took me to a Scandinavian store in Minneapolis I’ve been wanting to visit.  (I’ll share about that in another post.)  When we got back into Rochester, we felt like it would be a good idea to do our regular grocery shopping and also pick up a few extra things.  We weren’t in a panic, but

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All Things Home

cleaning & reviving old wood

A few weeks ago, I took some time to hit some of my favorite local antique and thrift stores.  I had been inside a lot during my shoulder recovery and then catching up on work through January and I just needed to get out…not to go to the grocery store or to run the boys to an activity, but to meander without much purpose.  While I was out, I ended up buying a couple of old wooden spools for $1.  I thought they would be nice to wrap yarn or twine around that had come unraveled.  They were dirty and the wood was dry, though, so I took some time to clean them up and get them hydrated. The first thing I did was scrub them with dish soap and water.  I know some people are nervous about getting wood wet, but it really is the best way to clean

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All Things Home

painted checkerboard studio floor reveal

Well, it involved a lot of patience, crawling around on the floor, tape (3 rolls), and dry time, but the painted checkerboard floors in the studio are finally finished! And I absolutely love them! I would say I wished I had done them initially when we first moved in, but I’m glad I had some time to live with the white-painted floors first.  The room has been a slow evolution, so I could learn how I worked best and what I needed.  I’ve put a lot of thought into the placement of each piece and, while I’m sure I’ll continue to tweak and maybe even do a full overhaul down the road, it’s pretty perfect for right now.  I needed to do a lot of scooting to figure that out, though, and the floors took the brunt of that. The checkerboard pattern on the floor adds just enough interest without

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All Things Home

painting the other side of the studio floor…

Last week, I was determined to get the studio floor finished.  That’s one of the difficult things about doing projects in stages.  It’s shiny and new at the outset, but when you only have about four feet to finish, it’s hard to get motivated.  It’s not exciting any longer and it’s somewhat anticlimactic.  But, it was pretty obvious that the floor was only partially done and I was really ready to have the studio put back together again and looking pretty. So, Monday morning, I moved all of the furniture over to the left side of the room.  Well, all of the furniture except the massive cabinet!  That piece is so heavy and so full (and it’s screwed into the wall) that it needs to stay where it is.  I’m rarely in favor of painting around a piece of furniture, but in the case of pieces that are huge and

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a slice of life

easy creamy potato & ham soup jars

We are just in one of those seasons of life when things are really busy.  I’m sure so many of you can relate.  You get a few months in a row when evenings and weekends are generally quiet and then you hit a stretch when there is something happening every single day.  Jeff has a meeting at church, the boys have climb team practice, I have a women’s event or a planning committee meeting, Jeff has a men’s thing, we have small group, Marshall has a 7th-grade boy’s hangout, the kids have tubing with the youth group…  It’s all good stuff and fun stuff, but it’s meant that we’re either eating early or late.   So, meal prep on the weekends has been key and a big part of that is making soup jars.  I cook one or two big pots of soup (usually a double recipe) and portion it out

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I’m Marian, a painter, writer, and lover of all things creative. From art and antiques to home projects and everyday life, I share my journey in hopes of inspiring you to embrace your own creativity and make beauty in the spaces you live.

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