2017 Decorate Yourself PL style calendar cards

Hello all.  These were a request and I worked on them over the last week – in between getting the kitchen sorted out and dealing with the leaking dishwasher, and trying to arrange my scraproom.  That one is scary.  I have no idea how I will wedge all my stuff (DH uses a different S-word LOL!) into the room.  The only way I could get enough wall space was to block the fireplace! I’ll never have a fire in there (can you imagine? All that paper, and smoke from an open flame?  Eek!) so it’s probably OK.

The layout and the font are the same, but they are for 2017 – I’ll make a companion 2018 at some point for the 2-year at a time fans.

Download 2017 version here.

I have no time to try to decorate a set myself, but I will feature a couple from last year:

And if you want to go back and read the original post with a couple more samples, that is here and this post has a couple of super cute versions made by one of my followers, for a bit more inspiration! Here’s one of them

 

Re-oriented Doily calendar

Funny how the things that you think Oh I can do that quickly, no problem always end up taking a lot longer than you think.  The flip side of that is, very occasionally, something you expect to take forever ends up being so quick there isn’t even time for your cup of tea to go cold before it’s done!

My doily calendar is perhaps the first one I made that had a horizontal orientation – all of the other 3×4 PL style calendar cards were always vertical.  I finally had a request to re-orient them vertically.  I had always intended to do it, but just never got around to it.

I replied to the comment saying that I was sure I could do it, just no idea when.  Guess what? I took me like 30 minutes to do.  BAM What? (watching teen girl TV with DD gives me some references that I am really too old to use, obviously) It all came down to a lucky coincidence.  The quirks of Intaglio mean that I tend to group, arrange and align things over and over.  I just don’t really bother with layers.  In this case, when I opened the working file, all the month stuff (month name, year, day strip and date block) were all grouped as one object, and the doily was grouped and masked with the 3×4 “card.”  That meant it was pretty much a two click process to change it from horizontal to vertical, the placing the month block pleasingly and exporting to PDF.  Done.

Download it here – and if you like it, say thanks to Ronna who asked for it.

I’ll try to  do an overview post for the 2017 calendars I’ve done so far very soon. In reviewing my posts I see there are more than I realized.  And I also have a few 2018 ones that match, for those who use them to make gifts.

 

A few calendars, by request

Here are the small circle calendars I posted about a while back.  Finally got around to finishing them, between coats of paint. There are both coloured and B&W versions, and both 2017 and 2018 versions.

2017 coloured circles

2017 B&W circles

2018 coloured circles

2018 B&W circles

Another request in a comment was for the ever-popular doily calendar as a single page.  As soon as I read the comment I had an idea that I thought would work.  I think it did – what do you think?

You can download the single sheet here and the 2017 3×4 card version here

The movers actually move the furniture (and all the books and all the kitchen stuff) end of this week and then the grand unpacking begins.  In advance of that, a new vinyl floor has been slapped over the old laminate and the kitchen already looks better.  There is a bit of painting to freshen the kitchen up and I may try bleaching the grout (or possibly re-grouting) and may try to match the colour of the cabinets so I can touch them up but that is it till we replace it. Once our stuff is all in the house, it’ll be all about altering the curtains to fit the 94-98 inch drops on the TALL windows, and trying to make 30 years of mis-matched furniture work together.  Then it will be room-by-room styling and planning the kitchen. At the moment I am looking at gallery walls and furniture arrangement for a few awkward spaces.  With all that going on, expect it to be all quiet on the blogging front for longer than I would like.Wish me luck….

Just a bit about the house….

I have been referring to “the house” often and now some progress has been made I thought I would share a bit about it.  The house used to be a pair of side-by-side Victorian semis which were united in 2000 into one house.  When we took it on, we knew there were issues, but were a bit in love with it from the start.  Rose-coloured glasses and all that.

We have done a LOT of work on it so far but there is still a ton of work to do.  The next big thing is the front entryway.  Each house had its own version of Victorian clay tiles, which were lovely, but filthy.

The part that was cleanest was just under the stairs.  On the left you can see the state of them, and on the right what about 2 hours of scrubbing with powerful cleaner and a stiff scrub brush and then scrubber attached to a drill accomplished

Looking down from the upstairs landing, you can get an idea of exactly how much tiling there is.

Further down you will see the other angle as the tiles flow on to the back of the house. We are re-thinking me spending weeks scrubbing when after they are clean, the next step, the sealing of them, is critical.  It might be something to hand over to the professionals!

I am pretty much living in one room, DH’s office (or it will be) at the moment, as there has been painting and carpeting and damp proofing and construction gong on all around.

Sad, isn’t it?  But on the plus side, the lounge is looking lovely, ready for old furniture – and new curtains. New furniture is still a ways off, I’m afraid. It’ll all be a bit mis-matched for a bit.

A casualty was one of a pair of lampshades, dropped by one of the painters.  It took me a week to sort out a good replacement, due to a series of annoying issues with Amazon.  But I quite like the new glass shade

The lounge and the dining room are being professionally done. The dining room is still in progress

I’ve done the snug (a small second sitting room that will probably be a library of sorts

and what would have been wayward son’s bedroom

and what would have been his studio

THAT one was a real challenge!  The walls were bright deep blue above the dado rail and under, two fat stripes of lime green and turquoise!

The walls were badly lined and there is flippin’ wood chip everywhere, but at least I got a fresh coat of paint on it.  Best that could be expected, really,  as it has already take two weeks for the pros to do the lounge and dining room and the ceiling in the snug.  At some point I expect we will have to strip off all of the wood chip and have the whole house re-plastered but RIGHT NOW it is more about making it clean and fresh, fast, for us to live in.

In that previous photo you can see my hubby’s touching expression of love.  Some men buy jewels, some buy flowers, but mine knows what matters.  He slipped a pair of comfy knee-pads in the basket at Homebase, knowing kneeling on the hard laminate flooring was going to hurt.  Love that guy loads.

I have one room that is done (except for an area rug and sorting out the curtains, and that is DDs room, the Purple Palace

As she will never have a fire in the fireplace. I’ve used some re-positionable adhesive and added squares of Basic Grey cardstock over the tiles. You don’t see it in most of the photos but every bedroom has a sink and most have a fireplace too.

I also did the Master Bedroom (see my sad and lonely bed-on-the-floor?)

and the biggest success was fresh white paint and new vinyl to replace the tattered and smelly carpet in the master bath.

What else?  I am in the middle of slapping a quick few coats of magnolia on what will be my office – this is actually just an hour before I started

I am awaiting the repair of the sink to do the last wall and a half – it was falling off the wall, and apparently leaking so the joist underneath is drying out so new floorboards can be installed.

I had to re-paint a bit of hallway that was incredibly grubby, leading up to the loft.  You can see that the door is in need of re-painting too!

The acoustics in the upper landing are fabulous.  By placing a bluetooth speaker just here

and streaming Radio Paradise from my iPad, I can literally fill the house with music.

What’s missing?  Well, the kitchen is a big one.  It is proper disgusting.  I can’t even show it. There is NOTHING good about it,  Rising damp, stained, ornate cabinet doors with extra barley twist insets (all painted duck’s egg blue but chipped and showing the original orangey wood thru in some places) and too shallow to fit our dinner plates, then buckled and lifting dead cheap laminate floors,  grubby backsplash tiles and cheap and ugly work surface.  We had one end unit ripped out and a new radiator installed to make room for the dishwasher but this room is just something we will have to live with while we re-stock the bank account to pay for a new kitchen.  No point in spending money to make it marginally better when it needs ripping out ASAP.  We may spend a pittance on some vinyl to cover the laminate, but other than that, nothing for now.

Off the kitchen is a smelly, damp and mildew-ridden utility room that is in the process of being sorted out, and a smelly downstairs loo, also being sorted.  There is another utility room off the back of the other side, with a small store room off it,  that is bone dry and smells fine.  Go figure.

Upstairs there is another bedroom that we are doing NOTHING to (the ONLY ROOM that seems fine) and a box room that was an office. That needs quite a bit of work too as the walls are full of nail holes and Blu-tak and there is a huge hole around the electrical socket that worries me a bit. There is also a slap-dash bookshelf that need removing before it can be painted.  There are two more family bathrooms, both needing a lot of work, not just cosmetic refreshing, but which are useable, more or less.  We might have to replace the shower mechanism in one, the other has just a tub, toilet and sink. If you are counting, that is 8 sinks upstairs.

So, if you were wondering what was keeping me from anything more than occasional blogging, now you know.  Between cleaning, and painting and wrangling workmen and making 1000 hot beverages, it was hard to find time to do much else!

I do believe this is going to be a work in progress for the foreseeable future…

 

Two years of Calendars – 2017 and 2018

I get a fair few comments (and emails) where people ask for the NEXT year of a calendar.  They either like to make an 18 month one or a full 2 year one at once. I thought that as I had a week where I couldn’t actually do much painting myself, with three lots of workers in the house (three painter/decorators, two carpet-layers and a plumber) I would stay centrally located and available to answer questions and make tea.  It was all I could do to keep the “tea, white, 2 sugars, coffee, black, one sweetener, white with 3, builder’s tea please…” straight and remember which cup belonged to which! But between kettle boiling and deciding on various little details, I had spare blocks of 10-20 minutes where I worked on these:

 

Here is the 2017 version

Here is the 2018 version

I would be interested in knowing if you prefer the month colours to be exactly the same from year to year, and the same font (these are) or if your prefer different colours and different fonts from year to year.  LMK

I am also working on a circle calendar, a small one, that can be punched out or cut with a die – it would work well as an addition to a larger decorated sheet.  Too colourful for an addition-calendar? Prefer it in B&W&Grey? Let me know.

The new house update: there is light at the end of the tunnel!  Most of the rooms have been refreshed with a lick pf paint   (some professionally done, some done by me, some done by a marginally competent handyman) new carpets are down in some rooms, some have been cleaned, one removed  (bathroom. Did you even have to take a moment to wonder which one??) and work continues on the damp and smelly utility room.  At first I thought I would be twiddling my thumbs for much of the six-week overlap between old house and new, or be able to move between the two a bit.  HA.  I barely have time to take a breath and I haven’t been back to the other house since taking up residence here.  I am up at 5:30 and fall in to bed late at night.  All day is pretty much go go go.  And I actually worry that some things might not be done before the furniture gets here!

On another note, happy and sad in equal measures, DS has taken a job in California.  It remains to be seen if it is a short-term contract or a longer term thing.  In my day, telling your parents you got a job at some big, letter-combo corp like IBM or AT&T or the NYT was a big deal.  Nowadays, as it’s E-sports, it is Twitch and Super Evil MegaCorp (ok, so that one is SEMC so sort of qualifies.) How times have changed.   It adds a sort of poignancy to this screen grab from one of his past broadcasts – and with the added irony of  the Brexit vote.

He hasn’t even made it to the airport yet and I miss him hugely already. Off to have a good cry now…..and to take a moment to appreciate just how hard it was on our parents when WE moved across the pond.