This weekend I’m launching my forth annual 100 Days of Summer list and one of the items this year is spend more time on my front porch. After hanging out on my sister’s, I realized I am a front porch girl. Give me a coffee or a glass of wine and I may never come inside.
As a kid, I was always drawing house plans and there was always a wrap-around porch and now that I have a porch, I never use it. I need to fix this.
Problem: The height of the railing vs. the style of my chairs (I like them but they’re more for lounging out back or on a beach):
Here’s what I’m loving:
Crack open the Sauvignon blanc, I found perfection! These spaces are Wonderful. Beautiful. So inviting. But, as mentioned, I still would not be able to see over the railing in chairs. That’s why I am thinking a swing may be the best solution, especially after I saw my friend’s Instagram post.
Here are some great swings I found online:
I think I’ll also need an outdoor rug, new lighting, a side table or two, a big fat fern, lots of throw pillows, a few fancy lanterns and pots and pots of flowers.
Hello summer!
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Rewind to the end of 2007 – Mike and I were DINKS (Dual Income, No Kids) living in Montreal and even though we loved it, the time came for us to move back to Halifax for Mike’s job. This was both a blessing and a problem. A blessing because most of our family and friends are in Halifax and we knew that’s where we wanted to buy a home and have a child but a problem because I finally had a job I loved and did not want to leave. I left the city heartbroken and unsure about looking for a new job. 
Long story short. It turns out it is a lot harder to leave my job than I thought and I have been lucky enough to continue working from home as one of their freelancers for eight years. The world is big but so are servers and online communication.
I juggle freelancing and personal projects all from the comfort of my home and have done so since January 2008. Happy anniversary to me!
Perks to working from home:
Cons to working from home:
How about you? Do you work from home and like it? Any tips to share? Any questions I didn’t answer? I’d love to hear about your day!
Way back in February, when I was snow-bound at my parent’s house on the Wallace River, I wrote a list – 
Step 2: Roughly sew along the edge of all four sides to keep your burlap from fraying.
Step 3: For framing purposes, add a few more inches of scrap material to all four sides of the burlap. This can be done quickly. 
Step 4: Once the burlap is ready, draw with a ruler your artwork frame (mine was 16 x 16 inch square)
Step 5: Draw on tracing paper a design the same size as your frame. My mom suggested keeping things simple – meaning more curves and less small details and hard angles. The fun part was coming up with a design – I drew a folkish flower arrangement in a pot because it felt like the right thing to do for my first rug hooking adventure.
Step 6: Pin the tracing paper over the piece of burlap, match the frames and trace your drawing – when you trace it hard, the drawing shows up on the burlap.
Step 7: Now you are finally ready to hook! 
Step 8: Secure the piece of burlap to a hoop frame and start hooking away with your hook and yarn. I started with the flowers and jumped around, making sure to use lots of different colours. The yarn should be long enough that you can happily hook without running out too often. When doing small items (like petals, you may only need 6-12 inches). Once you get the hang of it, you will get better at judging how much yarn you’ll need. As you move around your design, you can adjust the hooking frame to keep the working area in the center.
Step 9: Once the flowers were done, I did the flower pot and background. These two sections were a lot less exciting but yet mindless and easy to work through. 
Step 10: When everything within the frame was covered, I was finally able to pull it out of the hooking frame, remove the scrap material and make a finishing edge around the 16 x 16 inch artwork with yarn. To do so, fold under the edges of the burlap outside of frame and pin in place. Lay your artwork face down on an ironing board and cover it with a piece of cotton or a towel and iron. Then you can finish sew along the four sides and remove the pins. 
Step 11: (This is when I handed-off the project to my mom) *cheater. I had scrap material which she used to make the backing of the pillow. We stuffed it and sewed’er shut. 
Step 12: Voila! 
Hooking is fun and easy. Sure, the better you are, they better it will look but what I love most about it is you can hook-away almost anywhere. The majority of my hooking was in the car (on our trip to Sunday River) or in front of the TV.
I plan to start a new project this winter – for me, it really is a seasonal sport – I have a design and am excited to show you what’s next. Spoiler: I am going to try type.
Hello Sunshine 