Sung to the tune of "Neverending story"

Never ending kitchen projeeeect, aaaaa, aaaaa, aaaaaaa!
It's true.  The never ending kitchen project is still in progress.

This weekend I cleaned the walls, removed the crummy plastic blinds, hammered off old hardware, filled the holes with putty, taped off edges, covered the kitchen with plastic (again) and started painting the walls and the ceilings in the laundry room and kitchen.

I'm going to sew some curtains for the two windows in the back room to replace the yellowed mini blinds that were there before.  The door is also going to be painted white.  Maybe at some point we will replace the plastic edging nearest to the floor and also the floor itself.  In the past these rooms have been painted yellow, pink, green, and off white.  Imagine those colours with faux wood laminate.  Gross.

I'm going to be looking for curtain fabric to coordinate with this red and mint green tile that's in the kitchen and laundry room.

A few that have caught my eye;

1.

2.

3.

4.

5.

Any favourites?  I like 1, 3, and 4 the best, today at least. (All fabric by Amy Butler)

The cabinets in the laundry room used to be the same colour as the drawers and cabinets in the bottom of the kitchen.  Those will be painted at some point too.

Weekend manicure

Antlers and taxidermy

A couple of weeks ago my pal Erin of Bows and Sparrows hosted a craft night with our group of crafty friends.  Whoever hosts the night picks  the craft, which usually takes a few hours to complete and then you get to go home with a completed project.

If you haven't heard, painted antlers are the next big thing.  At least that's what we're hoping.  West Elm should be calling any minute now for the rights to these photos.

My naturally shed antler pre-paint

Antlers and wine!

My sad little paint tray

Oh this?  Yeah, I painted it myself

An example of good antler painting form.

Antler colours inspired by E's shirt

Crafty lineup

D, working hard on her project

Erin has more photos on her blog if you're interested in antler overload.

And if antlers aren't cutting it for you, may I suggest a visit to Foster's Bighorn in Rio Vista.  It's a nice afternoon drive along the river between Sacramento and San Francisco.  The bar and restaurant is covered wall to wall with stunned taxidermied animals put together in the 30s and 40s as well as amazing, can't-look-away photos of vintage hunting expeditions 

One of my favourite sad stories with an accompanying photograph is of the wolf who was shot in the jaw.  The wolf was still living, just unable to attack.  The hunter needed to get back up a hill so he held the wolf by its tail and had the animal drag him to the top.  

Sad and creepy but so interesting.  The day V and I visited in September 2010, I had a massive headache but after seeing the fate of these animals and having a beer I felt pretty lucky to only be suffering from a headache.

Photo by amenfoto

Apparently they have one of the world's largest collections of taxidermied animals with over 300 heads.  They don't just have your usual specimens, they have everything.  Giraffes, lions, elephants, rhinoceros' and wolves.  Or maybe these are usual things to taxidermy.  What do I know?  I just paint antlers pretty colours.

The dining room, photo by thomashawklooklook