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{ Homemade Summer Camp }

If your like most of my mom friend's you just can't wait for school to end so your children can follow you around the house and beg you for snacks, drive them somewhere, "when does the pool open?", "can I (fill in the blank), "do we have any popsicles?", "I'm bored", etc....

Good times.



If your like most of my mom friend's you just can't wait for school to end so your children can follow you around the house and beg you for snacks, drive them somewhere, "when does the pool open?", "can I (fill in the blank), "do we have any popsicles?", "I'm bored", etc....

Good times.

So a few years ago moms in the neighborhood invented -
It Takes a Village Summer Camp,
'cause it does.

The kids LOVE it.
We've had great themes, such as - 
cooking lessons
water balloon fights
tie dye parties
ice cream socials
arts & crafts parties
water fun parties

You can find tons of suggestions here, here, and here.

We also use 
Lots of Helping Hands calendar to keep track of whose having what camp when.

This year I made the printable above and sent it out to all the interested family's.
Feel free to copy it and send it to your friends, 'cause it takes a village people!

linking to 
good one

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house for rent



STOP PRESS!!





The house featured for sale here, is available to rent from 25th August to 2 September 2012, and during the last two weeks of October.


If you are interested, then email the owner here for further details


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gentle living in south west france






How charming are these pictures of a 18th century home, restored and decorated to create a comfortable family home.  What I especially love is the way that so many old pieces of furniture and objects are used, effortlessly.

The sort of items I love to buy in my local brocante fairs and flea markets.  Living proof that it's not because it is old, it can't find a place in a family home today.

The chair above is just like the pair I found in local market last week, in fact I think I may use this idea of toile de jouy to recover the seat.




I particularly love the pastel colours, the soft sunlight, and the clever use of space in the kitchen.  The soft beige stone of the outside of the house is typical of the area in south west France, known as Gironde.


Beside this old armchair, is a delightfully faded painted panel on the wall.  Quite possibly original to the house.







The kitchen is just the right size, and I love the butchers block placed beside the range.  Those old copper saucepans have never really lost their popularity, and are something I often buy here for clients.  Same for the old baskets hanging from the ceiling.  I could even source old blue and white tiles to reproduce this charming backsplash around the range.




lovely colours in the bathroom and outside...
on deliciously vintage chairs that can be snapped up every weekend here ...
 the perfect place for tea!



Wishing you a little vintage gentleness today.






all photos thanks to Campagne et Decoration


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This Could Be A Future Cabinet Color of Mine..

Image??? Help!

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Guest post by Meg from Whatever

This is a guest post written by meg duerksen from whatever.

when Clorox® asked me to write about making messes with my kids and cleaning them up
i said, "YES! we are GREAT at making messes and coincidentally . . . CloroxClean-Up® is my favorite cleaning product!"
they directed me to the Clorox Clean-Up Recipes for Fun--Where Mess Doesn't Matter!
have you been there?
it is FULL of ideas for crafts or cooking or even science experiments to get messy with kids!

i make crafts with my kids quite often and i LOVE to see them get really into their project no matter how messy it gets!
at the Recipe for Fun site i found an idea for using collage and color together to make a color wheel!
we got busy on the mess making.


mess making

i got out our stack of old magazines and began ripping out anything that was mostly one color.
we made a big pile of magazine pictures.
i cut a large circle from a piece of poster board and drew lines diving the circle into six equal sections.
i wrote the names of the colors in rainbow order on the wheel to know where to put each scrap.
then we started gluing down our pictures.

WHAT is this?!

i came across rubber cement at the grocery store and wondered if my girls had ever used it.
i knew i had never purchased it, so i got some.
my daughter was very curious!
"WHAT is this?!" she asked in a doubtful tone.
then i showed her how it had a brush INSIDE, and she was excited to use it.

using rubber cement

we also used a paint brush dipped in the glue bottle so we could all work at the same time.

it's just like painting but you paint with glue.



layering pictures to create collage

layering and layering . . . picture after picture . . . overlapping until there are no white spaces at all.

Rrrrip!

snip! snip! snip!

we almost always make our crafts at this table.
i painted it white almost 10 years ago.
my kids use everything on it!
and it always comes back to white with Clorox Clean-Up Cleaner.

i heart messy crafts!

i was out of town recently, and when i came home i noticed my 10 year old had organized this coca-cola crate
with our art supplies by color!
how cute is that?! i love it! we like to do lots of things around here in rainbow order.

craft supplies

my hands are all sticky!

pasting images

almost finished...

it was coming along quite nicely at this point.
there was glue all over our hands and the table!

mess.
they finished their color wheel collage but the mess still remained.

well...every Recipe For Fun needs a Recipe For Clean.

Clorox Clean-Up Cleaner combines a cleaner and the disinfecting power of Clorox Bleach letting you spray away messy play. It removes tough stains as well as the germs you can’t see, leaving your home sparkling clean and ready for the next recipe.

scattered mess
usually after craft time my kids quickly scatter leaving the mess for me to clean up.
but today my youngest surprised me by helping out!
she loves to use spray bottles and paper towels.

clean up! clean up! everybody... every where...

when she saw the marker and glue wipe right off she said, "this is going great!"

Bottle of Clorox Clean-Up Cleaner

with my daughter's help, a trash bag & Clorox Clean-Up Cleaner, the room was cleaner than when we started!

collage


find the perfect activity for you and your kids to live it up, mess it up and then clean it up at Clorox Clean-Up Recipes for Fun – Where Mess Doesn’t Matter!

do you like getting messy and creative with your kids?

tell me about it in the comments and be entered to win one of ten $100 Visa gift cards!
Rules:
No duplicate comments.
You may receive (2) total entries by selecting from the following entry methods:
a) Leave a comment in response to the sweepstakes prompt on this post
b) Tweet about this promotion and leave the URL to that tweet in a comment on this post*
c) Blog about this promotion and leave the URL to that post in a comment on this post*
d) For those with no Twitter or blog, read the official rules to learn about an alternate form of entry.
Entries from all participating blogs will be pooled for winner selection; only two entries per household. This giveaway is open to US Residents age 18 or older. Winners will be selected via random draw, and will be notified by e-mail. You have 72 hours to get back to me, otherwise a new winner will be selected.
*Entrant is receiving a sweepstakes entry in exchange for the tweet/blog post.
The Official Rules are available here.
This sweepstakes runs from 5/30/2012-6/24/2012.

Clorox® and Clean-Up® are registered trademarks of The Clorox Company.

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{ Free Garden Art }

Beside the fact that I love playing with the new Pic Monkey Collage feature,
I also love getting floral-ish centerpieces for my home...and you can too.
Here's a pictorial of how to -

linking to
Saturday Nite Special link party via Funky Junk Interiors

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Sample Spree and Lots of Fun Goodies


I know I said that you couldn't really purchase individual yards of fabric, trim, ect. at International Quilt Market, but there is one event that is held before market opens where you can and it's called Sample Spree.  Again, this event isn't open to the public, but it's about the only chance that one has to purchase lines of fabric that have yet to be released and may not be released for up to five more months.  It happens around 8:00PM the night before market and goes until 10:00PM.  Not every fabric manufacturer participates, but a lot of them do.  There is a lot of fabric as well as trims, patterns, notions, ect. that can all be purchased at wholesale cost (without the huge minimums that generally come with ordering wholesale). 

Sample spree is nuts!!  Seriously.  Imagine all the chaos that goes along with the running of the bulls, but instead you have hundreds of ladies obsessed with fabric all running to grab the new lines.  And once it's gone, it's gone, so I'm sure you can imagine the madness.  Mom and I signed up for Sample Spree last spring which was our first time, but we skipped it this past fall, so we thought it would be fun to do it again.  Luckily for us, there are no fabric lines we just MUST have, so we are much more relaxed about the whole event.  Some people would not find sample spree fun at all.  Certainly if you don't like crowds, you would not like this event.  But we like the excitement and hub-bub of it all, yes, we are the type that actually like shopping the day after Thanksgiving.


People start lining up for Sample Spree up to four-five hours before they even open the doors.  Mom and I arrived about 45 minutes before it started and this (picture above) was what the line looked like and we ended up pretty much in the middle.  It seems kind of nutty to wait in line that early since once the doors opened we were all in there in about 5 minutes, but to each his own.

So here are some of the things we brought home from sample spree and some freebies from different people at market..........





I firmly believe that you can never have too much rickrack, especially in pretty colors such as these!





I picked up pretty much the whole collection of 'Rhapsodia' by Art Gallery Fabrics (which has already been released).  These are all 1 yard cuts and I am in love with this line.  Feminine and girly, yet still modern.  And if you've never felt Art Gallery Fabrics, you are definitely missing out.  They are dreamy and wash better than any of my other quilting cotton.  Perfect for garments!






And while we were at the Art Gallery Fabrics table, I picked up one more bundle of fabric that I might love even more than 'Rhapsodia'......this one is called 'LillyBelle' by Bari J. for Art Gallery Fabrics.  This line will be released in June which is just around the corner.  This is only half of the collection as the other half was already sold out by the time we made our way to this stop at sample spree.





I have been waiting for this line from Riley Blake Designs to come out for about 6 months now.  It's called 'Seaside' and it is just perfect.  Yes, Riley Blake Designs sends me fabric for all my design team projects but I wanted to have all of these fat quarters of each print so I picked up this fat quarter bundle at sample spree.  I'm seeing a quilt here with this set.  Although, I may have to get some yardage as well because a few of these prints are begging to be made into children's clothing.



I don't have very much seasonal fabric in my stash, so I picked up this fun Christmas collection from Anna Griffin.  I like that it incorporates some pink and blue into the traditional red and green color scheme.


Here is a little freebie from the folks at Windham Fabrics.  This is Lotta Jansdotter's new line 'Bella'.




Some free, super-cute 2.5 inch pre-cut squares.



I picked up a Kona Cotton Color Card that they were giving out for free.  It's a great thing to have because it gives you an actual swatch of each solid fabric that is much easier to coordinate than just looking on your computer.  This card is also great when you are trying to pair a solid with a patterned fabric.




This was a cute bundle of embroidery patterns that I picked up.  I have been embroidering a lot lately and I am really enjoying it.  I may have a little embroidery up my sleeve coming out soon, so these sweet little designs really caught my eye.

Here are some pictures I took in our hotel room with some of mom's fabric too.......






And that's a wrap.  We had so much fun picking up these goodies at quilt market.  It's so nice that Mom and I both love sewing and fabric and can bond over fun experiences like quilt market

I think we both have A LOT of sewing ahead of us with all this gorgeous fabric!

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