Tudor Houses are Awesome

Anyone who knows me knows my love of all things English-y. I have a particular adoration of wonky Tudor houses. They are also called half-timbered houses or timber frame, but to me they are just Tudor ala King Henry.
We in America have a version of these....they have it in England too....that is called Tudor revival. Drive through some fancy neighborhoods-and even some not so fancy ones-and you will see the decorative trim that is on gables that is a throwback to the real thing. These houses are not authentically timbered but have trim styled like they are--there is no relation from inside to outside of the house. I am not hating on these...they are cute and I like them fine, but that is not what I am talking about here.

In true, ancient half timbered houses, the entire house was made with a timber frame. There are no studs inside the walls like modern construction. The builder made a giant frame for the house out of big heavy timbers and pegged them together. In between the beams the space was filled with rocks, bricks, rubble, sticks or anything they could come up with to fill in the space and then they "stuccoed" over the filler. The walls were as thick as the beams they made them out of and the beams were exposed on the inside and outside of the house. This is what an authentic wall was filled with....minus the glass frame, obviously....


There is modern timber framing....I live in a modern timber framed house. Kinda the same as the authentic, but not really. The whole "filling the walls with junk and stuccoing over it" thing is not very modernly energy efficient. This is what a modern timber frame looks like while being built....this is mine....

All smallest upright in that frame is 6X6 inches....some are bigger than that. But now, instead of filling in between them, we attached SIPs to the outside of the frame. This means you can see the beams on the inside of our house, but not the outside....so we faked it on the outside.
Inside....
Outside..

Enough of all that construction talk....THIS is why I love them. We took these on our awesome trip to London that we just got back from....click on any of these to go to the photo-set and see all of the ones we took.






And finally, here is a funny story. We were walking through Hampstead Heath and happened upon the most picturesque, perfect little cottage in the woods. It looked like something out of Hansel and Gretel and before we even got up to it we had discussed how lucky the resident was and wondered how they lucked up and got the gig that got them living in the cutest house ever in the middle of this awesome park, etc, etc.... This is the house....



Okay, now wait for it.....



It was the park bathroom....i would still live there forever....

Harry Potter Featurette!!

I cannot WAIT!!

Renaissance costumes finally complete and in use!!

I posted some of these on my other blog, but I felt the need to post some costume related ones here. The full photostream is on Flickr and you can get to that by clicking here or on any of the photos below.

Here is a full length shot of me and C & J. Ignore the stupid look on my face and Jack's completely skinny belt...I didnt catch the belt before we were half way across Nashville and the smart-assed look is a permanent feature.


Here is full length Chris fighting some beer glasses.


Here is a close up of Julia's lacings.


And here is a full length of her and Jack. And, a good shot of Caris's hair fall...the feathers on top were just added to annoy her when she wasnt looking;-P. Also, the blue fairy Hope is wearing is a previous year's costume of Julia's. It is much loved by any girls that join us each year and has been worn by several of them who needed a costume in a pinch.


So that is a good smattering of costume photos. Click on one of the pictures to see the full set--or on the link at the top.
It was fun!! Come with us next time!!

Stop the Insanity--Placemat Pillows, Part 2

Uggg. Let me explain. This could have been easy. But I had a "great idea". That is frequently where it all goes downhill fast for me. I will just give you the nightmare in pictures and see if you can figure where good sense went south and the lunacy began.

The plan is make these placemats into four pillows.

The light colored print ones arent double layered so I thought I would split open the green one and use it to back the two print ones. Totally simple, right? Yea, not so much. The green placemat had interfacing sticking the two sides together and was not so easy to pull apart as you would think, but I was determined and in the end I did prevail. Pillow casings done.

{watch my brain work here}
"Hmmmm, what to fill them with. I have a gigantic bag of batting in my craft supplies. I could just fill them with that. Or I could dismantle other pillows like i did previously. That would be all "green" and recycley. Or, if I am recycling anyway, I could use feathers!! I have a feather pillow I never use. Yea, that's the ticket. I will make some awesome feather pillows. They will be all soft and squishy and great. I'm doing it!!"

So, I find some on hand thick fabric that I can makes pillow forms out of. Eyeball the size I want, cut and stitch--leaving an opening for putting the feathers in that I can sew up later.

Looking at this pillow, I figured I could get all four out of this one pillow.

Cut that bad boy open!

Now for the totally fun part. I have to get all these loose feathers into those little pillow forms. Simple grab and stuff. Hmmm, maybe I will go outside for this part. It was totally easy and not messy at all.

In fact, I am so clean after this that I feel sure I can go out to dinner without changing my clothes or anything.

Okay, cute little pillow forms. It only took like what, an hour to do that. Something that should have taken 5 minutes tops.

Now, I think I will spend 2 hours rethreading needle after needle that keep breaking and popping the entire bobbin casing out a few times just for fun. Miss White (the sewing machine) and I are not getting along today. I think she has something against feather pillows. Because I am mad at her I will show you compromising pictures of her inner workings. She should be embarrassed by her behavior.

Anyway, eventually this all got done and the pillows are cute. (I totally should have smoothed the nap on my microfiber couch.)


I only need like 10 more of them, but that will totally have to wait until I forget what a pain in my butt this was.