House Post: Quarantine 2.0 Projects

As I whined about a great deal, my husband and I went briefly back under quarantine. It’s the first time he worked from home with me during this whole thing – he works at a hospital (though no patient contact) so has been essential.

Having him home so much was tough on our internet connection but great for house projects. Here are a few small ones.

Thread Holder

When I make saddle covers, I usually use one of five base colors of thread, coordinating with the fabric color: black, navy, silver, beige, or white. They come in large-sized (400 yards) spools in bulk prices, and I am pretty much constantly swapping them in and out, so they live on the table right next to my sewing machine with their bobbins. This means that I am also constantly knocking them off and into the trash or onto the floor.

A few weeks ago, I had picked up a thin dowel for exactly this project, so this week I knocked it out in less than an hour, including painting time.

It is not the final version for two reasons: the astute among you will notice I said five base colors and there are only four rods. That’s because I’m an idiot. Additionally, while the dowel holds the spools of thread quite nicely, it’s too thick for the bobbins to sit properly. SO, I’ll re-do this at some point, but in the meantime, it’s already doing brilliantly.

Lattice Ribbon Holder

I claim no originality on this idea, and stole it entirely from Confessions of a Dressage Barbie. I wanted to do it both because I love the way it looked and because I had hung my show ribbons on the curtain rods in my office, and now I need to be able to close the curtains and block light for video-conferencing.

Our local lumber yard delivered it to me, and my husband (who looooooves painting) painted it. About an hour investment total.

Yard Work

Yard work is neverending, but this week I made good strides in filling in grass in our back yard, raking out dead turf and re-seeding, and also put up tomato cages around the tomato plants, which are sloooooooowly growing up.

My husband also made HUGE progress in sorting out our back lot. It’s a bit tricky to describe, but our back yard basically drops down a steep wooded hill, and then opens up again to a flat area. We’ve let the flat area lay fallow the last few years, but this year are trying to reclaim it to some extent. So, that means removing the wood pile the previous owners had left, and also really hacking away and mowing down some greenery.

The remaining greenery that you can see are all well-entrenched blackberry bushes that we may tame a tiny bit so that we can access them all for jelly, but don’t plan on removing.