Beginning Again

I see that it has been almost year since my last post, and it's fun to go through and see what was happening then and to think about all that has happened since. For instance, the oven in the last past has been sold! And I'm glad to say that I made 35 bucks in the deal. I still have the lamp w/ shade, but I think I'm going to cycle it out into storage until I have a better place for it. And my sweet boys have grown so much in the last year. It's so strange how we forget they ways that they grow until we see old pictures. I don't like that it's been so long since my last update, but I've spent a lot of the last year focusing on working on myself a bit and needed to put a few things on hold: the blog being one. I feel like I'd like to give it another go and with it still being my favorite time of year, maybe I'll have more to post about. There's lots of updating to be done and I'll be getting around to it!
 Leave me a comment so that I know that you guys are still checking in on me!

Yay for Fall!!!

I can not tell you enough how glad I am that fall is here.  It’s so nice to be able to spend some time outside, and my need to express my creativity has kicked into full gear. It’s so nice to be able to say that I’ve actually finished a few projects lately, and started a few more:/

For example, this is the latest one I’ve picked up.

I got it for next to nothing, so if I don’t decide to keep it I can sell it and probably still make money on it.  This one is going to take a while though. I’ve cleaned the outside up a little, but the inside needs some serious cleaning and repainting (just the drawers, not the oven) and there are few knobs missing that I will need to find replacements for, but I think she’s pretty cute.

Now, a couple of weeks ago, me and my mom made it to the half-off Goodwill day where I found me another project.

A super cute Midcentury lamp with a terrible lamp shade.

It’s not the style I like at all, and it’s covered in dust and grime. YUCK! But, I decided to not throw it away because it wasn’t bent at all and I though maybe, just maybe I could recover it for something else. You see, I didn’t want it on my cool lamp because it was just too big. It covered up a good portion of the lamp itself. So, I kindly set it in my garage as another something I would eventually get to.

Until this morning! I took the boys for walk around the block this morning and there happened to be a garage sale around the corner. WHAT a coincidence! Anyway, they had a lamp shade for sale, it wasn’t exactly what I had in mind, but it might work I thought. So, I asked, “How much for the lamp shade?…..$5.00” she said back. Now, I have become increasingly cheap I suppose, because I thought that sounded to high. Maybe if it had been the perfect shade, but it wasn’t. So, as I walked back home it dawned on me that I could possibly turn my old ugly shade into something much more to my liking.

I have been eyeing the super cool retro fiberglass shades for sometime. Something like this one,

or this one.

They are just so fun, especially the ones with patterns on them.

So, now I’m going to show you how to (sorta) make your own midcentury lamp shade.

I would imagine that there are many ways to achieve these sort of looks with different types of shades, but here’s how I did it.

I started with this:

Your grandma’s tall tapering, outdated, lampshade. Then I tore off all the stained fabric.

Aww, it’s already looking better. Now, you will find that throughout this project my perfectionism slowing declined. It’s a good thing that this was a free project. So, then the next step is to figure out where you going o cut you shade, because once you start you have to commit.

 

I cut mine pretty much in half. Then you have to trace out the shape of your shade on your fabric. You can do that by tracing on the fabric as you roll your shade on it.  I chose to use just a plain linen fabric because of where it is going, but it would be so cool to do in a printed or a couple of different coordinating fabrics. I chose some super old, brown ribbon that was in a bag of stuff from my great grandmothers sewing stuff.  Once you get your fabric cut out, you have to figure out how your going to make it stick to your shade. Might I suggest not to use hot glue until you get to the ends, because if you don’t line you fabric up right as your going around the shade, you will seriously mess up you shade trying to get it off again. I opted to use some watered down Elmer’s. It worked just fine. So, you brush on some glue and start sticking pressing out all wrinkles as you go.

When you get to the end, just fold it over and hot glue down.

You can tell that I’m starting to care less. Anyway, now it’s time to start gluing on you edges. I used the linen on the top edge and my ribbon on the bottom edge of this one. I just used hot glue to glue the ribbon on around the edge of the shade. Easy.

So, now I’m going to fast forward to assembly of shade pieces, because I pretty much did the same things for the other shade.

This pict is of my shades upside down. This looks strange, but it will make more since in a bit. I basically took my smaller shade and turned it upside down and sat it in the bigger shade, and then flipped them both upside down so that I could secure them together with some other old ribbon. I’m starting to care even less, and I’m just trying to finish because my 2 yr. old is beginning to require more of my time. So, after I get it all glued together and run through the house trying to find an extension cord so I can test on my lamp, the glue has set, so I can flip it right side up and hang it on my lovely lamp. And then it’s like something out of “A Christmas Story” when the leg lamp lights up and you just stand back and admire your work….

Oh, isn’t it the most beautiful thing you’ve ever seen? My lamp is so much prettier now, but keep your distance. The closer you get the more you begin to notice my hurried work. She needs to be admired from across the room.

Oh, I almost forgot, I actually have been trying to get some “Fall” in my house. I found a cute pillow friend kit at Joann's last week and couldn’t resist. I must admit, I’m on the owl bandwagon and I can’t help it.

Isn’t he cute?

Happy Fall Ya’ll!

Lately

So, the summer’s already gone, and Jackson has been in first grade for more than a week now. How time gets away from me! With the 2nd hottest summer on record, I can’t say much has been accomplished this “break”, and I’m pretty sure this heat is causing me to lose it a little. I do believe the only trip we took was the day to Austin. Our bank account has pretty much been drained from house projects, and I’m beginning to feel out of element. I have to say it’s nice having Jackson back in school. He loves it, and is a happier child because of it, which makes my days less stressful. I feel like I’ve reached a weird time in my life where I feel antsy, or unsettled maybe. I have “The Itch”. I have this over whelming need to delve into my creativeness and to share it with others. Figuring out exactly how I’m going to do that has been the challenge. I did design a logo last week for guy here in the metroplex for his running business. That was fun, but I have yet to get another job of that sorts. I have a couple of prospects, but I’m not feeling fulfilled. On the flip-side of this there’s a little guilt. I feel like I should be able to have fulfillment in my family and in my home and friends and even my calling. But there is still this constant want/need to have another outlet. So,…so much of my time lately seems to be spent on trying to figure out what I can and will be able to do. I am having a hard time keeping myself out of thrift stores, and away from garage sales. They are definitely my guilty pleasure. My boys are to the point that they don’t like going to any store with me, it’s like pulling teeth sometimes. But, I have found that if I tell Colin that we are going on a “Treasure Hunt” he becomes a pretty good sport. Here is his booty for the day.

 

A super cool remote control racecar (it actually is pretty cool even though I didn’t want to get it), and his spiderman suit. I think I know what he’s gonna be for Halloween this year. Anyway, another one of excuses for being stuck to the computer lately has been family history. Oh man! It’s so dangerous. I have to admit that I spent alllll dayyyy yesterday working on it. It’s seriously addictive and a good cause for a spent day, I suppose. I am so looking forward to cooler days where we can step outside, but in the meantime I guess I stay in and try to figure out how I’m going to waste the rest of this overheated summer.

Here’s some pictures of this summer…

Man, I sure do have some cute boys!

A little busy…

So, it’s quite obvious that I have not kept the blog up lately, like seven months, YIKES! And at this point, I don’t really know where to begin. We made it through Christmas, New Years (a really fun New Years Party actually), Spring Break, The rest of Jackson’s Kindergarten year, of which I will put together another post for this later, Mother’s Day, Jackson turning 6, Father’s Day, and now were to Summer. Through all of this there has been a larger project in the works, and that is our renovation. It has been quite an exhausting experience. Jared had come up with a great plan to keep the inconvenience to a minimum. He was going to work one room at a time, taking down the exterior walls to redo the electrical and windows in each room. When he tore the walls out of the first room we discovered that there was no insulation in the walls (add it to the list). We then decided that we wanted to move the laundry room to the tiny bathroom at the other end of the house. So, since we were already working on the room next to that bathroom, we decided to just encompass it into what we were already doing in there. So, Jared and his Dad ripped everything out of the small bathroom, and we had this.

This is looking through the old bath doorway, through the torn out wall into what will be our bedroom. We closed off this doorway so that the laundry room opens up to the bedroom. Here is what we have so far.

Pretty good huh? So, because we decided to do all of this moving around, and because the main goal was to get the water heater and that washer and dryer out of our living room and because of a few other old diy attempts that weren’t properly executed by previous homeowner, we were pretty much forced to go ahead and redo the plumbing. In doing so, we also upgraded to a nice, new gas tankless water heater! Now we are down to one bathroom o_0 So, in redoing the plumbing we had to rip out our one usable bathroom as well. We wanted to move the vanity, so we had to get everything out of the way for the plumbers so they could move the plumbing to the other wall. So here is what it looked like.

And here is what it looks like so far.

Notice the lovely “white” bathtub! I’m so glad to see that black tub no longer in existence!!!

I actually need to take a half-step back. So, between the time we had the plumber come out and give us our estimate, and the time he came out to install everything, our AC decided to take it’s last breath. We had the our AC guy come out and access the situation.

Not that Situation!

(this is only to humor me, please do not think that I watch or will ever watch this show)

Anyway, he pretty much said that there was no quick fix, and that we would need to replace. Now, last time we had gone through this (last year), he told us that there was no replacing just the ac, we would have to replace the whole system together (furnace too). But this time he said that they were now allowed to put in “dry units” as a sort of a $2000 temporary fix until we were ready to replace everything. That seemed like a lot of money to spend for something that was temporary, so we decided to hold off until we could afford to replace the whole system. We bought some portable ac’s from a friend of ours and figured we could rough it through the summer with those. Well, that worked for about a month and a half in this Texas heat. Jared decided to take out a loan to replace the whole system because it was just too hot in the house.

Here is what that looked like.

This is all of the old junk laying in the yard, well, most if it. They company that we went with was fantastic, but they sub-contracted out to two crews. The deal was for it to be done in one day. One crew would install the units, and the other crew would replace all of the ductwork. They finished in one day, and we had ac that night. It was better, but not right.The temp never did reach what the thermostat was set to. I was told that this might happen, so I called the company and they sent someone right over. Now this was Saturday, the day before Father’s Day. When they got here they noticed that the crew installing forgot a tiny part that was supposed to be installed in the unit. The furnace itself was also tilting. They were here for a while when they finally said that they were going to have to replace the whole unit (furnace and coil). So, Monday they came to work and while the tech was trying to take out the heavy furnace, my fancy-shmancy filter collapsed underneath it. So, a new filter too. The tech was here for most of the day, but got everything installed properly and it all works amazingly and I’m so thankful for my new AC system.

Doesn’t the side of my house look Awesome , NOT…

Now we’re broke!

But do you see how that little window on that front is glowing blue? That’s my fancy filter. It has UV lights in it that kill germs that pass through it. Yippy!

Well, I’m still behind but I’ll try to catch up soon… I hope that some of you still check in from time to time.

Christmas crafts

So, I have been especially crafty this holiday season. Probably because I have recently become an avid follower of few very inspiring blogs. Most of which are added to my friends list if you would like to check them out. One of which is Centsational Girl’s blog. She happens to have a post dedicated to everyone’s crafty ideas, and I have LOVED! looking thought them the past few days, and have be wanting so badly to contribute. I have had several projects that I have been working on for the past couple of weeks (takes me forever to get anything done with Colin here), but none that I really felt were worthy, until now. I’ll post it, plus the others to just so you can see what I’ve been doing.

I went outside yesterday for some fresh air and some inspiration, and found these.

Not only do they look way better up in the tree than they do up close, but they also produce a strange odor:( And to me, Christmas doesn’t stink, so I figured they wouldn’t work. But then I looked across the yard at a huge branch that had fallen last January with the huge snow storm, and that for some reason is still laying in our backyard and ‘=’ (that’s a light bulb) I had an idea. So I pulled off a branch, stuck it in a pot, and started spraying (and glittering). Here’s what I have today!

It somehow looks way better in person, it’s very Dr. Seuss’ish, I love it! I have some vintage ornaments that I got last year at an estate sale right after we moved into the house. I thought my branch was a good way to display them, what do you think?

I also attempted a wreath redo last week. I had high hopes and expectations, and was a little let down I have to say. I decided to go blue and silver ( from my many years of red and gold). I also tried my hand at flocking, and all I have to say is that there has to be a better way. Anyway, here it is.

Before:

After:

I like it, but you can tell where half of the flocking had fallen off by the time I got the whole thing decorated. I’ll live with it for now, but I foresee me trying a new flocking technique next year.

Sydney gave us a gingerbread house kit to put together. I had hoped for a fun time with the boys, but because everything I do has to be “Perfect” I couldn't relax enough for it to be much fun. It looks great, but every time Colin pulls off a piece of candy, I loose it a little. I need to be a better mommy, I need to be a better mommy ( saying this to myself). So, here is our little creation.

*let’s play “can you find Colin”.*

And last but not least, here is an idea that I sort of stole from one of the crafters, who, at the moment I can’t not find. here it is.

Now, the one she had made was with an actual wreath base, and the rosettes were made out of lace (super pretty). I had neither…so, I used a Styrofoam plate (you can actually see it if you look close enough) and a thin, cream colored batting for my rosettes. I think it turned out super cute and it goes well on the fireplace with my new mirror (another project). They sort of look like cinnamon rolls though, oh well. I have a few more ideas that I wan to come to fruition some time soon, I’ll keep posted. So, this is what I’ve been up to, how about you?