Creating Vignettes

Hi y'all.  This morning I'm getting ready to head off to Houston for a few days.  My son turned 22 this past weekend, so I'll be taking him and his precious other half to dinner, I'm going to hook up with my Bible study girlfriends and go to Beth Moore's bible study tonight and tomorrow I'll be going to dinner with some girls from high school that I haven't seen in 23ish years!!  There will also be serious snuggling with my brand new nephew, can't wait to meet him!!  I will also be dragging my mom and possibly son's girlfriend all over Houston shopping at the stores we don't have down here!  Any bloggers in the valley that need Houston provisions speak up! :)

I wanted to post a few pictures I took this weekend.  A post on Maria's Blog a few months ago about vignette's inspired me and I've been kind of playing around with doing it.  I'm not good at it, it's something I've always had problems with, you know, the finishing details.  Maria's post made it seem simple enough.  Let me disclaimer this by showing you a picture of how the table by the couch usually looks

Of course the boy is in school right now so his glasses and most of his pens aren't there, and I did throw away the empty dinty moore can before taking the picture!  Now here's some pics of a company's coming side table.

You southern girls will recognize my secret little habit in the background!  Me and Sonic, we are like that I tell you!  Isn't this picture so much better than teenage boys nightstand?  So peaceful!

The flowers are in my granny's baby bottle!  I thank the Lord for her packrat ways!!  I have so much family history from her!

This is the other side table.  This table was my Papa's night stand, it's scratched and beat up, I've gorilla glued the heck out of this think, it was in pieces when I got it.  I will probably paint it the same color as the other side table when I get around to it!

Y'all be sure to notice my little violet plant!  This is the first one I've ever been able to keep alive!  Despite my cats best attempts to kill it!!  It just keeps blooming and blooming! :)

This is my old, but new to me gateleg table in my breakfast area.  I've been sanding away, little by little.  It should be done by Christmas, I hope!  But I wanted it to look nice and have a focal point so I put this together.

So, you like?  See any tips that would make any off it better?

One more thing, this is to show nannykim what my new spray paint trigger looks like, I think hubby bought it at Walmart, but I know I've seen them at Lowe's!

Love this thing!!

Alrighty, I'm off to load the car!!  You ladies have a good week! :)

Met Monday Makeover!

Why??  Why, oh why, didn't anyone tell me?  I mean, I've read about it.  Others have raved about it, but I just didn't think it was for me.

I'm talking about spray paint!  My new BFF.  Every time I have used it my finger just can't hang with the can.  I cramp, I just don't have the finesse that I need with that stupid can!  My dear sweetie has heard my complaints and brought home the most amazing trigger for the spray paint!  I have to run and give him a kiss every time I come in from the backyard after applying a coat!  I have been spray painting like a mad woman!  I'm making up for lost time!  All those years?!  I've got several projects going that I need to finish before the entire family shows up at my from door at Thanksgiving!  My office will be my sons temporary quarters while he visits and it has to be done!

This brings me to the second installment of my office redo.  I am doing this on a zero budget.  I am revamping and restyling.  So, here's a before picture of my chair and a bonus peek of what my desk area looks like when I'm in the middle of a project!  I have to have everything I need all around me so I'm just keeping it real!  You can see my new spray paint stash, every bit of that is used up now! :)  My chair has been around!  I bought it used from craigslist about two years ago and it's been used daily by me and the kids, it looks tired here, dontcha think?

Now for the amazing after!

Isn't it great??!  All spray painted and recovered!  I purposely didn't take the pictures in the office because I want to show it all off  when it's done! :)

Stay tuned, there's more where this came from!!! I'm participating in Met Monday at:






Be sure and run over to Susans and check out everyone's fabulous metamorphasis projects!!!
Night y'all

Soul Searching

So, where have I been??  I've been regrouping!  I have been focusing on some God details in my life.  I started this blog at a time when I was desperately struggling.  Desperately struggling in so many areas of my life.  Honestly I had been in that place for several years, it came upon me slowly and built.  Very sneaky!  I felt very removed from life outside my home.  My home didn't feel like my home, I felt lost.  I started really working on making my home feel loved it, not just lived in.  I felt that blogging about it and being conscious of the changes would help.  It didn't help, because my blog is brand new and haven't found my voice or any real focus I didn't have much feedback.  This just made me feel more lonely.  I was looking for a sense of community in the wrong place.

In June 2007 my little family up and moved 350 miles from our "home".  We left behind my son, my parents, my brother and his young family, my husbands parents, three of his siblings and all of our nieces and nephews and their children.  Plus, my very tight knit group of girlfriends.  You know that group of ladies you raise your children with.  The ones who you swapped babysitting and carpooling duties with.  Our move happened very quickly.  About six weeks after we found out; we were moved lock, stock and barrel.  I was in school full time and had a son struggling with a drug problem.  It was very simply like the Jerry Springer show at our home at times.  But it was the home we lived in for 18 years and our community was there.  Moving away separated me from my support system, and my beautiful son, my oldest, when he was in the depths.  I know now that was God's doing, he needed to "lose" our support to find his own in that battle he faced.

The stress of this entire situation caused my fibro to be severe and all of this side effects that come with it.  I had begun to feel that everything wrong with life right now was because of our move.  Because I moved with the conviction that God was moving us here, I felt guilty about feeling this way!  Financially, emotionally, physically, mentally...all of it.  It was all messed up because we moved away.  In the last few weeks I've spent some serious time soul searching.  Searching for God, searching for my life back!  It's said that when you feel far away from God that it's not Him who moved.  I had not walked away from God, I had just not spent time on the relationship, the most important relationship I will have on this earth.

For the last few weeks I've been seeking God's face.  Really seeking change.  And...I found it!  I have crawled back into God's lap and in the process, I found myself again!  I've found my passion again, I've remembered why I was passionate and I have discovered that for me, God is life.  Everything is just too hard to do it alone.  Even with my husband supporting me in every way he could, it was still too hard.  It's not his job to be my God, it's his job to be my husband and he does this very well.  It is also not my children's job to be my God, or my friends, and none of these people can even help me in my relationship with God.  It's just me and Him and I need to find Him, and hold on tight all by myself.

Now, I want to continue this blog.  I do love doing all the fun decorating and sewing and crafting, I love sharing and getting feedback and ideas.  I still need to find my voice here.  I will, I used to write.  It's in here somewhere!

Thanks for reading and allowing me to be transparent and I hope that this encourages someone out there in blog land to spend a little time soul searching!

So what do you think???

I'm moving along with my little craft room.  Yesterday I bought the paint to get the two bookcases and my sewing machine cabinet painted.  I think I'm going to paint my chair as well.  I'm going to recover it and that leads me to my question for y'all!

I picked this fabric up last night thinking it would be a good choice to recover my office chair with.  I love the colors!  I'm just wondering if it's not too serious for the room?  Maybe I need something a bit more whimsical?  What do you think??

My craft room overhaul!

I'm blogging today and linking to Susan's Met Monday!

Several months ago I decided that I wanted to do more things crafty and creative.  I actually felt that I really needed to get back in touch with that side of me.  When I went back to school a few years ago I really had to set aside all things extra, school was all science and logic, no room or time for creative thinking in the nursing program.  When we moved here the teenager pretty much took up in the living room like he lives there.  I can't complain, because he's not locked away in his room ignoring the rest of the house, I'm actually happy that he wants to be a part of the household.  Hubby has his home office to go to.  It's where he goes to work everyday.  That's completely his space.

Me, I didn't really have a space and I was feeling it.  Y'all know that craft projects aren't always done in one day and that often they are messy.  That really leaves the dining room out!  You see my dining room the second you walk in the door!  The only space left was the master bedroom.  So, I was working ON the bed.  Each evening I would put everything on the bed onto the floor next to the bed, on my side.  My side of the bed is not that big, so it was a careful tiptoe to the my side of the bed.  I grew more and more frustrated!  One day I had just had enough and I did a major overhaul of our little rental house.  Our third bedroom was completely taken over by our ebay business.  It was being used as our warehouse, storing our products and mailing supplies.  I moved our "warehouse" into the formal living room that was really never used.  I wanted a space that I could close the door on either to work without interruption or to not look at the mess I've created!

This summer I went and picked out paint.  I'm not a professional, but I love color!  I also love to paint!  Y'all know that as a mom, everything you do gets undone, daily.  I do laundry, cook, clean...and the next day it all needs to be done again!  When you paint, it stays painted, you can walk in everyday and say to yourself, I did that and it's not undone today! Ahhhhh!  I wanted the room to feel light and airy, fresh!  I have an antique chair that's upholstered in a nice lime green and blue stripe, I knew I wanted that chair in the room.  I chose colors from a chip card with a sunroom picture on it.  The green for the walls is Valspar Garden Fairy.  The ceiling is Valspar Summer Sorbet.  I also got a gallon of  Bella Mint from the same card to use as an accent.  Here's the colors all painted and done:

It was okay and I lived with it, my son hated it and said it looked like a babies room.  I had to admit that it was paler than I had wanted, just not lime-y enough, although I knew that the Garden Fairy color was not lime-y I kind of chickened out and went light!  I hate that!  I know not to do that, and still I do it!  You'll notice that the ceiling just doesn't look like I thought it would.  The blue just doesn't look right!  I painted an old window the ceiling color and hung it on the wall, it was TERRIBLE!  That's when I knew that I had to do something else.  I got out the Bella Mint and painted it on a small area of the wall just to see what it would look like:

Much better!  That's the color I was going for!  Here's a look at the paint on a larger scaled comparison:

What a difference!  It looks so much richer!  Not washed out and baby roomish like the first paint.  So here's the paint done, you can see the ceiling blue looks much better with this green.

Here's a close up of the wall color:

Here's the window I painted the ceiling color:

Obviously the room is still in progress, but I'm much happier every time I walk in.  I'll post the completed room in a week or two!

Hope y'all like the progress!

Fall is here and so are the butterflies!

I just had to blog! I have had the windows open all day! Fall has finally shown her face way down here in south Texas!! Yesterday it was in the high 90's and today it's in the 70's! The wind is from the north and so fresh!!

BUT, the most exciting thing is that I went out just a few minutes ago and the first of the Monarch Butterflies are here!!!! Hundreds and hundreds of butterflies are coming from the north and headed for Mexico! Every year they come through, usually we start seeing them in September, but I guess its just been too hot. I will get off now and go sit outside until its too dark to see them! I tried to take some pictures, but I can't find my cord to plug it into the computer, I thing the teenager has it. If any of them came out I will be posting them soon!

Have a wonderful weekend all!

Project ADD

Hey y'all! Sorry for the extended break last week. I didn't even mean too, it just happened! I've been plugging along with all of my projects. My usual MO is fully intact, lots of projects at once. I'm not sure if its that I'm easily distracted, overly ambitious or a bit of both?

Last week my hubby surprised me! He called me and told me to meet him at Lowe's. Okay, off I go and he let me pick out a new hand sander! My old one was just square and one of the arms didn't hold the sandpaper well. He's been watching me sand - by hand - on all of my projects around the house and I guess he felt sorry for me! LOL Now my sander has a round wheel, the iron shaped attachment with a long skinny attachment for tight spots! So I have completely sanded two of my six antique chairs and I've been working on doing a spindle-y leg or two at a time on the chairs and the table.

One of my other projects is a mid-century modern bar. I found it for $50 at the Salvation Army. I removed all of the doors and I've sanded it and it's getting wiped down and ready for primer tomorrow.

I am also working on a cross stitch project of the 23rd Psalm. I've painted my little office space - again! That's a post for another day! Plus all of my little crafty projects that I sell like my altered notebooks, smaller cross stitch projects and I've started working on Christmas-y things and three quilts for some new babies in my life. I'm thinking of opening an Etsy shop, but I'm not sure about that. See easily distracted!

I'm really having super guilty feelings about painting that bar/soon to be tv cabinet. I know that there must be some law somewhere I'm breaking by painting teak wood!! It really is gorgeous wood and if I still lived in Houston I probably would have craigslisted that puppy for a pretty penny, but here where I am there just isn't the same market. I keep telling my self that I can always sand all the paint and primer off and restain it. If that's not something I can do, please don't tell me!! Or do tell me! Oh, I don't know. I guess I have gone too far to stop now!

I'm going to go work on my tablescape for tomorrow!

Hasta!