The post with the thank you card.

In honor of Thanksgiving: the thank you card I made last week?

Lame connection, I know. Sorry. To be honest, I never, until this year, even considered decorating for any holiday except Christmas, which is why you find nary a fall reference on my blog, with the exception of this post in which I spray painted a ceramic pumpkin. Go me. :) This mindset might have something to do with the fact that the only Thanksgiving decor I can vividly remember from growing up is a felt turkey head (complete with googly eyes) attached to a pineapple that my dad brought home as a joke. If he breaks that baby out this year, I'll be sure to snap a picture. Have I mentioned that I love my family for their sense of humor? :)

Now that I've been introduced to the wonderful world of decorating blogs, though, and I have seen with my own two non-googly eyes the tasteful and gorgeous non-pineapple ways other people bring the holidays into their homes, I am really excited for next year, at which point we will (God willing!) have our own house for me to decorate seasonally. In my anticipation, I already bought some stuff for 90% off at post-Halloween sales (fake gourd for ten cents? I'll take it!) just so I am prepared for next year. Rick only rolled his eyes a little bit.

Speaking of Rick, he's the whole reason I made a thank you card last week, and no, it was not to thank him for letting me use his credit card to buy our future fall decor. He actually needed a thank you card for his preceptor, officially marking the halfway point of his last year of pharmacy rotations. Yes, that excessive hollering you just heard was us cheering...6 1/2 years later, he's almost there! :)

I've been making my own cards for several years now, a decision I made after A) working in a gift shop and learning of the racket Hallmark calls card prices and B) I realized that I liked putting my own personal touch on the cards I was giving to people. My Cricut (and the program Sure Cuts A Lot) has made that especially easy, as I am now able to cut out any word, in any font, that I want. Really unique, infrequent words, you know, like "thanks." :)

The colors are a little off in these pictures; the scheme is actually a lime-y green with crisp white and black, but the setting sun made taking a natural-looking picture nearly impossible.

So, even though this is the best attempt I can make on my blog to show a Thanksgiving-y project, that doesn't mean I am not 100% grateful for so many things this year. And any time I need reminding, I just take a look at this gratitude project that Rick and I did a while back.

Happy Thanksgiving, everyone! :)

The post with the sad little plant.

I bought a plant this past summer. A pygmy date palm, to be exact. It used to look something like this:

The tag said it enjoyed moderate light (check) and damp soil (check check). What the tag didn't say, however, is how much it does not enjoy cats chewing on its frilly leaves. Maybe because that's common sense? I don't know.

At any rate, I thank God that I can sleep at night knowing the plant isn't toxic to kitties (which I made sure of after finding this incredibly helpful list from the ASPCA), because our cats eat that thing like it's chicken. But non-toxic or not, the purpose of having the plant (beauty, air purity, a place behind which to hide newspapers) is lost when the cats treat it as their personal grazing station. We like to spoil our furry friends, but, come on. A personal grazing station? The thing has been bent and chewed like a nervous fingernail biter competing in the national spelling bee. Take a look at our sad little Phoenix Roebelenii (can I have the language of origin on that one, please?):

 

Sad face.

On another sad face side note, it occurred to me today that getting good pictures is going to be difficult for a while since I now leave and come home from work in the near dark. Yay winter. :)

Anyway, this thing looks like it belongs in the Addams Family house or something. Only it's not flesh-eating.

So here is my plea: HELP! I have 0/2 green thumbs and my resume of plant care consists of watering and, well....well, just watering. Can I keep my cats away? Is it really all their fault, or is it partly my approach to plant TLC? Shall I phone Morticia and tell her I'm sending an early Christmas present? If you're an expert or at least know how to do more than water, please share your tips. We (and our plant...but probably not the cats) would be ever so grateful. :)

And speaking of cats, here's one of the guilty members of that party now, perched so sweetly near her favorite late-night snack.

She only LOOKS innocent. When we're not looking (and, actually, sometimes even when we are), she becomes a ravenous plant-eating fiend. Like Little Shop of Horrors. Only she's doing the plant-eating, not the other way around...

Okay, I'm done now.

The post in which I go on a spray painting spree.

This past weekend, I went on a mini spray painting spree. The kind where I get so impulsive about pushing and aiming the little nozzle that I almost spray paint my cats.

Almost.

I decided the glossy look wouldn't suit them.

It all started when I wanted to experiment with using frosted glass spray paint to achieve the "etched sans hazardous chemicals" look. I try to save the hazardous chemicals for the member of my family that sports a white coat from 9-5 and whisks me off to dreamland with bedtime stories about loop diuretics and hypertension. (That is a true story: whenever I can't sleep, Rick volunteers to start talking medicine. Works like a charm.) My process (which, I'll assure you, is not earth-shattering ingenuity...I'm sure countless others have used frosted spray paint to achieve the same look) consisted of four very simple steps:

1) Find glass to spray paint. In this case, I used two recycled Yankee Candle jars.

2) Tape design to jar. I used regular Scotch tape on the tall one and didn't have any problems with the spray paint bleeding through.

I would love to try this same thing with shaped stickers or custom adhesives cut with my Cricut. But I'll save that for another day.

3) Spray paint jars with frost spray paint. I used Rustoleum Frosted Glass.

4) Peel off tape. Ta da! Ambiance shot:

That lantern in the above grouping started off like this, purchased for $.75 from the recent Ronald McDonald House Charity Sale (talk about a yard saler's paradise: this event overflowed an entire vacant Dick's Sporting Goods from front to back with donated--and cheap!--treasures):

Clearly, it was the next victim on my serial spray painting spree, because it is now white.

And on the other side of the mantle is my subtle $1.99 Goodwill hint that it is fall, which I also spray painted white.

Spray paint=wonder paint. You'll never look at gleaming faux copper pumpkins the same way once you can picture them with a new coat of paint. And you know you talk too much about the "potential" and "possibility" in things when your husband, out of the blue, says "Hey, that vase has good lines."

I was so proud. :)

Any favorite spray paint fixes? Feel free to share or link to your work!

The post about brownies, machetes, and house hunting.

The following activity is no stranger to me: wandering through our apartment, wishing we had a house, humming a tune in a minor key so as to fully and accurately capture my grief over not having my own mortgage payment.

Well, guess what? I believe my tune has just changed, because Rick and I are officially looking for a house. Which is why I have been less than attentive to the ol' rented house projects and blog lately.

Our house hunt has been pretty casual so far, with our parents invited to tag along (my mom calls it "intruding"). It's amazing, though, the differences from one house to the next as far as how well people prepare their house for someone to look at it. In case you were wondering, this is where the brownies and the machete come in. Yes, I said machete. As in weapon. As in extremely dangerous piece of equipment. Read on for the gory details about that house and the other houses that we have given extremely clever names to.

1. The house where we couldn't go into the rooms because there was too much stuff in them. Seriously, we think they need to be nominated for the TV show Hoarders. At first, we thought, "Well, they are in the process of moving." And then we opened closets and drawers and found more stuff. NO idea where the rest of the stuff used to live. Here are some pictures for good measure:

 

2. The house with the cigarette pack and a dirty old highchair greeting us on the front porch. The doorbell was also hanging off, to which Rick said, "Don't they have a screwdriver?" My mom and my sister and I were pretty sure that even we, if we worked reeeeaaally hard at it, could figure out how to screw the doorbell back to the side of the door. We like to call ourselves Lucy, Ethel, and Ethel Jr. 

3. The house with the machete in the attic. What kind of neighborhood is this, anyway?!  I am not making this up. Here's proof.

4. The house with the 100% floral tiled bathroom. Enough said.

5. The extremely clean and organized house with the brownies and a sign that said "Please help yourself!"<smiley face>. Of course Rick obeyed. I failed to snap a picture of him enjoying his brownie, but this is what he looks like when enjoying baked goods:

I also failed to snap a picture of him sneaking Sour Patch Kids from a bowl of candy in the living room (but that would have been incriminating evidence, right?). I suppose the sign did say "Help yourself...."



We've looked at others (7 total so far), but these were the most interesting ones. Not included in the above list, though, is the one we currently like the best...but we'll save details about the house we end up with for when we actually....end up with it.

I'd love to hear your memories of house or apartment hunting, so feel free to share any stories! :)

The post in which I wonder if I missed something.

We occasionally get mail for the previous tenants, and one of our recent deliveries was in the form of a Mackenzie Childs catalog. The cover seemed harmless enough, so, over breakfast one morning, I opened it up to see what else they had to offer.

And saw this.

I had a little giggle at the fabric pairing on the chair and ottoman (maybe they were designed by an old man in the dark?) and the side table made of a drum/hatbox type thing (I do enjoy a good repurposing, but...) and then I glanced over to see how much those babies cost.

Good news, folks: for just $3,850, that oversized clown club chair can be yours, and for an additional $2,350, the ottoman can come along as well. I say, why not buy one for each room? (And in case you were wondering, the table is a mere $1,750.)
I also am rendered speechless by this goose planter, which, at 13.5" wide, 32" long, and 22" tall, wins the prize of being larger than my cat but smaller than Rick's ideal TV. Cost: $1,050 (!).

And in case a simple goose planter wasn't enough of a feathery fix, you could also purchase that matching side table for $1,950.

And in honor of Halloween/almost Christmas, and because I'm not sure what it's supposed to be, this headless woman. Although I suppose she's not entirely headless, since she has generously been given a lampshade for her above-the-neck area.

 I'm not sure what made me choke on my Shredded Wheat more: the cost of these things, or the fact that they make me think I'm looking at Barnum & Bailey gone undercover as home decor. All it's missing is a trapeze artist.

Oh, wait, never mind: I found one! A $19,500 one. Phew.

Which leads me to my question: did I miss something? I have truly never seen anything like the stuff in this catalog. And I promise I'm not just saying that out of some deep-seated irrational fear of clowns. Please enlighten me if you have more knowledge than I. :)

The post in which I score decor points with Scrabble tiles.

It recently dawned on me that Scrabble tiles could be used for far more than an afternoon spent sitting across from your husband, who is desperately trying to figure out how to make a profound word out of the letters X, G, M, U, T, R, and O and wondering why he ever married a word-game-loving English teacher. More specifically, I realized that they could be used as decoration around the house. So when I was in Goodwill one day and saw an old Scrabble game for just $3.99, I knew that I could do something with those old-fashioned wooden tiles.

 And something I did--actually, five somethings.

The first thing I did with the tiles was make a game board of sorts using the fruits of the spirit for my words, making a nice visual reminder of the attitudes and temperaments that we should be embracing every day. This took some patience (and required that I make some of my own letters using blanks and the backs of those pesky "Z" tiles), but I finally got all of the words to be arranged and interwoven in a natural way.

 

If you ever try a project like this and aren't blessed with a photographic memory, I would recommend taking a picture of your final desired arrangement so as to safeguard against sleeves scattering your work/cats thinking they can use the tiles as a bed. Yes, I learned this the hard way.

I then spray painted an old frame, made a new back for the frame out of chipboard, layered on some burlap, and then hot glued the letters to the burlap.

I purposely made the letters a bit wobbly in order to A) make it look a bit more natural and B) ensure that I would not spend all morning trying to line up the tiles perfectly.

I really wanted to spell "Where's the nearest thrift store" with the leftover tiles, but I was, unfortunately, limited in my letter selection. So, instead, I decided to be romantic and spell the word "adore" on our living room bookshelf.

And for a little more mush...."I do" on white wooden blocks on our office bookshelf.

All together now: "Awww...."

I hot glued an "M" for our last name to a boring old tack, and we use it on our mini memo boards that I covered with zebra fabric (which was leftover from this reupholstery project).

The remaining letters mainly allow us to spell words like "rat" and "duh," which aren't nearly mushy enough for my taste, so they are currently sitting in a glass bottle on one of our end tables.

I call this work "Message in a Bottle." Rick calls my work's name "corny." Oh, well.

Has anyone else ever used Scrabble letters around the house? Do share your ideas. :)

  "But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, longsuffering, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control. Against such there is no law." And those who are Christ’s have crucified the flesh with its passions and desires. If we live in the Spirit, let us also walk in the Spirit."

Galatians 5:22-25

The post in which we have a good laugh in Goodwill.

That's right, folks, Rick and I have a hobby, and it's not typical like jam-making or crocheting. (I tried crocheting when I was in Girl Scouts. Let's just say that "a child's blanket" ended up looking more like a potholder. I don't think I got my badge for that one.) No, our hobby is much more amusing (and doesn't involve yarn). It's name is Goodwilling. We like to visit the said thrift store to A) see what real bargains can be snatched up and B) have a good chuckle about some of the odd treasures that make us say, "Why would anyone want that?" But, what is one man's junk, I suppose, is another man's treasure.

Or just another man's junk.

Here are some of the treasures that we found while touring Goodwill with our camera. :)

*          *          *

1.  This ghost. As if ghosts weren't scary enough: now we have them posing seductively. As you can see, Rick was particularly enamored with this little beauty. I guess I know what to be for Halloween.

2. This owl. While I do like repurposing, there's just something about repurposing teeny shells into a sculpture that screams "Tacky Southern Tourist Gift Trap." The good news is, there was a whole collection of these fine-shelled feathered friends, so you could buy one for all of your family members!

3. This frumpy lampshade. Enough said.

 

4. This little boy sleeping peacefully on a moon. Aww, how sweet. Wait--is he naked??

It reminds me of Maurice Sendak's In the Night Kitchen. If you've never read it, I highly encourage you to check it out of the nearest library. Not only does it contain stunning graphics, but also contains a great moral about why we have cake every morning.

If you have a blank expression of your face, you're not the only one. Read the book. It will answer alllll of your questions. :)

5. This rabbit. I tell ya, if you're looking to make your kids forget about the Easter bunny, just tell them he looks like this. I doubt they will want this guy creeping into their rooms at night to leave Peeps and chocolate eggs. And what is that thing on his chin?

6. And last, but not least, these elderly painted mice. Rick predicts that this will be us in 50 years. Only he says we won't be sitting in rockers crocheting: we'll still be marching (wheeling?) around Goodwill trying to find weird stuff.

 

In case you were wondering if we got anything useful out of our trip, we did! We left the store with an array of cheap goodies:

 Exciting, right? I know they don't like like much now, but they will. Just give me time. And some spray paint. :)

Anyone else like to have fun in stores? What's the strangest or best thing you've ever found at a thrift store or yard sale? Feel free to share!