Mork and Mindy Buy a Fan

While I was having some Africa pictures framed I decided to do something I have been wanting to do for YEARS, I brought an antique fan I have in to be framed as well. It turned out beyond my wildest dreams...

Although it certainly could fit in with my "things I love" theme I hung it over our bed so I can look at it every day. And really that is prefect since it hung on my wall throughout my childhood simply pinned in place with a couple tacks. Oh how I wish I had brought it to be framed before all the fabric crumbled but it is still beautiful, don't you think.

So where did I get this you may wonder. Great question. Great story. I have loved fans since I was a little girl and had a wall full of fans in my room growing up. Most of them cheap paper fans from souvenier shops. Somehow a girl in my 4th grade class found out I loved fans. She also knew I had something she really wanted, Mork and Mindy stickers. Now in 4th grade stickers were the ruling power and Mork and Mindy stickers were not to be found everywhere so I definately had some leverage. In she brings this beautiful fan and trades me for my Stickers. If I recall correctly I only traded one sheet not even the whole pack. She told me it had belonged to her grandmother when she was a teenager. Assuming her Grandmother was about the same age as mine that would make this fan 80-90 years old. The entire rest of the school year I kept waiting for her mom to find out what she did and demand the fan back. She never called and I have long forgotten who I traded with but I have always treasured my beautiful fan.

Things I like

I thought I would share a little of my decorating in progress.  I have noted that others like to wait for completed projects to share but if I waited that long I may never actually share anything.  What is a completed project?  You still wouldn't have seen the wall in my kitchen if we were waiting for that.  I mean the trim now has one coat but there are a dozen little projects still to be done, on top of another coat of paint on the trim.  It is the joy of being a home owner and living on a budget and having a husband that works in construction and doesn't always want to spend his evenings and weekends working in his own home.

ANYWAY...Our family room has been the bane of my decorating existance since we moved in.  I just don't know what I am doing down there.  I have considered several themes but get bored with them long before I get around to acting on the thought.  Well finally a very undefined theme that I am calling "put what I like down there" is forming in my mind. The biggest issue will be painting the walls but I have decided to definately hire someone to choose paint colors for me.  I am ready to paint a few other rooms as well and am saving up all my paint color plans for a 1 hour consultation.  Worth every penny in my opinion.  Actually I heard recently that Home Depot will send someone out for free to give you a color palate.  I might check them out...In the mean time here are a few pictures of where I am going.

Believe it or not John got this great cabinet out of someone's kitchen when they were remodeling.  The plan is to paint it black and put shelves on either side and crown molding along the top to create a nice built in.  I gave up my bookshelf last year to Isabelle's toys and now have my books stored in strange places all over the house.  When I am looking for a book I really miss them.  Would love to see this project happen soon but realistically it will look like this for another year.

I did decide to start my "things I like/Family history" theme with some items I brought back from Kenya.

Now keep in mind this is a work in progress.  I love the Lesos on either side of the fireplace but I realize they are too close and the one is a little crooked. (and they both need to be washed and ironed desperately.)  I had the map of Kenya and the painting I bought at the Nairobi market both framed and love them.  The question is...do you like them together on the mantle like that?  I will probably hang the smaller picture up a little higher if I decide to do it but since it is brick don't want to do anything until I am ready to commit.  Actually don't know how I will hang it on brick when I do decide to commit so sugestions for that welcome as well.

So then this is my favorite part.  I have been thinking about a wall of family pictures for the past year and picked up some random frames at our church sale last spring.  Then I started second guessing myself thinking they wouldn't work because none of them match.  But since I can do anything I want in this new decor style I decided to bring them all down and lay them out around this big picture we have of John rock climbing back in his hey day.  It looked great.  Then I realized I had 2 other frames with pictures I didn't really have a use for inside them and they were both the same size.  So I put them on the end and voila...I am a genius.

(John did the math to hang them perfectly.  I am only about the concept not the details.)

So there you have my perfectly hung family photo wall but not with family photos in any of the frames. I had initially planned to pick up a mat for the two end frames with random openings to give that collage look but as I was going through Kenya pictures spreading them on the floor I really liked how they were looking laying there. I decided to simply open up the frames and glue the pictures to the back of the pictures already in there and pop them back in. They turned out great..

...if I do say so myself.

So now all the big frames are filled and I just need to order a few 8x10's and 5x7's to fill in the other frames.  While I love seeing all our Africa memories I do want the family room to represent more than this one event in our lives so I a going to try to choose a variety of other photos of our family to fill in the gaps.  It is so exciting to see it all come together.  Now I just need to figure out what to put on the existing shelves in the entertainment center.  I guess the answer is to look around and see what I love and what is part of the history of our family.

Blue and Green and Brown

Have you noticed a theme in my decorating color scheme of late?

Here is my project from this winter when I was brightening up my office:



I am still planing to paint a few more squares around the room and include a few green squares in Jake's area because he thought this was a little too girly for him.

And then there is this inspiration for the summer, again, project not complete but coming along nicely:



So yesterday I am sitting outside enjoying the weather and reading a book I got at a garage sale on simplicity when I take a break and look up and see this:



and this:



and this:



And I think I am starting to understand where I get my inspiration.

Saturday Project

Well I can't feel the tip of my right index finger even a couple hours after finishing the project but I managed to turn a very, very dull (no before pictures) office furniture table and old brown metal folding chairs into THIS:

With just a few cans of spray paint.

Now I need to make all of this:


Look like it belongs in the same room with THIS:

Add a coat of paint to the walls and maybe even the floors and I have an enjoyable outdoor room.

I love summer projects. Hopefully by the end of summer this sad, sad gazebo will have a whole new life.

Office Makeover

One of the ways I have been spoiled as a homeowner is that I have always had an office. A whole room for my desk and my junk. They say you spread to fill the space and it couldn't be more true for me than with my office. I have often wondered what I would do if we actually needed the extra bedroom. Where on earth would I keep my desk, computer, file cabinet, bills, software boxes, craft supplies, etc. if I didn't have a whole room to house them. I am spoiled.

However, I have never had a pretty office. I don't have a fancy desk. I am currently on my 5th desk, none of which were new, all of which were given to us at some point or another. My file cabinet is 20 years old and was bought cheap because it already had a dent. I try to put nice things on the wall but it is a hodgepodge of whatever I happen to have on hand. I dream of feminine coordinated offices with nice wall color and accessories. Those fancy file folders the bookstores are carrying now would make filing my bank statement feel a little more glamorous.

Since moving into this house I have had several variations of desk spaces.

Number one: This desk came from a company John used to work for. They upgraded and gave it to him. It was in his office at the old house and I got it when we moved here. It was actually hand made by the father of previous employer. It has not moved but Jake moved into my office a few years ago and it now belongs to him. This photo is about a year old and reflects how I would like him to keep it and not how he actually keeps it.



Number Two: I then got a smaller desk but used an old door to expand the top. For a while I think I had 2 small desks under it but this picture was taken after I had downsized to just the one small desk. I think the idea of this location was that the sun would shine on my face and not the computer but it turns out the window leaks and I practically needed gloves on to use the computer in the winter.



Finally I decided that since most of my life was now on the computer I really didn't need alot of space and could get rid of the door and just have a small desk. I moved it to my current location and tried to keep it looking clean and organized even if it was a bit dull.



This Christmas a girlfriend gave me a dark brown wall frame. Not something I would have normally picked up for myself but I loved it. I decided to hang it next to my bulletin board and have ordered some pictures to go in it. I also got some cute ceramic hanging things in a pretty shade of blue which I hung on the other side of my bulletin board. They were all nice but not really speaking to me. I was dreaming of coordination, feminine beauty. Then it came to me. Blue and brown. I love the colors together. I have been wanting to paint a blue square somewhere in my house and hang a dark colored something inside, this is it. But I still didn't want to spend money.

As luck would have it our bathroom is dark brown so I used the extra paint to paint the cork board brown. I was going to try to find some blue paint in Home Depots reject pile but John called me one day and said he had 2 blues for me to choose from or I could mix them together for another blue. He was at a friends shop who had left over paint he donated to my project. Although neither blue is exactly what I would have chosen I felt they would work. I taped off a big rectangle over my desk and went to work. Afterward I realized my blue hanging things didn't look right on the blue background so I painted a small brown rectangle inside my blue one and voila perfection.



It makes me very happy and I think there just might be hope for the rest of the room someday. Now that I am on a roll who knows what I will do next. Of course I have to avoid turning around and looking at this:



I tried to convince Jake to let me put some blue and brown stuff around his desk but apparently he isn't dreaming of a feminine office. But maybe in Isabelle's corner...

The Thanksgiving Table

While everyone loves to write about what a lovely time that had during the holidays with family and what wonderful food they ate, and yes we had a lovely time and ate wonderful food, I would rather chat about the table.

I love dishes. I have several dishes. I have my every day dishes, christmas dishes, a variety of tea dishes, old every day dishes I can't part with, a set of antique dishes I am collecting and wedding china which, unlike many people, I use regularly, no special occasion required. I don't know why I love them. They just make me happy. Now to really optimize my dishes I need beautiful table decorations to go with them.

I have done some table decorating with a friend over the past couple years. We stand in her basement and set pretend tables in preparation. I stand there and tell her we need different color or sizes of dishes or we need something tall or blue or whatever and she pulls any abstract thing I declare out of a secret compartment somewhere in her house and we create magical tabletops. I have done similar with my sister decorating the tops of her cabinets. I just tell her I need something tall and silver or green and flat and she comes up with something just right.

So anyway, back to Thanksgiving. I went over to my mom's on Wednesday to create a table masterpiece with no money. I brought my antique Fire King Peach Luster dishes since the color is so Thanksgivingie. A friend had given me a magazine picture with my dishes and they had used a pinkish table cloth with them so I asked my mom if she had something like that. She pulled out a burgandy table cloth that was perfect. We ran a brown sheer fabric down the center. I had brought salad plates thinking they might look nice on top of my mom's wedding china which is white with a blue border and silver edge. We put the whole thing on top of a silver charger plate. It did look nice but was missing something, the centerpiece to tie it all together. Down to my mom's storage closet we went to raid her decorations. We needed something blue, a vase or something. We found candles and pinecones and litte houses, anything that went with the color scheme and then back up we went. The only blue thing we found was a short blue vase that was perfect except for the pink petunias stuck in them. We decided we didn't like the flowers anyway so cut the heads off (the stems were glued to the bottom of the vase) and jammed in some apple things, added some pine cones, a brown bird statue and tied the whole table together in one spot, it was small but did the job. After that everything else fell together, little candle holders, tall candle holders, pinecones and pheasant feathers rounded out the look. Yes the food was good but my favorite part of Thanksgiving was looking at the table.

The bad color in these pictures will help you understand why I need my camera back from the repair shop and John wants a new work camera.

Craft Corner

You would think that having already done the whole pre-schooler thing 10 years ago I would know better the second time around how to avoid having my home destroyed. Yet somehow I find myself asking the same questions I was asking then. why? Why? WHY would you...? And What was I doing while you were doing this? Actually that is the question my family would ask me when I would tell them yet another "funny" story of Jake's destructive ways. And I always answered the same way, "I don't know". It isn't a lack of supervision that causes the behavior it is something in their DNA that causes a little click the moment you turn your head and they are off to ruin something. Isabelle is famous for putting marker on herself. I am trying to stop photographing it but each time it is so funny. Here is a recent sample:

This picture represents a time of particular creativity with the marker. Not only did she get her face, legs and arms but she had stripped down and with much pride told me she had marker on her butt. Now on her butt is strange but in fact on her butt hole is much stranger, both hysterically funny and slightly disturbing. And yes I photographed it since she so proudly showed it to me but no I am not going to post it. Should you fear something is wrong with Isabelle, Jake did it too. Well similar, he used a ball point pen all over his body including all the private parts only boys have. Since digital wasn't around at that time I felt I couldn't take a picture of him naked but did get a covered shot of the rest of his body.

Now all this is funny to me because of washable markers. In fact the other day she walked by me covered in marker heading for the bathroom. When I commented she told me to leave her alone because she could wash it off herself. Which is exactly what she did. So that is where I was one day when I noticed a little green marker on her fingers. I continued doing what I was doing (what was I doing?) figuring that I would clean it up later. This is exactly the moment all 3 year olds wait for to do something new. Isabelle had been digging through my purse that lovely afternoon and found a sharpie. (why did I have a sharpie in my purse?) Taking that emerald green permanent marker she found the most prominent wall in our entire home to draw a large set of circles with beautiful eyes in the middle. why? Why? WHY?

Here is a picture. Sorry it didn't photograph well.

Now I admit I haven't tried alot of stuff to clean it up but having some experience with cleaning crayons and dry erase markers (not washable by the way) off the wall I decided not to knock myself out just for the sake of trying. I recognize a wall that needs to be repainted when I see it. Of course since we don't have that paint left it leaves me with a very prominant reminder that I have a 3 year old. And just when it is blending into the background of my mind someone new comes to visit, the moment they walk in the door they know we have children. It is a great conversation starter and gets people thinking creatively about how I could cover it up. So far I am leaning toward nailing a frame over it and calling it art.

So what should I do about Isabelle and the marker problem? I'm sure there are chapters in parenting books devoted to this type of behavior. And you may be asking yourself what I do when this happens and why I haven't hidden the markers. Well punishments do happen and I have started to hear her remind herself of the rules when she gets out the markers, but I like my children to have the ability to access their stuff when they feel creative. Sort of a Melanie version of Montessori. So I put up with a little destruction but it is worth it to see my children have fun and develop their own little personalities.