Still In Lighting Mode

Not that this is a great photograph or anything, but here's that fluorescent fixture that used to be in the kitchen, now in the garage:

Seriously NOT a great photo.  But there it is, all huge and extremely bright.  I can see what I'm working on now!!!  And it's all the more apparent that no, I never finished priming the garage, because I ran out of primer, hehe (I have a ton now, though, so it's back on my list).



In Other Lighting News...

Guess what I found at the thrift store yesterday?

On the left is another ginger jar lamp, just like the pink one I picked up (also at a thrift store) a while back.  This one's blue, and, lacking any better ideas, I'm leaving it as is for a while.  I'll update when I get a shade situation worked out. :)

On the right is a lovely and brand-new silver/nickel finish pendant fixture that I picked up for NINE DOLLARS.  I am not even kidding.  As much as I actually love the silver, I plan to disassemble this, paint it black, and hang it on my front porch.  More on that as I work on it.  :D

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An Aside

I have an update for you on the whole light fixtures thing, which will be coming later this week; but in the meantime, I finally attacked my mending pile in the sewing room over the weekend, and wanted to show you a bit of that.   I altered the neckline and sleeves on several shirts, and took in two pair of jeans that were gapping in some very odd places.  I still have lots of mending and alterations to do; but I'm pleased that I got that far!

This was one of the shirts I had on the pile:

(well, almost this shirt - mine has a round lower hem)

I *love* Holy Clothing's stuff.  It's all viscose and rayon, beautifully hand-embroidered, and soooo comfy to wear.  I bought this blouse at the renaissance festival a few years ago, and I've always loved it, but I haven't gotten to wear it much, because of the neckline.

These pics are from HC's website.  The second pic shows my problem:  on me (being a bit, ahem, thicker than the model shown), the neckline was quite a bit higher, and I'm REALLY weird about things on my neck.  I can NOT stand shirts touching my neck at all - I cut the neck off of every t-shirt I buy, before I ever wear them, and I never wear shirts with collars.  I have a standing order that every turtleneck that enters my kingdom  be executed on sight.  (That said, I love cowl-neck things and scarves, because they're soft and drapey, and not restricting at all).

So over the weekend I enlarged the neckline - I zig-zag stitched along the pink dotted line in the third picture above, cut along that line, folded it over, and stitched it down.  Easy peasy. Five minutes.

MUCH better.  *sigh of relief*  I can breathe now.  And that took like NO effort.  Yay!

And now back to your irregularly-scheduled Housey Stuff...


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Bullet: Bitten

You know that decorating axiom, "It's only paint"?  If you don't like it, you can just paint it again?  That doesn't fly when you're talking about painting over wood for the first time.  Stripping, sanding, restoring, staining, sealing - not the same as just a coat of paint in a slightly different color.

 Granted, the kitchen cabinets were technically already painted.  They were an orange f'oak (fake oak) when I bought the house, and I promptly gave them a brush-down with some flat black paint on a wet chip brush - a step in faux bois painting - in order to preserve the wood grain look but darken the color.  It worked really well, and I've loved them ever since.


But then the jones for painted kitchen cabinetry that's been eating at me for years finally took hold.  I fought it for months before giving in; and then I spent weeks on end dithering over when to start.

There's no going back from this, I thought.  I'd better just dive in and get it over with.

TA-DA!!!  


Omg I love these.


I think the brown on the bottom is a bit out of place now,  but I'm not entirely sure just yet.  I'll take some living with.

The brown ceiling fan on the ceiling (asopposed to the one on the fridge) is balanced out by the brown cabinets on the bottom of the room, though, and it's not "all that brown" anymore, the way it was in the before picture.

Wow, I really LOVE this white.  Yup, it's Behr's "White Clay", .just like the ceilings.

It really brightens up the whole room.  It feels so *light* now, moving around in this very full kitchen.





<   isn't that an adorable little clock?  There aren't any batteries in it.

These are the same smokey-quartz colored glass knobs that were in the guest bathroom.

No, I mean these ARE those knobs.  I took them out to use them in here, because it turns out that I love them so much with the white cabinetry that I wanted to see them every day.   (There are dinky little silver ones in the guest bath now, until I find something else cool to put in there).










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Light Fixtures Sliding Tile Game: BEGIN

Bedroom:

• ceiling fan:  good
• too powerful/large for room:  cold, too bright

Kitchen:

• plain builders' fluorescent "shop light" type fixture. Bright, but cold, and not adjustable. 
• terrible air flow (stove vent is bullshit) 

Garage/Workshop:

• Teeny tiny globe fixture with single bulb:  BWAHAHAHA

Solution, Step 1: 

  

Old fan from bedroom:  matches the one in the living room, which is visible to the kitchen and vice versa.  Great for the living room, but too windy and cold for the bedroom at night. 

Cute little plain white fan from the thrift store, purchased for $15 dollars, and in perfectly working condition.  Smaller, slower; just the right amount of cooling, air flow, and light for this room.  

Yay! 

Solution, Step 2: 

Old kitchen light. 

Bleh. 

Bedroom fan now in kitchen! Yay!  

Oops, no bulb sconces in the pic yet.  :) 

Solution, Step 3...   is coming, as soon as I can get some help putting that fluorescent fixture in the garage.  I can get it down by myself, but I can't get it up by myself!   

Stay tuned...

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Hello, House

By the way, Gypsycat is just fine.  WHEW.

Meanwhile, I've been doing all sorts of stuff around the house that I'm dying to show you;  I haven't quite got all the photos ready, but for the time being, here's a little quickie:

Hand painted backwards: stylin'.  LOL.  I keep seeing these (and the bathtubs/showers that say "get naked) all over the internet, and I thought it was really cute.  I figured I'd try it.  I meant to paint it less wonkily (that's a word now, I just decided), but this is the way it came out, and I kinda like it wonky.

I'd also figured that this would just be something cute for visitors; but coming home with Gypsy from the vet's last week, and then coming home this past Sunday night after a weekend trip to west Texas, that little "hello" made me so happy, and so relieved to be at my own house again.  Hello, House.

It stays. :)

And Now For Something Completely Different...

You guys remember the tacky cat statue, right?

November

Over the weekend, my cat Gypsy went into the hospital with a urinary tract blockage.  It's his second one, and although this case wasn't as advanced, it was harder for the vets to deal with due to scarring from the last time.  He's been through a bit more, and I've been uber-stressed about both him and the financial situation this whole thing is putting me into (not that I begrudge it, there's not a thing I wouldn't do for my animals).

I did a LOT of big, serious projects this weekend to keep myself busy and keep my mind off of things.  I'll be sharing all of it with you this week, but first I want to show you how this cats statue came out.  I can't fix Gypsy, but I can at least fix THIS cat.

I want you to know, I don't DO stuff that looks like this.  Seriously, it's pink and gold, and just...tacky as hell.  But this was one of those times when the art, the paint speaks to you, you know?  I cleaned and prepped and painted this cat with Gypsy on my mind, using it as a focus to send him love and healing - and I had every intention of painting this thing blue, mind you - but for some reason it just needed to be pink.  And gold.  With dots and stuff.  I have no idea, y'all, it just happened.

We'll call this "whimsy." 

Hell, for all I know?  Maybe pink is Gypsy's favorite color.  (Just in case anyone cares, the pink is Valspar's "Summer Night", purchased on clearance for $1 /8oz sample can; and the gold is just all my gold metallic acrylic craft paints mixed together so I'd have enough gold).

Ridiculous. Cute. Girly. Mostly ridiculous.  

Heehee.  Come home, Gyps-a-lator.  Mama and your brother Rabi miss the hell out of you. 

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When the Going Gets Tough, Paint It Blue

Which I guess should be my motto or something.  People make fun of me for my blue obsession.  But hey, in this case it works!  Remember the nightstand that I picked up on Bulk Day last year and refinished?  I recently moved it out into the living room and put my TV on it.  But it was missing something...color.

Painted black some time ago.

The top...nope.  Boring.  Liquid Sander to the rescue!

A very subtle blue.  The color's more intense than it looks here, but not by much.  I really wanted to go for a chalk-paint sort of look, but as easily as that stuff flakes and mars, I didn't want to risk the finish being completely destroyed.  The top of this thing takes a beating.

Now if I could only find the missing bracket so I can put the TV on the wall!  I can't find that thing ANYWHERE.  Grrr.


















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It's Here! It's Here!

The gift package that I won from Surya arrived today!  I'm THRILLED with all of it - so beautiful!  It all went into the living room:

The rug is sooo soft and cushy, and I LOVE the colors, even more than I thought I would.

My favorite, of course, is the blue in the center...that you can't really see in this shot.  But I have plans for a new coffee table soon, and I'm thinking it'll all look smashing together.

The GORGEOUS artwork - a framed textile - that now hangs over my fireplace.

The pouf also went into the fireplace, although I'm sure that's not where it'll stay.  I'm not sure exactly where to put it, but you know me - even if I was sure, I'll end up moving it all over the place anyway.

I keep waiting for a cat to sleep on it.

I guess I'll settle for Daisy smelling the heck out of it.

It's all hand-embroidered, and covered with all kinds of little seashells.

Rabi is very confused by the rug.



















YAY! Thank you, Surya!

You can follow Surya by on Pinterest,   Facebook,   Twitter - and everywhere else as @suryasocial.

Drt-Drrrr! I made a belt.

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Parts and tools, and the original belt that I'm copying -
broken piece on the left, and the buckle end on the right. 

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 Craft poop!  :D 

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New belt, with the old buckle on it.  Favorite!Belt rides again! 

And now back to your regularly-scheduled whatever.

Fail.

This past week, I've been focusing my attention on knocking out some little things that I've had looming on my to-do list for a long time.  Simple, quick, easy, small projects - like swapping out cabinet knobs, spray-painting some doorknobs, cleaning up the weird clutter that keeps accumulating on my fireplace hearth for some reason, getting some "landing strip" areas of the house re-organized and cleaned up;  stuff like that.  The desk lamp that I posted about the other day was one of them, too.

I also tried a few ideas that I've had that didn't work out.  I thought I'd share them with you, because some of them are funny:

This lady painted some chairs with Rit dye!  I can do that!

KaraPaslayDesigns.blogspot.com

I tried it on the big green wing chair that I brought home a couple of weeks ago.  I didn't have Rit dye, but I had a ton of India Ink lying around from my calligraphy studies.  I've actually used it on fabric before, so I knew that it would stay put, not run or fade, nor rub off on my clothes when I sat in the chair.  I decided to try it in a tiny area on the back of the seat cushion where it wouldn't show, and I'm really glad I did.

Apparently the stain-treating chemicals in the chair are really good at their job.  The ink didn't soak in, it just dried on the surface of the chair, into this gross, crusty mess that blackened my fingers the second I touched it to see how it was coming.  FAIL.

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Several months ago, Kress' mom left us some of those plug-in air fresheners with the oil bottle that you pop in, that fill up the house with this nasty, cloying, putridly-sweet, disgusting fucking smell that gives me migraines and makes me sick to my stomach.  She loves them, and it was sweet of her to buy them for us, but, um, EW NO.   I saw this on Pinterest:

Essentially, you take the air freshener apart and refill the bulb with your own blend of essential oils.  Not one to waste anything, I tried it.  And I really should have tried it with gloves on, by the way, because after scrubbing my hands with soap, dish soap, vinegar, orange cleaner, and finally BLEACH, the residual smell on my hands is STILL making me sick as I sit here typing this.  *barf*

Needless to say, it didn't work.  Maybe it works with some other types of air fresheners,  but on the kind that I had, the wicks broke while I wast trying to get them back into the bulbs, so the whole thing was just a waste of time, effort, and expensive essential oils.  FAIL.

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Here's another one from Pinterest, although I originally got the idea from a friend who did this and had great luck with it:

That's right, bubble wrap window insulation.  My bedroom gets HOT in the Summers, y'all, and not in that fun way.  The idea here is that the air in the bubble wrap insulates the windows and keeps some of the heat from coming through, without blocking light.  It's not terribly attractive, but behind curtains?  No big deal.  The cool part is (wa waaaa get it) that it works - I've seen it in action, and I know it works.

I, however, didn't have any bubble wrap, and that crap's expensive.  What I did have was leftover foam underlayment from back when I put new flooring into the craft room and guest room.   It's light and clear, and should do the same job, right?  I never got to find out, unfortunately:  when I went to put it up on my bedroom windows I realized something I'd forgotten.  There are big, red manufacturer's logos stamped all over the damned things.  The foam itself wouldn't have shown behind the white sheers in the bedroom, but the logo sure would have.  FAIL.

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Tomorrow's another day, though, and I have lots more small things to catch up on. For the moment, I'm going to go saw my hands off now, because the bleach (or the devil air freshener oils!) is making my hands peel and burn.

In the meantime, everyone have a safe, happy Memorial Day...and remember to stop and say "thank you."

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