Catblog!

Since I don't have another actual post for you this week, I bring instead CAT FRIDAY.  Enjoy.

Sasha, Queen of Everything

Rabi, being a poser.

Gypsy and Rabi at 2 months old

Gypsy's "legwarmers" post-surgery last October

Sweet Pea + Evie = BFFs

Gypsy being a poser.

Rabi moonlights as a LOLCAT

<3


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Problems??

Does anyone else out there read Thrifty Decor Chick?  Every single one of her posts is coming up viruses for me today, and I have NO idea how to message her and tell her, just in case she's not aware there's a problem.  Anyone know how I can do that, or know her personally and can message her?

Thx,
L


P.S. - it's thriftydecorchick[dot]blogspot[dot]com...I didn't link it because, you know, viruses. 
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Secret Beer & Other Plans

As I mentioned a couple of weeks ago (I think...?)  Kress and I have recently joined the SCA.  Very simply, for those of you who might not know what that is:  the folks who get dressed up in Medieval and Renaissance costumes and fight with sticks in the park.  This is why I'm so busy this week: I'm up to my ass in alligators with costuming and putting together gear for our first event, which is in two weeks!

The SCA involves camping, and camping involves, amongst other things, brightly-colored plastic coolers...which don't exactly add to the ambiance.  My friend Nan sews cushioned slipcovers to drop over hers, to turn a plastic cooler into an ottoman!  Camouflage and additional seating! Awesome.

So in addition to three full adult costumes, I'm sewing an "ottoman" disguise for my rectangular, rolling cooler this week, based on this pattern:

And since we're on the subject of me sewing things, here are a couple more ideas I'm planning to put into action as soon as I'm done with all this costume business:

That's:

1. another cooler cover, this one to turn a cube-cooler into a Moroccan pouf
2. a drop-cover for the old desk chair that I use at my sewing table, because it's FUGLY and scratched and stained and torn
3. a canvas "tent"  cover for the wire shelving units that I currently use to hold up my sewing table top (1), which will eventually be replaced with nice shelving, once I have the extra funds and the time to build them, paint them, and fill them with baskets (2)

2 and 3 actually use fabric that I already have in my "Storage Pit" which is what Kress has taken to calling my craft room closet, which he swears has an entrance to Fabric-Narnia hidden in the back behind the stack of spare pillows, LOL.

cube-cooler pouf:  yeah?

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!#$!@#%# SCHEDULING

AaaaaaaaaaAAAAAAaaaaaAAAAAAAAAAAAAAaaaaaa!   <-- me running around in circles

Be back next week, folks.  Sorry I'm so unreliable lately!  I'll iron my knuckles and sit in the corner for an hour.

As soon as I'm DONE OMG. 

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Happy Friday! Sort of!

It's Friday for me, anyway - I'm outta here for the weekend in just a few short hours.  Whee!

I finished the back door last night...mmm, no, I didn't.  I mean, I kinda did:  I clear-coated the brown parts of the door that I showed you yesterday, so that part IS finished.  I also started painting the bright white mullions on the door, in a deep teal to coordinate with the room.

I'd forgotten how LONG that takes! I'd painted them before, when I swapped out the paned window from another door that I scrounged from a curb in front of a house that was being remodeled;  the new door didn't fit my door frame, but the window was exactly the same size, so I swapped out the windows.  The "new" window trim had never been painted, though, and it was horribly yellowed with age and exposure (plastic) - and cracked, too, so there was cleaning and patching AND painting that day.  At the time, though, I had both doors completely disassembled, so although it was kind of a pain in the butt to paint all those mullions, it wasn't half the pain in the butt that it is doing them with the glass still underneath...with a 1/2" art  brush, no less!*   I painted around 6 out of the 15 panes, and it took me about an hour.  Oy.

But at least I'm painting something!  I've really kind of needed to paint things the last couple of weeks.  I pine and waste away when I'm not painting things.  I've been reading Better After recently, and it's made me just lust for an awesome piece of thrift-store furniture to refinish or restore or repaint! 

Except I DO have an awesome thrift find - a huge framed mirror that I picked up a couple of months ago for $8 and still haven't gotten around to fixing it up (mostly because I can't seem to decide on exactly what to do with it.  I was going to put it into the guest bath, but I changed my mind, so now I don't know where to put it, either!)

Door, mirror...re-do the entire craft room design because I've spent so long being a third of the way through the green-white-black thing that I started in there *two years ago* that I'm SICK of looking at it already (ironing board? just recovered it last month, you say? what ironing board?)  And of course, I have fabulous new ideas.

Not that any of them are remotely crystallized in my head yet; but here's a hint, to carry you through the weekend...

Design*Sponge

Everyone have an awesome weekend!  :o)




* No, I didn't tape off the glass panes first. The last time I tried that with a window I ended up scraping goo off the glass with a razor blade, which resulting in cutting myself and ruining my nails..  I'm a great cutter-inner, and I much prefer to just take care to begin with, and wipe off the occasional "oops" with a damp rag as I go.  :B


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Before + After: Back Door

Before

This is my back door:

This is my back door on drugs...sorry.  No drugs, I promise. Notice anything about the following two pairs of pics?

Microsoft Paint: kickin' it old school

I've been thinking about painting the back door.  Dark.

It was painted the same color as the walls.  I did this a few years ago, after sick of looking at a BIG. WHITE. RECTANGLE. breaking up the back wall.  And I liked it, but with all the dark wood furniture and floors, the room was getting a little quite bottom-heavy.  Painting the blinds brought some of the dark, warm wood tones up onto the windows (and no, I'm still not finished - been waiting for the rain to stop)...but what about the door?




After 

But it wasn't enough.  So yes, I painted my back door.  ORANGE!

do YOU have a blow dryer in your tool kit?

Haha, not really.  This is the undercoat for the faux-bois - a light, warm color that will later form the light, warm highlights in the "wood" look.  Normally I use a brown-ier color...but I had orange already in the garage! 

Me:  I dunno, baby, I kinda like the orange. What do you think?

Kress (from the other room):  WHAT?  I'M SORRY, MY BULLSHIT ALARM WAS GOING OFF 
   IN HERE AND I DIDN'T HEAR WHAT YOU SAID.

Me: *dies laughing*  Dude, that is so going in my blog.   

1st and 2nd coats of dark brown, streaked and stippled on with a wet brush

I love it.  It's not the BIG. DARK. RECTANGLE that I was afraid it might become.  Next step is to paint those white mullions (wow, those are bright), and to replace the turquoise scarf with a curtain that coordinates better with the white sheers on the windows. (I love the scarf in the day, but not at night).

morning light <3

corner "seam"

More later this week! Or not! What will be will be.  Or something. :)



QUIZ QUESTION:  how many animals can you see in this post?  If you guess correctly you can have one of them.  Not really.


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In the Great Hall

A bit about two of my three hallways, while I work on things this week to actually post about.

1. Entry hall, from front door to dining room/kitchen/living room/"back" hallway 
2. "Back" hallway: to guest room (music room) & guest bath, craft room, coat closet, and laundry/garage
3. "Bedroom" hallway:  to master suite

(3) Bedroom hallway 2009

I'd originally painted this hallway dark to keep it "out" of the living room, also because this deep purple was a paint mixing mistake - but I LOVED it and wanted to look at it all the time.

(3)  2010 living room paint job & less-is-more hallway art

When I painted the living room (and the entire free world - living, dining, kitchen, and entry hall) last year, I incorporated the bedroom hallway back into the room with the same paint color - which I like quite a bit.  I also got rid of the big picture arrangement and hung just a few related pics under a painted-on "picture rail".

(Now, I adore the bust that you see in the bedroom hallway, but I hate the pedestal it's on, and I don't like either of them where they are...but I'm not sure yet where the bust's new home will be).  

And here's the entry hall:

(1) Looooong entry hall

(1) Landing area on the left as you walk in

(1) Artwork on the opposite side

You can consider this last one a "before" picture, also.  I like the artwork here, but I'm not done playing with it yet.  The canvases need new hangers on the back so that they'll hang straight;  I'm also thinking of painting a "picture rail" on the wall to match the one in the bedroom hallway, but I'm not sure about it yet.  

The coat hook behind the door is going away soon;  and the inside of the front door is getting a paint job soon, as well.  Just as soon as it stops bloody raining, so I can leave the door open so it can dry without thoroughly humidifying the house!

Also, the blue ceilings in the entire house are going away as soon as I can muster the troops to paint nearly 1,500 square feet of ceiling (white).  Awful job, painting ceilings.  But that's a story for another post. 




*  Wait, where's the #2 hallway?  I don't have any pictures of it, because...I don't have any pictures of it.   It's, um...green.  And it's dark.  Which is why I don't have any pictures of it.  And because it is also a story for another post. 

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..and then Mother Nature went, "Nope!"

Like, EVERYTHING I've been wanting to do lately is getting rained out.

1. It's too cold and humid for spray-paint to dry properly.
2. It's too cold and WET to leave the back door open long enough for paint on the inside of it to dry.
3. Ditto the front door! 
4. It's too cold to do anything in the garage. 
5. It's too wet outside to get any work done around the yard. 
6. Rain = mud.  Mud + dogs = mud in the house, constantly, which = nasty, horrible, icky, cruddy floors, which = a very, very angry Laura when she gets out of bed in the morning and steps on all that mess. 
7. Cedar allergies + humidity affecting my asthma = can't even sing, so can't practice my music

 Pretty much all I can do right now is whine about not being able to do anything.  Hence the non-blogging-ness of me for the past several days.  Also, I'm mad at my house and currently not speaking to it, but that's a story for another day. 

Actually, I spent like 90% of the weekend sewing costume stuff.  So it's not like I didn't get anything done, but...sigh.

ApartmentTherapy asks today, "What is the first thing you see when upon entering your home?"   I see this:

...with three dogs all bounding down the hall to greet me.  Which makes me very, very happy.  That's a lot of little wagging butts, and wagging butts are pretty much always good.  :)   Plus, usually I hear the sound of my boyfriend practicing his bass guitar the second I walk in the door, which also pleases me.  I often stop before unlocking the door to listen for it, to see if he's playing.  Ahh, the sounds and sights and dogs of home! 

What about you - what do you see when you walk in the door?





P.S. - on Sunday I found not one but two Black Widow spider egg sacs in my Bauhinia mexicana!!!  I clipped out the branch they were on with my pruners and stomped them to a pulp on the patio.  I generally don't just kill things - I'm an organic gardener and a huge proponent of beneficial insects in the garden ecosystem - and I love spiders, actually.  But I absolutely draw the line at a creature that could kill one of my dogs, who can't say to me, "Mom, something bit me and now I feel weird."  Sorry, thousands and thousands of potential spiders.  You are OFF THE ISLAND.  

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Wheeeeere's Laura?

HERE I AM!  *peek*

Yeah, I'm working on nothing this week.  Nothing that belongs on the blog, anyway.  That sounded a bit dirty.  Nope:  the blinds project is on hold until the weather clears up:  spray paint has a hard time drying in the cold, and it almost doesn't dry at all in this nasty, wet, cold weather we're having down here.  It could be worse; I know a lot of you are having much more severe weather problems than I am here in Texas, which, aside from the astronomical cedar pollen levels this month is looking pretty normal, Winter-wise. The weather right now also keeps me from doing anything in the yard, or even really in the garage.  It's cold out there! 


Instead, I'm sewing.  I haven't had nearly enough costume-y goodness in my life in recent years, aside from the two renaissance festivals I go to every year; so Kress and I just recently joined the SCA.  So this week I'm sewing costumes in my nice, warm house with central heating and blankets and dogs to keep my feet warm and cats to sleep on my head every night.  :)

I do have some "planning" posts for later in the week, though, so I'll be back in a day or two. 

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Brainfail

For most of last year, I had this nifty little blue spiral notebook printed with henna-y designs on the cover and an elastic band to hold the cover closed, that a friend gave to me. She's a compulsive blank-book-buyer, which I love, because she frequently gives me her extra blank books, tee-hee.   0:)

I kept it in my purse, and for most of the year (until I used up the whole thing), I filled it with to-do lists and shopping lists - even tabbed it with stick-on labels for categories.  I was prepared, yo.

For what, exactly?

Last night I went to Target to pick up a prescription, and it wasn't ready, so I was forced to walk around their home section while I waited (terrible, terrible. Really, I can hardly bring myself to talk about it).  I wasn't thinking of grabbing any particular thing while I was there, just walking around checking out what's on sale and what's new since the last time I was in the store.

But then I saw the picture frames!  And I thought, "Picture frames! I need those!"  Because I did!  I remember trying to CRAM into my brain the idea that I needed 4-5 small, plain, black picture frames the next time I saw them on sale somewhere, so that I wouldn't forget.  And I didn't! 

For what, though?  Why did I want 4-5 smallish, black frames?  Where was I going to put them?  I HAVE NO IDEA.   Totally can't remember.  POOF.  Gone from brain.

Thankfully, my blank-book friend gave me a new one last weekend.  Guess I'll start writing in it.  I think this time I'll put clippings and paint samples and stuff in it, too, like a little workbook.  Squee!

here it is being random stuff on my coffee table

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Another NYR: Cleaning & Decluttering

My house has The Piles.  Not piles...ew...THE piles.  As in "of stuff."  Stuff, things, crap, junk, bullsh*t...all just piled places.  I set something down for a second and then never come back to it.  I stack stuff in a convenient spot, thinking that in some unspecified amount of time I will come back and put it away all at once and save myself some trouble and time.

But no:  piles.

Exhibit A

Like this!  Art supplies, half-finished canvases, box of sketches and inspirational photos.  Decommissioned fishtank stuff that made it to here...but not out to the garage to be socked away in the approproiate storage containers.  Small items that need to go into the Goodwill Box.  Two bottles of booze (one's empty - and the recycling bin is literally three feet away).

But wait...

Exhibit B: that took TEN MINUTES. 

Thaaaat's better.

But how to stop myself from doing this in the first place?  I mean, come on - I'm thirty-five years old.  I can't just put my toys away when I'm done playing with them? (No).

Once upon a time I had a BOX.  I placed the BOX in a central location and put stuffthingscrapjunkbullshit into it, and when the BOX got full, I carried it around the house and put everything away, and then returned it to its place (this started when I lived in a two-story duplex, actually, where there was a box at both ends of the stairs, so I wouldn't have to run up and down them all day long).  Until one day, I stashed the BOX in a side room because company was coming...and it was never seen again.  It became the foundation of a new PILE.  ARGH. 

I'm going to try using the BOX again.  Er...actually, this time it's a BASKET:

that big one, right there ^

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Pillows: I Has Them

All that about a to-do list for the month yesterday...and then I go and do this last night, which was nowhere on that list.  But I found this remnant while I was cleaning up my craft room last night - I had picked it up a while back and kinda forgot about it.  Oops. :)


$12/yard drapery fabric,  reduced 10% as a remnant, remnants half-off during a post-holiday sale.  Five bucks!

TWO pillows! For five bucks!

Love them!

Not loving the other pillow, which I just had sitting around in a closet - it looks white, right?  And, like..dirty?  It's totally blue.  Same shade of light, muted blue as you see in the new pillow fabric, except that the dark brown of the couch washes it out.  So THOSE aren't staying.

I need to keep checking the remnant bins at all the fabric stores - looooots of remnants this time of year, as they clear things out to bring in new Spring prints.  Best time of year for me to stock up on all the dark colors I love - excellent for couch pillows, cushions for my meditation corner, single yards of stretchy knit to make cute little tops out of (I have some dark red, in fact, that I picked up the same day I got this stuff).

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What's a "Resolution"??

Yeah, I generally don't do those.  My lists and I have a love/hate relationship.  I must make to-do lists...but I almost always bite off more than I can chew and end up with an ever-growing list of stuff I was gonna do but then...didn't.

"There is no try, only do."

How am I supposed to work on anything when I'm tangled up in my to-do lists like a cat with a ball of yarn?

1. organize the lists
2. choose a focus for one month
3. pick one thing to work on each week - I can do bits and pieces every day
4. schedule large projects for specific weekends
5. allow myself time off when I need it, without feeling guilty for "not being productive"

Because, after all, none of this is any fun when it becomes work.   I have one big "master" list with everything on it (organized by category, type of work, and cost, because it's me, lol);  usually when I'm bored I go through and find something I can do for free...but the list is rapidly wearing down to stuff I keep putting off. 

I think what I'd like to do is start keeping a list for each month, with a few items on it from my big list that I will do whether I want to or not (I'll want to as soon as I get started!)  Some fun stuff, some small projects, some painting, some maintenance (that I will no longer allow myself to postpone - bedroom ceiling fan, I'm looking at YOU!), and some yard work. 


For instance, January's list might look something like this:

• finish the living room blinds
• finish the artwork I started in December
• paint the guest/music room & closet, and hang new shelves
• clean up the baseboards in the dining room
• repair/adjust the ceiling fan in the bedroom (it knocks)
• paint the insides of both the front and back doors
• refinish the mirror I bought at Goodwill in November October
• design a new entertainment center FOR REAL THIS TIME and actually draw up plans so that I can build it next month
• repair/adjust bathtub faucet (pressure issue)

But will it get done?  Guess we'll see.

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Sneak Preview...

Well, hello, 2011! 

I sure was excited about the three-day weekend I just had - so much to do!  Including a project I was really, really not sure about.  Figured it would either be the FAIL to end all FAILS...or really freaking spectacular. 

The good news is, it's the second one!  The bad news is that Saturday morning I threw my back out and had to bum around on the couch the rest of the weekend. Resting.  ARGH.  I'm doing alright now; but I'm kinda peeved that I didn't get to finish my project over the weekend.

After the bamboo blind incident last week, it occurred to me for the thousandth time to wonder why I couldn't just spray-paint the blinds I had?  Some of you just cringed.  I do, too, just thinking about it - all those moving parts, and the cords?? Plus, spray paint can be iffy, even in practiced hands. This time, I googled for project tips, and found quite a few people who'd pulled it off successfully and were kind enough to share.

The trick, it turns out, is to work in small sections, and to keep the blinds moving while you're working.  I sprayed about 10 slats at a time, then worked the rod and strings to keep them separated while they dried.  The whole project took about two hours, and two cans each of dark gray primer and dark brown satin-finish spray paint. 

pardon our mess...

I love, love, love the way this blind came out.  I can't WAIT to do the other two in the living room (both twice the size of the first one, yeesh) - but that'll have to wait until Saturday, since I won't have enough daylight to work by after work this week.

In the meantime...hm.

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