Crazy!

Things are crazy busy on this end. I've been creating a bigger inventory and adding different things to it, starting Summer Semester, trying to sell a business, getting ready for a yard sale!
So forgive the lack of anything interesting to say today... But if you are interested in the yard sale, email me via the contact button and I'll let you know where it is in town!

~Ciao.

Scissors

This may be a no-brainer for most of you, but for me... it was a revelation. You see, for years now I have been working with okay scissors. You know the kind. The ones that you can buy at Walmart for ten bucks and that really do work when cutting fabric and paper or plastic. Those really are good scissors and I have been using them for years now. But the other day... I got a coupon. Yes, those same Jo-Ann coupons one gets in the mail for 50% off something. I used my coupon along with a 15% off discount the total purchase I also had. I bought expensive scissors. It was not an easy decision. I went back and forth about it for a week before I actually did it. My thought process went as follows...

"I don't NEED new scissors. I have a perfectly good pair. They cut the fabric fine. I've sharpened them. But... I have used them on paper. I would like a dedicated pair for fabric... it only makes sense. Scissors for paper and scissors for fabric. Right? But these scissors are expensive. I have a coupon though... and... the scissors are... so shiny."

It was probably the "shiny" part that did me in. I nabbed my scissors and took them home. Today, I opened the package and started to use them (as I need to very quickly come up with a bigger inventory before the end of the month so I can set up my little booth for the Red Brick House). Let me just say... I love my new shiny scissors. Love. It cuts sooo smoothly and I can cut up delicate fabrics in shapes I couldn't do before because the previous scissors were not so precise. It's like the difference between having a bowl of ice cream or old Halloween candy from six months ago. I mean... the Halloween candy is still good, but I'd rather have the ice cream. ^_~ Okay, maybe that was a poor example because I could really go for some ice cream right now...

The brand I bought was gingher. I love them. They came in a tin though and I'm on the fence about the tin. I love the tin boxes as well as the next person, but if I keep getting those pretty tin boxes, what will I do with them! There comes a point when we get tired of getting the scissors in and out of the box so... we shall see what I end up doing with the tin.

Now that I have bored everyone to death about my love for these scissors... I will get back to work on my inventory!

So that's how it started...

We went to my parent's place again to gather up more things for our proposed garage sale. Going through my old bedroom is like taking a trip to crazy town. I was a pack rat kid/teenager and I kept the weirdest stuff! Like fifty bouncy balls and trading cards.
However, as I took a break and started to look at my mom's house... I have now figured out where the creative gene first bit me. It is definitely all to be blamed on my mother. She's always building something or making something pretty. She has a few footstools around the house I'd like to snag (my mother and me like propping our feet up when we sit on the couch). She always has something interesting going on.
She had this up for Easter. A friend of hers cuts out the pieces and sells them and mom just painted them and decorated them. I need me some of these... One that says "Summer" would be awesome.

Mother is very big into hats of late. She wants to start making them and I agree. She should. She started making new bands for these two so we could wear them to church on Mother's Day.

She has this incredible branch in the sitting room. At any given time in the year, it is decorated. On Easter she will have floss wrapped eggs hanging from the branches. Halloween could be little pumpkins and Christmas could be Andes mint candies wrapped like presents (which would promptly go missing).
Right now she has little paper cranes hanging from it for the Summer.

We are currently packing up boxes of books for the garage sale. It is rough getting rid of some of them! But I know someone else will treat them well... So I should go help with the packing now. If anyone wants books or DVDs or kitchen stuff or a whole dining room table complete with chairs (!) make space on your calendar for June 4th!!! We'll do it street-wide here in Cedar City. Just gotta find the right street...

What I see everyday

I've been busy of late. My husband and I are doing Summer semester (crazy? Yes). I started talking to a lovely lady who has a gift shop in town and they are moving their business across the street into what used to be a bakery (interestingly, a place where my husband used to work). They will be doing the same thing and having consignors and places to rent a spot to sell items. They are also going to include soups and sandwiches. I have been working to boost my inventory of stuff so that I can rent a spot there! See their website here at The Little Brick House. I am super excited. So here is just a quarter of my desk that I see everyday as I work.
Pandora (tuned in to the Comedy channel half the time. I adore Bill Engvall! Who would have thought...) all my paints ready to go, a quick tree paint sketch for inspiration, jewelry stand in the back, cleaning supplies are necessary, as is my always present Victoria's Secret Love Spell lotion. Mmmm... So this is where I have been holed up for the past few days. So sorry that nothing else has been listed on Etsy lately!!! I will be getting on that soon...

Weekend Trip

I apologize for disappearing for the better end part of a weekend. We had a blast at my parent's house where we celebrated Mother's Day/Anniversary/My brother calling home from back East. It was a wonderful weekend.

While we were home, we got to visit with my cousin and we accomplished several projects and she took me to a presentation featuring a lovely lady that spoke about organizing one's life and home! I will tell you what, I needed that little pep-talk with getting rid of all my stuff! Marie Ricks is an excellent speaker and has a lot to say on how to help kids clean (and husbands). Take a look at the website, it is full of great information. House of Order.
Sooo, in honor of this, the hubs and I will be hosting a community yard sale!!! Stay tuned for more information.

My darling cousin Rachel that I visited over the weekend is a talented photographer in the Las Vegas area. To see her blog, please go to Brilliant Imagery or to see her portfolio, go here. We worked on a few projects for her and her friend and Rachel was awesome enough to snap a few pictures of this awesome project.

The husband is busy in the back making cookies. Isn't he incredible?!

The project was an awesome vintage suitcase on which I painted wildflowers all around. It actually turned out great and I am happy with the end result. I am so pleased that this beauty will be used again to travel instead of lost in an office holding craft supplies. Heh.

For my mothers

I feel I need to take a moment to give thanks to all the mothers in my life. The women in my family have helped me so much and it is only right I thank them all.

To my grandmother - Thank you for making sure we are always comfortable and have enough to eat when we visit. Thank you for the toys you kept when we were kids that we loved to play with (especially the blocks and the plastic boat). :) Thank you for welcoming my husband into the family with open arms. Thank you for showing me how to serve everyone no matter who they are.

To my "yaay-yaay" - Thank you for letting me call you "yaay-yaay" even though it is just "yaay" (I was young girl who couldn't say it). Thank you for coming to my piano recital when you came all the way from Thailand. Thank you for being a classy lady and thank you for slowing down just enough to let us grandkids catch up with you!

To my late "Grandma" Milne - Though not my real grandma, still treated us kids just like a grandmother would. Letting us pick fruit off the trees and letting us roll down the hill in the backyard. Then letting us "skate" in the kitchen on dish towels (though you really just wanted us to dry off the floor after you had mopped).

To my Aunt Louise - thank you for making us laugh. Thank you for teaching me to cheat at card games :) and thank you for teaching me to respect my elders.

To my late Aunt Alice - For giving me the whole Anne of Green Gables book set to encourage me to read and for letting my brother and me run down the dirt hill to the irrigation ditch below the house to play.

Thank you to both my grandmothers-in-law for whom I am grateful - For teaching my husband to be respectful and loving him as a boy. He always speaks of you both so fondly.

To my aunt-in-law Joyce - You are beautiful and so very kind. I had always heard such great things about you from my husband and you are even more wonderful than he could have described to me when I finally met you.

Finally, Thank you to my darling Mother-In-Law - For being so patient. Thank you for being so loving and caring to all your children. Thank you for making sure we are healthy and for giving us advice in so many things. Thank you for letting us stay in your home. Thank you for talking to us when we need to. Thank you for being a wealth of knowledge. Thank you for being such a classy lady. Thank you for my husband.

And last of all, my own mother...

Just a short list of things she has done for me over the years…

*Cook amazing food
*Force me to do chores so I would know how to when I started my own home
*Chauffeur me all over until I could drive
*Teach me to walk and talk
*Swabbing my owies with hydrogen peroxide so they would not get infected
*Pulling my big head out of the grating when I got it stuck as a kid
*Teaching me to cook
*Teaching me to love all things beautiful
*Showing me how to be classy while not breaking the bank
*Giving me a love for tea on a cold day
*Teaching me that an education is so very important
*Teaching me never to give up
*Telling me not to hit my brother
*Reading to me when I was little then teaching me to read on my own
*Taking the time to give me a great and structured education
*Being there to talk on the phone when I want to rant and rave about something and then calming me down
*Telling me to “be positive!”
*Giving me a never-ending love of traveling
*Always being mindful of others and serving selflessly
*Teaching me a love for God
*Putting her children’s wants and needs (but more often the “wants”) before her own
*Making the best of it when dad built our house and we had to live in a trailer until it was finished
*Teaching me to sew
*Teaching me to laugh
*Taking care of me when I got sick
*Always caring for my health
*Being the first to teach me how to create
*Making sure I made it to piano lessons
*And Violin lessons
*And Fencing lessons
*And soccer.
*And youth group.
*Teaching me to drive so I could go myself
*Showing me how to think for myself
*Showing me how to care
*Showing me how to serve
*Showing me how to give
*Giving me the foundation for a wonderful life and the motivation to seek out the right things for my family and to follow my passions. My mother is the most beautiful woman in the world. She has given me so much and I can only hope I will be able to give the same to my children one day. She has supported me in so many decisions even though she knew that they were not necessarily the best for me. She let me make those mistakes on my own and propped me up when I fell after them. She taught me to press on and she has never stopped loving me.

Mommy, I love you

A Chandelier

Wooo, finals are over! It is time to party! To celebrate, the husband and I finished up our project with the chandelier.
I picked this up at the DI for $9. It had been ripped out of someone's house so we had to rewire it to become a free hanging chandelier. This is also because we live in an apartment and didn't really want to leave it there when we move. :) To be perfectly honest, I was not the one who rigged up the light. I let my husband take care of that so this isn't so much of a tutorial as a... this-is-what-we-did-and-it-worked, kinda thing.

We pulled off the sad glass shades. (I need to think of another project for those...)

Then we pulled it apart to take a look at the wiring. It was simple to pull out the ground wire and replace with the Swag Light Kit we got at Home Depot for $12.
So this is the guts that we kept inside. These are the wires that go to the individual bulbs.
These are the wire nuts. They go on the white and black wires to connect the wires. (So it works when you flip the switch. Nifty).
It's alive!
My turn at the wheel.

This is what I did. I found some Mardi Gras beads at the local Catholic Thrift Store for $1. Just so happens they were white but you can do it with color beads as well. I was just going to paint over them anyway.
So I stuffed paper towels in the bulb cases so that I wouldn't paint them.
My trusty Krylon gloss black paint! There's usually a can or two of this stuff laying around the house at any given time. :p Now, some of you may ask "Why not leave it white?! It's so pretty!" It is! But... I thought the black would make it pop out from the white ceiling a bit more and I've always wanted a black chandelier. I figured, what the heck? Have some fun. It will end up in a kid's room one day anyway.
After I finished with the spray painting, I just waited for it to dry and then added some sparkly crystals I found at Ross for $1.99.

After spray painting I needed something to hide the chain. Now, I do like the look of just the chain but with the wire threading through it, I wasn't a fan. But I also really don't like the chain cover-ups. They're chunky fabrics obviously hiding the chain. So, I went with the next best thing. I wrapped the chain with fabric to pseudo-hide the chain. It's not everyone's aesthetic but I like it.
Simple to wrap up.

Doesn't look half bad.
Here is the switch. I like it for right now because it's a portable chandelier. It's perfect for us as college students because we end up moving a lot. But we're willing to bet we'll be in this apartment for at least another year until the hubby's student teaching is finished. I digress. You probably want to see the final product, huh? ^-^
TADA! Isn't it cute?! The girly in me loves it and one day I will use it to dress up my baby girl's room. (*fingers crossed I actually have a girl one day*). The nekkid bulbs are a little irritating but I have yet to find shades for it. So nekkid they will remain. The chandelier gives us a TON more light. WOOHOO!

So let's recap, shall we?
Chandelier - $9
Swag Light Kit - $12
Spray paint (laying around from another project but usually $2-$4 dollars)
Gems $2
Bulbs (again, laying around but compact florescent bulbs for $1 per bulb ish)
Approximate grand total - $30

Soooo much better than buying a $200 chandelier.

Lessons learned from this little ordeal? Well, the biggest one for me was to take MORE pictures in the daylight time and of literally take a picture of every step if I want to actually show you all what I did! I need to work on these camera skills! I feel that I somewhat failed in this duty and you're left with a mediocre mess of a project. But it's all a learning curve and I hope you'll all just bare with me. :)

Almost there and a plant!

Phew, last test to take is on Wednesday then I will be dooone for this semester. Then comes Summer semester! Yes, I know... we're nuts. But here is what I did in ten minutes when I had a spare minute.

I have a very bad habit of doing projects late at night so it makes for not so good pictures. I hope you at least get the gist of it. :P

Firstly, I have a poor little aloe vera plant I have been trying to keep alive for the past year. It is the one plant I have managed to keep alive for more than two months! So when I started to notice its poor little spiny branches getting a little shrively, I panicked. What could be happening! I decided the pot I had it in was too small. To be honest, it was probably too small to begin with... I know I could have gotten a ceramic pot for $10 at Home Depot or something but... I had another plan. I jaunted on over to the DI and found an old red plastic bowl. For $1 it will be perfect.
The handsome husband drilled some drainage holes into the bottom of the bowl. If you do this, do it quickly and carefully because the plastic will melt a little, but it was no big deal.
Thank you to "Ruby" for donating the bowl to DI. ^-^
I filled the bowl with some extra dirt left over from who-knows-when we attempted to plant something. Then I very gently pinched the bottom of the plant and wiggled it out of the little pot.
If you look carefully, you can see all roots straining to get out.
Fill with more dirt and pat down and water.
This is the top of a Costa Vida take-home meal holder from a burrito long past. We put the plant on that to make sure the water doesn't drain through onto the tabletop.

And tada! My aloe vera plant in a new $1 container. I am not a gardener at all so I am hoping this works. It certainly looks like it will. Here is my only issue with my cheap planter... I don't like how high the dirt comes up in it. Maybe I should have tried to find a taller planter. Or maybe I need to find some way to hide it. Or maybe I worry too much! It's pretty good for $1.
What do you think? Suppose there was a better way to do it? Let me know! :)