The Chair

I know you all (All 3 of you faithful followers. You are the best! I love you. When this blog hits it big time I will forever acknowledge you as being my first.) Sorry for the side track.

Anyhow, like I was saying. I know you have all been waiting on pins and needles for the unveiling of "The Chair". It's a sentimental one so get the kleenex ready kids.

When my grandma decided to move out of her house, the only house I have known her to live in, the house that holds so many childhood memories..sniff sniff. She started cleaning out. As she decided what to give away she would put things in her basement. We would occasionally go over to shop in "Grandma's Bargain Basement". When I saw "The Chair" sitting down there looking lonely in the corner I knew I needed to take it home. I remember playing with this chair when I was a kid. There was no way I was letting some stranger buy it at Grandma's yard sale and take it to their strange house and let their strange kid play with it. I would rescue it and let MY strange kids play with it! But not before giving it a little nip-tuck.

Now, if any of you know me, you know I am not the best at finishing projects. Really good at starting...I won't tell you when I started it. The important thing is that I finished it before my kids were too big to use it! Victory! So once more here are the "befores". Lovely floral with touches of harvest gold....




Here is the "before" of where Emilyn used to read her books.



We gave her the chair for her birthday. Here she is reading her books before bed. Happy as a clam in her new chair.


The After

Much better!

Grandma and Emilyn


A small tribute to Grandma's house.

Better After

So my friend Stephanie did me the not-so-kind favor of telling me about this blog (Better After) quite awhile ago. I know she was well-intentioned, 'cause that's the kind of gal she is, but knowledge of this blog has been quite detrimental to me. I am obsessed. Really I am. If you don't take the time to go to the blog, it basically highlights people's home projects by sharing a before and after picture and a few details of the project. There is usually a link to the do-it-yourselfer's (if that wasn't a word before, it is now!) blog as well. I never follow the link, so I am left with two pictures. It always looks SO easy, but that's mainly because I don't pay attention to all the in-between steps. I leave the blog wanting to scour flea markets for inexpensive things I can redo. It is very inspirational. This summer I found a few things needing a little sprucing up. Here is my own little version of Better After. It's a lamp I got for $2 at a garage sale. It came with a "nice" pale pink shade. The kind with all the folds. The ones I hated dusting as a kid, because no matter how hard you tried, you just couldn't get the dirt out of those darn folds! I told the guy at the garage sale I didn't need the shade and left it there.



So this is what the poor girl started out looking like. Yikes! It just took a little sanding and a few coats of paint to add a few more years onto her life. For some reason I already had the shade laying around the house and the paint was leftover from when I had the red wall. So this project was SUPER cheap! Yeah!
Here is the after. Much better!



Stayed tuned to see what I do with this beaut of a chair. It came from my Grandma's basement when she moved. I used to play with it as a kid. Sentimental make-overs. Double whammy!

Crap I Find

So I don't know if this is a boy thing or what, but Emilyn has never been one to abscond things and hide them in weird places. Ashton on the other hand loves finding the most random crap and putting it in an even more random place for me to find. Here are a few of his treasures I have discovered.



Why yes superman, I do need that casserole dish. Thank you very much.





I left this one for Kyle to find.






Me while giving the kids a bath: "Kyle will you grab the body wash?"
Kyle: "Sure, where is it?"
Me: "In the washing machine of course.".

True story.

Mostly.





Pop some popcorn and grab a Dr. Pepper to drink while watching Spirit. I can somewhat understand his reasoning behind putting this there. Wait a minute, a one-year-old reasoning? Wow, I AM that frazzled tired mom of toddlers!





Don't make fun of me for owning tapes. They are sentimental sermons from Charlie McCall from my time spent at The Hill many moons ago. (Yes, I just said many moons) Kyle insists I need to do some purging. I chose to keep them because I WILL listen to these sermons again. Gosh darn it! As soon as I can find the tape player.
I think I own a tape player.
Maybe.

Hmmm, maybe I do need to purge a little.




The culprit himself. Playing in the tub toy box. I love that little stinker. And I'm thankful he hasn't started hiding food for me to find.

I'm Back!

So I have a confession, the "formatting issues" mentioned in the previous post really were OCD issues. As I am out and about blog-stalking I have seen so many people's REALLY cute blogs. Really how hard could it be? Apparently harder than I can handle. I struggle with having something plain and un-original. The perfectionist in me is throwing a royal tantrum right now. Maybe I'm just not meant to have a cute blog. Maybe people will come here because they enjoy the content of what I write.....ha! Oh well, you're here now, right?

I imagined my homecoming to the blogging world to be somewhat grand. I imagined I would post something amazingly witty as well as insightful and humorous all at the same time. Balloons and party blowers were even considered. The longer I waited to start blogging, the bigger my comeback post was idealized. So I figured I better just bite the bullet and do it. Otherwise it may have gotten out of hand and I would have felt compelled to do a tutorial of some sort or started giving stuff away.

A LOT has happened since my last post. Was that over a year ago?! Good grief! I could expound on all of it but I don't have the time right now, plus I would feel guilty making you read through it all. Maybe some day...in small doses. For now I will condense it into a list:

1) A lot of holidays came and went. We celebrated most of them in some way.
2) We probably took a few little trips to the west side of the state.
3) We added a member to our family! Not a dog you goons, a baby. Aston Lewis to be exact.
4) We won the lottery and bought a condo in Hawaii!

Okay, so only the first 3 are true. I almost had some of you didn't I? Who am I kidding? I know that most of you who read this keep in touch on a somewhat regular basis and you know better. A girl can try can't she?

There it is folks, in an effort to keep my sanity you may be seeing me around here more frequently. But don't get your hopes up.

I'll leave you with this picture of my adorable kids.