debor026

The fireplace surround in my living room is stone. Well, fake stone but whatever. It's pretty and I love it. BUT, the mantle is also stone and doesn't stand out and it is teeny. It is about 6 inches deep and really hard to decorate with much of anything. A little closer? It blends too well. I love the stone but I hate that thing. It should be a couple inches wider and deeper. Add a box? Yes, I think so. I was sitting on the couch with my sick child and decided I was sick of looking at it. So I went to the garage and grabbed some MDF and made a little box around the mantle in the size I was thinking of. Clearly I did a very patient job of it, too... Ok, not so much. Don't laugh too much, please. I did go back and counter-sink the screws later, though, so they wouldn't stick out. I cut the bottom piece around the supports (that took a few tries of taking it back out to the garage to trim here and there). See that nice extra depth? A couple inches should be m...

I wanted a centerpiece for a spring mantle. My kids need a lesson for being nicer to each other. I figured, why not combine them? I grabbed a piece of MDF that was hanging out in the garage and used some turquoise paint left over from the bookcase I built last year. I traced Thumper in the corner with a pencil and then drew over it with a blue Sharpie marker. Then I explained to my kids who Thumper is because I have apparently never bought that movie and introduced my kids to Bambie (which I will remedy this weekend). Then I used my Silhouette machine (really love that thing!) and added a few nice words to my board. Now we have some lovely spring color and I can point to it when the kids' words to each other aren't very nice (which is working already. yay!).

Back in 1998 I was walking around the Saturday Market and there on the grass was a couple of hippies with a box of puppies. They were all crawling over the top of each other and stepping on heads and tails. And in the middle was a beautiful golden puppy who didn't really look like his half pit-bull litter-mates (we never did know what the other half was). I was instantly in love and, though I had no plans for a dog, he came home with us. We brought him home and we had trouble picking out a name. He was a very lazy puppy but he was half pit-bull so we knew he might not always be so lazy. We needed a name that would suit him either way. A friend jokingly suggested that if he was so lazy he should be named Thorazine and I said that Thor could work if he grew out of the lazy (he didn't) and he was so named. When he was a few months old he accidentally knocked my small niece down and got a scolding and ever since that day he scaled his playing to the human's size. He woul...

I got in a bit of a creative mood this week and here's what I have to show for it so far: Felt owls. Since the owls are actually attached to the front of the frames I can trade the background fabric out all year round. For now a spot of pink for Valentines seemed appropriate (while keeping it a little subtle because I don't want to go too overboard on hearts around here). And the silhouette machine was just begging to be played with so I chopped up some wood to make holiday blocks. I figure after valentine's day is over I can use the backside to put together some Patty's day love. I also have a puzzle bookcase assembled in the garage and awaiting paint and I'm tinkering with ideas for a murphy bed again. Also, since Joe decided that he is "too big" for little boy rooms (and "little kid" everything, really) I have him helping to pick out something suitable for an almost 10 year old. He is really digging navy blue for the walls but he keeps wa...

A couple weeks ago Amy at the Idea Room posted about an she idea found for a Bread Cornucopia (originally from Taste of Home ). It looked really simple and I really wanted to give it a try. We're headed over to someone else's house for Thanksgiving and I wanted a nice display for some nuts and grapes for pre-dinner munchies. Now, I took the easy way to do this. They actually made their own dough, let it rise and used that, which would undoubtedly be better. But since I'm managing small children and dog-sitting at the moment I bought some in-a-can breadsticks (I know, shame on me) and used that to wrap around the tinfoil form and it was done in about 10 minutes for two of them. Want to see how easy this is to make with just some dough and tinfoil? Take a look over at the Idea Room . I love how it turned out and now I'm thinking maybe there are some uses for this I can do for Christmas. How about making a bread bowl for dip but shape it like a star or snowman using...

We're having a party this weekend for the neighborhood and I'm getting the decorations wrapped up. This year I have seen some fantastic ideas on the web and I couldn't wait to try them out. Crafts and Sutch has a great tutorial for how to put a spiderweb on your wall (found via Be Different...Act Normal ). I found a cool spider in all the halloween stuff and decided to try it out on the ceiling. Since a lot of the people who will be here are still strangers to me (lots of new people in the neighborhood) I worried a bit about people getting into the movies and books. So I covered all of those shelves in spiderwebs to keep busy hands out. The lower shelves aren't covered yet so the kids can get their movies during the week and I will get them covered over the morning of the party. Cheesecloth and sticky backed bats covered the lights in the great room for a little atmosphere. We'll set up the potluck here. The artwork on the wall is my son's. He really wan...

I love decorated pumpkins. I HATE gutting them. Eewww, gross, never liked it as a kid and my own kids hate it now. But decorated pumpkins are fun! Enter adhesive felt. I started doing this last year and it worked so beautifully. The kids can draw whatever picture they want (on regular or construction paper) to decorate their pumpkin face and cut the shape out. Then you turn it face down on the adhesive backing and trace with a marker. Cut out your shape, remove the backing and stick on the pumpkin. You can layer felt on top of felt which is what I did here for the eyes and later for the tongue and teeth. If you want to add hair to your pumpkin you can make it really cute with pipe cleaners. Just twist them around the stem of the pumpkin... And style to suit You can add ears with the felt too. Just make a little tab that will stick to the pumpkin in front of the ear (only remove the backing from the tab, not from the actual ear)... And place a tab on the back to help it stick out...