If You Can't Beat 'Em, Join 'Em

If you've read my blog anytime in the last two years you know that I have hated my turquoise bathtub. I mean, really what goes with turquoise. Or maybe it's seagreen or seafoam or whatever *but* what it isn't is neutral white. The last homeowners decided that they'd make it go with green and put in a marble-esque peel-n-stick type tile and green striped wallpaper. And it's not that I don't understand that. In my first rental house the bathroom was tiled in retro yellow and black. Well, I decided I'd make it go with navy blue. But it didn't and I changed to white and it looked much better. Do you see where I'm going with this? Well, my parents were here this week and mom and I shopped- and shopped and shopped. Which, btw, was absolutely fabulous since none of my Nashville friends like to shop. You see, I keep it all stored up and when my mom visits I get to use all that stored up shopping energy. And while we were shopping I happened to mention that someday I would replace my paint smeared current shower curtain with a super cool one I found at Target. And wouldn't you know it, mom sneaked back to the shower curtain isle after we checked out and got this little beauty for me.

Super-cute, huh? And the bird actually matches the tub! OK, truth be told I would use this in any house with any color bathtub but it works with this one when a lot of stuff doesn't. It has a nice cottage-y feel that I love. And we'll just pretend that when I took it out of the package I ironed it, K?

I have *much* more to post about because a *lot* of interesting things happened this week- which is why I couldn't post about it. I'm also considering doing a fun thing called "open house Tuesdays" since I don't know a single person that's not at least a bit of a gawker. And if I get to showcase my most favorite city on the planet then it's even better right? Franklin, I'm talking about Franklin. Didn't you know that it's my most favorite place? It would take a really big act of God for me to leave. I got some fun pictures from around town yesterday that I'll get to also. But now I'm off to clean and paint- not necessarily in that order.

Party People Everywhere

You have to check out this site. I don't need to say anything else.

Of Stockings and Such

Sophie's stocking is finally finished. Actually I finished it a couple of days ago and started Halle's stocking. I made Halle's bigger because I felt that Sophie's was pretty elaborate and my daughter must have something bigger and better than my cat. My dilemma is this- since looking at the picture I think that the cat's tail needs something. Possibly the dots or small stars. The original thinking was that doing the tail too would make it too *busy*. But now I just think it looks unfinished. Which is sad because I've since sewn the whole thing up- by hand. Yes, my cat has a completely hand sewn, hand embroidered stocking- funny.

So on to Halle's stocking. My original thought was to do something simple, elegant, and icy feeling. I love the combination of blues and plus my Christmas tree is in shades of blue. But now that I'm partially done it just feels sort of bland- especially when compared to Sophie's stocking. And my Christmas tree might not stay blue and silver forever. Every year since I moved out of my
parents house (9 years) my tree has been various shades of blue and I still like it but I'm starting to get tired of it. So do I really want Halle's stocking to just be blue and maybe silver? I'm not sure. I could just embroider smaller colorful snowflakes around the large one, which I was planning on doing anyway only in shades of blue and silver. But I'm not sure that it will have the same impact as starting with pink floss to begin with. It definitely won't be as bright and cheerful. I guess I'll figure it out and keep you posted.

And I don't think I ever posted pictures of my completed kitchen island project. I just took the panes of glass out of the drawer fronts, cut some fabric to fit, sprayed it with spray starch and put them back in. There were pieces of wood designed to keep beans and things in the drawer fronts (remember when that was in style?) but I left the wood out and it gives me and extra inch or so of drawer space. I'm sure that doesn't sound like a lot but the drawers don't open very far and they're really impractical for storing things so the extra space really does help.

Orange is My New Favorite Color

OK, not really but I do like it a LOT because of this blog. Now I want something orange. I originally decided to paint the kitchen yellow because I could use an amazing amount of color with it so I'm thinking of some sort of orange accessory for the spring/summer season. I didn't put her blog up here just because of the orange thing though. She also has tons of great ideas for projects- I would say crafts but she kind of went on a tirade about how she hates that word craft. So whatever you call it she has tons of great ideas- I think she's graphic designer by trade. And also at the end of this article there is a well laid out plan for marketing your products. Now, I don't see myself ever doing that because it's not my thing. But several friends have talked about 'maybe one day I'll...' so here you go.

It's a Picture-Palooza!

I don't think it's possible to sum up the last two-ish weeks without driving myself crazy trying to remember it all so think I'll hit a few highlights over the next few days. So for starters...

I'm sure you remember that I decided to tear the bathroom up just a few days before she got here and as per usual it took much more time and was way more involved than just putting some paint on the walls. Originally I wasn't going to patch the weird lines-up-with-nothing hole in the wall*but* Travis was dog tired one night but was still willing to put up the new storage cabinet we bought. Due to his tiredness however I have two brand new holes in the wall that have to be patched and no cabinet on the wall. So, since I still must patch holes and re-paint I might as well go ahead and fix the other hole- especially since I can borrow all of the tools from Eric and Tisra. And I decided to paint the oak vanity which turned out OK (it needs another coat) but *somehow* all of the cabinet hardware has been lost. I put it all in a Ziploc bag and set it on the island and now it is mysteriously gone and nobody has seen it. I really do want a new cabinet but I promise I didn't do that on purpose. So I'm going to go to Gallatin to check out a warehouse that supposedly sells cabinets for cheap so I'll see what they've got and maybe I'll have a new vanity to go with my new cabinet. The current one is less than 24" wide so it is really too small to house the bathroom stuff for 5 people so I am hoping for a new one. If I can't get a new one and I can't find the hardware I was thinking that I can just put up a little curtain temporarily- you know a little "shabby chic" look. Oh, and I need a new mirror but I won't know what size to get until the cabinet is on the wall- it's big and I don't know how much room I'll have left. I also think that the room needs another color to ground the whole thing. It almost seems stark to me. I thought about some little black accents but then I thought it would be too stark with the pale green and now I'm thinking about a shade of brown. We'll have to see. So what started out as a can of $5 oops! paint is now turning into the money pit. But at least I'm not completely grossed out every time I walk into the bathroom.

This is what the bathroom looked like before my M-I-L came.

And this is what it looks like now-

You'll notice that I still have a turquoise bathtub- but the green actually looks nice with it. Not that you can really tell what color I painted it in these pictures. I still need to paint the trim though and the door. Which I don't want to paint because we'll have to replace the door eventually and I just hate to have to do work that is just going to get thrown out anyway. The jury's still out on that one.

The living room. I forgot that I took this picture the other day.

Ah, what to post about? I'm sure you don't want to hear about me doing laundry- although I did get a new-to-me washer this weekend. My washer and dryer were my very first large purchases when I graduated from college and got my first place because I refused to go to the laundry mat. I thougt I'd surely meet up with an axe-murderer there and figured I'd be much safer doing laundry at home. So fast forward nine years and said washer has washed it's last load. I'm not actually even sure it was washing the clothes at the end since it didn't always agitate or spin. But thankfully, I found a great washer on Craigs List for $75 and it works perfectly. We figured if it only lasted for a year or two we'd still be getting a bargain.

Well, I guess this will be a post of randomness since the pics have nothing to do with anything except that I figured I could sneak more vacation pics in; it's kind of like making your friends sit through your vacation slides only not all at once. And I hadn't posted a picture of my brothers kids except for Ashton and I didn't want to leave the rest of them out. So the pic of all the little kids with Amanda and my brother are Megan, Tessa, Chloe and Dalton helping Halle blow out the candles on his birthday cake- what a sweetie!

Murray is dead. Yep, my poor little Venus Fly Trap has bitten the dust. He had really been through a lot; repotting, getting knocked into the sink by Sophie, I put him outside where it was too hot, etc, but he always pulled through. Apparently though no water for the 10 days while I was gone was too much for him. I asked Travis to water the plants and he did once but never even opened the blinds that are over the kitchen window and didn't see Murray to water him. Which, unfortunately, was the first thing I saw when we got home, which resulted in a gasp from me, which drew Chloe's attention to Murray, which resulted in uncontrolled sobbing, which was not the homecoming that Travis had pictured. Poor guy, he'd worked close to 70 hours that week so I don't blame him- I'm just glad we weren't gone longer. In other plant news- My lemon seedling is doing amazingly well. I repotted it and put it outside where it is thriving. My sunflower is doing well also along with some blackeyed susans. I planted them late in the season- the very end of June, well beginning of July but hopefully that was close enough, so I don't have any blooms yet and I'm wondering if I will. And if they don't bloom will they come back next year? They're perrennials but I'm not quite clear on how it all works. I also planted some other type of daisy-like flowers in the urns on the front stoop but Halle pulled a bunch out of one but the others look good so we'll see if I get any blooms from those. I've wanted to re-do the front planter but I'm sure I'd spend at least $50 on it and don't really want to shell out that kind of cash on plants right now. Home Depot has some great looking Gerbera Daisies which are one of my favorites but maybe next summer. Or I could start some seeds indoors next spring and then plant them. And I know I've shown you this website before but after taking a closer look I found out they are located in McMinnville so their trees and things aren't shipped from across the country. They also ship all of their orders for $6.50 no matter how big the order is. I have my eye on a black gum tree that I've wanted since I read in Southern Living about how beautiful it's red autumn foliage is. But in researching it I've also found out that it is a slow grower and since we're not planning on staying in this place forever I might want to find something that will give me more immediate satisfaction.

Oh, and in other random news, I have completely re-done our living room! I stayed up until about 4 o'clock one morning and just finished it. Well, actually, I still need to paint the trim and do some touch-ups since I was pretty much painting in the dark but it looks pretty good. We moved the chair and ottoman out and replaced it with a piano that we're piano-sitting for the next couple of years. But I suppose I should really post some pictures of that. It just seems that my living room hasn't been clean enough in the last week to get a picture of it. Every time I think I can get a picture-because it is clean- the girls have thrown off all the couch pillows to jump all over or someone has set a basket of clothes in the floor to be folded, you know how it goes. But I'll try to post that tomorrow. I also painted Chloe and Halle's room but that REALLY hasn't been clean enough to take pictures of.

So, until tomorrow....