Where Did the Time Go?

I had every intention of posting some pictures of my home decorated for the holidays...write about a few more decorators on the Elle Decor A List...browse design blogs for more beautiful, inspirational images to share...

Of course none of that happened. But here is a belated view of my favorite Christmas tradition:

If you'd like to read more about my Christmas tree issues - check out my recent post on The Big Piece of Cake.

The tree is gone now...replaced by the furniture we moved to make room. And a beautiful Amaryllis flower is now blooming there to help ease the pain of not seeing lights and ornaments. Actually...I should be honest and admit that I'm kind of relieved to have everything back to normal. I loved my tree, but it was really, REALLY dead. Needles were everywhere. And it was beginning to smell.

I think I'll start the New Year with some pretty pictures. No theme - no color story - just a lot of pretty:

Wishing you all the best in 2012 - and A LOT of pretty!

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My Thanksgiving Photography Priorities

I meant to do another Elle Decor's 2011 A List post...really, I did...but the holiday prep, day and aftermath got the best of me. I'll have to double up on posts next week to catch up. In fact - I should probably do that anyway since it will be a little odd to write about a "2011" list in 2012...

In the meantime - I also completely failed at taking warm family photos of our Thanksgiving dinner. This may have a lot to do with the fact that our children are still pretty young and were barely at the table (and only my daughter put any thought into her holiday attire - the boys were still in the logo tee shirts that they put on that morning).

Earlier in the day, when I assumed that family photos were going to happen, I snapped some pictures of all my simple rose centerpiece and pretty china waiting to be set on the table.

I also took a picture of the killer dessert I made.

Okay, so the picture isn't great (there is a reason that I don't bother with shots of food on the table - foodie photography is not my forte). BUT the dessert, an eggnog cake was divine. I highly recommend the recipe.

Sending you belated holiday wishes! And if you're not in the U.S. - I hope that Thursday treated you well.

Just Call Me Ms. Fix It!

Disclaimer: There are no pretty pictures in this post. Scroll down for that kind of thing.

Do you live with broken things for weeks-months-years and wonder what life must be like to just be able to fix it yourself?

I do.

In a perfect world, I'd just hire someone to do it for me, but the truth is, there are TOO MANY broken or unsightly things in my house to pay others to fix all of them. In a one-income home with a special needs child (which for the uninitiated, translates into thousands of dollars in therapy bills), we have a rather lean home fix it budget.

And no - I don't have a handy husband.

But whinecrywhinecrywhine...it is what it is. And lately, I've been thinking it's time I try my own hand at being handy.

My inaugural project was actually handed to me in the guise of my four year old daughter handing me a piece of a bathroom faucet.

This particular faucet belongs to "the kids' bathroom" - a room in which I spend as little time as possible. The floor tile is cracked, the lighting fixture is hideous and the cabinetry is just plain enough to escape looking obviously cheap. I'm usually too busy averting my eyes from the maroon accent tiles to care about the tacky little sink faucet. But now that it's broken...

...I've taken notice.

And while my initial reaction was to add it to the list of things that we'll finally fix a few weeks before we put our house back on the market (which should will probably happen sometime in 2017) - something made me stop and reconsider. It was probably the "I'm almost 40 and in serious need of some life direction - hear me roar" voice that keeps popping into my head lately, demanding that I get off my ass and DO SOMETHING already. But either way - It occurred to me that I could just replace the faucet myself.

After looking under the sink and seeing how simple of a job it would be - turn off the water, remove the old faucet, install the new one - I thought, "this is it." It would be my first foray into the world of simple home projects.

Okay - my first foray was actually installing some sliding closet doors that we desperately needed, but they're not all that attractive and I'd prefer that my "first foray" say "new and shiny," not "functional and not terrible looking."

So. First stop - the closest home improvement resource, which would be Home Depot. I used to feel like I needed a nap after five minutes in these giant warehouses...but excitement over this new adventure (and the three children climbing in and out of the cart) kept my previous apathy at bay.

We picked up some pumpkins on our way into the store, because who DOESN'T make seasonal impulse purchases when kids are involved? And we then made a beeline for the bathroom stuff. Which means we looked at paint chips, exclaimed over hoses and searched for the restrooms on our way to the bathroom stuff (again - kids).

After finding the best size/cost option for my needs, I put two faucet boxes in the cart. My own bathroom faucet is also pretty bad, and I was feeling ambitious.

Savvy home improvement shopper that I am, I noticed a list of tools I would need printed on the box. And I knew that we didn't own "channel pliers." So we forged on to the tool aisles.

At this point, I knew my time was running short with the kids. But before they made a break for the chainsaw display, I was able to snag one small item for my own bathroom cabinet: a knob. The original one fell off a year ago and I've been meaning to replace it...well, you know - see above for an explanation on what happened there.

Finally, we made it to the cash registers with our pumpkins, faucets, pliers, knob and three candy bars (what - you don't buy entrance AND exit bribes?). And then we were off!

Once home, I was able to restrain myself from destroying the kids' bathroom just a couple of hours before teeth brushing time...but it was a near thing. I was PUMPED!

I waited until the next morning after putting Oliver on the bus and the twins in from of a DVD. And THEN I was finally able to get to work.

I pulled out my tool bag...

Doesn't everyone keep their tools in an Arizona Trader Joe's bag?

...got organized...

...and opened my shiny new faucet.

Doesn't that look SO much better?

Of course, I first had to turn turn off the water. But guess what? Those knobs are really tight! It was obvious that I was going to have to use a wrench or something. But before I took care of that, I couldn't help myself. I just had to see how hard it would be to loosen those...um...things that held the other faucet in place under the sink.

NO! I didn't create a geyser of water in my bathroom.

Honestly? I couldn't if I tried. No matter what angle I used, I could not fit that damn wrench in the tiny space around the...things.

Talk about a buzz kill. This job was no longer looking so simple.

And I wondered if a real handyman would actually remove pieces of the cabinet to be able to use a wrench. Or maybe they have special wrenches for tight spaces. The latter seemed more likely...

Not to be denied my new found status of "handy," I checked out the faucet in my bathroom. Maybe I could just replace that one.

I was denied. Same problem.

So after a few minutes of pissed off incredulity, I closed my mouth (which was hanging open in full teenager "affronted face"). And I admitted defeat.

But I still had one other project that I could do! I had my knob. And in just a few minutes, I took my bathroom cabinet from this...

...to this.

I don't like to toot my own horn...but ain't she a beaut?

I think I might name her. Yes, she is a her - like a boat, right?

So as you can imagine, I'm feeling very accomplished. There is nothing quite so satisfying as a job well done.

And the lesson to be learned here? Don't sell yourself short!

Think you need other people to fix your house for you? Look at me! If I can replace a knob on a cabinet, then you totally can too. I believe in you. And more importantly, I now believe in myself.

Sigh. Have any good references for a handyman?

The "Real Housewife" of Decor Blogging

This is not my house.

(via The Selby)

I recently wrote a piece for The Powder Room about how my own house looks NOTHING like the fabulous spaces I feature here. A confession of sorts.

And I wanted to title it as above - but they changed it. I guess the Real Housewives phenomenon isn't main stream enough "across the pond."

Anyway - here's a lead in:

Since I started my decor blog in 2010, I've often wondered what the real lives of other design bloggers are like. Their posts are filled with beautiful spaces, their home projects always get finished and you never hear about anyone buying a sewing machine that stays in the box.

While perusing the impeccable interior design images, the photos of impossibly well groomed children, and weekends spent antiquing ....well I feel like a bit of a slob.

Don't get me wrong. I try to make my home pretty and warm. There are homemade cupcakes for my children's birthday parties (which admittedly taste better than they look), and I can pull together a lovely floral arrangement of seasonal flowers. But my house is usually kind of a mess. Piles of papers always creep onto my dining room table and I DO own a sewing machine that has never been taken out of the box.

Click HERE to read the rest!

Rainbows All Around Us

I see a lot of rainbows. And some have been so incredibly memorable.

The technicolor one arcing over the road alongside the Potomac River as I drove home from work...The ethereal one that appeared in and out of the mist as my family drove to Hilton Head...The one that my children and I chased all over our neighborhood after spotting it in the sky on our drive home from the store. (Just realized that they're mostly memories that involve driving. Huh.)

And I see them all over my house. Always little ones though. The kind that appear on the carpet or the walls - light refracted by angles in the window panes.

But I have never in the almost five years I've lived in this house, seen something like this:

I'll take it as a sign of good things to come. Or at least a good weekend - hope you have one of those!

Sometimes It's all about the Packaging...

I've always preferred red to white wine. Not that I won't drink anything but red... I can enjoy pretty much any variety when paired with food, but I rarely buy a bottle of white.

So I had no illusions about why I was buying THIS one!

Is that not the prettiest bottle of wine you've ever seen? The contents are long gone, but the bottle is now up on a shelf waiting to be used for something...

Any ideas?

Every Box of Bobble Heads Has a Silver Lining

Mine did!

Yes - the much anticipated bobble heads arrived... And while just as hideous as expected, there weren't all that many of them. So that's good. And of course they were meant for the boys' room - it's not like Chris' mom decorates her own lovely house with bobble heads!

Anyway - she put some other goodies in the box for Eleanor, mostly in the way of junk jewelry. But there was a little something for me as well:

Isn't it gorgeous? It's a vintage candy box - or tin.

I'm madly in love with it and need to look up when it was manufactured. Based on the age of great grandparents, it should be the 40s...or possibly a little older?  How does one go about that? I know people do online searches for this kind of thing. But I'm not sure where to start - Ebay?

I do have this info from the bottom:

Here are some more views.

Now I just need to figure out where to put it...

Do you have any old everyday items that are now fabulous and vintage? Makes me want to start saving things for my grandchildren.

Framing Odd-Size Prints with Standard Frames (two ways)

Last week, I posted some pictures of bedrooms for my children that I recently pulled together with a very small (non-existent) decor budget.

I bought cheap Target/Michael's frames for several prints I already owned - but some of the pieces weren't standard sizes.

Three were prints of room renderings...

...and three were pages from a children's book that fell apart.

Here is how I was able to frame all all of them without expensive custom work...

First, the book pages. We had a used book, Willy The Wimp, with great illustrations that my children loved. Sadly - they loved it so much that the binding failed and all of the pages fell out. I hated the idea of throwing it away, so I saved my three favorites assuming that I'd find a use for them someday.

And TODAY, that would be wall decor for Oliver and George's room.

The images were square sizes, so I looked for frames with those dimensions. Since none were a perfect fit, I thought I'd buy ones with mats and mount the pages on top of them instead of behind.

All I needed was a blade, a straight edge (like a ruler) and a piece of cardboard to protect my table.

The first page included a border, so I thought I'd just use that for my cut line.

But - AARRGGHH! - as soon as I finished, I realized that it was now too small to mount over the mat!

Seriously - dumb mistake. But before I tossed it, I tried cutting the middle border off of the mat (which was supposed to hold four pictures) and putting an extra unneeded page behind the mat to fill in that gap.

Not perfect - but for a kid's room? It's fine.

In the future - one improvement I would make on this would be to use another piece of paper to cover the cut of the mat. It would create an additional border for the image and there wouldn't be any gap - noticeable or not.

The other two images filled the page, so I just needed to trim the ragged edges. One had a small tear...

...but again - for a kid's room, it's barely noticeable. My six and four year olds certainly aren't complaining...

I think they look pretty great!

Next - the prints of watercolor room renderings.

My mother gave these to me years ago, thinking that they'd look cute in frames - possibly in a bedroom. I never got around to it for my own room, but they're perfect for Eleanor.

I knew I'd have very small wall space to work with and frames with mats would be too big. So I found some that would almost fit allowing for just a little space around the images.

Since they didn't come with mats, I picked up some art paper (sold by the sheet) that I thought would provide a neutral background. A pattern or color would also have looked nice - but in this case, the border wouldn't be uniform and the effect would be odd.

The rest is obvious. I trimmed the images (which were mounted on sheets with printed borders) and then cut the art paper to fit into the frames.

Ta da! Took just a few minutes, not a lot of money...and for a little girls room? They look adorable.

Sometimes I think I avoid doing projects around my house because I know that it will look amateur. Well - maybe so - but amateur is better than nothing when you have limited means!

I'm going to go for it a little more often - things can always be re-done by professionals later.