:-)

Please, oh please, enjoy this.  I enjoy it very much.

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If you give a mouse a cookie...

Okay, so hopefully you all know that children’s book, “If you give a mouse a cookie, he’s going to ask for a glass of milk.  When you give him the milk, he’s going to ask for a straw"…and it goes on and on and on.  Well, that was me this weekend with the wreath.  I finished the wreath that I was sick of working on, so I wanted to hang it on the door to admire it.  I hung it on the door and all I saw was a pretty wreath hanging on an ugly orangey-peachy-brownish door.  So I decided to paint the door, you know, to go with the wreath.  Well, since I had to get all the painting supplies out anyway, and since I was already at Lowes looking at paint colors, I decided to go ahead and paint our nightstands that I’d been meaning to do for a while now.  And that will bring us to today’s blog post.  Yep.  Basically this weekend consisted of me handing the baby over to Matt, while I was scurrying around trying to get as much done as I possibly could. 

I’m pretty proud of these nightstands because they originally came from craigslist.  I love craigslist.  I think these were $30, for both.  And actually, they weren’t even technically nightstands, they were office storage.  The inside shelves are still labeled things like “outgoing mail” and “copies”.  (I leave the labels there because I think they’re funny)  Anyway, when I bought them they had been spray painted brown.  I actually didn’t mind the brown, but I knew I would eventually paint them a different color.  They aren’t anything fancy, or finely crafted, but that’s what makes the painting fun.  No pressure, if you totally mess up, you’re out $30 and go back to putting the alarm clocks on upside-down laundry baskets, which is what we used until I found these babies. 

So I went with a color called La Fonda Ortiz Gold.  I’ll be honest.  I picked it purely because of the name.  My door, by the way, was painted Purple Basil, and I only needed one quart of each color.  So after the color was chosen, I headed over to the hardware section.  I was tremendously disappointed with the selection at Lowes, I couldn’t find a single pull handle that I liked.  I did, however, find some knobs that were okay.  Since the original hardware was a pull handle, I just bought two knobs for each door, and I’m really happy with the way they turned out.  The four knobs together remind me of buttons on a pea coat.  So I’m very pleased with my mini-renovations this week, and now I’m going to start thinking about next weekend.

Before

The painting begins!

Almost done!

After

Another after photo

A Cheap Wreath Idea…

So I was actually wanting to make this wreath for fall/Thanksgiving, but I didn’t get it finished until last week, so now it’s a Christmas wreath.  I saw the idea on Made, where Dana made a wreath sort of like this but out of acorns.  I love the acorns, and they would have been even cheaper than the beans, if I lived near some trees that dropped acorns.  But at $1.29 for a bag of great northern beans, a Styrofoam wreath and some stuff I already had, you can’t beat a new wreath for under $5.  Now there is a catch.  It takes A LOT of time and patience, but if you do a little bit each night, who am I kidding, it still takes forever.  But eventually, it’s done, even if it’s not for the holiday you intended.  Which brings me to my next point about my bean wreath……I’m going to try to use it for every holiday this year.  On Made, Dana  just painted it different colors when she wanted a new look.  So in the interest of making the most of this thing, I’m going to paint it a new color each month.  I’ll keep you posted.

If you’re interested in making one yourself, it’s really easy.  Here’s what you’ll need:

-styrofoam wreath base (use a 40% off coupon from the Sunday paper at Michaels)

-one 16oz. bag of beans, I bought two, but didn’t even use a whole bag.  I chose Great Northern for the color, but pick whatever color you’d like.

-glue, lots of it.  I like Aileen’s tacky glue.  You need something thicker than regular white glue.

-spray paint is optional

1.        You can really use any type of Styrofoam wreath base, I chose the more squared off edges just because I liked the look of it.  I chose to paint my wreath with black spray paint, just so I couldn’t see the white Styrofoam.  I already had black spray paint, but if I didn’t I probably would have just left it white, it’s up to you.

2.       Start gluing beans!  I started with a diagonal line of beans going from edge to edge.  I found it was faster to put a lot of glue in a 2 or 3 inch section and then just do as many rows as I could before the glue dried.  Also, because my wreath base is flat, I didn’t glue any beans on the back, just 3 sides.  I found it was helpful to kind of push each bean into the styrofoam  to help it hold better.

3.       Keep gluing beans!  You’ll find that you need to adjust your pattern as you go around the wreath.  I tried to pick out the smaller beans for the rows closer to the center and saved the larger ones for the outside rows. 

4.       Get a glass of wine and then keep…….gluing……..beans……one day it will be over. 

5.       Horray!  I used a ribbon to hang mine because I liked the look but also because once it’s done, it can be kind of heavy.  You could also use some wire or a traditional wreath hanger.  Let me know if you have any questions!  Enjoy!

Oh, you better watch out...

My sister and I can remember when we were little, in the middle of the summer, one of us would start to act up and Grandma Graham would just start to quietly sing, “Oh, you better watch out…you better not cry….”.  That reminder that the omnipotent Santa was watching us was all that we needed to make us good for goodness sake.  It didn’t matter what time of the year it was.  I like the idea of this sort of psychological weaponry for children.  That’s why I’m fully planning on using this little trick on Elin.  In order to use it though, she also has to know who Santa is, not only that, but she probably needs to meet with him each year.  She can report on her behavior for the past year (or ¾ year in this case) and they can discuss toys and just in general get caught up with each other.  Lucky for us, Santa is taking some time out of his busiest toy production season to hang out at the Park Place Mall.  I hear he really likes the kiosk that sells the crocs. 

So last Sunday we psyched ourselves up enough to brave the mall traffic, mall parking lot, mall people and the mall germs (yes, there were grown adults coughing and sneezing without the slightest concern for covering their mouths.  Where do these people come from?)  We figured that if Santa could make the trip all the way from the North Pole to Tucson, the least we could do would be drive the mall closest to our house.  So we did, and we stood in line, which surprisingly only took about 30 minutes or so.  We got to watch kids meet with Santa, which is always fun because most of them freak out.  A lot of you already know this, but I LOVE pictures of kids crying on Santa’s lap.  It’s just so funny to me because I don’t blame these children one bit.  From a child’s perspective the whole process is just absurd.  The best part about these pictures is that the parents (myself included) go to so much effort for the kids to look nice.  And we’re all standing in line trying to keep the kids clean and picture worthy.  By the time it’s actually your turn there’s so much built up to these few seconds with Santa, and then the kid gets freaked out and just starts wailing, but Santa smiles anyway, making the picture that much funnier.  I love it.  So what does my kid do?  She says, “See ya Mom!  Why hello sir.  My name is Elin and I’d be happy to sit on your lap for a picture if you have a spare moment.”  No crying, not even a wimper.  We got some good pictures and also a long conversation about talking to strangers.  Enjoy!