decor craft projects

With all of the craze of tassles, I thought that I would try my hand at it. Here are pictures of my first two tassles.



Next project is a table top clock. I have seen a couple of clocks that were on a pedestal, or a finial. I loved them, and searched in actual stores to see if I could buy one. I have not found any at all. So off to search for parts. I finally found this little clock at Kirkland's, and figured that I could mount it on something.

I wasn't sure what to mount it on, but finally decided on this tree/bird's nest/candle holder thingy. It was a greenish gold color, and I wanted the clock to look like it was all one piece and like they were supposed to go together. I didn't get a picture before I started painting, but you can see the color.

Then I painted it a cranberry color to get some of the red tones in the wood of the clock.

Then I painted black over that, and let some of the underlying red tones show through.

It is not an exact color match, but I think that it looks pretty good.

exercise

Megan and I have been jogging/walking every night together. It started as me wanting to go walking, and I invited her to come with me and she agreed. Then it turned into a good time for us to talk about the trouble that she is having with friends at school, and finally meshed into us both wanting to be able to jog farther. We are slowly increasing the distance that we jog, and then we walk the rest of the way. We both look forward to going all day, and this is our second week of doing it. We'd better keep it up. It will be harder at the times that Bruce isn't here because then we will have to bring Conor. Conor will make it harder to keep up our pace, get into a rhythm, and to talk. We'll still do it.

fun

The kids and I went to see High School Musical 3 this weekend. It was very good. I recommend it as a fun family movie.

Halloween

Megan was an Indian and Conor was a Jedi apprentice. Easy home made costumes.

organizing laundry room

There is a sight called orgjunkie.com, and she has an organizing theme for each month. November's theme is the laundry room, and it was on my list of things to do as well, so that motivated me to get started. The laundry room tends to be a dump all room where if we have something that needs fixing, or have something that we need to put somewhere else, it gets stuffed in the laundry room. To the right are the washer and dryer, and on the left is a counter and cupboards. Here is a before picture. It is at its worst.



I organized all of the cupboards, put craft stuff in boxes with labels, brought some extra craft stuff from the office and put it above the cupboards in boxes, and I put in two shelves above the washer and dryer. I may even put some pictures up, but that will be later. At least it is all organized. Here are the afters.

decorative display of decorative fish

I will preface this by saying that I love the ocean, and wanted to be a marine biologist. I keep getting these pretty decorative fish as gifts, and they have been sitting on a shelf in the family room. Then at one point it hit me, I have this glass bowl thing, and fish should live in a bowl. One of our bathrooms is also going towards an ocean theme. So I combined the fish and the bowl and put them in the bathroom. The blue stand that they are on is a plate and a bud vase I think that I hot glued together. It makes the display stand out a bit.

antique table

Our community had a community wide garage sale, so I was thinking about all of the things that I could get rid of during the sale, and I thought of this little table that has been sitting in the garage for years. Then I thought that no, I could not sell a solid wood perfectly good table even if I don't love it. So I was thinking about what I could do to it to make me love it. I came up with some great ideas, but I realized that I can't do the invasive things because this is a true antique washstand from the 1800's in what appears to be original condition. It would be wrong to do things to it. Here it is, and then I will tell you what I wanted to do, and what I still may do.

Notice the top of it is not attached. I will fix that at some time. One problem is it being a wash stand, it has this hole in the top of it for the bowl and pitcher. I found a little plate that fits the hole perfectly, and secured it with repositionable glue stickers. I also got a little lamp for it.



Now what I really wanted to do. I was going to paint the whole thing black, and cover the top with slate tiles. I think that I will still make a top that can be set on top of the current top and cover it with slate or something similar. We will see, and so will you if I ever get to that. In the meantime, it is funcional, looks pretty good, and stuff won't fall through the center of it.