Random Monday Makeovers

Just a quick update to show you what I've been up to.

Since I'm trying to get a handle on all my hoarding of good intentions, I promised myself that  I wouldn't bring any garage sale reject back into this house unless I was ready to do something with it.  To keep myself honest, I have given the Man of the House permission to toss all procrastinated rejects into the trash at the end of June.  Therefore, I thought it best to get cracking.

I started with this rejected croquet set. Now, I realize that the logical thing to do would be to play a game of croquet, but that isn't the reason that I hoarded it.

 I only hoarded it for these.

I had a notion to paint and decoupage some faux ceramic orb thingies for my kitchen. Yes, I realize that I could have found black and white ones nearly anywhere, but I'm a hoarder and a cheapskate so I made these. 

Not too bad.

 I wanted them for my baker's rack. I've been dinking with that thing since I painted the kitchen last winter.  I've probably changed it twenty times.

Here's how it's looking today.

Sorry... the lighting is terrible.

Too bare and predictable?

Too much?

And is the height gap on that bottom shelf  bugging you, too?

It always looks like I have enough on my shelves or tables to the naked eye. Then, I take a photograph of them, and they look sort of bare. Then I add things, and it looks too crowded to the naked eye. Then I remove a few things and, it looks bare...

Does anyone else have that problem? 

I also changed out my bar stools this weekend.  You might remember that I bought those stools back in February during my Great Tagalong Shopping Adventure.  The cushions were beige and suedey and didn't match the rest of the kitchen. 

I covered them with this houndstooth instead. 

Like it...

So anyway, that's what I did this weekend. How about  you? 

Here's what I'm working on next:

Based on the mess I'm making, you might never seen an after shot of this one.

*****
Sharing this with Marty for Tabletop Tuesday

Simply Dimply

No, this week’s simple pleasure isn’t about smiling. I just wanted my title to rhyme.

Today, I'm  yakking about  this stuff.  

Now, I realize that not everyone reading this will *get* this simple pleasure. I’ve come to realize that poetry is like a music style. You either love it, or it hurts your ears.  

Put me in the love it column.

I think there must be some kind of poetry gene, and I was born with it. My paternal grandfather, the fiery evangelist from yesterday’s post, was a great lover of verse.

And then there's the Duchess...  

While most kids have a favorite storybook from their childhood and remember sitting on their mother’s lap as she turned the colorful pages, my best memories are of sitting in the kitchen, or just about anywhere, as mine turned the colorful words.

Longfellow is her favorite, and she interjected him regularly. It was impossible to leave the breakfast table any morning of April 18^th before she began,  Listen my children and you shall hear, of the midnight ride of Paul Revere… Of course, I never wanted to leave anyway. I stayed for the whole ride and hung on every word like Revere to the reigns.   

I sure hope the sister doesn't recognize this poetry book that I never returned to her...

I’m sad to report that I’m not a poet myself, though that’s not for lack of trying. As a little girl growing up, I fancied myself a great one. I bought those black and white composition books and sat outside for hours, writing Odes.

Because it’s always an Ode if it’s written outside, you know.

Little Debbie Seventh Grader tried to turn her angst into verse as well. Since absolutely nothing rhymes with the word Philip, I turned to free verse. Let’s just say that there are some things I’m mighty grateful that I never hoarded.

After a while, I realized that I wasn’t called to write poetry; I was just called to love it, and love it I have for nearly 50 years.

I say without exaggeration that I can sit for hours with a good anthology. I don’t have a favorite poem or poet, either, although I actually tried to photograph some favorites for this post. I gave up because it was taking too long.

It all depends on my mood.

 From ballads to sonnets, I love them all.

 (ok, maybe not e.e. cummings. he bugs me.)

  

It’s so important to me that I have tried my level best to pass the passion to the next generation.  I spontaneously burst into random acts of senseless rhyming just like my mother did, but it doesn’t appear that either daughter ever caught the bug. I blame their left- brained father who apparently stunk up the gene pool.

So I'm saving my books and my hope for the next generation. In the meantime, enjoying poetry is this week's simple pleasure.  
   

***** 

Now click THIS LINK

If you seek treasures

And party with 

The Simple Pleasures…

(It’s not as if I didn’t warn you, folks…)

The Duchess and Prince Charming

My parents were a mismatch if there ever was one.

She was five feet two.

 He was six feet five.

She was from the country.

 He was from the city.

She was a gifted musician.

 He played football... and basketball… and baseball.

She was a stiff backed Congregationalist.

He was a toe tapping tent meeter.

How they managed to make such a perfect team is one of life’s little mysteries.

The Duchess grew up in a Walton’s Mountain existence where everyone knew his neighbor and shopping was done by walking to the little country store. It was on one such trip to the store that she first encountered my father.  

Lying between her home and the country store was a little brown church which had been abandoned for years and recently reopened by one of those fiery evangelists from out of state. 

And he had a son. 

Because he hadn’t grown up and gone to school there, the son was pretty much a country curiosity. The Duchess knew nothing about him other than what she could glean by propping on her mother’s wringer washing machine and peering through field glasses as he tossed a football with her neighbor on Sunday afternoons.

Not that she was interested or anything…

So as she approached the church that Saturday afternoon, she easily recognized the familiar figure painting a sign on the front lawn.

Obviously, he noticed the figure approaching him as well, and as he was painting, he began to whistle. It wasn’t a wolf whistle or cat call or anything like that. He was merely whistling a tune.

It was The Dance of the Cuckoo, better known as the theme for Laurel and Hardy.

Harmless enough, perhaps, but while he appeared to be engrossed in his painting project, his tune seemed mysteriously whistled in time to her walking.

So she walked faster.

And he whistled faster.

The faster she walked, the faster he whistled.

Apparently, the preacher’s kid was what the Duchess calls, "fresh".

She was so horrified by the time she reached the store that she phoned home for rescue by automobile.

Now, the rest of the story has a truthiness that depends on the narrator. They both agree that it took place about a week later and at his church. According to the Duchess, she was reluctantly dragged to an event by an insistent friend who never did know how to take “no” for an answer.

Dad used phrases like chased me down in the vestibule of my father’s church.

Somewhere in the middle lies the truth that they officially met on the steps of the church, and that second meeting was more to her liking.  The attraction must have been observable because his mother invited her to a birthday party she was throwing him the next week.

And the rest, as they say, is history.

The courtship was a whirlwind, and within the year he pulled his car to a stop under a covered bridge on the way to a formal dance (which I like to call a Ball) and popped the question.

On June 8^th of the next year, they were married.  The Duchess wore a beautiful white cupcake dress and a crown of pearls that set the bridal standard for me for the rest of my life. Prince charming towered over her in a dinner jacket.

They were blessed enough to celebrate that day together for the next 43 years.

When Dad passed away, my sisters and I tried a variety of ways to make her anniversary day a special one, but after a while, she told us that it was OK to stop trying. Her anniversary was like Valentine’s Day, she said. It’s a day that can’t be fixed and didn’t need to be shared with daughters, no matter how well intentioned they might be.

Whether or not he’s here in the flesh, the day still belongs to The Duchess and her Prince Charming.

But I don’t think they would mind if on this anniversary day, I shared their story with you.

Seven Days of Purging Makes One Weak

Wooohoooo!

The Great Garage Sale Adventure is
finally
a thing of the past.

 I’m here to report that it was a moderate success.

I had settled on this past Saturday because they say the first of the month is the best time to have a yard sale. Lucky us… our oppressive drought was predicted to last well through the weekend so we took the plunge.

We ransacked both attics and every other conceivable innie paradise and brought anything we even remotely considered selling out to the garage. 


Did I mention that daily temperatures reached 100 degrees all week? 
They did. 

Which make this a hot mess...

Sorry, that's the best picture I have. I forgot to factor in lens condensation from the sweat balls on the end of my nose.

And do you know what we discovered? Junk. Seriously, there were very few big ticket items.  To be honest, I would have tossed in the towel right then and there had I not been using it for a sweat rag.    

In addition, I raised a tenacious android for a daughter who wouldn’t let me quit. She got the bossy gene from her grandmother and an organizing clean-freak gene from her aunt.  The good news is that bossy organized androids get things done.  

And we did.

She put that schmancy college education to use and set up a spread sheet upon which to log our schtuff, which she called inventory. 

We went through every single piece of inventory. A few items snuck back up the attic stairs.

Others took a long overdue ride to the dumpster. 

Most of it was listed and assigned a price. Stuff too goofy to deserve a price was boxed together.  

Baggies were filled with small stuff. 

Other stuff was given both an individual price and a box bargain price.

While I listed, they piled like-priced items together in various corners of the garage. Then we they she made sure it was all clean and complete with necessary parts. Then we tagged it.

Then, we divided it again, 

this time with similar items for display.

On Friday afternoon, we set out all our tables.  That’s just about when it started to thunder.

That thunder rolled for most of the evening, and since we’re in the middle of a serious drought, I would have gladly taken the rain.  Unfortunately, it was just another false alarm. We never got a drop. All we got was a mutant strain of hair spray resistant Georgia humidity.

We got up at 4:00 to set out our inventory.

I had planned to get a better shot, but early birds arrived a full hour early. I have an opinion about that, but I'll have to save it for another yakabout.

And we sold...

And a whole lot more.

Someone made us an offer on that sideboard
 that I've tried and failed to fix all year. It doesn't  have doors and hardware, but off it went.

I think I'm glad...

Before the end, we were close to empty...

I had followed advice and had a plan for the leftovers. I'm glad that I did because the free loaders came by after it was over. I have an opinion about that too, but I'll save it for the same yakabout where I cover the early birds...

In the end, we made exactly $333.00.  

$37.00 of which went to advertising.

Considering the hours worked multiplied by four workers from beginning to end, I figure that we would have made more money by hiring ourselves out as onion pickers.


I'm still calling it a moderate success since we did get rid of all that inventory.  For those of you cheering me on in the hoarding rehabilitation, I'm proud to report that I didn't bring a single thing back in the house.

I brought several...
Baby steps, folks, baby steps.

*****

Linking this with the other anti-procrastinators @ New Nostalgia

The Whackit Back Attack

I've blogged before about the crepe myrtles lining my street.  Being a lover of all things pink, their magenta explosions are something that I look forward to every summer.

Every winter, however, they look like this.   

Now, those myrtles get their yearly whackit whether we like it or not. It's done by order of the development, and the crepe myrtles, like their pals the pear trees, don't actually belong to the home owners.  We don't complain, though. We all know that a little pruning is best for the long term health of the tree.

By experience, we know that the whackit  is just a temporary rest.  In due time, the leaves start growing again.   Before too long, I'm a happy camper on pink watch.

pruning  + patience = reward. 

There's a reason for this ramble this morning. You may not have noticed, but  I've been doing some long overdue pruning myself lately.  For a variety of reasons, I need a rest.  Let's just say that I needed a little pruning for my pink to grow. 

And so I have whacked back the blog writing for a while and tried to entertain myself elsewhere.  First, I entertained myself by celebrating a milestone with Sir Lotsa Hair. You know the one...

We ditched the black and did it up green since that's our theme color for the year.

 Plus, he's not even close to over the hill. 

Oh please... with all that hair? 

After that, I entertained myself  with a Great Purging Adventure of epic proportions.  Why I habitually wait until Summer to get into that attic is a mystery. It might have had something to do with the fact that the two house servants I procreated were available to help. 

Or it might have had something to do with the looming deadline for that LIST that sits on my sideboard.

Smirking.

Or maybe, it's the perfect project for  Whackit Back Season.  After all, Hell hath no fury like a menopausal maniac purging an attic in the summertime. As far as attic whacking is concerned, I'm Debbie Scissorhands.

Whatever the reason, the Great Purging Adventure has kept me very occupied as I wait for my pink.

And just  look what I discovered on my walk this morning.

Proving once again that a little pruning is a positive thing.

By the way...
Does anyone have any tips for successful garage sales?

Stainless Steel Magnolias

Back in December, I found these little plates and bowls at my favorite local second hand store, and I had my heart all set to use them during  magnolia season. 

Unfortunately, magnolia season is also a busy season. For a variety of reasons, I found myself without a tablescaping team.  Since I don't fly well solo, I convinced the two daughters to help me out with a table before the bloom was off the magnolia.  Thanks, girls...

We set it up under the tree in our lawn. 

Besides the magnolia plates and bowls, we used some vintage Austrian china. The scalloped edges looked like petals to me.

 We borrowed this sheer tablecloth from the Duchess and used it over a dark green linen one. We're pretending that those are magnolia blossoms on there.

They'll probably be petunias next...

I found the magnolia napkins at another local store.

The napkin rings are actually shower curtain rings.
 I hoarded them from The Practical One's college bathroom just for this purpose.  

Because we're  steel magnolias.

Technically brushed nickel magnolias, but just go along, folks... 

Stainless steel magnolias.

(American Colonial by Oneida.)

These votive holders are kind of like that sheer tablecloth. 

They can be any flower I want them to be.

Today, I want them to be magnolias

so I set them in a blossom folded napkin. 

We've used this casual stemware before. 

It's a set called Claudia that I bought years ago at Waccamaw.

Set on magnolia coasters made from prints of my Mother's Day card this year.

The centerpiece is one simple magnolia. 

The fragrance was absolutely heavenly.

They smell like a quiet gardenia.

So there you have it, our magnolia table in the daytime.

And then with candles...

...as the sun was going down.

*****

Sharing with Between Naps on the Porch

and The Tablescaper for Seasonal Sundays.

Sandbagging and the Still Small Voice

Have you seen this video? 

If you’re the type who doesn’t like to click on videos, I’ll summarize.

It’s about a man who lives smack dab in the middle of the Mississippi floods.  Faced with two choices, fight or flight, he decided to stick around and take a stand for his house.  He did it by building a moat around his property and then sandbagging the moat.

Very cool.

I’m not really sure of the engineering of the whole thing. There’s never been a lot of activity on that left side of my brain, after all.  All I know is that as of the time of the filming, his house was standing, in the midst of all that flooding, on solid ground.

I saw that video on Saturday night, and I couldn’t get it off my mind. To say that I was impressed was an understatement. I was impressed with his courage. I was impressed with the folks working beside him.  More than anything, I was impressed with their tenacity.  Even as the video was being shot, boat loads of sandbags were arriving still.

It wasn’t enough to surround the house. They were determined to keep on sandbagging as long as absolutely necessary. 

Even though I live hundreds of miles from the mighty Mississippi, I relate to that man. My house is just standing in a flood path of a different sort. It’s a moral and cultural swell that looms all around me, threatening to sweep my house away in its snake- infested muddy waters.  

And just like that man, I have two choices, fight or flight.  

It probably won’t surprise you that I tend to gravitate toward the flight option. It’s my nature to rush off to some moral high ground and barricade my clan away from the world.  I sent my daughters to Christian school and obsessively monitored their friendships and pastimes.  I surrounded them with prayer breakfasts, and youth groups, and all sorts of churchiness.

But there’s one big difference between a cultural flood and a literal one. Cultural flood waters never recede. They just keep rising. The flight option doesn’t work so well.

You had better learn how to sandbag.

I was still thinking about this yesterday morning when our youth pastor stood to give his sermon, and in one of those Holy Coincidences, he finished what God had started.   Oh, he might not have used the term sandbagging, but he spoke of it nonetheless. He drew his sermon from  Deuteronomy 6:4-9.

Hear, O Israel: 

The LORD our God, the LORD is one. 

Love the LORD your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength.

 These commandments that I give you today are to be on your hearts.

  Impress them on your children.

 Talk about them when you sit at home

 and when you walk along the road,

 when you lie down and when you get up. 

Tie them as symbols on your hands 

and bind them on your foreheads.

 Write them on the doorframes of your houses and on your gates...

Sandbagging.

I like to think that we’ve done a lot of sandbagging over the years. God knows that these energizer bunnies have tried. Honestly?  I 'd like to think all that yakking has left us sitting pretty behind a moat, beyond the sandbags.                                                                     

But we aren’t.

The flood waters are muddier than ever and even closer to the property line. I can see them from where I stand, and frankly, Satan has tried his best to give me a spirit of fear.

But God has given me a man in Arkansas.  

And then he gave me a wonderful young pastor to remind me that the book of Deuteronomy is not the telling of the law; it's the retelling. It 's the first of many reminders that  as long as we have breath, we have sand bags to fill.  

And that's what I heard from the still small voice this weekend.

How about you? 

Sharing this with Jen and the others at Finding Heaven

The Great Oreck Intervention

Wooohooo!

 I’m here today to report a miracle.

My vacuum cleaner worked.

Quietly.

This may seem like a small matter to you, but it’s obviously a big deal to me. You see, for months, my vacuum cleaner has sounded like a lawn mower sucking gravel from a concrete floor.

I had been living with it because it was still  working… somewhat.

Plus, I’m too cheap to buy a new one.

Plus, I was ashamed to confess to the husband that I might possibly have killed another electric appliance.

We bought this particular upright because of my back problems.  We wanted something powerful yet lightweight, something that I could use every day if I wanted to.  Not that I wanted to.  

The Oreck XL seemed to fit the bill.

And you know how Mr. Oreck man says

 that it’s powerful enough to lift a bowling ball?

It isn’t.

It is, however, powerful enough to suck the fringe off a rug, a cloth off a table, and a curtain off a rod. Don’t ask me how I know this. Let’s just say that little sucker is the reason we can’t have small pets.

This phenomenon makes it a poor choice for those of us who like to retreat to our happy spot while doing the household chores.  One careless pass too close to the window and happy thoughts are interrupted by a high pitched squeal and the smell of burning rubber.  

I’m sure someone can relate.

I don’t know how you handle this, but I usually scream for a minute before turning off the machine and extracting the offending object from around the beater bars. If you unwrap gently and slowly, no one is the wiser.

Angry little tugs, however, can make the belt slip a little.  Very angry tugs can snap it completely. I’m not exactly sure what putting both feet on the beater bar while yanking out an entire spool of pink satin ribbon does, but the result sounds like a lawn mower sucking gravel off a concrete floor.

You can see why I had been reluctant to mention this recent episode to the husband.  I just suffered in silence. Too bad I couldn’t say the same for the Oreck.

Until yesterday.

Because yesterday, after months of gravel grinding, I plugged him in, and he ran as quietly and efficiently as when he was brand new. I’m almost positive that I could push him around easier too. I was so delighted that I cleaned the entire house.

Now, clearly the man of the house didn’t fix the Oreck; he’s been out of town all week. Plus, I hadn’t told him that the Oreck was in need of fixing.  I certainly didn’t fix it. My specialty is breaking.

But fixed it is.

I’m putting this in the electronic miracle category and calling it an act of Divine Oreck Intervention. I had a little service of thanksgiving, too.

And then I started thinking about my Divine Oreck Intervention…

And about the whirly swirly gremlin living in my computer.

I’ve been living with Della the demon possessed laptop for just about as long as I’ve been living with the protesting Oreck, yet it was the Oreck who got the faith healing.

Maybe God is much more interested in my cleaning than my blogging.

Just sayin’…

Have you ever had a divine appliance intervention?