Our latest collection

 

Do you remember a couple of years ago when Jason was obsessed with old, rusty cans?

 

He got the nickname "The Can Man" for a while.

 

You can read about his can collecting adventures here.

 

Thankfully, that collection has halted.  The cans are still placed strategically around the house and I'd still like to get rid of them.

 

But Jason found a new object to collect.

 

We were walking around an antique store called "Found" here in Ithaca about a month ago and this little guy caught Jason's eye through the glass showcase.

 

 

 

 

I had a gift certificate for my birthday from my mother-in-law and I kept wandering around the store looking at vintage jewelry to buy but Jason had his eye on that fish.

 

I finally decided on a cake plate . . . it just happened that the cost of the cake plate wouldn't use up all of the gift certificate, so I decided I'd get the fish bottle opener for Jason.

 

Jason loves the bottle opener, especially since our old bottle opener is a little junky thing that probably came from the dollar store.

 

Right before Jason's birthday, I went on Etsy to see if I could find some more bottle openers, since J mentioned that it would be cool to have a collection.  I couldn't believe the selection!

 

I remembered reading in Martha Stewart or somewhere that usually collectors pick a common theme for their collection.

 

So antique plate collectors will often pick plates with only gold edging, or only blue plates, or only plates from a certain time period . . . you get the idea.

 

(For the can man, it was any can with lots of rust.)

 

So I had some choices.

 

I could buy only fish bottle openers.

 

Or only animal bottle openers.

 

In the end, I decided to go with bronze or gold bottle openers.

 

 

I found this darling little dog bottle opener.

 

 

 

 

And this horse bottle opener.

 

 

 

 

 

So now we have the beginning of a collection (the fish remains Jason's favorite).  Aren't they cute?!

 

 

 

 

 

 

And I'm no longer embarrassed when someone needs a bottle opener at my house.  Now we just need to figure out how to display them!

 

Drawer Pulls = No Drama

I remember about eight years ago when Imani's father and I were splitting up.  Not only was my family as I knew it falling apart, but everything in my life seemed in disarray.

I couldn't believe I was finding myself in this situation -- a single mom of a bi-racial daughter - 

with no clue how to raise a child

and no clue how to raise a bi-racial daughter

and  no clue how to get my life on track.

I needed a break, so I packed Imani in the car and headed off to Virginia with a friend. She was going to visit her daughter and I was going to visit my friend Jennifer, who I'd known since kindergarten.

We made the 12 hour trek together and, looking back, I'm surprised my friend agreed to travel such a long distance with a two-and-a-half year old in the back seat.  I'm glad she did.

Staying with Jennifer was a welcome break from all the craziness I was experiencing. My life had become something off a bad, dramatic daytime talk show like Ricki Lake or Maury Povich and my head was spinning.

Jennifer's house offered me peace and quiet.  In my thinking I noticed a recurrent theme in Jennifer's house.

She had fancy drawer pulls on her dressers, bureaus and cabinets. 

I remember we had dinner at another friend's house during my stay and lo and behold, she too had fancy drawer pulls -- drawer pulls shaped like flowers, birds, butterflies . . .

I commented on their drawer pulls and how fancy they looked and I think Jennifer and Laura both thought I was joking.

"Seriously, Steph . . . drawer pulls take all of five minutes to put on!" Jennifer said laughing.

I thought about it for a minute.

"I guess when your life is so full of drama, you don't have time to notice drawer pulls," I said. 

 "That's it. When I go home, I'm getting fancy drawer pulls." 

It sounds silly, but I was dead serious.  When your life isn't full of drama, you can notice the details around your house.  It became a running joke that week and when I left, Jennifer and Laura gave me six of these:

I still have them and will likely keep them forever.

To me, they are symbolic of having a drama-free life (for the most part!!). 

Sure, life gets hectic and crazy, but it's not out of control anymore.

And I'm happy to report that just the other day, I was in Hobby Lobby perusing one of my favorite aisles and I remembered Jennifer and Laura.

So I made a little purchase for our little guy's bedroom.

And when I got home, I replaced these

with these

May he have a life free of drama.

What about you?  Do you have fancy drawer pulls?

New Toys

I never did tell you how great my birthday was.

Not only did I get to go out to dinner with two of my favorite people in the whole world, but they got me an awesome gift too.  You can imagine my excitement when I opened one of my presents and it was this box!

This is a huge step up for me.  I've been working with a little Nikon CoolPix point and shoot camera for the past year.  Half of my time was spent deleting photos and retaking them because the camera I had was
so awful!

This amazing camera is not only a great gift for blogging, but it's going to be great for capturing memories of our baby and Imani too.  I remember when we got married and our pastor gave us a few pieces of advice.  His first piece of advice was to invest in a good camera to capture memories.  We finally listened.

(If you missed our DIY wedding, you can read about it here.)

I have no idea what I'm doing with photography so I am excited and nervous to learn. 
Any suggestions from those of you who own DSLR cameras is certainly welcome! 

I'd also love website suggestions, blog article links, book titles or anything else that would help me to learn this foreign language of photography!

As if this gift wasn't enough to keep me busy, tonight this arrived in the mail:

I haven't even taken it out of the box yet. 
I'm a little overwhelmed by these two pieces of technology to be honest!

If you follow me on Twitter, you know I won this from a giveaway at Beneath My Heart a few weeks ago.

(If you don't follow me on Twitter, get with the program! All the cool people are doing it :-)  Just click the link in the top right of my blog).

I am so excited to learn how to use this fancy schmancy little Silhouette machine that I can hardly stand it.  If I wasn't pregnant and didn't need all my time off for my baby, I'd be taking a vacation day (or two) just to play with my two new toys!



Keeping the Cape

As many of you know, Jason and I put an offer in on a big house out in the country and it was accepted.  The house was beautiful -- it was a renovated 1840s colonial and I was excited to have found it.

The entire process of listing my house and putting it on the market was far more emotional than I thought it would be.  I never realized just how attached I was to this little cape.  But we forged ahead, excited about our new venture.

To make a very long story short . . . as beautiful as a house might appear at times, what matters most is the home's structure.  Unfortunately, the home we were about to purchase had major structural problems.  Sometimes, when you want something really really badly, you try deny reality.  I was denying reality for quite some time in the process, but it became very evident that the structure had more damage than we were willing to take on and we decided to back out.

We thought about looking for another house, but after such an emotionally draining experience, we began noticing all the things we love about this little Cape and we've decided we love what we have.

Grace, at Sense and Simplicity is hosting a little blog party to list the five things you love about your home, and in looking around . . . I realized there is a lot I love about my house.

My house isn't overwhelmingly unique or awe-inspiring like this barn that was converted to a house (one of Jason's favorite type of houses by the way)

contemporary exterior design by dc metro architect Blackburn Architects, PC

contemporary exterior design by dc metro architect Blackburn Architects, PC

contemporary exterior design by dc metro architect Blackburn Architects, PC

And my house isn't some 1800s Tudor revival mansion with a manicured lawn

traditional exterior design by chicago architect Eifler & Associates Architects

traditional landscape design by chicago architect Eifler & Associates Architects

My house doesn't have any incredibly fancy amenities, like an infinity pool.
 
(Who in the world owns these places and what do they do for a livng?!)

tropical pool design by hong kong architect Original Vision Limited

contemporary pool design by George W Girvin & Associates

contemporary landscape design by vancouver landscape architect THOMAS KYLE: Landscape Architecture

 My house is just a cozy little Cape Cod in a small town in Upstate New York.

I know, we have GOT to do something with those steps!

So, in looking around, there are a lot of things I love, but I will narrow it down.  You'll find that I'm not that difficult to please.

Probably one of the single best features about my house is the enormous family room with cathedral ceilings.

 

With skylights, sliding glass doors, plenty of windows and a big bay window where we sit and watch unusually large herds of deer roam through our backyard, what's not to love about this space?

 

But the best part about this room is that at Christmas time, we get the biggest tree we can find!
 

Another feature of my house that I love is my deck.  It's not big or elaborate, but I enjoy sitting out there and having a cup of coffee in the morning or reading in the afternoon on the weekends (sorry for the rain in this photo . . .)

Another feature of my house that I love is the gas fireplace in our sitting room.  I have to confess that we cannot use it to actually have a fire because, although it's new, it sets the smoke detector off every single time we start it!  We need to address that this year, but I still love having it. 

I love the slate tiles Jason put in and I enjoy having a mantel to decorate (which currently needs an update).

Okay, the next thing I love is really silly and Jason will likely make me remove the photo if he reads this.  I love the marble tile he installed in the entry of my house.

Jason didn't really have any experience tiling and I picked out marble for the entry.  If you know anything about tiling, which we obviously didn't at the time, you'd know that marble is difficult to cut.  It is very soft and breaks really easily.  What should have been a small project turned out to be quite costly because of the many cutting mistakes.

To make matters worse, Jason wanted to just lay the tiles all straight and perpendicular.  I, of course, wanted a diamond shape in the center with little tiles bordering the center tile.  I haven't laid a single tile in my entire life and I am not the greatest at math with angles and cuts so I had no idea what trouble my idea would cause.  All I knew was that I saw something similar in a magazine and thought it'd be cool to have it in my house.

Jason argued with me that it was too difficult, so being the brat that I can sometimes be, I said, "Fine Jason. Just don't do it.  I'll just hire someone who can do it the way I want it done.  Forget about it."

But my good husband set out to tackle what he didn't know how to do and, in my opinion, it came out great.  I love this tile;  Jason hates it.  He sees his imperfections, but every time I look at it and see that diamond, I see my husband figuring out how to make my wish come true.

Like my bubble-gum pink toes dangling off that step?!  That pedicure was a celebration that recently, I survived lay-offs in my job .. . but I digress!

Back to what I love about my house.  Of course, I love my new tiled bathroom . . .

with a pebbled-floor shower. . . .

But what I love most about my house isn't any particular room.  I love that this house sat on the market forever and everyone laughed at it because it was so hideous and smelly.   But I had a vision, and Jason made it happen.

Every inch of my house has my husband's time and love poured into it.  He obtained his degree in Fine Arts and I often complain that he isn't doing anything with it but when I wake up each day, I realize his art is all around me. 

Our house has been his canvas.

Cloche Revisited

Although I was happy with my spray-painted cheese dome, every time I looked at it, I remembered those I'd seen on House of Hepworth's and Thrifty Decor Chick's.

To make matters worse, on the day I  published my Cheese Dome Cloche Club entry, one of my readers, Suzanne, emailed me to tell me she had done the same project and had posted about it on the EXACT same day.  I headed over to Suzanne's blog, "Mommy Moves Again" and wouldn't you know it. . . her cheese dome had a pedestal too!  That was it, I knew I needed to get a pedestal for my cloche to complete it.

After many trips to Sally's, I finally found the perfect pedestal that would become the new base for my cloche.  What I liked about it is that the base has a square shape, which I felt would add contrast to the circular shape of the cheese dome.

It was only 99 cents, and it's a good thing considering how disgustingly dirty it was.   It took some scrubbing to get this baby clean. 

I brought it home and cleaned it up, took it outside and gave it a few coats of spray paint.

I removed the little feet from my cheese dome and contemplated filling the holes with wood putty, but who is going to be looking at the base? 

I spray painted the base again to cover up where the feet had been.  Next, I applied wood glue to the pedestal and placed it in the center of the cheese dome base.  

 I put one of my three pound dumbells on it and let it dry.

Now I think I'm officially in the club.

Sally Ann Goods

I keep telling myself not to buy anything until after we move in July.  My  friend Lori keeps reminding me that every time I buy something, that is just another object that needs to be packed up and moved.  I keep telling her that if she'd finish her darn foyer already, I could blog about that and I wouldn't have to purchase anymore objects for projects!

In all seriousness, I like Lori's advice and use it all the time when Imani asks for something in the store.  It works perfectly.

Imani:  "Mom, can I have (insert any random toy or object here)?" 

Me:  "No, sweetie, anything we buy now is just another object we have to pack and move in July."

But unfortunately, I haven't followed Lori's advice for myself as much as I should.

We're definitely not doing any home improvement projects around here since we are preparing to move (as I'm sure you've noticed by my limited number of posts lately) and I have certainly slowed down with purchasing stuff lately. 

But on a recent trip to Sally Ann's, I couldn't pass up three things.

First, I found this brand-new lamp from Target. 

 I was so psyched because it was only $4.50!  Did I mention it is brand new . . . as in, tags are all still on it and the cord is still all wrapped up?

I plugged it in at the store and it worked!  I was so thrilled because it is similar to the lamps I have in my sitting room, which I think I paid $17 for about two years ago.

Next, I found this scummy wooden dish/planter that I am going to use for another project, which I'll post about tomorrow.  It was 99 cents.

Finally, I found these little framed pictures.  Imani has been begging me to get her two frames for a project she is working on for the computer nook.  These are perfect for what we have in mind. 

I was a bit disappointed with the price, $1.50 each, but I liked that they were real wood and that they matched.  I also liked the design in the wood and they are the perfect size for Imani's project.  Hopefully, I'll be able to show you the finished project this week.

Linking to:

Estate Goodies

When we first bought our house, not only was it painted a million crazy colors, but it also smelled like cats.  On top of that, it was an estate and it was filled with the previous owner's belongings.

The first thing we did was pulled everything out onto our front lawn and had an estate sale.  We didn't even take the time to put price tags on the stuff.  The goal was to get rid of everything as quickly as possible so that we could begin to renovate the house.

Our lease was up at our old apartment and we needed a place to lay our heads.  We couldn't function in this house with all of the previous owner's smelly belongings.

Looking back, people got some great deals.  We had a jar of old marbles and some collector went through and picked out a couple he liked.  I think he gave us $25 for two.  I'm sure they were probably worth more but at the time, we didn't care.

We sold hundreds of cigar boxes, old magazines, futons, and other objects that marked another person's life.

Fortunately, we kept some things, like this old picture.

And about a hundred Buddhas.  (We're not Buddhist, but we really liked all the Buddhas for decoration).

Here are just a few of my favorites.

This lady, who sits on our window ledge (along with the turtle and the little thing next to her).

This guy who's missing a hand.

This garden Buddha who was sitting outside near an urn of cat ashes (I'm not joking).

This jolly little guy who acts as a book end.

And a variety of other Buddhas who sit on our bookshelf.

The other day when he was cleaning out our garage, Jason found another old object that was left with this house.  He brought it in to display in our guest room.

I'll let you know what it is tomorrow, but I will tell you it's NOT another Buddha.