Little Black Dress

Fashion gurus are always telling us that a "little black dress" is a staple in any wardrobe.  Since my kitchen window has been a source of frustration for quite some time, it got me to thinking maybe that goes for windows too.  Please try not to pay too close attention to the next bad iPhone photo and the dirty dishes, but I forgot to take a true before picture and this was all I could come up with!

In all reality, this window just needs to be completely replaced, but that's just not in the budget.  You can see part of the half-round window above that has always just driven me crazy.  Why do builders put these crazy difficult windows in?

I had gotten a quote for a custom Roman shade to cover the window, but at $2000, it wasn't in the budget either.  Who spends that on a blind?  After quite a bit of searching for an alternative, I found this blind at West Elm.  It was a deal at $79.00!

It fit the space perfectly and helped hide the half-round (at least when the sun isn't shining through).  It all was still a little bland for me with the ivory cabinets and brown walls (the walls are next on my to-do list!) so I pulled the shade down and tried to work a little budget friendly magic.  I ordered 7 yards of 2 1/4" grosgrain ribbon from MJ Trim for $1.98/yd and set to work at soon as it came in the mail.

I extended the shade all the way out and started trimming the edges with the ribbon using my favorite adhesive for fabric.

I put the trim down both sides first trying to keep it as straight as possible and eyeballing equal distance from the edge on both sides.

Nest I did the bottom and top and just folded the ribbon over at both ends a bit to cover the cut edge.

While I waited for that to dry I broke out some black paint I had leftover from painting my front door and painted the trim around the window.

After the shade was dry I hung it back up and, voila!

I think those fashion gurus might just be right; everybody (or everything) could use a little black dress.

Good Things Happen When You Pay Attention

My cousin had been holding on to some plates that belonged to my great grandma "Peck" Peckenpaugh.  She dropped them by my house recently so I could ship them to my sister whose married name is "Perez."

Something happened while I was packing them to send to her.  I realized that an upside down "p" is in fact a "d" which obviously stands for "Dover."  

So I did what any good sister would do; kept 5 of the plates for myself, flipped one over and checked the manufacturer, logged on to Ebay, and bought matching salad plates for both of us.

I would love to add to the set for us, so I'll be checking Ebay often and scouting flea markets and estate sales to see what else I can find.

What Not To Do During The Holidays

Do not move into your basement the week of Thanksgiving so you can have your main floor hardwoods refinished;

unless they turn out like this.

Do not, that same week, rip everything out of your main floor bathroom;

unless you get a vanity like this to replace the old one.

Do not move all the furniture from your bedroom into your master bath and your living room the week before Christmas;

unless you get new bedroom carpet that looks like this.

Do not, that same week, rip off all the carpet and treads on your main stairs and replace them with oak treads;

unless you end up with stairs that look like these.

still without the handrail...

And do not, the Saturday before Christmas, have a custom cabinet installed in your lounge;

unless it rocks like this even before paint and hardware.

Without Words

My heart is shattered.  Praying that the God of all will wrap his loving arms around the people of Newtown, CT and the entire nation.  Please God, keep us from coming undone...

Christmas Tree Conundrum

Most years I don't think twice about how to decorate our Christmas tree.  But with Pinterest and a ginormous blogland to travel, sometimes I catch myself wondering if I should rethink the way I decorate it.  

Should I make it a color coordinated gradient like John and Sherry's?

Or maybe it should have a theme like this poinsettia tree.

This book tree is quite clever,

as is this wine bottle tree via Pinterest.

via www.nps.gov

Maybe just going large like the White House would be fun?  But at the end of all the "should I's" it always ends up like this.

If I made it match or gave it a theme, I would miss dragging out all the ornaments we've collected over our 20+ year marriage.  

Like the following three all handmade by my sister.

This one is a memorial to my husband's grandma who was a dairy farmer.

And this one is a memorial to my grandpa, who among other things, was a Republican and of course collected elephants of all shapes and sizes.

This one my "rock star" nephew made for us.

And this one my oldest son made when he was in grade school.  He is now 21.

And of course, Rock Chalk Jayhawk!

I've linked up with Honey We're Home to show off my tree this year.

Evolution of a Space

This is what the dining room looked like when we bought our house almost 3 years ago. (This is the previous owner's stuff)  The trim is faux painted to look like wood and not only are the walls faux painted to look like maroon leather, they are also textured. The walls in the  living room and kitchen were also textured and the kitchen walls had a nice grape and leaf motif stamped in them.  Needless to say, before even moving in we had the popcorn ceilings scraped and replaced with knock-down texture and all the walls skimmed to get rid of the texture. 

This is the third phase of the dining room as I am missing a picture of it painted yellow.  This room is directly on the left as you walk in our front door and quite a little way from the eat-in kitchen, so we actually didn't use it as a dining room all that often.

I decided to move our large dining room table into the kitchen and use this room as a lounge area.  I painted the ceiling in the bay window area the same color as the walls to try to make it disappear a bit and I also painted the ceiling a light grey and replaced the light fixture.  I found the grey club chairs on Overstock.com and they are actually very comfortable!  

In the process of making some repairs to other areas of the house, we had to tear up a bit of our wood floors at the back door.  I begged a little and we decided to take up the carpet in the "dining room" and the half bath right off the kitchen and then have all the floors refinished.  Yeah!  

This is how it looks today.  I have fabric purchased for curtains but that will probably have to wait until after the holidays.  Plans are in the works for built-ins in the alcove on the back wall and the carpet on the stairs will be replaced soon.  It has been a lengthy process but I think we will use the room much more this way.

A Season for Thankfulness

I was going to post this last week as part of Mama Kat's Pretty Much World Famous Writing Workshop because one of the writing prompts was "A Blessing in Disguise."  It didn't happen.  Frankly, I was still wrapping my brain around the previous weekend's events.  
How about we start at the very beginning; it's a very good place to start (according to Fraulein Maria).  I have healthy kids.  We don't visit the doctor often, none of them are on regular medications, in fact, rarely has even an antibiotic been prescribed to them.  I say this knowing how truly blessed I am for this.  All of them are active and regularly participate in school sponsored and recreational sports.  So a few weeks ago when I saw in the announcements that our school district was offering free athletic heart screenings, I thought about what a great idea that was and promptly put it out of my mind.  The day before the screenings, my youngest son TJ reminded me that they were going on and said I needed to call the school nurse and schedule with her if I wanted him to be screened.  Since we weren't overly busy that Saturday, I decided to go ahead and have it done.  The screening consisted of an EKG and an echocardiogram.  I was prepared for a quick in-and-out and a "you're all good."  What I got instead was a cardiologist telling me, "TJ has a condition called Wolff-Parkinson-White Syndrome and it can be hereditary so we need EKG's on your other children and yourself and your spouse.  Without much time to let that sink in, I took TJ home and roused Ali from bed to get her over for her EKG.  Within 15 minutes we had more shocking news that Ali also  had an arrhythmia, but hers was different and they suspected Long QT Syndrome.  Both conditions can cause fast, chaotic heart beats, fainting spells, and even sudden cardiac arrest.  Needless to say, both of them were told not to have any aerobic activity that could raise their heart rates until further testing and treatment.  As it stands now, TJ is scheduled for a catheter ablation to correct his condition and Ali has had a treadmill test and the cardiologist is still studying her records.  We aren't on the other side of this yet, but I know the blessing is there in the fact that we didn't find these conditions in an emergency room after a cardiac event or an even worse scenario.  You can bet I'll be saying more about this, but in the meantime, do some homework.  And please, if you have athletic heart screenings in your area, take advantage of it.