My Boring Life

Today finds me waiting with bated breath for the mail carrier. Why? Because the only thing I have to look forward to today is my shipment of felt.

Yes, the stuff we played with in elementary school to make Christmas decorations with Elmer’s Glue™ and popsicle sticks. But the felt I ordered is wool, so it’s more sturdy to use for the flowers I am addicted to making love to make. Hopefully this evening I will be sitting in front of the TV cutting out shapes in preparation to hot glue my fingers together make the pretty new styles I found on the interwebnets.

I did tell y’all my life is boring.

Anyway, I’m off to stalk the mailbox check to see if it’s here yet. Hope y’all have a far more exciting Saturday!! 🙂

Overstuffed

I have come to a conclusion: there is no room for anything in this house.

After days of clearing out the upstairs scrapbooking stuff from the storage closet, only to organize what I kept back in it, it just seems like I still have no room for anything. Add to that the full SUV I took to Goodwill drop-off this past Saturday, and I still have a cluttered garage. Every shelf and bookcase and cabinet is completely full.

I thought of turning to Craigslist or some similar way of advertising all the stuff I want to set fire to banish from the premises. But I am a bit *ahem* leery of doing that. Maybe I’ll just set it all on the sidewalk with a sign that says “FREE STUFF”. All I know is I have plans for this house, and that entails getting rid of a LOT of crap:

• I want to set up a dart board and a fridge in the garage.
• I want to have my own scrapping area.
• I want to put all the books in shelf units.
• I want to organize all the power tools into ONE place.
• And finally, I want to set up my stained-glass art area.

I have PLANS, people. I just need the oomph to get going.

That, and more shelves, apparently 😉

 

I Am Totally NOT Ignoring Y’all. Honest!

This past holiday weekend was a blur of activity at Casa de Aggie. We raked leaves, cut down errant branches, trimmed unruly bushes, and washed down dirty patio furniture. That was outside, obviously. Inside, we installed new light fixtures, cleaned the old ones, changed filters, dead light bulbs, unclogged drains, and did general maintenance.

Someone told me there were some football games of import. The only thing I saw on the TV was a layer of dust, and that was promptly removed.

I hope to get back in the groove of blogging soon. Between cleaning and organizing and downsizing and therapy (that’s physical therapy, ok??), it feels like I have no time left to blog. Oh, and I have a wine party next weekend. Oh, and the weekend after that I have a birthday and a scrap swap. Oh, and it’s almost time for Blood, Sweat, and Tears Day™.

DOES THIS EVER END????

Don’t bother answering that. It was rhetorical. Anyway, here’s a pic of the new foyer light fixture.

Yeah, it’s not this one, but it’s still pretty cool! Not only did I get it waaaaaaaaaaaaaay on sale, I also put an Edison™ bulb in it. It was a moral imperative. Next up? The Just-This-Side-Of-Redneck Chandelier™. It would be an awesome Mother’s Day gift.

Yes, I know the next so-called holiday is Valentine’s Day, but I ain’t holding my breath 😉

Ahhhh, Sunday

I love Sundays. Not to be confused with The Sundays, which I also love. Sundays tend to be very slow around here. That’s a good thing, because I am still getting rid of stuff upstairs.

I think I defied some law of physics, getting all that crap to fit in one closet.

Anyway, off I go to try and finish closing the gate to Hades which I have opened. In the meantime, enjoy a Sunday earworm.

Hey, it could have been worse. It could have been Rebecca Black 😉

Have a great Sunday!

Funny Findings

So, I am still plodding along, cleaning out the storage closet upstairs. I did say this would be a week long project. If I didn’t say it, I was A) too busy crying or 2) I was trying to figure out why I had bought a bag of rocks when I have a yard full of them.

Anyway, as I kept digging out crap and boxes and bags of forgotten loot I found treasure!!

How cool is that?? I had no idea that was in there. Probably a good thing, too, considering how my kids think outside the box. No telling where they would have “grown” them. Like in the toilet tank.

I also found a huge latte mug with the words “Chocolate Lover” on it (have no idea why I own such a thing…), a battery-operated piggy bank (Son had two and kept one in the box), and a weird glass vase that belongs to Eldest. Oh, and I also found three Coach™ handbags. Hand-me-downs from my sister. I love it when she cleans out her closet. I wish she would do it more often.

So far that is from two shelves thus cleared out. I have…. *mentally straining to count*…. six more shelves to go. And the floor. Can’t forget the floor.

Something tells me a match would have been a better choice 😉

Spring Loaded Cleaning

I know. It’s not spring yet.

I’m not loaded yet, either.

But I do have a lot of cleaning out to do. For years I have had all of my scrapbooking supplies in the storage closet upstairs. Also in that closet are the Christmas decorations. And last but not least, the many, many paperbacks I own.

Yes, I totally do this. And yes, I do look like Ginger Rogers, at least if you squint hard enough. And look straight into the Sun.

Anyway, today I am getting rid of a lot of stamps sets, scrapbooking papers, albums, and other what-nots. I’m sure there will be some kids toys and random crap I have shelved in there in a feeble attempt to “clean” before, but I am buckling down. No more Mrs. Nice Gal! If I don’t have a use for it, haven’t read it in a year, is out of style, or otherwise doesn’t contribute to the general well-being of the house, out it goes. I will endeavor to have before-and-after pics for y’all.

It will be like “Hoarders”, but on a very small scale. Miniscule scale. STOP JUDGING ME!!! 😀

A Place to Stick It

I use pins a lot. I use them not just for sewing, but also in my altered art. Pins are useful, needful things, aren’t they? You see them everywhere in your house, until you absolutely need one.

Then you can’t find one to save your hem.

Anyway, I decided to make a few pincushions from old tea cups for the Craft Pay-It-Forward. There are several tutorials on the internet and all are very easy to make, and have few variations. So, without further ado, here’s my simple tutorial on making teacup pincushions.

You’ll need:

• old teacups
• scrap fabric
• poly fill
• needle and thread
• scissors
• hot glue gun and glue sticks
• round template, like a salad plate

First, cut out a circle of scrap fabric using your choice of template. My teacups are about two and three inches in diameter, so I chose an eight inch salad plate for the larger cup, and a six inch dessert plate for the smaller cup.

Two Days Later

I know I am not getting off to a good start, keeping to my “one post a day” habit. But to be fair, I never made a resolution to do a post a day, so it’s not like I’m breaking one.

Today marks the Twelfth Day of Christmas, and Epiphany, which means it is now time to take down the Christmas decorations. But before I can do that,  have to filter out the unwanted decorations to toss out.

Along with the old lights that don’t work.

And the wrinkled wrapping paper saved through the years.

Oh, and who can forget the broken ornaments??

Normally this would be easy to do. However, the Christmas stuff is in the same storage area as my scrapbooking stuff, and of course, everything gets mixed up because that’s Newton’s Law at work with Murphy. No, I don’t know which Newton’s Law. I write for effect, not veracity. On top of that, I have not cleaned up after myself after the whirlwind craftmaking of the past few weeks. It looks like Archiver’s™ exploded.

So, today will be a very busy day. How do I know? I have been writing this post off and on for the past four hours.

Hope y’all’s Sunday is far less hectic!! 😀

Pins and Pretties

Well, start of the New Year, and no resolutions for me. That’s what Lent is for, in my opinion. But I want to be more social and make more friends, and if that’s a resolution, so be it. At least it’s a fun one!

Yesterday, my friend MsOz put up a challenge at the social-site-with-faces: 2013 Craft Pay-It-Forward. Basically, the first five people to reply get a handmade item from her, with the stipulation that those participating also place the same status on their social site and do a craft for others as well. After thinking and thinking and more thinking, I decided to make these:

Pincushions made from vintage tea cups! This one I made from leftover fabric and a cracked demitasse cup I found somewhere. So, today I am going out to scour the antique stores for lonely little tea cups in search of a home. I will post the tutorial later this week.

I don’t know if this would work with voodoo, but it would be fun to try 😉

So Much For That…

Seeing as today is a half day at the schools here, I was going to take advantage of my solitude and wrap presents.

And that was the plan, until Son came down with a fever, and Hubby decided that he was staying home for his half day.

So I have been catering to two men at home, moving piles of gifts to and fro, drinking more than my allotted caffeine allowance for today. I am severely tempted to not wrap anything and instead throw them in garbage bags and write their names on the bags with a Sharpie™.

Who am I kidding??? I will totally have the gifts wrapped by tonight and be serving hot chocolate and popcorn to celebrate the start of the Christmas holidays. It’s what I do! But I will be grumbling about it.

Courtesy of The Queen!!

Eh, my cheer will get here eventually. It arrives around the same time Hubby comes back from the liquor store. Until then, I will be wrestling with tape and paper cuts… 😉