Meditation

Yes, I need meditation daily. And now it will be staring me in the face because our new paint color is...dum de dum...Benjamin Moore's Mediation. I was finally like, you know what, I am clueless and I threw myself at the mercy of my favorite place in the world - Pottery Barn. Because Pottery Barn is sheer genius, both instore and online, and because they obviously knew I was desperate, they had the perfect color right there on their website - Meditation. I even liked the name of it!

Hubby was able to run by Ace Hardware and pick up a sample (along with two more - just in case) and we finally agreed that yes, it was the right color for our living room. I could see the relief on his face. Then, my mama came over and confirmed our choice. Since she is a decorating machine, I trust her opinon more than anyone's and know that we're making the right choice.

I am feeling so on top of the world right now!

A Paint Chip On My Shoulder

This upcoming weekend is an exciting time for me...I get to hang out with Loftis/Andrews cousins at the 1st Annual Cousin's Brunch that will be hosted at my hacienda Saturday morning. We are an all-girl family...8 first cousins and two new baby second cousins will be coming into my home for some fun girl family time.

So it has to be perfect. Every (fresh) flower in place, no dust or Jake 'n Lucy hair to be found, and me in a perfect apron serving perfect food that is perfectly cooked.

And then I woke up. Because right now, my house is in chaos, due to Lucy the wall eating dog causing several door casings to be replaced, new shoe moulding to be put down, and pretty much all the trim needing to be painted. And, contrary to our original plan, the entire ROOM has to be repainted. Which means one dreaded thing...picking out paint.

I love paint. I really do. But paint and I have a love/hate relationship, due to the fact that I feel that paint lies to me. When I'm in the store, it looks one way. When I get home, it looks quite different, causing me to want to forgo the whole painting thing altogether and spend the rest of my time in a living room that looks like a failed paint by numbers kit.

Currently, we are displaying six different samples of paint on the wall. After I head to Ace Hardware after work, it will be closer to ten.

I think the reason why I am so leery of making a firm paint color decision is because when we decided to paint our Barney purple bedroom (yes, seriously, it was purple...all of it), I was trying to go for a pretty neutral brown tone. Instead of pretty neutral brown, however, it looks salmon-ish. How that even happens when the paint sample clearly said "PRETTY NEUTRAL BROWN TONE" I'm not sure. But needless to say, it has scarred me for life.

So, in the midst of trying to make sure the menu is fabulous, toying with the idea of trying to make an edible fruit tree (I'm starting to lean towards a *%!$ no), and trying to clean top to bottom, I'm also dealing with paint decisions that would normally take me at least a month.

But on the bright side...I get to see my cousins...and the thing about family? They can't disown you because you make a bad paint decision. Thank goodness!

Filling An Empty (Wall) Space

I think one of the hardest things about decorating a home is finding stuff to put on the walls. I have the hardest time trying to decide what would or would not look good, should it be a photo, should it be matted, etc., etc., etc. Unfortunately, my lack of decision making ability has led to some really bare spaces in my house (not counting the lack of a couch in the living room - that bare space is its own separate story). Because I can be very easily overwhelmed when it comes to trying to decorate a home, which is why I can't go in the Target home section anymore, I have decided to just take it room by room.

Right now, the room at the center of my glare is the kitchen. First of all, let me say that I love my kitchen. It is probably the biggest room in the house and my dad paid a cabinet maker to come in and put in a pantry and I love it. What I don't love are the massive spaces of wall on two sides that don't balance with the massive amounts of cabinets (for a small house) on the other side. I also don't love the cabinet hardware, but that too is another post.

In my quest for trying to find wall art that doesn't look a.) cheap b.) chintzy or c.) like I don't know a dang thing about art or decorating, I came across this site and found these prints that I just fell madly in love with. I'm thinking of getting all four of them and having them matted and framed at Hobby Lobby (50% off sale every other week, you know). They are original

Kitchen Woes & Dog Foes

First of all, it has been a week on my recently reduced prescription of Cymbalta and I have yet to jump off a building somewhere or gauge my eyeballs out. No withdrawals! Three more weeks until my doctor's appointment and the next step to being drug free.

In other news, a small slice of border still hangs forlornly to our kitchen walls and there is no end in sight to this god awful idea I had to redo our kitchen. Not even really redo...just make...prettier. One of my dad's friends who is a skilled cabinet maker is coming over on Monday night to take measurements for our new pantry! We are removing the office nook area that sits weirdly beside our fridge which will be a great spot for some extra kitchen storage. And, since we converted our sunroom into an office/reading room/sewing room (when I get some time to actually take sewing lessons), everything will have its own space. Thank goodness. OH - got a fantastic deal yesterday that needs to be shared because I'm so proud of it.

I purchased this desk from Target when furnishing our sunroom and I believe I paid $115 for it because it was on sale. Since we are moving our office from our kitchen, I needed a file cabinet to go with it. Can I just say that file cabinets are really expensive? Like $150 expensive brand new from Target? So I improvised. I went to a used office supply place yesterday and got an old black file cabinet for $16. No lie. It just need a little TLC and black spray paint and it will be good to go. It even has those adorable tag holders that I'm going to write on to make it look "retro" because, well, it is retro! After I'm done, I hope it looks like something similiar to this. I hope.

On to the dog woes. Lucy is nuts. She ate our kitchen wall. Twice. Like, to the sheetrock. How do you eat a wall, I ask you? I'm thinking of giving her away. Not really because it wouldn't repair my wall anyway, but for GOSH SAKES. Hopefully Chad is as good with patching walls as he is with getting into school. If so, then the situation can be resolved peacefully.

Ya'll have a good weekend and wish me luck on my spray painting venture!

A Little Home Help

I was given a really good piece of advice yesterday. I have gotten to the breaking point over getting the !?*#$@ wallpaper border down from the lofty heights of our kitchen walls, so I began taking a survey of how people get down wall paper border. Amazingly, they said nothing about the $15 we spent at Lowe's on a scorer (I had no ideas what that was until said Lowe's trip) and the overpriced wall paper getting down secret formula that one just HAS to have to get down wallpaper.

Last night I used hot water and Dawn dish detergent in a spray bottle. It worked like a charm and now I am down to the last two walls...I can see the light at the end of the tunnel.

I am really wanting to get the kitchen painted by this weekend because there is a slight chance that we're going to have a Memorial Day cookout and I'm hoping that the newly painted kitchen will draw attention away from the random dryer STILL sitting in our mudroom and our ruined couch and love seat that is now looking even more fetching since we threw some yellow sheets over it. Just call us the "Design on a Penny" team.

Note to self - the next couch we have, put the random sheets on it BEFORE the dogs chew it to shreds. Or maybe, keep the dang dogs off the couch.

A husband with a paint brush...it's a beautiful thing

Our sunroom has stood empty (except for the random rocking chair that belongs to my MIL) for almost two years. I take that back - there are built ins that are full of books and a TV and old school Nintendo, and also this random bird cage that I purchased off ebay and put books in IT - anyway, I digress. The point is, we've really had no rhyme or reason to the sunroom and after two years of whining about it, I finally just shut up and put up - money that is - and my darling husband finally started helping me with its transformation. We are making our sunroom into a lovely office/reading space for yours truly. I have purchased the desk, the parsons chair, and various other decorative accoutrements and last night, the amazing happened. My husband primed the walls for a fresh coat of paint! Now, Chad is NOT lazy by any means, but he does work and go to school full time, so evenings are usually spent studying , at least on the weeknights, and our weekends are so full that doing house stuff is out of the question. But he primed those walls with abandon and by the end of the week, my sunroom is going to look completely different. I can't express my excitement. Even though it won't be "DONE" for a few more months (gotta save for a comfy chair to play Nintendo in), it's well on it's way.

Did I mention that I adore my sweet husband? Pictures to come later...

To clean or not to clean?

I have to be honest with you about something. My house is dirty. I mean, it needs some major overhaul work with some Comet, the Scrubbing Bubbles team, and Mr. Clean. I don't think my mop and broom would call and serenade me with random seventies songs because, baby, they wouldn't WANT to come back.

Living with two dogs is part of the problem. As much as I love the babies, they are furry and collect and cause more dust bunnies than I have ever seen. Also my house was built, oh, more than half a century ago. Evidently they're harder to keep clean. Or maybe I'm just making excuses because I'm not one of those women for whom cleaning is their drug of choice. Unfortunately for me, my husband is not a neat freak either. He does clean floors, which is helpful when he decides that he needs them to be clean (once every six months), but for every day stuff? Yeah, our house could be filled with trash and mud and he'd just ignore it - of THAT I am certain.

So this past weekend, I looked around (this was after Jake had stomach problems that didn't make it outside) and burst into tears. Yeah there were water works. A LOT. And wailing and gnashing of teeth. I screamed that I WORKED ALL THE TIME and DIDN'T HAVE TIME OR THE ENERGY TO CLEAN THE *$!(#! house. NOW you see why I need prayer? In all honesty though, I am at work until 5:30 or 6 every night. I do have every other Friday off, but sometimes I still have to go in and work and usually spend the rest of the day running errands. Or sleeping off the past two weeks of work. I will admit it. I nap on my day off. Sue me.

I called a maid service today. They do spring cleaning. It will cost me $150 for them to come and spring clean my house. I said, please come. Then I called my husband, who gave a sound in the back of his throat when I mentioned the cost - like I had caused him an early heart attack. Or did something to his gall bladder. Of course that irritated me like no other. I can't even begin to explain the anger rushing through my system when he didn't just immediately choke back his sighs and huffs and just support my need for a spring clean. I wanted to reach through the phone and strangle him. Is that normal for a wife to feel that way? Or am I hormonal? Or am I just a working wife that can't do it all? Is that normal, too? Or am I just a whiner? Or a little of all the above?

Anyway, should I get the cleaning service in? It's bad, ya'll. Real bad. Obviously.

Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness

On July 4, 1776, our Founding Fathers declared independence from England's tyranny. In that Declaration is a phrase that has been perverted and distorted so much that it has given people a false image of what they deserve:

"We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness."

I usually try not to get political with my thoughts on my blog, but today's coverage of last night's town hall meeting with President Obama in Ft. Meyers, Florida, has disgusted me. First there is Julio, a college student (good for him) that has been working at McDonald's for quite some time (also good for him). His issue is with health insurance. He can't get it. Or says he can't. Or maybe he can't stomach the fact that his pay check will be dramatically decreased each week when the company takes out his insurance payments. Welcome to the club.
Second is Miss Henrietta, who has allegedly been living in her car, is unemployed, etc. She begs the President to help her out of her situation. No one questioned her on WHY she was unemployed, WHERE her former home went, or WHAT she spent her money on. She was automatically labeled as a victim of circumstance, which may or may not have been the case.

The audacity of these people boggles my mind. When did it become an unalienable RIGHT to own a home? To have health insurance? I thought that my rights were life (thank goodness I didn't get aborted), liberty (better not say too much or I could offend someone), and the PURSUIT of happiness. I take that to mean that I am entitled to pursue my OWN happiness, not pursue OTHERS to give me happiness, wealth, a home, health insurance, etc.

What happened to personal accountability? Or personal pride, for that matter? I grew up in a family that figured things out themselves. They didn't rely on the government or anyone else to pay their bills, be it their mortgage or any other creditor. I'm thankful that that attitude has been passed on to me. Yes, I do have some outstanding bills that my husband and I are working to pay off. But we get up every day, dust ourselves off from working the day before, and go at it again with a vengenance, thanking God that we have another day to work! We aren't going to sit around waiting for a government handout. And neither should anyone else.