Sweater chop shop

The other day Miss Reagan & I went on a window shopping excursion (read idea shopping) trip through the Wonderland of Beauty.   

Otherwise known as Anthropologie.

We went... we saw... we drooled.

I promptly went to the thrift store (the next day) and purchased some goodies to Anthro-up.

Here is what I did.

Took this Davids Bridal dress (purchased at Village Discount Outlet on Farnsworth on 3 for $1 day) 

Cut the front of the dress into strips and made these flowers.  There is plenty of the dress to make more goodies.

Gap sweater, purchased at VDO on 3 for $1 day.  

Notice it was very large at the shoulders, impossibly small at the bottom.  

No way this... ahem... traditionally built woman was fitting in that.   

So I cut the sweater from the V-neck down to the bottom.   The sides roll inward, no sewing necessary.  

                                                    

Pin flowers on sweater... viola!

Are there any other Anthro girls on Thrift store budgets?  Share your tips & projects w me pleeeeeease.

Kitchen Work - the island

Honey Pie is a gracious and generous man.  

He divvies up the finances quite fairly, giving me the household budget, 

groceries, clothing and and spending money.

  

I get to spend it the way I want, he does not give a hoot what I do with my left overs. 

I get left overs by using cloth diapers, coupons, bulk purchasing, buying clothes second hand etc.  

I shop at Aldi, Cermack, Michaels Fresh Market where I save 40-90% on my groceries.

I make our bread, we do not drink pop. 

We do not buy pre-cooked or prepared foods.  

We eat fruit & veggies instead of chips and Oreos.

It may not sound like much, but it adds up!

I saved my left overs for 2 years and got ... A KITCHEN REDO!

I am a Horchow girl on a Goodwill budget.  

I'm not complaining about it.  Far from it.   

The hunt for what I have in mind and the journey to make it into what I want, 

ahhhhh there is joy in that journey! 

I love to look at home dec ideas.

         In so doing, I stumbled across this hand carved beauty.  

Priced at $8, 550

(find it here http://www.finesgallery.com/InfopageMFP-333.htm)

 It is a little bit toooo ornate, even for me, and that is saying something.

Wonder what Frued would say about my desire for opulace?  Oh well, never mind.

I prefer something more like this, which I found in a magazine but cannot find online.  

Since it is NOT living room work time... YET...( insert minacial laughter here) what is a girl to DO with her dream of oh-so-fabulous-wood corbels?  

Where could they go in the kitchen?

(kitchen before)

I know what you are thinking... well duh Rachel...slap them on the island of course.

Yes, I think you are right.

Add a bit of paint, my oh-so-fab-corbels and a few pieces of trim later,

and you get.....

Taaaaa-Daaaa

Yes indeedie, it is the same island.  

And that my friends, is the story of the island that cloth diapers built.

***************

The boring detail stuff

I found these corbels 70% off at  http://www.osbornewood.com/

They recently ran them 90% off  

which made them around $70 each (paint grade)

sign up for their sale emails!

The actual WORK was done by Mike & Sarah Haiser of MGH Construction

contact them at http://www.mghconstruction.com/

where you can see more of my kitchen under the kitchen photos!

Naked Yard Party

We moved into Blessings House in the middle of the summer.  The yard was my husbands every dream come true.  In  his estimable opinion a yard only needs one thing to be perfect with a capital P.  NICE GRASS.  And nice grass we had.  Little else.

In faith, dreaming of a lush garden of Eden, minus the snake, I had used my birthday/anniversary/Mothers Day money to have a flowerbed cut into the front side walkway and driveway.  It looked like this.

I'm sure those dandy concrete planters caught your eye.  I rescued from the curb of an ancient victorian house being stripped.  The pair were a wee bit chipped and black, but a round or two of spray paint froofied them right up.  They now stand guard at the steps of the front entryway.  Those babies weighed about a thousand pounds each.    You just gotta love strangers who will help fetch and carry for you when you need it.

Then I threw a Naked Yard Party.  I sent out a whiny pitiful explanation of my naked yard and invited folks to dig up a piece of something they had plenty of, in exchange for food and non-inebriating libations.  Some folks did just that.  Dug up some green leafy things.  Others grabbed a pot of something from the store.  All were welcome.

Next spring/summer we welcomed this.... the blue and white planters are my version of treasure.  They are stinking hard to find so if you see any snatch them up for me.  Pretty Please with sugar on top.

Ordered bulbs from ebay that fall and was thrilled and delighted the next summer with this

 

Never one to be hindered or hampered by conventional rules, I planted tomato, lettuce and carrots right there in the front along with the flowers.  It was lovely to walk out and pick our salad fixins fresh while cutting flowers for the table.

There was one hitch... Miss Reagan accidentally transplanted one of her Russian Giant sunflowers into the front flowerbed.  It looked like a TREE.  Seriously.  People would slow down and stare at the monstrosity of a sunflower growing up into the heavens like a modern day Jack's beanstalk.  Brent is 6'4 and it dwarfed him.

I will not go into horrifying detail  concerning my removal of the evergreen bushes near the front porch.  Lets just say that Honey Pie said it couldn't be done.  I proved it could.  Unfortunately their removal resulted in water coming in through the window well.  Something about roots sucking up rain water and when the roots were no more the water had to go somewhere else.  Who knew? Let's just say the pleasure of being RIGHT, for once, was overshadowed by the water ruining stuff in my sewing room.  Urggg. 

So if YOU have a naked yard of your own..... have a Naked Yard Party and fill 'er up.

The Art of Frugality

Use it up, wear it out.  Make it do or do without.  Old words that ring truer than ever in these days.  Coming from my red-neck, mostly-second-hand-everything childhood I am a born repurposer.  I am sure that I cut my first teeth on someones garage sale table while my mother found a treasure for our home.  I have a long and proud heritage of second handing and repurposing.  


Today I want to share with you a repurposed thrift store find.    It was a leather coat that had seen better days, frayed edges and worn seams.  It's days as a coat were over, but it had plenty of wear yet as ... drum roll please....shoes!

I love the Bobux & Robeez boutique leather  & cloth soft shoes.  They are comfy, they fit Baby G's chubby little foot like a glove and they are so stinking cute.  I have several pair, cutsy ones for wearing to church and around town.  But, more is more girl that I am... I wanted more. 


So I found (free) patterns for them, cut up the  thrift store suede jacket and viola!  Baby G has some run-around-the house shoes. 

I experimented a bit on these two pair, adding in some blue ultra suede and pieces of an old leather skirt.  They are a little cuter than the first pair... but still woefully unbeautiful.   Hopefully I'll get better with practice and he'll have some cuter ones soon.  

Check out the free pattern and step by step instructions at  http://www.tackyliving.com/article.php?id=121
and try your own hand at it.


For AMAZING photos of other peoples BEAUTIFUL work look here   http://www.flickr.com/groups/bittybooties/

You are going to have to live with it.

Hubby is one of THOSE people.
He measures everything.
I eyeball it.
His way is right.
My way is right.

He gets HIVES when he sees a new, gasp in horror, nail hole.
I figure that the offending hole will soon be covered by my project!


He came home one day to discover my newest domestic endeavor.
A a faux antiqued mirror to go over the mantle.
Nailed to the wall.
Eyeball measured.
He might near fainted.

It looked good to me.
It just could NOT be perfectly centered.  He was sure.
He measured.
It was 1/16th of an inch off.

He grimaced, in actual mental distress.
Then told me with firm conviction...
"You are going to have to LIVE with this"and walked off,
He was right.  I am happy.

Imperfection, imitations.
These are good enough for my house,
but not my heart.
May I always be able to know the difference between
what is real
what is just for show.

May I always remember that some things
done imperfectly
I will have to live with
forever.

The Cottage

Once the deal was struck, the money borrowed, the house ours there was the ordeal of the WAIT.  Due to the building of the new home we would not be able to move into Blessings House for a year.  Rather than wait we immediately put ours up for sale and began the hunt for a rental.  Honey Pie had in mind an apt or efficiency long term hotel suite.  I had in mind new furniture for Blessings.  So I hunted around and found, drum roll please, The Cottage.


I decided to call it The Cottage because The Scary House, as my children had started referring to it, just did not have a grateful ring.  They called it that because of the narrow dark stairway and hallway that was the things horror stories are made of.  Lets just say that I am a picture freak, I take photos of EVERYTHING.  I took no images of that house.  Nary a one.  It was not a conscious decision, but looking back it speaks volumes to me of my emotional state.


The Cottage was a hundred year old house with original.... everything.  Almost.  It was in an older section of town (read scary) had tons of issues BUT was only $600 per month. Yes indeedy $600.  That plus the fact that it sat next door to my children's great uncle & aunt brought it up considerably in the desirability department.  Honey Pie was unsure, but willing.  It had only a single window unit for a/c.  I will leave it up to your imagination how thrilled he was about that.  I purchased two small ones from Sams club for the bedrooms and reminded myself that millions of people live without air.  It was a small price to pay for saving up some curtain money.  Those curtains were certainly worked out with sweat equity of a new sort, as the kitchen was like an oven.


I scraped off 8 layers of wall paper in the dining room only to discover, to my everlasting horror, that there was NOTHING underneath.  Nothing but the frame boards.  AGGG!  So I applied 300, yes mam, three hundred pounds of drywall compound to those boards.  With my hands.  It ended up looking like the inside of the Olive Garden, but with the artistic addition of my fingerprints.


I painted the entire kitchen white.  Countertops, fridge, cabinets the works.  I quickly ran out of energy and extra dollars and since we were only going to be there for 12 months I killed the 'do more' bug with one swift swat of my plastered/paint covered hand. I will draw the curtain of gratitude over the rest of the house.  Suffice to say that the low rent made it far more appealing to me than it did to any of my friends who came over.  All three of my kiddos shared a room and that was a fun thing for them.  Many a night they lay awake listening to story tapes, giggling and whispering together.  And they adored Aunt P & Uncle W next door.  They spent hours over there, playing with the dog, playing in the yard, being petted and pampered.


There were unexpected things that arose during our stay in The Cottage.  Looking back I am not sure that living there was the best thing for us. I had some seizures, James had separation anxiety from the move/relocation, Reagan developed IBS and Lincoln suffered terrible breathing troubles. I wonder if there were mold issues in the house which brought on some of the emotional/physical trauma we endured.  But I cannot say for sure.  Knowing what I know now, I would not do it again.  Just in case.


One of the many lessons I learned from the 12 months we lived there was that your surroundings DO affect your emotions.  The effect can be positive or negative.  The darkness, the narrow stairway, the dungeon basement laundry and the neighborhood were energy suckers.  I learned, and learned quick, that saving money is NOT always worth the sacrifice.  Sometimes spending more is the wiser choice.  That whole location location location thing is a truism.

Another lesson is that hope is a powerful thing.  The bright dream of Blessings House was keep me looking forward, to keep me on track, to keep my focus on the future.  No matter where you find yourself, you CAN look forward to the future.  I may be HERE, but I am not HERE to stay!

The Hunt

So we were on the hunt.  Honey Pie fell in love with a white colonial.  It was a repo, and in our price range.  I wasn't sold on it but since it is one of the FEW things he has EVER said he wanted, I was willing.  We put in the bid.  Our home did not sell.  Sigh.  He was disappointed.

Honey Pies mom had told me the story many times of a home they purchased when Honey Pie was an infant.  They had put a way below list price offer on a custom home.  The owners told them that they had 3 offers for several thousand dollars MORE, but they wanted them, the young Coltharp family, to live in their home.  It was a home they never could have afforded, but by a miracle it was handed to them.  I loved that story.  I still do.

One Sunday we visited yet another new on the market repo. It was a mess.  But, cue the music, across the street was the castle of my dreams.  Mind you, it was waaaaayyyyy beyond our price range.  Double our price range.  It made me drool just looking at it.  I pointed it out to Honey Pie who promptly said "Houses like that do not even make it onto the market, the seller will KNOW someone who wants it."  Remember this was at the high point of the selling market.

But I just could not get that house off my mind.  I started driving past it on my way to church.  The more I saw it, the more it called to me.  One day, on a whim, I stopped and knocked on the door.  I proceeded to tell the person at the door how much I looooovvvvved their house, and did by chance she know the genius who had designed it, as I would very much be interested in seeing their other work, in case they made this fine castle in a miniature cottage form.  Why yes indeed, she DID know who had designed it, her father.  She took my phone number and promised to give it to him.  A day or two later he called.  I prattled on about how his house was the most beautiful house in Aurora, and believe me, I'd seen them all, and did he happen to have designed any others around here?  He was gracious and told me about his design firm.  We parted on friendly terms.  I had it in mind to look him up when I sold a book (my version of the 'when my ship comes in' daydream) and have him build me one!

The house kept calling to me, and so I began to drive around it every time we went to church.  That is approximately 5 or 6 times a week.  The kiddos and I would drive by, slow down and pray for the family who lived there.  Several times I knocked on the door and asked if they had any prayer requests.  I called every 6 months or so to check on prayer requests.  Sure enough, prayers were answered!  I would invite them to special services, and we have plenty of those!  One day I got a call, it was the home owner.  He was going to build a new home in a neighboring community, and would I like to come see the inside of his house.  Would I?  Wahoo!  This would give me decorating ideas for my someday house, which we had not found yet.

I dragged Honey Pie and his mom & dad along for The Visit.  I assured them that we were meant to meet these folks, and that I had been inviting them for over a YEAR to our church.  They just HAD to come meet them and see this house.  To humor me, they went along.

We got the grand tour.  It was beautiful.  A thousand times more house than we had ever looked at before.  We sat in their living room and talked, and they told us they knew I loved the house (!!) and would like to offer us first chance at it before they put it up for sale.  They were planning to start building their new home and would be living in this one for a year longer.  They had the appraisal papers and house plans and specs for us to take home.  As we walked down the sidewalk, all three of my sweet ones pounced on me, lovingly, and said "Now Rachel, you know that people like us cannot afford homes like this, please do not get your heart set on this house".  I assured them that I did not have my heart SET on it, that I did love it, and was overwhelmed by the interior space, but that my vision was for the people, not the home.

Honey Pie and I had a long talk, he was reluctant to even place an offer.  He knew that our limit was way below the value of the home.  He worried that it might offend them.  I countered that our best offer was that, our best.  What did we have to lose?  He begrudgingly typed it up, assuring them we meant no disrespect to the value of the home, and the personal investment the designer had in it.  He explained our financial situation, the choice to be a one income family, the home we needed to sell etc.  He added in the dollar amount, wincing.  It was hard on his pride, but he did it for me.

He was too embarrassed to even deliver the offer to the man in person.  So he left it inside the storm door.  Four eternally long days later he called me, choked up.  Honey Pie was crying.  He said the home owner had called and told him "I know I could sell my house for a profit, but I want you to have it."  It was almost word for word the same thing spoken to his father 36 years earlier!  The house was ours!