A Wordless Wednesday

I'm not feeling so good today so this is going to be my "Wordless (or should I say "Word few") Wednesday."

I feel so blessed to have this painting grace my dining room.

This Is Keeping Me Up At Night...

So, I've been getting to bed really late because of a couple of little obsessions...

This year my husband and I were just doing Christmas for the kids because we couldn't afford to do much more. I got laid off back in July and, even though we now aren't paying for childcare, we are really strapped for cash.

However, my husband must have some secret little savings account somewhere, because he got me the mother of all gift sets. Let me just tell you, when I first saw this at the store I was taking my 4 year old to the bathroom and stopped dead in my tracks at the display on the way there. Coming back from the bathroom, I couldn't see straight and when we got back with the rest of the family my husband said, "What's wrong with you?" So, I told him just to walk to the bathroom and he'd see. So he did and while he was gone I found a chair to sit in... He came back and just said, "Wow! 33 disks!?! 86 hours!?!"

Do you know yet???

Yeah! I fell in the floor and cried when he said, "Santa must have dropped something in the fireplace..." Okay, call me a freak, but not until I tell you the other thing that's been keeping me up late...

I guess I'm a tad bit obsessed with this:



Now, this is not a Christmas present. It's not even a new game, we bought it used at EB. We had rented this game, but I didn't play it... well, I tried but wasn't any good, so I just gave up. We bought it months ago and just stowed it with our other Wii games. Then a couple of weeks ago my husband mentioned it and decided to finally get it out and play it. It's really fun to watch, but one night I decided to give it another go and ended up having a blast. Now I'm hooked!!

Okay, now you can call me a freak!

Yes, I'm still here...

No, no, nothing happened to the Sacred Marty Crane Chair (see the bottom of this post)! Sorry for the little bloggy vacation; I think there was some holiday we were all a little wrapped up in...



Anyway, I'm playing catch up now, but just wanted to post real quick like about this contest to win this:

I just entered this contest, but please, please don't go over there and enter it too, 'cause I never win anything and need all the help I can get...

We Elf'd Ourselves

Send your own ElfYourself eCards

A Couple of Silly, Little (But Finished!) Christmas Gifts

Well, I've finished some of those gifts I mentioned that I have been feverishly working on. I had a few that I deemed were safe to show photos without ruining any one's Christmas surprise... So here they are:


We made these butterfly ornaments (okay, so I don't have a hanger on them yet...), and there is a story behind this, but I want to wait to share it because it ties in with some other ornaments I made. I'll just say that both my mother and my mother-in-law love butterflies, so these are for them. Oh, and my four year old called dibs on the orange one...

No story to go with this one... it's a "garland" of Christmas-y houses for my sister-in-law. She has tons of bookcases in her house and we thought this could easily decorate the top of one. I got the idea when I was looking at some back issues of Mary Englebreit's Home Companion magazine (I'll edit this later to put which issue... I don't want to hunt it back down again right now...)

That's it. Pretty boring tonight... I'm wanting to figure out how to make one of those nifty buttons that no one but Alli would want. Oh, who am I kidding, she wouldn't even want one, but I'd hack into her account anyway to put it on her blog. *insert widely grinning smilie here*

Why have I been MIA??

Okay, so my best friend (she just started blogging!) calls me this afternoon to ask me what is going on because I haven't blogged since Tuesday. Well, I've been staying up way too late for the past two nights working on Christmas presents. So, Alli (or anyone else I know IRL), if you happen to get anything that looks eerily similar to something in these photos just know they took some effort on my part, okay so a certain four year old helped a lot! But since we have no money for gifts I had to come up with something... sorry, hope you like it!):

My "Lucy Tree" Angel

I realized that I didn't post a close up of the angel on my girls' tree on our tour, so I'm going to tell you all about her. Hmmm... Maybe I'll even name her St. Lucy. Huh, yeah, I think I will. Come to think of it, I put the "Lucy Tree" up on St. Lucy's Day! Or, maybe St. Lucy's Eve... I think that's a sign, or something. Anyway, here she is before I gave her a little wardrobe update:
Pretty, but I thought she needed some color.


I had a bag of various ribbon. Now, I've got to tell you, I have two hot glue guns in this house, one of which has gone into hiding. And I have, probably around 75 glue sticks for the guns. It beats me where they are. I ended up using all of the part of a glue stick I had left in my glue gun to do a mistreament for Guinevere, so thanks to my neighbor for letting me borrow her Super, Duper, Ultra Hot Professional Burn All Your Fingertips Off glue gun! Thanks Jo!!!

So, after cutting some ribbons to an appropriate length and arranging them to a pattern I thought looked okay, I hot glued them to another gold piece of ribbon.

Some onto the front:

Others onto the back:

Then I folded the ribbon over and over again to hide the edges where I glued. All I had left to do was to tie it around Lucy's waist like an apron, and there you have it!

I think this is a little more festive!

Christmas Tour of the White House

See! I told you it was the White House! Boy that's a blurry picture!


Father Christmas gives you merry greetings:

Our "Welcome Un-wreath." If you are selling something, don’t bother stopping by :)

As you come in you will see my masterpiece garland on our mantle. You can read more about it here.

Our Christmas tree gets sad when she has to look at the garland.

Well, at least Miss Guinevere will give her some attention!

Oh, and if you’ll notice, I did add more to the garland after the garland show and tell. See?
They don’t look as great in the photo, but they are leaded glass icicles and they really sparkle.

Oh, the tree is getting sad again, so let’s pay her some attention.

Here is a squirrel roasting a chestnut over an open fire!

How about a Superman lunchbox?

I wonder what’s for lunch...

Oooooh! Hippo and meerkat! My favorite!




The top of the tree:

I'm not too good at the artsy photography...



As you head to the Dining Room, please notice our Advent wreath.

Oh, yes, I almost forgot. We have two Advent wreaths.

You’ll notice that it’s Gaudette Sunday.

And here is my sideboard, where Molly and Kirsten have taken up temporary residence.

Wow! These picture make my walls look really pink!! They aren’t, though. They are Valspar Apricot 5. They have more of an orange undertone to tie in with the coral handles there on the sideboard...

A little touch of Christmas in my bedroom:

Okay, what’s with the camera making my walls look pink?? This room is a deep shade of crimson. I don’t know the name because it was this color when we moved in...



Here’s a bit of Christmas in the bathroom. I don’t like the fake garland sprig thingy, but Santa seemed like he needed something.

I loved this Santa because he was blue.

Here is the Charlie Brown (no Lucy) tree I made for my girls. The angel is almost bigger than the tree

Well, okay, so I didn’t make the actual tree. I made the ornaments. Here are some close ups:

And most importantly... why we celebrate.

Jesus will be placed in the creche on Christmas Eve.

Now, for a reality check. On your way out, you see "The Marty Crane Chair."

If anything ever happens to this chair, this blog will be abandoned as I will have entered Witness Protection...

Hope you enjoyed touring my home!

An Ugly Duckling of a Bathtub

Chris asked me in this post if that was my bathtub to the right of the window. Well, yeah, it is, but I'm going to give you the real deal on this.



Here is the glorious arched alcove bath:

And here we have a basket of magazines to peruse...

...or to hide the three layers of linoleum that are peeling up from mildew!



Here is the bath from a different angle:

That tile going around the arch is just ugly.

"What's that?" you say? "What's that thing at the top where the shower head is supposed to be?"

Why, it's a broken shower head nozzle! And it's ready to spray the skin right of your body like a power washer!!

Oh, this is the example of the lovely mildewed corners of the bathtub...

And this is the lovely job the previous owners did of putting up a fake (cardboard) tile do-hickey on the back of the tub. Gotta love how they pieced the thing!!

Well, I guess I should mention some pros about the tub now. I do absolutely adore the alcove, although I'd like to figure out how to improve the tiles (you can't paint them can you???) And the tub itself is so deep and great for soaking. I also love the lines of the tub which you can see in the second pic...

Hmm, maybe I can get pictures of my grandparents tub on here after Christmas. It's really neat... REALLY colorful, but really neat.

Dinner and a Show

Again I'm going to try to make this one quick, so I can get to a painting that's being sitting around for a week, a little Charlie Brown (no, maybe Lucy) tree that's been sitting around for two weeks, and paper ornament patterns that, well, they've just been sitting for a day, but they've got to get done!

Tonight I made pizza for dinner. I have never made pizza (well, unless you count the frozen box kind...) for dinner, but I wanted to get rid of the chicken I made to other night, so I was determined to do it. Oh, and did I mention that we aren't eating tomatoes?? We've renounced foods containing salicylates for a few weeks to see if it helps my 4 year old and some issues we've been having. Tomatoes are at the top of the list of foods we will re-introduce because we love Italian food, and my husband makes the most excellent spaghetti!

So, instead I made a homemade Alfredo pizza with chicken and spinach. I didn't make the crust from scratch... I cheated and used some Rhodes frozen bread dough. Here are the results:

Another thing I forgot was mozzarella cheese, so I used Parmesan and some Monterrey jack instead. This was great stuff!!!

On with the show... after dinner we decided to go see this house not too far from here. It's all decorated for Christmas, and when we got to it there were ten other cars trying to get a good spot to see it. Why?? The people had every square foot of yard and every square inch of house covered in lights. They had them all set to a program that times the lights with music! You've heard of this, right?? You put your radio to a certain station so you can hear the music in your car and just sit back and enjoy! These people have been doing this for, oh, the past three or four years, and it's always entertaining, especially for the kids. So, we watched for a while and then came home. Fun!

Bathroom Window Mistreatment

I'm going to try and make this short and sweet today. I'm busy making Christmas ornaments out of stuff around my house for gifts since we have no money right now... I'll try to get a post up of them soon.

Anyway I've had this fabric in my closet for a year and a half, I would guess. I was keeping it back to reupholster my chairs at some point down the road. There were maybe six yards of fabric, so I decided to cut it in half and do a mistreatment of my bathroom window.

I got some upholstery tacks from Home Depot, 20 for 97 cents (hey, I just realized there's no cent symbol on my keyboard... what is the world coming to when you don't even use the cent symbol anymore!)! Then I folded my fabric up several times. Then I just tacked it up with a few of the tacks! I didn't even need the glue gun, I just sort of tucked the raw edges in and was done!!

Here are the final results:

A little closer view:

Ah, the casualties of war!!!

Hope you enjoyed this post!