Alice in Wonderland Caged Singing Flower

I went thrift store shopping again the other day and found this faboo bird cage. Well… it wasn’t exactly faboo to start with of course. It had flowers and crap all over it, but it was a steal so I snatched it up and took it home with a couple of other things

So I stripped it of its flowery vine stuff and cleaned it off. There’s a flower in it again, but not in the way it was before. I added one of my singing flowers and wired it in place with very visable wires. The idea behind the visible wires is that the flower might try to leap out and get you and has to be tied in place so it can’t do that. I want to add a big warning sign on it and a specimen lable, but I also wanted to share it right now.

It’s sitting on part of my desk area and makes me smile. I’m not sure if I want to sell this one or not and to be honest, I have no idea how to price my AiW stuff anyway. I make it out of bits and pieces I find, none of which seem to cost me very much. It takes time to make these specimens yes, but I still have a hard time considering them art. My cousin (the artist) told me that paint and canvas isn’t much either, but people pay for the final product and not the materials going in to it. She’s right of course, I just… I don’t know how to value things I make because they are easy for me to do. Ya know?

In any case, my flower

Edited: June 26th, 2009

Changing up the Chandelier

Something I really hated about my dinning room was the chandelier. It was that tacky faux brass stuff and had pits of discolor in the finish. Everything about this thing bugged the crap out of me. I mean… look at it. Does it look like it belongs in a house from 1920?

The photo makes it seem so much better then it really is. It was fug. Seriously. So I started looking around and found several that I just *LOVED* absolutely loved. The price tag? $550 and up. Um. No. Not right now anyway. That’s a “we’re living in this house for a while” purchase and I don’t have $550 to blow on a light fixture just because I hate the look of the currently functional one.

I read This Young House a lot and they had the same chandelier. I had thought about painting my old chandelier  and they were helpful in figuring out how to do that. So down came the brass monstrosity and it was given a coat of primer. I left the current lights in because I wouldn’t be keeping them anyway and they’d protect my sockets

I actually kind of liked it this color, but since our hardware is all dark (or at least it will be when I’m done boiling the paint off of it) I painted the lamp with a hammered metal spray paint that came out spiffy

Okay. Now look at it up in the room. We have to fix the wires, but it was late and my husband had worked a 12 hour shift so I’m not stressing about them right now. They’ll get fixed when they’re fixed

I love the look of the round light bulbs. I think it looks a lot better now and was pretty cheap compared to replacing it. $12ish on bulbs, $8 on spray paint… that’s it. So for $20 instead of $550, I have a lamp in the dinning room that I’m happy with now.

Edited: June 24th, 2009

Parts of the House

When the movers were packing us up, they kept complaining about two things: my art collection and my dish collection. I’ve started to unpack the dishes and art and wanted to share spots from around my house. I apologize if the pictures are a little blurry, I took them early in the morning yesterday

This is the top of the entertainment stand in the living room. It lives next to the fireplace and holds all our gaming systems, dvd player, sound system etc. On top of it I have a couple pieces of luggage I picked up at a thrift store (under $3 each) and a dog my oldest son painted when he was 4 or 5.

The luggage is great for a quick clean up and hiding clutter when people are coming by shortly. I always seem to have a couple things out when people say they’re stopping by and it’s easier to have this system then to run around trying to put it all away.

The savages are back and they’re in the dinning room for now chilling with the people wallpaper.

I hate the wallpaper, hate. But I don’t want to take it down until we have the funds to do the project properly and know exactly what we’re doing. My side of the family is notorious for starting a project and not finishing it so their homes are in a constant state of “remodeling” and I don’t want that for my home. We’re researching the best way to do this room the way we want it and then I’ll get it done in a weekend.

It’s a dark photo, but that’s the front fireplace as it was yesterday morning. It’s already changed a bit since then, but that’s just how I am

This is my Alice in Wonderland Collection that lives on my $15 vintage sewing table I bought at an auction. The sewing table sits across from the front door and is a handy place for outgoing mail or keys. The Alice Collection is waiting for a shelf to be put up on the wall so it has a spot to live. The copper light thing is something we take out on the front porch when we sit out there, but I don’t want to leave it out there because it might get stolen like my planter did. /cry

This is the ledge above the Alice Collection and our cats love to lay on it and people watch. They can look out the door but be out of reach of the dogs. It’s perfect for them unless you snap a photo…

Sad psycho (from whatisblick.com) hangs on the wall by the stairs. We may be angling him down so that it looks like he’s coming down the stairs or I may move him to another room. I haven’t decided yet, but here is good for now.

This is the art shelf near the front door. It no longer looks like that because I’ve already rearranged the art on it several times, but you get the general idea. I like a shelf instead of hanging the pictures on the wall because I can rearrange without having to put up new picture hooks (thus more holes in the wall) and with plaster walls, I really want to avoid putting more holes in them then I have to.

Edited: June 23rd, 2009

RIP Little Bat

My little dog Anni is a West Highland Terrier, they’re bred to go after small rodents… Yesterday she and Mouse were in the yard investigating something and I kept hearing what I thought were bat noises. I realized that they probably found a bat and I ushered the dogs inside. Sure enough, little bat was laying in the grass and Anni had been biting him to make him squeal.

Both the dogs are up to date on their rabies, but I called our vet just to make sure I wouldn’t have to get the bat tested. They said I had to bring little bat in for testing and that just made me so sad. I went outside to get him and Jordan had put it over near the old trees so that Anni wouldn’t find him again. We had a merry hunt in the vines for little bat and found him

Jordan had on uber thick gloves and put little bat in a plastic container. We were both a little upset. It looked like little bat just wasn’t strong enough to fly up in to the trees like it’s mom. I think it got weak in my basement because there wasn’t a lot of bugs for it to catch. It was the bat or my dog though and so I took it in. Luckily the vet is close by because I was in almost tears the whole drive over. Little bat was trying to make noises for help and trying to get out of the container. It was sad.

The vet took little bat from me and I know they have to kill it to test it. Little bat just had such a rough little life. Caught in my basement for several days, bothered on my gate when we had a party Saturday night, nommed on by my small animal torturing dog, death by rabies testing. I wanted to slip a couple bugs in its container to give it a last meal, but I also didn’t want to touch it. We’ll find out soon if it has rabies or not and then we’ll see what has to happen to Anni.

The husband and I were already looking at the bat houses you can buy and put up in the yard. I really do like watching them outside, I just don’t want them to come in my house or lay on the ground so my dog can chew on them. So we’re hunting down a bat house and doing some research on where to put it, which one to buy etc etc. I’ll stick it in the back corner of the yard under a big tree and hopefully I won’t have to take more bats in for rabies testing.

Edited: June 23rd, 2009

#74 off the list

“put legs on Wes’ side table”

It was a fairly straightforward project to do this one.  I took the legs off of an old, rickety record cabinet I bought for $1.50 and put them on a cabinet I had painted in chalkboard paint with teal insides. The whole shebang was pretty easy and is the perfect height for my son’s bed. I’m still working on his room so it’s a complete mess, but it’s getting done bit by bit.

Edited: June 22nd, 2009

Bat removal complete

DH found the bats in our basement on Thursday night. On Friday the boys and I joined him for a potluck in his building on base (we brought 5 dozen cookies) and he said “I went in the basement this morning and the bats were gone. It should be safe now.”
“GREAT!” I thought. It meant I could safely park in the garage and go inside via the basement…

… except the bats were not gone. No no. The bats were freaking sleeping on a wet papertowel on the floor. I sent the boys quietly upstairs and went to investigate the bats. I’ll admit that when I first saw them, I thought “OOOH! They’re DEAD! and I don’t have to deal with it now.” They weren’t though, they were very much still alive and I realized one was just a baby.

We have a ton of boxes around still so I dumped the paper out of one and put it on top of the bats. Okay… so I kind of tossed it down on top of them because they were close to the cat carrier and I thought they’d fly out or something if I tried to go slow.

I called Cody at work and he was gone so I talked to our friend Robert instead. He said put a book I don’t like on top of the box and wait for Cody to get home to help take them outside. I put Brisinger on the box and called it good.

Then Cody and Jordan came home and slide one of my foam core sheets that I will never be using again under the box and carried it outside like so

We thought they’d fly away but they were not going anywhere and we couldn’t just leave them there on the sidewalk so we slipped them under one of the plants in the side yard.

They haven’t been back inside. We found the baby on the gate to the yard Saturday night and heard them in our trees Saturday and Sunday night, but they’ve stayed outside so I’m good. They were actually kind of cute once they weren’t in my house…

Edited: June 22nd, 2009

HELP! I need BATMAN!

So that’s not one of the ones in my house, but I have little bats in my basement… woo freaking hoo! We’re attempting to figure out how to rehome them and how they got in, but that’s pretty hard when you don’t want to go in to the room the little suckers are in.

Edited: June 19th, 2009

#72 Off the list

“install art shelf in zach’s room” is now done

He’s already begun to use it for display purposes as well. It was an adventure to put it up and we had to alter where we originally wanted it, but it’s up now. We tried to put it up on the wall between the two windows and discovered the brick for the chimney… so we moved it over to the wall with the closet and his desk will go underneath it still.

You can see a glimpse of his pink flowered “Gracie” mirror that I’m still scrapping off. I will also be repainting it. For now though the shelf is enough. The eventual plan is to give him some more frames so he can rotate out his artwork from school, have it on display, and have a defined art area so it doesn’t end up looking junky. As a bonus, it’ll force him to pick and choose what to display and what to tuck behind the current display. I’m trying to curb his pack rat tendencies now instead of having him deal with them later on in life.

Edited: June 17th, 2009

#7 off the list

“put shelves on parlor wall”

I still have to do #8 (line shelves with paper to make them pretty and washable), but the shelves are up. Of course… now that they’re up I’m starting to not like the brown color so I may had “paint parlor walls” to the mix later one, but i can live with the brown for a month or two

The picture isn’t pretty yet, but it will be soon. It’s a good start anyway I think. I’ve been putting away my business stuff and still can’t find my 1 inch button maker. I’m starting to worry after what I found yesterday while unpacking. Several hundred dollars in supplies *poof* ruined. So not happy, not happy at all.

In other studio space unpacking, the husband and I put up some shelves in my closet so I can store other things out of the way. I quite like it so far and of course I need to go through things still, but it’s a good start.

We’ll be putting a shelf up on the bottom to help even out the floor. It has an angled shoe thing in the back that is messing up my ability to use the closet for storage, but I don’t want to rip it out either. So We’ll just make the closet have a shelf right above it and call it good. I’ll be putting the sever and printer on that shelf because it’s out of the way, but still accessible.

I also have the button area going. It too is not done, but it will be later today. I have inventory to store, a corkboard to recover etc., but it’s off to a good start. The room is much more cleared out then it was the day before.

Edited: June 17th, 2009

Just give me the wine and no one gets hurt

There are several lovely wineries in the local area and I’m a frequent buyer of their wine. I went to a new one for me with a friend a couple weeks ago and tasted (and bought) some awesome wine. The New Oak Winery was awesome and the other night I so just wanted a bottle of wine.

But “where is the corkscrew? OMG it’s not with the other kitchen stuff at all”

We went through THREE HUGE boxes of kitchen/china stuff before my lovely husband says “Did you go through all the little boxes? It was something they forgot to pack and I saw him put it in a little box.”

So we start going through little boxes as well. We both ended up going through this one box and not finding it. I decided to go through that little box again and unwrap everything even though it wasn’t kitchen stuff at all and out rolls the corkscrew. YATTA!

It only took 2 hours and a huge mess, but I had my wine. The table looked like this afterwards despite Cody putting things away as we went.

And wouldn’t ya know it… not even a full minute after I find the corkscrew, in walks Jordan with one he ran to Wal-mart to buy without telling anyone. He was going to surprise us and be back sooner, but he was stuck behind some guy going 20 mph…

A+ for effort though Don’t we have such an awesome roomie?

Edited: June 17th, 2009