I’ve really enjoyed the creative space posts on kootoyoo so I’m going to attempt to start posting a photo from my creative space every week. This week’s photo is of some button images I need to punch out and a “love” thing I embroidered recently (first time embroidering too)
Edited: October 29th, 2009
When we were in process of buying our house, a friend told us we’d have a lot of paperwork to sign. He told us to go out and buy a nice pen and use it only to sign your paperwork for the house buying process. Cody and I thought that was a pretty neat idea so we picked on up and only used that pen to sign paperwork for the house and it’s the only thing that pen has ever been used for too. I wanted to display it somewhere in the house and figured my shadow box would be perfect. I took pages from Alice in Wonderland (french version) and glued them to the back of the shadow box. Drilled a hole through the back and wired the pen in to place. The result? This:
I still have to decide where I want to put it but for now it’s living on Cody’s bedside table.
Edited: October 29th, 2009
I’ve been working on new things and I’ve been so lazy about listing them. I LOVE to create stuff but I loathe trying to take photos, come up with a description, list it all etc. I need a mook or something to do all that for me because I just… I despise it. I’d rather be creating you know?
In anycase, I wanted to share some of the things I’ve been working on and slowly listing. There’s this lovely bat print that my oldest son now has in his room.
Edited: October 26th, 2009
Wow you guys are amazing. Thank you for sharing in my happiness with me. I’m still quite a bit giggly over it all. It’s hard to explain to someone that has never lived the military lifestyle but wow what freedom now. We’re finally Mr. and Mrs. instead of (his rank) and Mrs. If you’ve never lived the military life, you may not understand and probably roll your eyes saying that we’ve always been Mr. and Mrs. Really though… we’ve always been his current rank and Mrs. People judge your worth as a spouse based on your husband’s rank. It’s annoying that these spouses attempt to wear their husband’s rank and think that you’re doing the same thing. My rank? I have no rank. There is no camo on my behind.
I used to teach scrapbooking classes on base and I distinctly remember one class group that showed up together all the time… until they found out *I* was *only* a SSgt. They’d been dogging on enlisted spouses and I didn’t say anything until one of them said something like “Don’t you agree?” to which I replied “Well Gosh, I thought I was pretty normal and doing fairly well for myself too.” They asked what rank I was and I said I wasn’t any rank because I’m just a spouse, not military. One of them asked what rank my husband was and I told them he was a SSgt. They never came back to my classes again. I thought it was pretty sad too but it’s not unusual.
It’s one of many times when someone didn’t want to get to know my family or me because of whatever rank my husband currently was and it’s so nice to be able to be friends with whomever we feel like being friends with without a thought for rank.
It’s just… I’m excited. Perhaps I’ve built it up too much in my mind but I see good things for us outside of the military now. Although he still works with the military, he’s doing it as a civilian which has been very different. It makes me happy. Thank you for sharing in my happiness 
Edited: October 26th, 2009
You may remember this post about my ugly wallpaper. I hate the stuff. Loathe. Despise it. EWW. We’ve been looking around for the best way to fix the dining room and received quite a bit of help from our online peeps that helped us decide what to do. We couldn’t take the old wallpaper off without seriously damaging the walls so we opted for repapering it instead. I found a paintable slightly textured wallpaper from target that should look lovely on the bottom 3/4 of the wall. The upper 1/4 of the wall is in process of being painted this lovely dark teal color.
The best part about this paint? It can be used with chalk … or at least that’s what the Lowe’s paint lady said. I’m hoping she’s right. So when I’m done, I can draw pretty things on the upper 1/4 of the wall and change it with the seasons. It sounds neat in my head, I hope it ends up being neat in person too. Aside from painting, I’ve been laying in bed or watching shows with my husband. I’m still getting over whatever it was I caught recently, but I should be good soon.
We’re not going to do the wallpaper tonight because I’m just too tired to try and figure it out, but we’ll do it later this week. I’ll update with photos when we’re done. I still need to finish edging in the paint because this particular color takes about three to five coats of paint to give even coverage. It looks really rich in person though. Like staring in to the deep ocean when you’re out at sea. It’s just a really beautiful color and I heart it.
I linked this at A soft place to Land which is a faboo blog and you can find other make over projects too. 
Edited: October 25th, 2009
I needed some art for my walls and I’ve had some ideas that I thought I’d try out. My new bedding arrived yesterday and it’s super comfy. I thought I should probably add some art to the walls after I moved my bedroom stuff around yet again. Naturally this meant busting out the art supplies
I’m still working on other aspects of the room. The sock monkeys will be relocated to somewhere else eventually I’m sure. … I’m just waiting for the right pillow to take their place. My curtains are from the last house and will be replaced in December when my mom comes out and sews new ones for me. I’ll end up altering the paintings a bit more too because they’re a little too plain for me. I made the painting though and the little felt heart between them too. I’m sure it’ll look better when it’s not such a muggy day outside too. It’s hard to take photos when there’s hardly any natural light in your room despite 6 windows. /sigh It doesn’t really show up in the photos but the duvet cover has a subtle pattern in it and it looks better in person. I just need the perfect pillow stuff now I think.
What would you do to my room?
Edited: October 23rd, 2009
We went to the Warsaw Heritage Days thing last Sunday. Cody volunteered to do stuff there and we drove out to pick him up. Getting there was awful because I’ve never driven to that destination and the signage for the actual festival kind of blew, but we got there and all was fine. The boys and I were starving so we ate at the first place we found which was a mistake because there was way better food further on in the festival. We could have had ham and beans with cornbread, turkey legs, etc. and instead we had the saddest little hamburgers I’ve seen lol. Oh well, live and learn I guess.
We did pick up the most delicious kettle corn though. OMG I loved it! I want to learn how to make it because that was just faboo and if that is what the cans of popcorn are trying to imitate, they fall way short. It was delicious! We ate it while we walked around. Our first stop was this guy and he played a mean trick on the boys by scaring the poo out of them. He told them he had a turtle as a pet and pulled down this turtle shell purse thingy. He was really good at drawing the boys in to his story, told them the turtle was shy, opened up the purse and then went “AHHHHHHHHH!” while he jumped a little. Made those boys jump too. Luckily my boys could laugh about it and he kept saying that turtle are fast without their shells…
We move on to other things and walked around a lot. We also bought a lot of food stuffs like local wildflower honey and sorghum syrup, beef jerky sticks etc. The demonstrations weren’t as involved as they were when Zach’s class went on a field trip there, but it was still pretty fun!
Edited: October 23rd, 2009
… Yes, it’s true… We’re finally just Mr. and Mrs. Geek instead of SSgt and Mrs. Geek and we couldn’t be happier. My husband served 9 years as active duty Air Force and we’d always thought we were lifers. Stuff happens though, you realize the life isn’t what you signed up for and you make the choice to leave it because it’s healthier for you to leave then it is to stick around. Something I’ve found interesting is how other military families treat you once they know you’re getting out. It’s as if by you getting out, you’re unknowingly saying they’re messing up for staying in. That wasn’t the case for us at all. We think the USAF can be a really great job/lifestyle choice for some people and we wish them the best with it. Military life was no longer for us though and it was better for us if he was no longer military. So we left.
Yesterday was his last day as active duty military. He had 94 days of terminal leave so he hasn’t been wearing his uniform for awhile but it was nice to know it was the last day the military would have any ownership over our lives. We went out to lunch with some friends to celebrate and hit up Rib Crib because that’s where our friend Cooleen works. We heart Cooleen. Anywho… some photos
Cooleen’s fiance Bryan screwing around and not letting me take a photo
My mutant potato that was huge and ended up being three meals. OMG. HUGE? Yes. Who knew it would be that big?
My honey bunny and I on his last day in the military. We wore those smiles all day long.
No really. I wore that huge grin all day long. I picked up a bottle of Redbreast Irish Whiskey and brought it to him at work… on base. It was my very last time driving on base as a military spouse and I had a huge grin to the point that the civilian gate guard asked me if today was a special day. I said “YES! It’s the last day I can ever use that card to get on base and I’m so fucking happy I could cry. Best. Day. EVER!” The military gate guard started laughing and said he still had two and half years until he could say that. They both congratulated me and wished us luck. I drove to Cody’s work, harassed his co-workers (no really, I like most of you guys I swear. You just happen to work with a couple of tools that need to go away now), gave him his booze, and then went home.
Seriously though, it was a fantastic day. I had just this grin all day long and the giggles and I was in such a good mood. I was even okay that I had to hunt the stupid dogs down because they chewed a hole in my fence large enough that my goberian got through the fence (thus a big hole) AND I had to go out there with a test splotch of dye on my hair and ratty clothing because I was repinking my hair. /sigh
Speaking of my hair… It was fading because I took a super long shower and forgot to keep my hair out of the hot water. So the tips of it were going from pink to brown and it just looked like crap. I picked up a bottle of Punky hair dye though and fixed it. My bathroom and my hands look like I slaughtered something pink and cute, but my hair is awesome again.
Edited: October 22nd, 2009
I like chalkboards. I like writing on things actually and chalkboards allow me to keep writing on things. Enter my chalkboard lamps. I heart them. I have one in my bedroom right now and I wanted to share it. I just rearranged my bedroom and bought all new bedding (shhh the husband doesn’t know that part yet) and wanted to share a couple photos. Why only a couple? Because I have a contractor garage bag and a HUGE box full of stuff to take out of my room and donate to the Salvation Army. I don’t want to share the mess parts lol.
Edited: October 20th, 2009
I like writing on things, but most importantly… I like REwriting on things. Write, erase, do it again. It’s my favorite. I had this idea for being able to doodle on my ornaments because well I like to change things around often. I’m constantly changing things but I don’t like to be wasteful and replace things all the time. I like to find a way to re purpose them. Thus the chalkboard ornament was born. I can doodle on it all I want and not have to go buy a new one.
I need to take better photos (like always) but I heart them. What do you think of them? Won’t they look neat once they’re all doodled and on a tree?
Edited: October 18th, 2009
