I Stumble and I Tumble
Pretty catchy title huh? Sounds like I am going to get serious on you about a drinking problem I might have, but I’m not. It just popped into my head when I thought about sharing something fun I like to do.
**I have NOT been compensated in any means to advertise for these companies, I don’t do sponsors or ads on my blog, that way I can share first hand what I like and don’t like. I just needed to put this out there in case you thought this was some type of advertisement and hit the skip button.
Have you ever heard of Stumbleupon? 
Well, I stumbled upon it one day {pun intended} and love how it works. You just add stumbleupon to your tool bar and start stumbling on sites that you have interest in. Like crafts, sewing, weddings, cooking… what ever tickles your fancy. I even sometimes get geeky type sites that are out of my “norm” but actually find interesting. You just keep clicking stumble button on your tool bar and it brings you to site after site after site of stuff you think is cool or not so cool. If you like it, you give it a thumbs up, or if you don’t like it you give it a thumbs down. Cheryl, at Tidymom did a great guest post at Crafterminds on how it works. I don’t need to reinvent the wheel, so I will just send you over to read the article here. But come back because I want to tell you about my Tumble.
Revealing My Guest House Chaos
I am always asking myself, “why is it that I create so much work for myself?” Keeps me busy I guess now that there aren’t any children at home needing me every moment. But I rarely share it on my blog, my many, many projects. I think I don’t do as many posts because I wait until I have the perfect finished picture. Which takes a really long time to get. I love looking at pretty pictures of finished rooms on blogs, so I tend to wait until I have the best picture before I show it to the www. But that isn’t really being real. After reading Centsational Girl’s post today, and how she showed just random pictures of what is going on at her house, un-staged, I gave me the courage to do it myself. It made her seem more of a real person, and I liked it. I was so hesitant to show you these pictures because they make me cringe, but I need to get over that and start sharing with you the good and the bad and the ugly.
Here is a perfect example of one of the many projects I am working on at our house. This is our guest house.
Ghost Chairs
I have always wanted some ghost chairs
I think they are versatile for any decor style. I have seen them paired with rustic
And with vibrant modern rooms
When I saw these come up on Hautelook one day I bought a couple. They are copy cats of the original, but that was ok with me. When I got them delivered last week, I was surprised how small they actually were in person. But I still love them! I bought 4 of them, and once I saw the scale of them, I had to re-think where I was going to put them. I took some pictures yesterday of two of them in their resting place. The problem is, this room is really hard to photograph, especially when you are an amateur photographer like me.
I took a lot more pictures, but they just didn’t turn out that well. I really want to get a post up with pictures of this whole room and how it all came together. There is a lot of fun stuff going on in this room that I would love to share with you. I am going to practice this week with my camera {and manual} and see if I can do better in the photographic department. But I just had to give you a sneak peek how they looked, I am so happy to finally own some Ghost chairs!
Fabulous
Happy Valentines day to you! I personally don’t celebrate like the masses, I want my husband to show his love all year long, not just one day that society (and the retailers) tells him to. Plus I have 3 daughters, and have always hated to see them get all down in the dumps when this day rolled around and they didn’t have a valentine. The peer pressure and the marketing is out of control, it can really make a young girl feel sad.
So since today is Valentine’s day, and everything is about pink and red, I thought I would do a “valentine” type color post. {plus I was so bummed to see that missed linking up to the CSI Project Honeysuckle link party, dang!}
As I was reading my Google reader yesterday, this picture caught my eye.
It was a picture from Sherri’s blog Insideoutdesgin She used this picture of Miley Cyrus’s dressing room in her post. But what caught my eye was not just the beautiful dressing room, but the picture reflected in the big beautiful mirror…”hey I have that picture” I thought to myself. So I Googled Miley Cyrus’s dressing room images to take a closer look, and guess what I found? A web site dedicated to dressing like Miley…are you kidding me? Sheesh! Anyway, there was a more detailed picture on the site showing a better view of “my” picture in her dressing room
Fresh Flower Shopping From Home
When I sit at my computer like I am now, I look out my window and see this
Blue skies, birds and beautiful pink flowers growing on the tree. This is California living in the middle of winter, the reason I love living here. I decided to take a Sunday stroll around my yard today and was surprised on how many flowers were in bloom. I went and grabbed my scissors (now that is a real gardener huh?) and started cutting. And this is what I came in with
Calli lilies, sweet peas, hydrangeas, alstroemerias, and some daffodils.
Can you believe it? It was as if I went to the flower market, I was shocked! I made a couple of arrangements with them and set them around the house
I was pleasantly surprised to see those yellow daffodils in bloom, they are so fragrant!
I love alstroemeria flowers, they really last a long time as a cut flower.
That picture is of me and my daughter Shannon. It was taken at her 70′s themed birthday party a couple of years ago, the one and only time I have been a blond.
A few finishing touches
I have a lot of finishing touches I am trying to do at my daughter’s house, but it is going really slow. I am still waiting on fabric from Kravet for the headboard for this guest room, I have been waiting 2 months already! I wish I would of known that before I fell in love with the fabric and made the purchase. I would of looked for something else if i would of know about the looooong wait. I also needed a bed skirt for this room as well. But I was running out of options because I just couldn’t find the right color of gray and style that I was looking for. Then it dawned on me, I have been dying to do something using a drop cloth. Seeing so many creative people use them for curtains, upholstery and stuff I wanted to try it too. So I decided to use one for the bed skirt. It was the perfect gray. I have to be honest here, I didn’t sew it myself, I got lazy and paid someone else sew it for me. I just wasn’t up to the challenge.
She did an awesome job! Plus I introduced her to the ruffler attachment and she wants to ruffle everything now! I can’t wait to get this room finished and check it off the list, but it looks like it might be awhile.
Painting A Vinyl Seat
I saw this before and after post today from DesignSponge 
Amazing transformation right? I thought for sure this was professionally reupholstered for the after shot. Then as I was reading more about how Karen from redoux made this transformation, I got all excited! I had done this recently to a chair but never shared it here. It is now my new favorite painting technique.
I found this chair for $10 a while back at the thrift store
I loved the curvy lines of it but thought it was a little boring and needed a face lift. I happened to have my paint sprayer out one day and sprayed the frame of the chair with Arizona White. I noticed that the seat was in perfect condition. It was solid and had no rips or tears, but the color was boring {yawn}. Slip covers and reupholstering is not a favorite project I like to tackle. So I thought what the heck, I am going to spray the seat with a can of spray paint and see how it works. If it didn’t work I could still put fabric over it, so I had nothing to loose. I did about 4 light coats of gray spray paint. Letting it dry for a least a half an hour in between, and it worked!
