My Weekend

I had a good weekend. I like it when I feel like I get stuff done. I got some yard work done, some work on my fence, helped with painting my daughters kitchen cabinets, worked on birthday presents for Janae, even worked on cleaning the garage. The kids and I even took about a 2 mile walk tonight with the dogs! I have been in a really uplifted mood from all the nice comments I got from My Romantic Bedroom post. Thank you for that! I thought I'd share a couple pictures from the weekend.

Chantel is always so much help when we are painting.

The mess at my daughters  house--I told her this part wouldn't be fun!

This is how the fence posts looked this morning

This is how they look now. I think the caps add a lot! Now it is time to get busy and paint the fence before the Oregon downpours start!

Another picture by Chantel (still working on that focusing problem). This is our dog Duke kicking back on the couch in his sunglasses. Wouldn't life as a dog be great?!

Oh, forgot to say I even tagged along with Janae this weekend on a trip to Home Goods and got really Home Goods happy when I found this little mercury glass container in the clearance.  It was missing its lid and that is why it was in the clearance. I love it--I was able to get 2 (wish they would have had 3).

Ending our weekend we took the dogs for a walk.

Well tomorrow starts another school week and Gage has an appointment with his neurologist. I am so looking forward to Janae turning 22 on tuesday (it seemed like she was 22 months such a short time ago) and as usual I will be up all night working on her gifts. I'll be sharing those on tuesday. Have a great week!

My Romantic Bedroom

Today I am sharing my bedroom-and yes, I do share it with my husband. I have had some people tell me that it is just too pretty for most men but I guess I am lucky because my husband doesn't complain.  When we were first moving into this house I was worried because our previous bedroom was much bigger and I was worried that the large scale of this furniture wouldn't look good, or even fit in such a small room. But just like most everything else in this house it all fit perfectly. I am really pleased with how the bedroom looks. I painted it this lovely blue (which has a lot of purple in it actually) and I think it is peaceful, calming, and a wonderful place to drift to sleep.

When my husband and I were first married we bought this bed . It was oak and for many years stayed that color.  I love it now that it is white!  I want to get a  hanging roses applique to put in the medallion area.

I found these curtains at Goodwill--for one side anyway, and had to buy the other side at Target.  I love them!

I have had several people think I painted the chandelier on the wall, but it is a vinyl sticker I got on Etsy. The photo is of my husband and I on our wedding day.

 My Mother got me that cute little bunny at a garage sale and the teddy bear is from my days as a teddy bear artist.  For several years I was really involved in my teddy bear making!  I even was published in a teddy bear magazine.  I want to make a pretty fabric flower or something to cover the broken spot in my antique wicker chair.

My vanity is another Goodwill find. Paid $15 for it. Of course it looks much prettier now than when I bought it!

I love the baby portraits of the boys in this room. The color is perfect!

We got the amoire with the bed--it was also oak. Its a great place to hide the TV!

Thanks for coming on a little tour of my romantic bedroom.  

Big John Portrait by Chantel

I have always enjoyed photography. I don't enjoy the technical side of it at all but I think that I do have abilities, especially when doing portraits of capturing the persons personality.  Both Chantel and Wyatt have shown interest in photography.  Today Chantel took a picture of Big John, and though she still needs to work on her focus I think she did a nice job.

 Big John is our last silver persian.  He is 13 years old (born about the same time as Chantel). Before the last 3 kids were born I used to show and breed silver persians. It was fun at the time but all the bathing, expense and everything else was just not in the cards after the 3 younger kids were born.  I never showed or bred Big John--we just ended up keeping him. His name comes from that old country song--and I named him that because he was the biggest kitten I ever had. He is a normal size cat now.

Big John with Bella when she was a puppy--these two adore each other!  I always wonder if they think they are related.

 Chantel loves her Big John!

Chalk at our House

There is so much talk about chalk paint on all the blogs these days and I am so wanting to try it. Problem is I'm afraid I'll love it and I keep hearing the comment that its expensive. Expensive isn't in my budget these days. So I had to laugh to myself this afternoon as I saw my daughter out drawing in our driveway (as is often the case) and realized I'm on a sidewalk chalk budget.:)

Oh well, better sidewalk chalk than no chalk at all!

Today was only in the low 80's --instead of the low 90's and I am getting excited to know there may even be some rain by Saturday!  This Oregonian needs some of that refreshing Oregon rain. Today I walked for about 1.5 miles with my Mom and sister and then when Chantel got home from school she and I walked to Goodwill!  Its fun living in town now. Chantel told me she refused to carry home a coffee table or something from Goodwill though. :)

Ruffly Lampshade Project

So while worrying about Daisy (by the way she is fine now) I have been ruffling away and making a lampshade for my bedroom that I love!  I was inspired by this post lampshade inspiration here and I just changed it up a bit by ruffling the fabric.  Also, she went up and down with the fabric and I went side to side. I think I will try up and down if I make another one but not sure how much different that would make it.

So first of all, if you like ruffles and you sew I would highly suggest getting a ruffler attachment for your machine.  I love mine!  I can ruffle all day until my hearts content and it is so easy!

I ended up tearing 3 inch pieces of white muslin. I ended up using 17 pieces. I left the raw edges.  I ruffled right down the middle of the strips and folding them in half hot glued them down to the lampshade. I went back and forth in about 4 inch long sections.

I just kept going back and forth with the ruffled pieces..which was kind of time consuming but I watched an episode of Nate and actually it was quite relaxing.

What started out as $3.99 lamp my daughters found for me at Goodwill .

Turned into this beautiful bedside lamp.

I love all these pretty ruffles!

 Janae thinks it looks similar to the coffee filter wreaths that you see a lot on blogs and that I also love. I agree it does.  One of the things I like almost as much as ruffles is feathers so thought I'd also share a picture of this lampshade I made a couple of years ago.

Happy ruffling!

Just wanted to add--thank you Janae for making my new blog banner! Its so great to have a daughter to help you out with your blog.

Daisy Update

I want to thank you all so much who responded to my prayers for Daisy post. Blogging makes you feel like so many people care and that is such a good feeling!  This morning I was a little panicked because she was not worse but not better either.  But as the day went on she was drinking quite a lot and she seemed to be a little more with it.  She usually has a little prance when she walks and she started to have that again--just the tiniest bit.  It was over 90 degrees again today and very HUMID so I think some of her inactivity was caused from that.  Afterall, her nickname is "Lazy Daisy".  I was still not sure that she was better until my husband came home from work and she greeted him at the door wagging her tail.  She hadn't wagged her tail in 2 days. I was (and am) so relieved.  She is such a important part of our family. She spends most of her time sitting by our disabled son and whenever he gets upset she howls until someone comes to him. She is one of the sweetest dogs I have ever had and we all love her so much.

Excuse her bad hair day--its been a rough couple of days

Thanks again to all that sent their prayers for her!

Prayers for Daisy

What a day.  This morning when my son Wyatt got up for school he said, "Mom, Daisy's shaking".  I immediately got concerned because when she was a puppy she got into something (we never did figure out what) and she ended up on IV's for 3 days with vet bills we certainly don't need right now. The vet said the shaking is a sign of poisoning and he even took her home with him one of the nights. (our vets son is Wyatt's best friend, and he has always been great with our animals) After she came home she was fine.  Then recently our oldest daughters little Pom (Bella) also got into something (also unknown) and $550 later she is fine. So I called my husband at work and he researched on the computer to try to figure out what she had gotten into. We were not happy to discover that almost everything is toxic to dogs.  Most of us know about chocolate and salmon--but had you ever heard garlic, onions, daffodils are all poison to dogs? The list goes on and on. Really makes me worry about Janae's little Bella because she will eat anything.  We are living in a new to us house that has almost every kind of plant imaginable! So she seemed like she was getting better on her own and my Mom and I went for our daily walk. When we got back she was shaking again. I was starting to panic. Janae let me know that the vet gave Bella activated carbon to absorb the poison. I researched it on the computer and also talked to a friend whose dog almost died from getting into rat poison and everyone said to give her some.  So I did...and honestly she probably should go to the vet but from what I had learned the activated carbon is something you can give them while on your way to the vet.  I also gave her some lunchmeat because I thought maybe diluting the poison would be a good idea. Though depending on what kind of poison it is that could be bad, or good. Again, if we were not so broke right now I wish I could have rushed her to the vet.  Janae did tell me she would loan me money for the vet bill so if she got any worse I would have taken her.  But shortly after eating she seemed better though still shaking. She went to sleep and my son Wyatt and I walked to Walmart to buy some canned dog food (my husband had my car because he is in a cast from recent surgery and can't drive a stick shift and I just don't like to drive his truck) and on our way Chantel texted me that in her sleep Daisy had stopped shaking.  Now it has been several hours later and she is still sleeping most of the time and has not been shaking at all. So I feel more comfortable now that the worse is over. I gave her a lukewarm bath to cool her because it is so hot and humid here. So I just wanted to post this so anybody out there could send their prayers for our little Daisy.  We want her back to her normal sweet self.