I know Christmas was a couple months ago, but I'm just now getting around to Posting The Penguin Project.
My sweet baby girl (who just happens to be 21--AND Moscato-Legal) didn't ask for much for Christmas, but she DID want a penguin hat. She even hinted that Walgreens had a cute one I could get for her.
Since I'm a weirdo and would rather make stuff than buy it, I started looking for a penguin hat crochet pattern online. I never did find one, but I did find a basic hat from Leticia Maguire. From there, I pretty much winged it for the rest of it.
I chose a nice, soft yarn...warm and soft and mooshy!!
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Introducing Mon Cher Monsieur Pierre le Dres-sair:
Okay, "Dres-sair" isn't really a French word. You caught me. But it kinda rhymed with "Pierre." Plus, it's actually more of a chest than a dresser.
Let's just say the love of my life doesn't exactly share my interest in taking old, ugly, cheap, discarded, unwanted, or full-of-potential items and turning them into something, well, better.
Simply put, he sees my "interest" as his "having to work on junk."
Buuuuuut....I scored another piece from the online classifieds at work: A reproduction French Provincial chest I bought for $25.
So, let's call this, "Annie Sloan Chalk Paint® Take 2" (which I purchased at Second Betty, if you recall).
And, fortunately, it required very little effort on Philly's part.
We got a sneak peak at Frenchy at the end of my Jewels post--my first trial piece with ASCP.
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I confessed in my "hey, jude" post that I really don't sew. Unless I'm working without a pattern.
I'm just going to toss out some pics of quilts I've designed over the last five years or so. I don't have any "in-progress" pictures, but I think some of them are kinda neat.
I know I'm missing a couple, but I just can't seem to find pictures of them. Must have been before our digital camera...
My daughter's Sweet 16 (can you tell she's musically-inclined?):
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Actually, it's Philly's nightstand. And it used to match our horrifically ugly bedroom set that will be unveiled in an upcoming post. The makeover on this particular piece was really by happy accident.
Or mistake. Oops.
We'll just say that when I planned the makeover for all three of our ugly bedroom pieces, I miscalculated my supplies which left Nighty out in the cold...so to speak. Instead of getting the additional supplies I needed, I decided to just wing it with some paint and fabric so all three pieces wouldn't be (as the professionals say) "matchy-matchy."
And now for something completely different.
The Original Mr. Lackluster.
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I love pizza. I'm a total pizza hound. I grew up with my mom's should-be-famous homemade pizza. I've always tried to replicate it, but just never could. Because no one is a better cook than mom.
I'm only Italian by marriage, but let's face it...who doesn't secretly wish they could toss that dough up in the air and not have it land on their face, the ceiling fan, or their dog.
After years of trial and error, I've finally settled on my favorite from-scratch (sort-of) pizza. I say "sort-of" because I make my sauce from assorted canned tomato products. Hey, I'd love to saunter out to my garden and pluck up some vine-fresh romas, but it's winter. And cold. And actually quite rainy today.
That's really just an excuse because that would just be too stinkin' much work anyway.
I'm not a professional cook, and I think my sauce-from-cans is actually pretty darn tasty.
The low-down (this makes a bunch of sauce, BTW):
Sauce (totally tweak as you see fit):
2 T Olive Oil
1 medium onion, chopped
3 (14 oz) cans Italian tomatoes
28 oz Contadina thick and zesty tomato sauce
1 (6 oz) can tomato paste
5 cloves garlic, pressed
7 t. sugar
2 t. salt
1/4 t. crushed red pepper flakes
1 bay leaf
1 oz chopped fresh basil (added about 30 minutes prior to making your pizza!)
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Annie Sloan Chalk Paint®!
(This is COMPLETELY different than "chalkboard" paint--so do not be confused.)
I've been seeing posts EVERYWHERE in blogdom about ASCP and I wanted to see what all the fuss was about. (The beauty of ASCP is there's NO prep necessary as with latex or oil-based paints. No stripping, no sanding, no priming...just start with a clean surface. )
By the grace of paint, there's a shop 20 minutes away from my house that carries the stuff: A lovely little shop called Second Betty. The next closest shop is 2 hours away. Yikes. The owner was the absolute SWEETEST gal and I could have stayed there for hours.
She was incredibly helpful, then she happily took a bunch of my money. :)
But the super-nice thing about buying from a local shop is the fact when you get home, you get to open a lovely gift! Much nicer than the icky plastic bags from the Mart of Wal...
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I don't sew.
Well, not in the conventional sense anyway. I have absolutely no idea how to read and follow a pattern. I started dabbling with quilts a few years back and if I can't make it up in my own head, I pretty much can't do it.
My beautiful niece just had her first baby...a sweet little boy! Her handsome hubster is a Buffalo Bills fan, so upon learning my new grandnephew's name, I got straight to work on his quilt. (Is it grandnephew or great nephew??)
Either way, it makes me old.
I will not presume to call this a tutorial, since I'm a self-taught, complete amateur. But, this is my first quilt where I've taken pictures along the way.
Here's little Jude's Tatanka.....er...Buffalo.
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Why is this post titled "chubby checkerboard"?
Am I going to break into song and do The Twist? No.
I am, however, posting the rebirth of my awesome new checkerboard coffee table, and it just so happens I'm feeling a little chubby during the scribing of this post.
I've got to get off the pizza, brownies, and wine.
Here's my new little beauty, allllll finished.
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The DIY Drop Cloth Drape.
It's amazing how much you don't realize you dislike something until you replace it with something better. (And no, ladies, I'm not talking about your husbands.) It's also amazing that after you look at something long enough you become oblivious to the fact that something else could and WOULD look mucho better-o.
Who knew I didn't have to keep window treatments forever? Not me, that's who.
I'm very new to the blogging world, the DIY world, and just cool house stuff in general. But now that the kids have been kicked out flown the coop (and I have a new, super-fly FAST computer), I'm finding all new ways to get creative and generally irritate the crap out of Philly.
I'm a little late getting on this particular boat, but apparently a really cool and inexpensive way to make yourself some custom drapes is to start with some uber-cheap painter's drop cloths. I bought mine at Lowe's, but I suspect you can find them at any do-it-yourself box store.
I picked up a 9'x12' drop cloth.
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We have a great thrift store in town. I went in a few weeks ago looking for some lace panties and a toilet brush, and I saw a pair of brass lamps sitting high atop a shelf.
I'd been wanting to play with a brass lamp. Opportunity presented itself.
These particular lamps were $3.50 each. While at times I'm willing to blow that same amount on a Diet Coke and 6-pack of chocolate wax donuts for breakfast, I thought that was too much to spend on an actual working lamp, let alone $7.00 for the pair.
So I walked away.
I went back into the shop a week later for a matching bra and toilet plunger. My lamps were still there.
AND, it was half-off-anything-electrical week!
I walked out of the shop with both lamps AND 2 back issues of Better Homes & Gardens for a nickel apiece. Grand total for the shopping excursion: $3.82. Score.
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I love my Mom. I also love that she was impressed enough with my kitchen backsplash to trust me to do hers as well.
Unfortunately, I'm more of an earthy-tone-brownish kinda girl...whereas Mom is into cooler grays.
Gray is not my friend. Whether we're talking about the hairs multiplying with increasing voracity atop my head.....or paint. Grays like to turn blue. (Again with the hair...You've seen how old-lady-gray hair can, indeed, turn blue, if not properly processed...)
And let's face it. 50 Shades was the WORST. BOOK. EVER.
But I digress.
Mom has a gray quartz countertop and blonde-colored maple cabinets. Hmmmm...grays and creams living together in perfect harmony?? (I'd like to buy the world a Coke?) Inconceivable!
But this is my Mom we're talking about, so instead I'm thinking, "As...You...Wish...!!"
After painting the gray tones on one wall THREE different times, they finally started looking less blue. The tiles still appear somewhat blue in the photos, but in person, they actually do look gray.
Well, most do.
I'm rethinking wanting to do this as a side business. It turns out I'm not much of a contortionist, and you really NEED to be one in order to properly mask everything off and paint in the corners. I'm seriously considering looking up the local chiropractor after this one. I could see any money this kind of work might generate would go straight to the Back Quack. Well, the masseuse, anyway.
Blue or Gray, Union or Confederate, I still think the backsplash turned out okay. Was I successful in uniting the two different colors palettes?
Here are the before shots...ignore the miscellaneous crap lying around...that's mostly my mess.
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I found myself in project mode again. Hubby was gone for the weekend, and I always find some trouble to get into when he's away. This was fairly benign, however...merely painting the red wall in the living room. (The red HAD to go since I just painted the adjoining kitchen wall a lovely eggplant. Now the red was just blecchhhh....) The only real difficulties in this project were moving the incredibly heavy TV from the corner, and painting around the piano, since it can NOT be moved. It's a mere 4 inches from the wall at its closest, and folks, 4 inches just isn't much to work with. (nyuk...)
But this isn't really about painting a wall. Or climbing atop my piano (which makes me about as nervous as a whore in church), or crawling under said piano and banging my head about a gazillion times while at the same time, wishing my arm were just that mere 4 inches longer so I could reach that spot in the corner.
It's about my sweet little ice chest I've had forever that now needed a serious facelift. It was still the same color as when I purchased it some 15+ years ago and was really out-of-place after painting my wall back to a neutral color and changing up my wall decor.
As usual, hubby was a tremendous help. He started sanding her down for me and got me going with the power tools and I finished up the sand job. Then he thought he'd be quite helpful and spray the primer on for me. Philly is genius at 99.9% of the tasks he sets out to accomplish. This was the .1%. He was a bit overzealous with the spray can and ended up with puddles of primer on the top of the chest, and drips down the sides. I now affectionately think of him as my Big Dripper.
I didn't take pictures of this because he managed to get it all sanded down again. I don't know if I would have done that to him anyway. 'Cause let's face it. When it comes right down to it, I screw up WAY more stuff than he does, and he almost always has to fix it. Plus, he's pretty much a saint. Well, sometimes. <3
Anyway, here's how my sad little chest started out:
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