Carlie's Bedroom - DIY corkboards

When we moved into our condo, we rented it furnished. Now that we're buying it, I've asked the landlord/owner/seller to move out some of her furniture so I could bring in more of my own.

The most recent thing to go was the bedroom furniture in Carlie's bedroom. She was living large with a queen size bed, which is completely inconvenient in this small condo where space is at a premium and she needs to be able to buddy up with her sister or a friend or whoever might be crashing here.

I wanted to move her into two twin beds, and I wanted to find something vintage and fabulous. But I couldn't. And believe me, I looked. I ended up buying two ghetto $99 captain's beds from Big Lots which are actually quite nice and serviceable platform beds without headboards. Even though they came from Big Lots.

I thought about doing upholstered headboards. But that requireds, like, tools and such. Long story short, blah blah blah, I decided to go with cheap and easy and DIY. And thus, the corkboards.

I found these two horrible "paintings" at Goodwill for $14.00 and a roll of cork at Fred Meyer in the clearance bin for less than $5. Add a tube of trust E6000 glue and we're ready to rock and roll.

These pictures are not canvas. The "art" is on a piece of hard board in the frame. So I decided to glue right over the top of it rather than remove it and replace it with cork. This made the project even simpler than I had planned. I covered the "art" with E6000 and laid out the cork.

I pressed the cork down smooth and then used sophisticated crafting weights made for this type of work. The right tool for every job is essential.

Because I do everything in a semi-half-assed fashion, if you look above you'll see that my cork is not perfectly measured nor perfectly cut, thus leaving a little bit of a gap around the edges. I closed the gap by gluing a piece of ribbon around the edges.

And voila, gilded corkboards, ready to hold treasures in a tween girl's bedroom.

Carlie immediately announced that she hates them. Hates them very much. Because they are "too gold" and "too fancy." My response: when you move out, you don't have to take them with you.

So the room transformation is complete. The dresser between the two beds is from my childhood room in the 60s. For real. I used this dresser as a changing table for each of my kids starting in 1987 and also for grandbaby Iris when she was born in 2007.

And a quick tour of the rest of the room, because it's small and there's not much else to see. Here's Carlie's desk/vanity table.

And even her closet got a quick makeover with storage shelves and bins.

For all I know, she is hatching an egg in that laundry hamper.

The end.

Linking up to some crafty blogs (for the first time ever!)

Between Naps On The Porch

Making The World Cuter

Lazy Blogging, Part 1

I've got a ton of awesome pictures (and some less than awesome pictures) on my iPhone, and, lucky you, I am sharing. Ha ha. Actually, I am quite pissed that I have somehow lost the battery charger for my real camera, and I guess for the rest of my life the only photos I'll be able to take are with my phone. Or until, you know, I buy another camera. Or find the f*ing cord. Shut up, it could happen.

Today's theme is shit I've made. This idea is inspired by the fact that I am making a birdcage wedding veil for my daughter's wedding next year.

So without further adieu, shit I made in 2010.

Blinged out Christmas stockings

Tote Bags

Brought an beat up, colored on dollhouse back to life with scrapbook paper used as wallpaper and rugs

Cake platters, that work fabulously for cupcakes

I got to help make a wedding, complete with a DIY wedding potourri sachet making station

And lots of stuff for babies.

Up next, the shit I bought edition. And once again, ignore the underlining because, really, WTF?

Off The Wagon

My Sunday food intake consisted of cheesecake and coffee for breakfast. And for dinner. Steak and coconut shrimp for lunch. And eating my weight in cheese for a snack. And we're not going to talk about the Saturday wine consumption. Diet Fail.

My workload is overwhelming, with a current 500+ page backlog. And yet? I haven't touched work all weekend. And I have new jobs to go out on this week, thus creating the cycle of never being caught up, which I had broken nicely in recent history, but am now treading water in again. Work Fail.

The kitchen is a disaster. We have no clean clothes. The grocery situation is abysmal. And we're out of cat litter. Homemaking Fail.

My "post every day for a month" goal lasted 13 days. My exercise streak was broken at one week. I could go on. And on. And on. Fail Fail Fail.

And why, might you ask, is everything around me crumbling? I'll tell you why. Knitting and sewing. That's why.

Someday I will figure out this whole "balance" thing. When I do, I'll let you know.

Is she going to *get it*? Or think I'm retarded?

I am going to a wedding reception later this afternoon. It's for a friend that I have not seen in over a year. She got married in Jamaica last week. I'm really looking forward to seeing her and going to her reception and sharing in this celebration. The couple are grown ups, having established their household together years ago, and as such have not registered for gifts and specifically included on their invitation, no gifts please.

So of course I have spent the last week obsessing on a gift. Because I cannot go anywhere without a gift.

I decided to make something for the bride. Something fun. Not a wedding present, but a fun jokey type crafty present. Because I'm kind of known by my friends for being something of a crafting nightmare.

And besides our chosen careers and our years of agonizing court reporting school together, the one thing this friend and I share is our undying love of all things Prison Break. I could go off on a really long Wentworth Miller tangent here. But let's just let the man stand on his own merits. Oh, Wentworth.

ANYWAY... after three trips to the craft store and hours spent searching the Internet... I present to you the Prison Break Charm Bracelet. For a bride. At her wedding reception. Behold the splendor of my craftiness...

Now I am wondering... will she *get it* or will she think I am the worst gift-giver of all time. And also retarded.

Let the festivities begin...

We went to our first Halloween party of the "season" yesterday. Followed immediately by our second Halloween party of the season. Don't be jealous, that's just how we roll. Also? The "second party" is kind of a stretch since it was Carlie's school carnival. And we stayed, like, a nanosecond, long enough to drop her off and head to Cinetopia for Paranormal Activity. Date night, holla.

Uncle Marty's party is always a good time for the adults and the kids. The kids didn't have a keg. Ha ha, losers.

You might recall my recent fascination with homemade cake plates. Or you might not, because the post was immediately overshadowed by my recent-er fascination with f'ed up wedding cakes.

Any-hoo... I made a couple of cake plates, for sharing goodies at Halloween parties. This one consists of a plastic goblet and a plastic black plate, both from Dollar Tree. This is a make it and leave it at the party kind of plate.
Here we have a white platter from Dollar Tree, epoxied atop a $1.99 pedestal candle holder. Topped with a festive gourd. Because nothing says festive like a warty gourd. This one did not go to the party, it's serving as our centerpiece at the moment. Because warty gourds are kind of our design esthetic.
And my favorite one. A 99-cent swirly looking plate from Goodwill, atop a $1.99 silver tapered candle holder from Goodwill. Ignore the giant spiders.

Of course, I spent more time on the plates than I did on the treats, and at the last minute we didn't know what to take to the party. So we combed through the bathroom garbage cans and collected up our used q-tips. They were a big hit.
At this point, I'll note that the boys hosting the party we went to? They like gross stuff. Really gross stuff. Not so much with the scary, but the grosser the better.

I needed an excuse to cart around my new cake plates, so made some mini cupcakes. We had a little graveyard, some funky mummies and the red blobs... well, those were kind of a last minute save. See, Carlie had a nosebleed while we were decorating, and we didn't want to waste the cupcakes just because they were covered in bloody snot, so we threw some fangs and eyes on top and called it good.
And my favorites... the pumpkin patch.
I didn't have time to dress up, so I just went as my normal self.

If I had a better camera, you'd be able to see that my scarf? Is a bloody gauze bandage.

Carlie was a hippie chick for the party. For the carnival, she was a lady bug. But she's learned from experience that it's not a good idea to wear your "good" costume to Uncle Marty's party. Things tend to get a little rough at that party. Plus, she really likes changing outfits. A lot.
Our escort? The blind ref. Side note: I went to the Halloween costume store to find glasses and a cane for the blind ref. Couldn't find any. Asked the sales girl for Stevie Wonder glasses, she looked at me like she'd never heard of Stevie Wonder. Then I said, "You know, for a blind person, and I need a blind guy tapping cane." And she looked at me like I was an asshole. Hello? she's clerking in a store that is selling size 4T diva hooker costumes and I'm the asshole? I think not.
When the ref gets his sight back, I'll screw the head of the broom back on and clean this place up.

PS: Forgot this part. My giant hat? Was trashing the decorations in the house, like spider webs in doorways and such. So I took it off. And had two separate people comment on how they thought my hair (my real hair) was a witch wig. Um. Thanks?

How to make a fairy... I mean goblin

For some reason, my mad crafting skillz are ON FIRE this Halloween. We made goodies for a party yesterday and they were spooktacular. Har har har.

My friend Deb requested directions for my Halloween goblins... and because I am too lame to figure out a way to post them anywhere else, I am doing it here. If these goblins look familiar, it could be because my mad crafting skillz are actually about equal to those of an eight-year-old and I am "repurposing" my fairy-making supplies for the fall season. Because? I am green like that.

Lastly, as I was typing up the directions, I realized that you'd have to be smoking crack and hallucinating goblins (does crack even make you hallucinate? I may have just lost all of my street cred) in order to understand my lame-ass directions. So I did a photo tutorial. And if you're not interested in making crafty goblins, stop reading now, because that's all you're going to find here, folks.

I have to say, after getting the first one going, Carlie was able to do the rest on her own, so this is definitely a good "busy" project for kids that you do not have to stand over and micromanage. And it costs next to nothing.

Materials: chenille sticks (aka pipe cleaners), faux flowers (ours are fabric from the dollar store. plastic would work too), yarn for the hair (tho in the spirit of spookiness, we used dollar store spider web and some of the plastic flower leaves on the goblins) and wooden beads (for the head). Oh, and a fine tip Sharpie to draw the face. And option ribbon or fabric scraps for embellishment. If you're putting wings on, you'll need glue. (Goblins are wingless).

STEP ONE:

Cut off a piece of the chenille stick. About "that much." The short part will be the goblin arms, the long part will be the body and legs. So cut off about 1/3, or just shy of 1/3. It's not an exact science, people.

STEP TWO:
Fold the long piece in half and slip it through the wooden bead so that you have a loop on one end and the two loose ends on the other. Those loose ends are about to become legs.

STEP THREE:
Insert hair through the loop. We used chunks of dollar store spider web and left over plastic leaves. For Christmas fairies we used yarn scraps.

STEP FOUR:
Give the "legs" a tug to cinch up the loop to hold the hair in place. IF YOU PULL TOO HARD, the bead will come off the end and you'll have to start again.

STEP FIVE:Take apart your faux flowers. Any kind will work. The ones we were using were kind of bow tie shaped and were layered two "bow ties" per flower, so we used two per goblin. Tulip shape works too. And we've used rose pedals as well. It really doesn't matter.

STEP SIX:
Thread the "legs" through the whole in the middle of the flower pedals and the flower pedals now become the "skirt." After you get the skirt where you want it, you can tie a knot in the legs to keep it from slipping down, or give the legs a twist. Doesn't matter, you won't see it under the skirt. For more manly fairies at Christmas time, we did some with leaves instead of flower pedals for more of a toga or loin cloth look than a skirt.

STEP SEVEN:
Wrap the small piece of chenille stick around the "body" and draw a face on the bead. Ta da. Goblin.

OPTIONAL:
We used some brown ribbon scraps on these, because Carlie wanted them to have a shirt. If you were being true to the art of the craft (hahaha), you would glue the ribbon neatly and not leave big jaggy looking hanging off parts, like we did. But we're spooky like that. Also, if you were making fairies vs. goblins, you could at this point glue two leaves from your faux flowers to the back of the fairies for "wings." Our goblins are glueless. So basically, we saved the life of a horse with our jaggy looking hanging off parts. (Do they really make glue from horses?)

Here's the goblin we just made, hanging with another goblin who has faux leaf hair. And also has the little plasticy part of the faux flower, the part that held the petals to the stem, as part of her skirt. They're goblins, there are no fashion rules.
THE END.

Obsessed much?

It started with a cupcake. A really tasty cupcake.

Hey, I can make cupcakes! They're cute, novel, and Carlie can help decorate without me so much wanting to hurt her. You mess one up, you've got, like, 20 more to work with. Win Win!

Here's the part where I point out that I don't really *make* things that require baking. And also? Anything I have ever decorated looks like it was made by kids. At the blind school. But I digress.

I'm going to make cupcakes as my new signature "what's Shana bringing to the party" dish. But instead of looking for idiot-proof yet tasty cupcake recipes, I am COMPLETELY OBSESSED with cake stands. I know. Right? But seriously, is presentation not half the package when you're bringing food to a party?

So today Carlie and I will be hitting the thrift stores and garage sales -- again -- last weekend it was for baby doll heads. Today we're in search of cool vintage plates for the top part where the cupcakes sit , and then bowls, wine glasses and candle holders for the bases. Because we're going to make cake stands. Yes. Multiple cake stands. Because here's the best part of the plan... when I bring the cupcakes to the party, the cake stand is a gift! GENIUS.

What work? What backlog? What transcripts? What dirty house that's hosting an open house this weekend? Shut up. Oooooooh... cupcakes at the open house! That would get this sucker sold, surely.

Plastic plate and cup from Dollar Tree

Random plates on those cheap vases flowers are delivered in

Multi layers

Vintagey

Plain plates on plain vases with, um, stuff stuck in them

Using a bowl for the base

Not just for cakes or cupcakes!

Looks like an ice cream soda glass for a stand

Cool plate with candle holder base

Simple plate on upside down margarita glass

Don't you wish your gramma was hot like me?

You know that trip to New Orleans that I have hardly mentioned at all in the last 24 hours? On the way there, I have an almost four hour layover in Houston, during which Maggy and Iris will be coming to the airport for an airport birthday party with me. Because that's how we roll.

This is Iris' Christmas photo, taken in early December. She turned one in September. Last time we saw her, she was nine months old, not even very mobile. Now she is 15 months old, walking and running and dancing and saying bye-bye. And Carlie and I are dying to see her.

******************************

Quiet day on the home front. Early trip to the gym for a 5k run. A quick shower and then a crepe brunch with Holly of Fantastic Forrest fame. After crepes, I put in two hours at the ceramic shop doing finishing work on the tiles that Carlie's class painted yesterday. 

We had one close call. One of the tiles? TOTALLY unrecognizable as anything, plant, animal or mineral. The other mom who was working on the project with me had to take it back to the school and ask the child what he was going for, because can you even imagine the horror if I had written his name on the wrong end and had it mounted on the bar upside down? Poor little dude. Turns out, the artist was going for two bunches of bananas growing on a tree, in the sunset. THANK GOD we asked.

So our class project? It is totally going to kick the asses of all of the other class projects. We're taking one of these

And 50 of these

Some of which are solid colors and some of which depict scenes from the rain forest.

And when when we're all said and done, we will have a pimped out tile topped patio bar.

Carlie's contribution? That plant that eats people from Little Shop of Horrors. It's right here, to the left and a row up from the aardvark. Or maybe it's a hedgehog. 

The auction is the premier fundraising event every year for Carlie's school. But the main goal? To be the parent who comes up with the most kick-ass class project. Because it's a Catholic school. And that's what Jesus would want.