Color Therapy, Part 3

Click here for Color Therapy, Part 1 and here for Color Therapy, Part 2.

Finally finishing this up! I'm sure you were all waiting with bated breath. Since my last post we got some sort of horrible cold/flu thing that pretty much has knocked each of us out of commission for about a week. And, of all irritation, it knocked my blogging schedule off kilter. Oh well. Sometimes life gets in the way of blogging. We are okay with that. 

I'm thinking that since we've paid our dues with this particular horrible illness, perhaps we should be excused from all illness for next year?! Ha, if only it worked that way. 

So, this is what I ended up doing with my beautifully painted clothespins... I found a over-sized Brandy glass vase thing at Walmart, and since I very specifically wanted something that didn't have a lid (I find it irritating to rattle with lids when my hands are full of things), that could eventually serve more than one purpose, and was cheap-ish. This fit the bill on all accounts, and I treasure it greatly.  I think possibly I need another 100 pack of clothespins, yes?! Hee hee!!

 After we were done painting most of the clothespins (I had deliberately withheld some in case I felt the need of another color) the girls and I stood back and looked at our work, and decided that the colors weren't quite full enough--they thought we were missing hot pink. :-) I however, realized that we were missing some depth to balance out the deep purple, and so I found some Navy Blue spray paint and did the ones I'd withheld--I'm SO glad that it ended up working out that way, because the colors look awesome.

 This is the lamp in the upstairs bookcase area, in progress. I love the look of writing on a lampshade, so I tried to accomplish that with this, one of my favorite poems by Emily Dickinson, "Hope" is the Thing With Feathers. In short, I was NOT happy with how it turned out.

Things that made it not work very well:

**The fabric of this particular lampshade was really heavy and rough--not conducive to writing on--I couldn't even get pencil to show up on it to initially trace my letters, and painting it with the stiffest of brushes was nigh on impossible. I ended up free-handing it with a toothpick. Which is why it looks so rough.

**If I should write poetry on a lampshade again, I would do a barrel shaped silk or soft paper shade--one that is equally wide at the top as it is on the bottom. And then obviously measure and tape lines to keep the letters uniform, and also, I would first write the entire poem with a pencil, and use an acrylic paint pen over the top of that.

All that being said, it was a learning experience for sure. I had it like this for one night--just to see if I could live with it, and in the few hours I looked at it it made me CRAZY--it became very clear it had to go. So, the next morning I took it downstairs and painted over it with a spray paint to see if it could be salvaged.

 And, AFTER! Painting over it with spray paint worked well enough. You can still read the poem but it isn't so shocking. It doesn't necessarily make my skirts fly up, but it will do for now, and I can live with it.

This space is SO WELL LOVED and used now, at any given time there is usually a girl sitting in the chair with a book and a drink.  I put a coaster there for form for a few months--I figure my kids should at least know when they are and how to use them, but I'm not really that uptight about it after all, I did beat this table with a hammer before I brought it into the house.

 A close-up of the lamp. Goodbye, scary tacky gold, hello lovely interesting green.

 Next on my "Make this House Livable" agenda was the third bedroom. Our third bedroom in every house we've had has always served as the computer room/study/sewing/craft/guest room. And, one reason we were attracted to this house was because the third bedroom was HUGE. Blessedly huge.

It's also been the room that always ends up with the oddest assortment of furniture in it, for some reason.

So, when we first moved into this house I thought we'd do school upstairs at the kitchen table. I assumed that I needed to be near the kitchen while we were doing school, as that is how we'd done it in Wenatchee, and it worked SO well. But, as we've lived in this house it became very obvious that wasn't working out too well, at all. The kitchen and dining area in this house is TINY, and therefore it was ALWAYS a mess with school stuff going on, and whatever else. More than that, it turns out what I needed to be near wasn't the kitchen, but the LAUNDRY ROOM! And in this house, the laundry room is downstairs, a million miles away from the kitchen. This house is seriously weird. So, I set about having us do school downstairs in the third bedroom, aka the computer room/study/sewing/craft/guest room ANNNND... now the School Room too.

Also, the last year or so of our life sewing has really taken a back seat for me. And, obviously that's something that is going to happen here and there, but it was getting to the point where I really missed it. And I needed to figure out a way to fit it back into my life, even if just in a small way.

I didn't take any before pics of this area, but let's just say that it was a mess. This table (which I absolutely LOVE--it is from my uncle and aunt, and was our dining table in Wenatchee, but it doesn't fit in the dining room in this house)  was one leaf smaller, and piled high with fabric and books. Also, the light in this room is wonderful and natural during the day, but it has the weirdest light fixture that is horrifying at night--rendering the room completely unusable, and that is NO exaggeration.

So, goals for organizing this room were:
1. Set up for school, seating and storage and supplies
2. Light so I can sew in the evenings and the girls can play
3. Game/Books/Art storage so the girls can play in this room in the evening while Momma sews and Daddy plays Call of Duty.
4. Storage for sewing stuff and school stuff, so this room can be clean and completely decluttered when guests need to use it.

 We were always needing more chairs in here, so the blue ones in the above photo I found at goodwill for $9.99 a piece. They are wood, so I should be able to repaint them if ever needed, and they are perfect school room chairs for not just this room, but any room of the future. I ended up with one extra little lamp from all my lamp/furniture moving--but it's little enough that it nestles perfectly under the big lamp, so we're calling it good--it is SO NICE to have light in this room in the evening! I can't even say how wonderful it is.

I do need to add one more leaf to the table--I keep forgetting to ask Garrett to help me with that. I was able to do the first one myself, but we need muscle on both ends of the table for another. This huge table is such a blessing down here--we are totally able to have both art/puzzles, whatever going as well as sewing projects. It's been nice to get a bit of sewing back in my life, and also have the room set up so we can spend the evenings with Garrett, down in his Daddy Dungeon, alternately known as our "School Womb" or Guest Womb". Hey, the walls are all dark red. :-)

When I first started into organizing this room I was a little worried that I was going to have to find a half bookcase for our school stuff, and possible some of the craft supplies. Thankfully however, the previous residents of this house had this shelving in the closet. Not so handy for guests who have hanging clothes, but SO nice for our purposes. I don't know what I'd do without all this shelving. This closet full of shelves has proven to be a complete lifesaver for me. I was able to rearrange all our office supplies and craft supplies to also fit sewing and most of our school supplies and about half our games on it too. Yay! I love it when stuff works out like that!

 So this was a fun little project I just couldn't resist.

You see, Anthropologie has these delightful little containers in both large, and small. And, I've been plotting making them mine for a ridiculous amount of time. However, I never could quite bring myself to do it, because of a few reasons:

1. The sizes of them are a little small for actual usefulness.
2. I want more color options for the big one, especially. The blue is pretty, but I wanted a green big one for my sewing stuff.
3. You really need three of them if you're going to store fruits or veggies in them--like one big one, and two small ones, so it would be balanced properly. That could get spendy.
4. I bought 9 pairs of shoes between December and March. Now, realistically, I didn't really buy ANY shoes between December and March. You see, the first ones were my treat to myself since I moved us. And, I got them on sale for $30. If you count our moving process over a period of 3 months that means that I worked for a rate of $10 per month, which is ridiculously low, and shouldn't count against my shoe purchases at all. The next two pairs were with Birthday money, so they ABSOLUTELY don't count. The following two pairs were due to the fact that we moved. I used to run errands in my super warm snow boots all winter long. Now living over here in big-city, classier dressing people as a general rule, wet puddle-ville, it became apparent that snow boots were not going to cut it. So, I had to get a black pair and a brown pair of errand running flat cute (not heeled) boots. I firmly maintain that this is not my fault, and these shouldn't count against me.  Then, I did our taxes this year, and saved us a bundle on not going to an accountant. And I really needed some cute flat sandals for summer. So, I found a black pair and a brown pair--good basics for the need at hand. But then, I realized that anyone in their right mind who's rewarding themselves for the thankless and horrific task of doing taxes, especially in a year where there's a home sale and multiple other fun little things along those lines, should buy sandals in an actual shade of delight--not black or brown. So, I got myself a blue pair. But then, in order to get free shipping I had to spend another $5. So I got myself a coral pair too. And therefore, you see, I haven't ACTUALLY bought nine pairs of shoes. It just SEEMS like I have. My logic here is inescapable.

Somehow though, I find that this particular shoe saga takes a bit of the joy out of spending a ridiculous amount of money at Anthropologie for a few little trinkets, so I'm holding off on that for a while. :-)

Also, should you need any exorbitant purchases justified, I'm your girl, just give me a call.

Also, Disclaimer: My allowable shoe purchase price is stupidly low--so it's not like I spent a ton of money on said shoes.

So, anyhoo-how, after all that, I bought a bucket of strawberries, and and spray painted the trash at the end of the strawberry eating. :-) Then I coated it with multiple coats of an outdoor polyurethane, and I gotta say, I'm THRILLED with the outcome. Totally cute and usable and not the end of the world if it gets stepped on or dropped.

 I don't know anything about food storage and polyurethane, so I don't know that I would ever make these to put food in. Actually, I probably would, but I don't know that I should.

 That being said, I think I might need a yellow one, and an orange one, and a blue one... yeah. :-) Also, the bottom of it is my very favorite part--ha! I will admit to sometimes lifting it up, and grinning at the bottom. :-) It's the little things in life.

 So, for now that ends my pictures of the organization and projects around here. I'll be back with more, soon. Getting sick really threw me off my track--BOO! I'm hoping to be back on it soon. It feels like the clock is ticking for Bebe's arrival. It's not THAT imminent, but I've lost two weeks of good work due to being sick, and I'm not overly thrilled about that. Oh well, we will try to take it as it comes. Be back soon with more fun posts!