Wrap, wrap, wrap... wrap it up

It has been a fairly productive day here in the crazy house.  Poor Sake had waaaay too much energy this morning (note to my fairy godmother: we need to fence the yard), so we started our activities at the area dog park.  Thank goodness for this place, because otherwise puppy would only get to really run when Daddy is home - he rides his 10 speed full out so she can stretch her legs.

Look at this place...

Outagamie County Dog Park - North Park

This is just one of three areas that the dogs can run, play and socialize in during the warm weather.  Gorgeous!  When snow arrives, we’ll check out the fourth and final unknown... the winter-specific area.  Really, it’s awesome, so if you’re local check it out, and if you’re an animal lover who just happens to be rolling in cash, they survive on donations, no additional funding at all.  Just sayin’  ;)

After the doggy exercise, we went shopping!  Actual retail shopping, and I found both the perfect wedding gift and a toy for myself that I suspect will factor heavily in some later posts.  Yay!  I’m just a little excited :)

Why is it that even when the kids are behaving, having all three of them with me in a store is so freakin’ stressful?!?  A big Thank You! to my mom, who kept them at her place when it turned out that the only location to still have one of the “Perfect Wedding Gift” was at the mall.  I WILL NOT take my children to the mall.  God help me when they’re teenagers...  We got lunch from a mission-supporting, fund-raising brat fry, and went home to get the girls down for the naps that I they so desperately needed. 

Ah, naptime.  The delicious quiet, the potential to get grown-up things done...  yeah, I fell asleep.  Only for a couple of minutes, though, I promise!  When I jerked awake on the couch, I had only one thing on my mind, and it was this:

What the...???       Exhibit #1

(backstory)  Months ago, I picked up this lamp from Goodwill.  

It keeps reverting to its side!  Sorry!

It will be the perfect reading light, and it’s very sturdy.  All it needed was a nice shade, right?  Uh huh.  Problem:  the shade fitting was threaded.  I’m a small-town girl; I had no idea that such things existed.  Thank goodness for Google, which taught me about UNO fittings for lampshades, blah, blah, blah.

Basically, this little treasure needed a special type of shade that did NOT fit into the crazy house budget.  Enter Ebay, and an UNO lampshade frame for $11 (see exhibit #1).  I was tickled, and had all kinds of good ideas about how I could make it really cool.  

Did I mention that this was all months ago?

Yesterday, during a cleaning fit (don’t worry, I’ve recovered nicely), I found my big spool of jute.  I knew I had one, but it’s been misplaced for some time (months, maybe?).   Anyway, I woke from my nap, saw that pathetic frame hanging from the lamp that had never even been plugged in, and remembered the jute.  In the last minutes of blissful stillness, I got to work.  

I also found a marathon of Gilmore Girls on the SOAP channel, so that was a win-win.  I still want to be Lorelei.

The procedure is simple - tie a square knot to whatever inside joint is available, and walk the jute over to the first of the six wires that make up the frames panels.  

Wrap the jute over and around the first wire, under and around the second, over and around the third, etc. until you get to the sixth, where you have to go against the pattern and go OVER, in order to get the lovely woven effect for most of the panels. 

If the frame you want to use has an odd number of wires, there’s no need or reason to deviate from the over, under pattern.  With an even number, you’re going to end up with 5 “woven” panels and one with nice, straight lines.  It’s a subtle difference, and unless you’re looking closely at the shade, it’s not going to be noticeable.  I turned my “odd” panel to the wall, as I’m one of those freaks of nature who would notice, and be bothered by it daily.

To finish the bottom edge, I simply chose to wrap the thicker wire with the jute I had left.  The difficult part about that was getting the unwinding spool between the wire, and the wrapping I had already completed.  My solution was to push the wrapped material as far toward the top as possible, which looked horrible and scared me that I had ruined the whole thing.  After each section's bottom frame was complete, I adjusted the upper sections back into place to reassure myself that things were ok.  They always were.  Whew!

There you have it!  A hand-worked lampshade for cheap - the lamp, shade and jute all together were less than $20.  I love the texture it'll bring to the room (which room?  I can't decide yet).  AND I got some bonding time in with all my peeps in Stars Hollow!  


It was a good day, my friends!  Hope it was wonderful for y'all as well...

xoxo,

Tami
Linking to:

Thinkin' Thursday

Thinkin' Thursday (on the lighter side...)

Thought of the day from a witty, wary woman full of wisdom:

The Great Sarah Silverman

“If you don’t have enough   regret in your life,

try   cutting bangs.”

That's it for me today.  Busy cleaning and organizing kids crap junk stuff all day... 

xoxo,

Tami

Underwhelming Wednesday

Do you know what today is?  Do you???  Well, when I woke up, I thought it was Wonderful Wednesday, which would be a great day to break back into the blogging game.  However, after I waited in line dropped in at the Thrift Shoppe 

this morning, there was just so little thrifty goodness!  I know you have all been there, when you have your hopes up and are geared to make some great find, and then ppthsst, the air just goes right out of you.  

It’s not like there’s a ton of stuff I need, but I wanted to find a piece to make over, as it’s been a long, dry, not-creative summer.  After my wonderful hubby made an involuntary donation of some of my to-be-done pieces (yeah, grrrrrr), I have both the space and the inclination to make something purday.

Instead, I guess I can catch you up on a couple of things around this crazy house.  Check out this nonsense... this is the Porch of Peril!  

March 2011

Now

Actual space to sit and chat, eat, and maybe have a cocktail or two!  The big green lump is the salon chair that has no official place, but I may have come up with a long-term home for that bad boy!

Oh yeah. The scariest room in the house - the laundry/clothes storage room.  I’ll keep y’all up to speed if there’s any actual progress on that front.  :)

This lovely thing is going to be our new kitchen table.  

Hunter green be gone, and blonde wood as well.  (The mirrors & picture frames are on my list)  I have high hopes for this table, as it seems like I’ll never have a real dining room, at least in this house.  Once the table is done, there will be some serious lobbying for some cohesive chairs... I am feeling pretty done with the whole bachelor pad/starter home vibe.  I’m 41, people!  Let my house grow up!


Hey, a couple of side notes...

Happy Birthday, Mom!  

1945 was a good year!

And, do you remember this little girl?

March 2011

Not so little anymore, although still as cute.

June 2011

Now, folks, I need to be off.  Have a great day, and I'll be back at you tomorrow.

xoxo,

Tami

Distraction

Have you ever noticed how one little thing can lead to another?  Of course you have; the majority of my readers are women!  If you are anything like me, you can start off doing a load of laundry and end up in Mexico! ;)  OK, small exaggeration, but I often find myself seriously off track of whatever I thought I would get done during any given time period.  Today, for instance...

I dropped the kids (all three of them!) off at summer school at 8:30.  

They are safely occupied for 3 glorious hours each weekday, and I try to use that time wisely.  Already by drop-off time, I had been knocked off of my original plan of cleaning and prepping for our weekend away by a phone call summons request invitation to have coffee with my mother instead.  I told her I could be there by about 8:40, but didn’t actually arrive until about 8:55 because I was further distracted by a rummage sale, where I found this.

29 inches wide, and 52 inches tall, it's solid oak.  Thank goodness there's no glass in those doors, because it already took three of us to get that puppy into my Vue, partly because I hadn’t totally unloaded my haul from rummaging yesterday (oops), and party because my real puppy was trying to make a break for it, since all the doors were open at once.  She’s not so little anymore.

So, I had coffee with Mom, and we talked for too long, and I got home about 10:20.  Oh, man!  Only an hour ‘til I had to go get those kids.  So of course I spent it cleaning and packing... NOT!

I went into the Porch of Peril, 

and pulled out the base of a vanity I’d been planning to redo for the girls’ room.  At that point, it was totally filthy, but still had the simple shape I remembered.  More importantly, it measured out to a workable base for the hutch, since my original planned piece did not.  There was a moment of panic, as I considered that I’ve been forbidden to bring any more “potential” to the PoP until I free some space.  

There’s also the offered bribe of new patio furniture if I will only clear out my stash, but that doesn’t seem to be going so well.

ANYWAY, 

Once I moved my antique Singer treadle machine {For Sale!} out of the way, I hefted the vanity base into position and wasted used up another chunk of time wiping it down and then cleaning it thoroughly with Murphy’s Oil soap.  

Boy, I love the way that stuff smells.  Kinda clean, I guess.  :) A look at the clock, and I started to sweat about how the Rell I was gonna get that oak monstrosity up the three feet onto the base.  Too late!  11:25, and the kids dismiss at 11:30!  Craptastic!  Off I went...

to be continued...

xoxo,

Tami

Literally Crazy

On a personal note...

I have been in a ridiculous slump lately.  My last post was about parenting issues; there have been more of those going on, but, really, a lot of what’s been happening or not happening has been caused by or contributed to by my mood(s).  I have been slacking terribly around this house, and I have no patience for anything, including myself!  I wanted to blame everything on being a “single parent” so much (D travels for a living, after all).  I wanted to think that if I just had a little support, things would be so very different.  Everything I wanted to accomplish was blocked by some thing that I needed someone else to do for me.  Guess what?  These things are all true.  They do deserve some of the blame.  However...

The larger problem is just me.  I can’t seem to find my focus, I’m terribly emotional, and every little setback feels like a deathblow.  NO! I’m not pregnant!  What I am, though, is off my meds.  Antidepressants, specifically.  I’ve been on and off of them for most of my adult life (mostly on).  I have a chemical imbalance in m’brain, which sounds like a cop-out, but medication is the only thing that’s ever been reliable for keeping me on keel. 

The beginning of this year, I was feeling better than I have in recent memory, strong and confident, and I really thought that I could be okay on my own.  Coming off these types of meds, you have to wean down, which I did.  For about 5-6 weeks after my last dose, I felt great, and got back some of the other emotions that tend to be tamped down by SSRI’s (Selective Seratonin Re-uptake Inhibitors).  I bragged to my hubby how good I felt, I made progress with all the projects I wanted and needed to do, and I made friends!  I even lost weight - could it have been any better?  It was wonderful... right up until it wasn’t.  

Suddenly, every noise the kids made grated on me (OK, that’s not THAT unusual).  Not being able to find a tool or supply could make me cry, or turn me into a screaming maniac.  Little annoyances that I could usually shrug off now made me just enraged.  It’s ugly, people.

FYI: When I’m fully dosed, I can’t cry.  Can’t.  Not for reasons large or small.  It’s one reason I want so badly to be done with these pills.

Being a raving B%&$@ isn’t very conducive to writing what I try to make an informative, entertaining blog.  The fact that all I’ve accomplished lately is consuming an incredible amount of comfort food doesn’t help, either.

Long, long, story short...  please forgive my absence, and watch for things to resume funniness shortly.  I don’t like me like this, so I won’t expect you to, either.

Oh, and I WILL be asking for the help I need to get some things done around here.  Sometimes a bad mood is just a bad mood!

On to better things...

xoxo,

Tami

Parenting issues

It’s a beautiful day outside.  The sun is shining, there’s a gentle breeze, the humidity is under control... and the kids are out there screaming, fighting and just generally trying to cripple each other’s self-esteem.  Soooo glad it was only a half day of school!  (Sarcasm is ugly.)  

Truth be told, they have been owley since the moment their beautiful blue eyes opened this morning.  Previously very excited to participate in “Bike to School Day”, the older two kids wouldn’t eat, get dressed, or clean themselves up this morning, except in slow motion.  They fought me at every turn, and finally, I ended up driving them to school, and we were still almost late.  Seeing all the other families biking in together made me actually cry as I dropped them off.  I have no control over this family!  The puppy, too.  She decided that 20 minutes alone in the car was offensive enough  that she should punish me by destroying the cables for our portable DVD player.  Since I’m driving cross-country in two weeks, this is just about all I can handle.  It adds up to a pounding headache and a very poor attitude on  my part.  This is a huge shame, since I had planned to take them all on a picnic when I picked them up.  No more of that.  Rewarding bad behavior is just dumb, but...

Whoever dreamed up the idea that taking away privileges was a great deterrent for bad behavior was dreaming.  I’ve tried taking away actual things, then privileges, and tacked on chores as “punishment”.  None of these worked, and unfortunately, I don’t have a better idea.  I am feeling very inadequate, and wondering how I am ever going to manage a week-long trip in June, with 3 kids and a dog in the car.  I think I may be having to re-think that.

Sorry to be such a Debby Downer today.  I’m feeling kind of at my wit’s end.  If anyone has some words of advice and/or inspiration, I’d be glad to hear them.  

Next time will be much brighter, I promise!  

xoxo,

Tami

A funny for you, and a plea for me...

I just had a visit from my favorite brother's wife, who I haven't seen for almost a whole year!  Way too long, but it was sure nice to have a couple of hours to spend with her as she travels down to Tennessee to help her folks (snowbirds) prepare to make the trip back for the summer here in Wisconsin.

While she was here, she had to share with me the hysterical video I've attached below, and so now I am passing it on to you.  Goofy fun!

Hope that made you laugh...  it sure did me good to just giggle like a kid over it!

If you liked it, please feel free to spread the love!  It always makes me feel good to think I've brightened someone's day  :)

And if you like me, or just reading my nonsense, feel free to "Like" me on Facebook. Share the love, people!  Also, I'm always trying to figure out what y'all wanna read about, so don't be shy with comments, either good OR bad.  And finally, if you read me regularly, please consider becoming a Follower.  It's really only important to me, but I get a big rush whenever a new person comes on board!  Selfish much?  Yep, it's all about me!  ;)

Have a great night, everyone!

xoxo,

Tami