Reviving the Deck

After a long winter with no love, below is the sad, lowly state of the deck.

Fifteen dollar rug turned into the consistency of a dried paper towel.

Yuck.

We flipped the rug over.

My lovely assitant and I grabbed some painters tape

and commenced to taping using the boards on the deck as a guide.

Oh, yeah, we commence 'round these parts.

Intoduce spray paint to make sure our idea will work...

Alas! It does!

and better than I thought because the paint gets on the fat, blank

lines just enough to make it look intentional. Yay.

Adam hit my pot with the lawn mower so I took this doo-hickey

gave it some paint (because I'm in that mode) and repotted it.

                                      

And here's the finished result:

                                              Husband and I are planning to stain the deck soon
                                         but so far, I'm please with this mini-makeover
                                                             on a $0 budget. (( :
                                          

A Jar of Twine

   Last night I was bored to tears. My kids went on an impromptu visit to Boone with my Mom and Dad and Husband was out of town on business.
  The Lord asked a few days before that I take a 3 day fast from regularly scheduled programs (aka my T.V. addiction). So what's a girl to do? Organize a closet? Catch up on laundry? Clean out the fridge?
                  Why, of course not. I'll roll twine around a Mason jar and take a ton of pictures of it!

When I began, I was hoping to avoid burning off my fingerprints using the hot glue gun so I

experimented by looping the beginning under to secure and then hiding it by going over it again.

It held tightly.

I kept trying to snug each time around up to the former but it occurred to me to wrap a bunch of

times and then push them up tightly. Hello.

Wrap.

Push.

The bottom was tricky so I just left it since it matches the top anyway.

(Plus Made in the U.S.A. is still visible!

Booyah!)

I added one drop of hot glue to finish.

Now what to do with this 15 minute project?

I know! Stack another 10 minute project on top...

This......

hot glued to this.

Topiary wanted to be with it's own kind.

This is what used to be in this space by the front door.

now this...

Who Needs True Green?

 I found a lovely little container at the Thrift Store recently. I gave it a coat of white paint (it was an ugly patina red before), put some rocks in the bottom and soil on top.

I threw in some wheat grass seed and wah-lah...

                              These seeds sprouted within days! I think the picture above is like the 3rd or 4th day.
                                                                                True WHO?

                                           And this was the 6th and after a haircut.

(Check out the border in the background. I am in the process of removing it but lost my umph when I realized there is no avoiding bruised armpits reaching over my "beloved" oak cabinets to scratch and claw dated border. Sigh.

Speaking of which, I finally have husband convinced to let me paint the oak cabinets white. This is a MAJOR feat on so many levels.

One, he's a mountain boy.

Two, he's a wood loving man and

Three, he admits that he doesn't envision things very well and

he's asking me when I'm going to do it!

Now normally, I would be on that like a fly on a cow patty, before he changed his mind but this falls about midway on the priority list and anyway, if it doesn't turn out I can always say,

"well, YOU kept begging me to do it!"

Okay, sorry to veer off but if you've read this blog one hot second, you know how I love a tangent.)

Isn't it cool?

I could have sworn I saw the Easter Bunny puttering around in there this morning!

Barely grass has tons of nutritional properties. I intend to juice it since I'm trimming it every 4 days or so anyway but haven't tried it yet.

If you want to try this, get wheat grass seed online or at the health food store. 

Soak the seed in water and change out the water every 12 hours or so for 2-3 days or until it sprouts.

Spread the seed generously over soil and lightly cover with more soil. 

Water often. 

                                                                          source

Slapping Together a Topiary

                                   I found this bag of stuff at the Mighty Dollar. 

I hotglued it to this styrofoam ball.

I prowled the yard for a straight stick. This one called to me from

my neighbor's side of the fence so I snatched it!

The pretty goblet, I found at a thrift store.

I stuck the stick in plant styrofoam and packed in faux moss.

Full of Beans

  It turns out Big Deb, the Diva Desk is a bit of a gangsta because she stole dining table's bling.

Ah, well. You don't really know someone until you live with them for awhile.

 So dining table had to go find some more bling and fast. She was feeling a little

neckkid.

Thanks to Nate Berkus' suggestion to fill apothecaries and vases with random things around the house,

dining table got some bean love.

That's black eyed peas, black beans and coffee beans.

This was super cheap. I spent $2 for each vase and $3 for the beans. The coffee beans and candles I had on hand.

 Feeling content with Bean Bling.

A Christmas Tree, I mean, Geometric Shape is Born

While doing Mammoth Basement Drudgery for a serious 6 hours yesterday and accomplishing only 1/3 of one of the 5 disaster rooms, I found this amongst the mountains of crafting crap.

                                                                   and this

Which reminded me that on a recent Ross trip I found this for $2.99

It's a candle holder. I whipped out the hot glue gun and nearly burned my fingerprints off but it was all worth it when it turned out like this...

It's a geometric shape on display for now but in December, I'll call it a Christmas tree. ( ;

I like how it breaks up all the deep reds which I think I've gone overboard with in this room. But I'll figure that out later. For now, it's back to the grind. )) :

Pretty By Accident

 I have been short a bamboo place mat for months now. It's such an eyesore to me; like a 1,000 piece puzzle all nicely put together and eek!! --the last piece is missing. I finally decided to order the missing mat, even though they only come in a set of four from Amazon. You can imagine the sigh of disappointment when they arrived and I tore into the box eager to fill that empty spot on the table and discovered this.....


............

The one on the left is the offending party.
So my first inclination was to promptly pack up said package and hurl it against the wall but then, wait. Craft mode is in high gear. Surely something could be done with these.
I tried to do a mismatch theme with new and old place mats but then it just looked like mismatched place mats. I fingered the strips and momentarily considered disassembling them all and stringing them back together to make a bamboo curtain but no...no...

Suddenly I hear the voice of The Count Dracula from Sesame Street in my head...AHA!

Some liquid nails and

so much for comfy bottoms plus I have once again evaded the need to sew!

My final plans for this space is to paint and lower the lighting a few inches and add curtains panels...which is another shop online failure but I'll save that until I have a happy ending to write!