Unanticipated Bathroom Update - Quick Custom Art Project

Last year, I showed you the pictures of our bathroom redo here.  Nothing much changed in the ensuing months...until Superman came home on leave in June.  Remember these two little vases on the shelf?

RIP two little Ikea vases.  The previous "picture" was too little anyway.
  It was a mushy greeting card Superman had given me early in our marriage...
I loved it so much, I framed it and have it up somewhere in our house all the time

They were pretty, weren't they?  Well, in one move, Superman bumped the shelf with enough force to knock them both off the shelf and send them crashing to the floor.  Bye-bye, Ikea vases.  After Superman went back to work, I rearranged to make it look like this. 

There have been fires in the area for more than a week...look how the
quality of the light is altered by the filter of smoke.  Do you like my blank
wall?  I even left the nail in place to nag at me to come up with art for the space.

I left a big blank space under the shelf and waited for inspiration. Well, here we are in September and inspiration took its sweet time!!  Fortunately, Costco supplied the missing piece and the project came together in a day.



These frames are really nice...didn't think to take a picture before the project.
Inspiration comes in the strangest forms, doesn't it?

Saw these frames at Costco...11 x 17 with matte...two frames for less than $20, plus 100 free prints from Costco.  These frames, combined with thoughts that had bouncing around in my head, resulted in the perfect art piece for our bathroom.  All it took was a piece of fabric and a vinyl cutout and 20 minutes later, we had "art".



The card is on the shelf now and my new art is on the wall...this new arrangement
is so much better and I still have my framed greeting card...plus a gift from my
daughter...the little sheep (including the black sheep) were a present.  I love them.

Look at this.  All I did was tape a piece of fabric to the back of the matte and apply a vinyl cut-out to the front of the fabric.  (I didn't even use iron-on vinyl.  This is just standard vinyl...Oracle 631 from Expressions Vinyl.)  I tucked the end of the branch under the matte to make it look like the branch was coming out from behind the matte.  After that, I put it all back together and put it up on the nail that was still in the wall. 

The original nail was too low, so I moved it up an inch.  Plus, the picture
was missing a little something.  It needed just one more thing.  Do you see it?

I love how it turned out.  Unfortunately, the nail wasn't in the right place, so I have a new nail hole (sorry, Superman!).  Plus, I think picture was missing a little something...it wasn't quite perfect.

There!   See?  I added a tiny heart above the birds.  The perfect
finishing touch!  Now, my project is just perfect.

Ah, now it is perfect!  I love the way this project turned out.  The nubby fabric and the smooth, matte vinyl look elegant framed with a picture matte.  I have one more frame...I need to find another place that is crying out for an art project!

Shoot Me! #19 - Costco and #20 - Amongst Lovely Things

It occurred to me that blogging connects people from all over the country, even all over the world.  We find our common ground and share our lives...kind of like a Venn Diagram where we all meet in the middle.  My friend Gens is in the Deep South and my friends Karen and Kyle are in So Cal.  My sister is in Boston.  We're spread out all over the place, you know?  Yet, when I say "Costco" to almost any blogger, you immediately get an image in your mind.  Do you think of the taste test ladies?  Those ladies make my kids love Costco.  Maybe you think of the photo processing or the book section, the meat coolers or the milk, egg, and dairy cooler.  Regardless, I'd bet you could walk through my Costco and find everything you were looking for and, conversely, I'll bet I wouldn't have any difficulty finding my way around your Costco.   Our lives might be different in so many ways, but we share enough that we speak the same "language".  Isn't that kind of cool?

Here is a shot of me at my Costco.  Does it look anything like your Costco?  Yeah, I thought so.  This is my submission for week 19 of Shoot Me...I'm trying to catch up.  Charming took it just today as we raced through Costco so I could hurry up, get home, and take the two younger ones, Valiant and Buttercup, to hang out with my new blogger friend, Sarah at Amongst Lovely Things. 

We've been fortunate enough to discover that we live a few blocks away from a fellow blogger.  Don't you wish you knew more of the bloggers you read?  Even better?  We love her and her family!  Sarah homeschools her three adorable children who are much younger than mine:  Primrose, Tulip, and Snapdragon.  They're new to our area and I'm so glad she ended up joining my homeschool group.  She's like a breath of fresh air.  She is so fun and has the most infectious laugh...whenever she laughs, you want to join right in.   We had hoped to have a picnic today, but the weather hasn't cooperated, so we headed over to their house for some inside play.   When I confessed that I dragged my camera along so I could grab another photo for Shoot Me, Sarah and Primrose joined in with Buttercup and me, while Valiant snapped the photo for me!  Her house was full of fun and some crazy creatures, don't you think?  (I think the girls' drawings got a life of their own!)  So, head over to Sarah's and say "Hi".

Shoot Me is the brainchild of Carin at Forever In Blue Jeans...a year long project in which you include yourself in at least one photo you snap each week.   I'm still a week behind, but I'm catching up.  Carin Says:
It's time to stop hiding behind that camera of yours. Your family is missing you in the picture. So it's time to post a picture of YOU (yes, you) every Thursday with your child, your spouse, your friend, your dog, or even by yourself. Just get in the picture, you'll be glad you did! And just jump in now with 1 of 52, you can do it!

Costco...not the problem it used to be...

Over the last year, Superman and I have not only revamped our spending patterns, but also revamped our eating habits. The truth is that we love to go out to eat...fast food, mid-range, it doesn't matter, we love to go out. The other truth is, we can't afford it any more. We spent a small fortune turning our new house into our home as quickly as possible, because we felt under the gun. We moved here in September 2005 and we knew that by September 2008, Charming would be on his own, either in dorms or in an apartment. We wanted Charming to truly feel that this "new" house was his home...and it worked. All of us feel that this is our home. Now, however, it is time to pay for all that accelerated progress and that is what we've been doing.

I've been joking that I'm done with the house, so now I need to learn to cook. Another truth? It wasn't a joke. I've spent the last 2 years learning how to cook things from scratch. I haven't even begun to feel like a "cook", but, wow, have things changed. I cook tons of things from scratch...and the side benefit is that I feel more accomplished, more skilled, and better about what I feed my family. I am a far cry from the girl who was seriously stunned that you didn't need a box of pancake mix to make pancakes. (Yes, I really did express shock at that!)

So, how does that tie in to Costco? Well, this is how: I just spent $180.75 at Costco and the only things I bought that were made for me were vanilla ice cream and Nacho Cheese Doritos. What did I get: 50 lbs of bread flour, 50 lbs of all purpose flour, 25 lbs of sugar, one bunch of bananas, 20 lbs of ground turkey, 11 pork chops, 4 lbs butter, 2 gals milk, a huge block of mozzarella cheese (6 lbs) , a huge corn tortillas, 44 uncooked flour tortillas, 5 lbs of frozen organic corn, 5 lbs frozen organic green beans, 6 cans Comet and a 6 lb box of Bisquick. Do you know how many meals I will be making out of all these staples? A lot! It is so much more satisfying to know what goes in our food and NOT pay someone else to make it for me. The $180 I spent will go so much further than it would have with prepackaged food and it will feed my family so much better. So, that is why Costco is not the problem it used to be. I'm not tempted by the conveniences it offers...I see it as a way to feed my family better for less. It is the ultimate frugal store for me...how awesome is that!