DON"T BUG ME!

I will let you know when it is your turn!

It's a Two-Fer Tuesday!

I know I already posted today, and this is all you get! (Until the weekend!)

MR. President,

When are you going to send more troops to Afghanistan?

MR. PRESIDENT? MR. PRESIDENT!!!!!!!

Oh, I see!

Fiona and Twig: A Most Elegant Giveaway

Fiona and Twig: A Most Elegant Giveaway
More time spent blurfing, guess what I found? A beautiful blog with a great giveaway. Check it out! Karyn

Makin' It Monday!!!

I am letting you in on my dirty little secrets. Remember my decorating post. This was in one of the shots, I think I put it up in 2001. The Idea was to corral some of the clutter right? UGLY And get the picture of the refrigerator. Industrial sized chips and coffee on top, basket of vitamins, flashlight, baggies, YUCKY!

I just had an AHA!!! moment!


Cheapo picture frame! (Cute boys though!)


Took down all those business cards and phone numbers, Most were out of date anyways!



My basket of "napkins" Curtain remnants waiting to be hemmed.

Every bloggers best friend, Spray paint!

Magnets from Brystans room (these don't work well on his wall, they are too heavy.)

FRUIT!!!!

Favorite Pasttimes, Arlington WA, Tell Marian Karyn sent you!

Another bloggers best friend, GLUE GUN!

Clutter in Much Larger basket to be "out of sight, out of mind"

Yep, I am learning ladies!

BTW: This is kind of heavy, needs 8 Magnets!

^

Nothing is ever permenant!

I got bored while cleaning and dusting the dust catchers... so I went shopping in my bedroom...

And my office,

You are going to have to jump down a couple of posts to see the difference...

Dinner time!

I have sick people at my house, and it is a proven fact that chicken soup actually is good for you when you are sick.



SO






Tonight, I made Chicken tortellini soup:

In a big stock pot I put chopped chicken, two boxes of broth, (I used chicken and vegetable because that is what I had on hand... And some herbs
I know, not fair right? This contains black pepper, garlic, sea salt, onion, parsley, cumin, paprika, and red and green bell peppers. I also cut up half an onion, and minced a couple of garlic cloves. Let that simmer until the chicken is cooked. Then I added two bags of frozen vegetable, (we like California blend) and a package of cheese tortillini. Once those are cooked all the way, then I dumped in two jars of alfredo sauce. Cook for 5-10 minutes longer, and serve!



I have also made this in the crock pot by putting the chicken, broth, onions, garlic, and herbs in in the morning, vegetables and tortillini in at mid day, and alfredo sauce 1/2 hour before serving. I imagine if you have very picky eaters, you can steam the vegetables on the side, puree them in the blender, and "hide" them in the creamy soup without anyone being the wiser. Todays alfredo sauce had roasted red peppers, but I have also used the one with sundried tomato bits, and plain, 4 cheese, and garlic. It is really a pantry staple here, so whatever flavor I have on hand goes into the soup.


Now, Who feels well enough to do the dishes?

On Second thought, unless you are feeding an army of giants like I am, or don't want leftovers, maybe you had better halve this recipe!


some good recipe swap blogs to visit:
http://southernhospitalityblog.com/

http://themusingsofamom.blogspot.com/

Fall decorating ideas.

I learned a new term tonight, "Blurfing" It means blog surfing. You know when you click on your friends blog, then see one of thier friends blog that looks interesting. While looking at their blog, you see another that grabs your attention, and before you know it you are twenty blogs away from the original blog. WELL, That is what I have been doing all night. I found a few with some great fall decorating Ideas, and a few giveaways. SO...

If you want to go blurfing, and fall decorating seems interesting, check out some of these...

http://creationsbykara.blogspot.com/
http://yarboroughhouse1929.blogspot.com/
http://erin-artandgardens.blogspot.com/
http://afinehouse.blogspot.com/

Karyn
P.S. I have fixed the links, it doesn't like going to a specific post, so it will take you to the blog home page. You can find the decorating post from there...

Ode to Autumn

I have been sneaking in and out of those blogs where people show how crafty and decorative they have been on a budget. It inspired me to try a little seasonal decorating, so HERE IT IS! What my weekly forays into the second hand stores and clearance bins have netted me. I am new at this seasonal decorating thing, so it is still a little spare.

Above is my puny little mantle. It is only 4 inches wide, so everything on it has to be very narrow! I have been thinkinthat I would like to tear it off and build a more traditional mantle, and now that I have seen what some other bloggers have done, I just might tackle it this year. My Princess house shelves weren't from the second hand store, but most of the princess house canisters on them were. The pumpkins were from a 6$ surprise special they run from time to time, and the gold candle was a customer special. I bought some fall floral picks from Michaels to stick in the canisters and the burgandy candle is from a clearance table at Fred Meyer.
Darians' girlfriend Kaila brought me dried roses this week, and I thought even though they don't really say "Autumn, I needed to put them in one of my groupings. The green leaf plate is also Princess house, I bought them on clearance last year, but didn't know how to use them. The rest of the set is on the wall in my dining room.

I decided that my Autumn theme would be harvest, so I started picking up pictures in the second hand stores. This one cost me 6$ Since walls are spare, it went on the pony wall between the living room and the kitchen.

The living room curtains are tablecloths I picked up at Target last year. I cut them to length, and sewed a pocket for the rod. The matching pillows were actually placemats that had two sides, so I cut open one of the seams, and stuffed between the two sides and sewed them closed.

My birdcage was sitting in my spare room for about a year. It is really cute, but it was white and green, so I spray painted it brown the other week. I found the hydrangea swags at a garage sale, and couldn't find the right home for them. After I painted the birdcage, I just stuffed the swags inside and I loved the way it looked. Joyce gave me the mosaic candle holder after I broke the one I bought at her partylight party.

Yep, those are plastic vegetables! I know pretty cheesy right? I bought a bag of them on a whim a few weeks ago at GoodWill. I brought them home and they stank! I rinsed them off, then soaked them in a sink of vinegar, washed that off, and now they are as good as new. The leaf swag was an impulse buy at the "Chic" second hand store on Camano Island. I also saw that basket the vegetables are in, but at $23, I passed it up. Good thing too because then I went to Value Village and got it for $2.50! (Yeah Me!) The lamp is princess house, Another Value Village find. I paid the full price of $9.99 for it because they are not made anymore. Then because I was so pleased with myself, I bought a lamp shade brand new at Lowes to go with it. The framed Bible verse is one of those fliers that door knockers leave at your door.

More Value Village pictures, and another Princess house $6. surprise (the clock). Hmm, Maybe I should have cleared the cork board before showing off huh?

More fruit pictures. The long one was a $4. find at Yvonnes in Arlington, then the two matching pictures are old Home Interiors pictures I took down 6 years ago because they were too 1990's for me. I took them out of the frames, and painted the mat and frames and put them back to gether. Now they look new. The fruit plates were also from Yvonnes, I paid 4$ each for them, but the rest is my princess house collection. The plate rack was one of my Hostess credit purchases, but it has been put away for over a year because I did not know where to put it. The leaf plates are the rest of the collection I showed you in the living room, and the gold plates behind the fruit plates were... $6. surprises from Princess house! (I have 6 more) the swag is also an old Home Interiors item I stored away after I felt it was no longer in style.

And a few weeks ago, I found this fruit print table cloth at GoodWill, I cut it down the middle, and sewed it into two panels, put a rod pocket on each, and now I have beautiful kitchen curtains. Can you see my anniversary present? Jon bought me the Keurig one cup at a time coffee machine. Apparently he thinks it is wasteful to make a pot of coffee, then only drink two cups. Which I did every morning and every evening. (This was our 15th anniversary) I gave him a card.

That is the grand tour, Does it look like Autumn now? It is almost time to start my Christmas decorating forays into the second hand stores... YAY!

@

Graduation

That original teeny tiny motorcycle Jon bought has given way to two much larger bikes. First because it was way too SMALL for our great big boys, and second because they took to motorcycles like fish to water.

I thouht these were pictures of all three boys, but upon closer examination, I see that the first two are Darian. The bottom is Brystan. I will have to look through the other computer to see if they took any pictures of Cannyn.

I have to say, this was the most peaceful summer I have had in a long, long time! Only one little injury, but he was back on the bike the next weekend. Maybe we will have a decent winter and they will be back out again soon.

Teenager worthy!

I cannot do the painting because of my arm injury, so I hired a couple of my teenagers to do it for me.
Look at all the hole puttying we had to do, I wish we could figure out a way to hang posters with magnets or something!

Brystan has lived in this bedroom for 6 years. He has been asking for a change for two years. But I loved this room so I put it off as long as possible... He is 5'5" and 190 lbs, cannot fit a twin bed anymore, so with the bed change, I might as well update his entire room right? (Like I really need an excuse to decorate something.)

After taping off, the boys applied first primer, then What is this? Magnetic Primer! Put it on the wall, paint over it, and your walls are now magnetic! It is kind of scary though because it is BLACK!

The red head is a cousin I bribed to come home for the weekend and help. He lives on his own, so food and money are always acceptable bribes.
Darian and Talon are best cousin friends, and work well together, I enjoyed them working this weekend. I rarely had to tell them what to do next because they did such good work.

While those two were inside, I was outside spray painting furniture. Mom's old Iron bed used to be hunter green.

the base color of the walls, a real nice dove gray, not that you will be able to see it when we are finished.

Because next we spray painted the walls with a metallic silver! The Valspar representative was in Lowes when I was asking for help. He told me how to achieve this look was to "spray a few cans of silver over your gray paint"

UM... Try TEN CANS OF SILVER AT $4.5 EACH! Oh, yeah I went back into Lowes yesterday and right by the paintbrushes was a glaze that would have done the same thing, not poisoned two healthy young men, and Not made my house so toxic we had to leave for several hours while it aired out. That little bottle of glaze would have done a nice job of making a silver room at half the price, and get this. IT WAS VALSPAR! ( I will help you, I am the Valspar representative.)

The green dot is the Mr Yuck magnet off the refrigerator! Not all magnets are working on this wall, but the sticker kind seem stronger for some reason.

I scraped the silver off the closet when I was putting the shelves back in. So, this was my fix because I certianly wasn't going to spray paint again,

The final product, Fit for a teenaged boy. I hope I can get away with another 6 years...

^