Little Yellow Table

Months ago I picked up this little, extremely sturdy, plant stand/table at a yard sale.

As with all my projects, it sat in my garage for.ev.er before I got around to redoing it.

This is certainly not an overly spectacular piece of furniture, but I absolutely LOVE the color! (Strawflower...with a slight bit of distressing thanks to Ralph Lauren Smoke Glaze.)  And it is one of my favorite redo's to date!

Tomorrow she is going to a new home (via Craig and his list)...which is a total bummer to me.  I really want to keep her.  But alas, the downside of a small home, I have no room for her. :(

Isn't she just precious?!?  

I know she is a "she" because she is so dainty and yet so strong...she could be nothing other than a "she".

And it's amazing how resourceful we can be when need be.  My little vase of "flowers" are actually weeds that are growing in the yard of the abandoned house behind mine.  And yet in a cute Goodwill vase, they look beautiful. 

Such a sweet little lady.

I adore her.

Updates

Well, I figured it had been awhile on any updates on the personal front.  So, in case anyone was wondering....

SCHOOL STARTS ON MONDAY!!!!

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Not Doodle's....she started school last week.  She started 6th grade and is loving it.  I'm so glad I have a kid who loves school. 

But NO, I'm talking about....COLLEGE!!  For me.  

I'm excited and nervous at the same time!  It's been 19 years since I was in school!!

For anyone who missed it, I am starting college full time to get my Bachelor's Degree in Interior Design!!

So.....I managed to score high enough on my math placement test to at least take the lowest math at the University.  Otherwise you have to take a class at the Community College before you can begin the lowest University math they said.  So, that's good.  I think. LOL

But seriously, that does set me back a bit.  I should be starting in Algebra and Trigonometry...math is a huge part of Interior Design. So, I'll have to take some summer classes to graduate on time. Such is life of being an "old" student. ;)  

Or maybe, my backup plan of being a Social Worker instead will start sounding better and better. LOL

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Let's see, I am also taking:

Intro to Interior Design

Color and Design

Drawing for Interior Design

Those sound more up my alley. :)

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Ok, update on Foster Care.

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We had our home study a couple weeks ago and it went GREAT!  The Villages had their meeting to discuss us last week and we were APPROVED!!

Linda comes back out tomorrow to check that I did the things that needed to be done (I forgot about child safety locks for the cabinets with cleaners and the fire extinguisher...duh) and to go over my packet one last time....then it's just a matter of the state issuing my license. :)

Oh, and getting the VA Hospital to MAIL MY PHYSICAL paperwork out!  Did you hear me frustrating VA Hospital?? I'll even come pick it up....just fill it out.  ;)

So, we should, if a child with our criteria comes up, have a placement before the holiday seasons begin! Yay!!  :)

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Let's see....what other updates?

OH!!!  Back to Doodle's school starting....

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Our school district is having HUGE financial trouble.  And since our township did NOT approve a tax hike last year (we already pay some of the highest taxes in the state...see a problem there?), they sold all of our buses (for a $1  I might add...think the Superintendent should be fired, I do) and no longer bus our children to school!!!

HUGE problem!!

The alternative is to hire a private company (the one they sold the buses to for a $1) for $50 A MONTH, PER CHILD, to bus your kids.  Or take them yourself. 

So, you can image the traffic nightmare it is causing as most people cannot afford an extra $50 a month....per kid!!  We still have mostly rural, two lane streets in our community.  So starting about 30 minutes before school let's out cars are just sitting on the streets, cars off, waiting to pick their kids up.

Can you imagine if you lived in those areas and were stuck in that traffic and didn't have kids!

It's been about 45 minutes to drop her off in the mornings...and easily an hour to pick her up!!!  Yeah, nightmare!!!!

The district has been very spiteful in their approach.  It's really disappointing to say the least.

Last year over 8,000 kids took the school buses.  This year only 1,800 signed up....that leaves over 7,200 parents taking and dropping their kids off at the schools to give you an idea of the problem!

High school kids driving with cars loaded full of teens...picking up their siblings at the Middle School!!  A few Middle School kids riding their bikes or walking....down a two lane rural street!  Yeah, that's safe. :\  Parents like me, who are just trying to help each other out, taking other people's kids.  I have 3 kids each day in my car to and from the Middle School.  One of the mom's takes Tuesday's and my ex's girlfriend has Wednesday afternoon's.

And they closed schools and consolidated others...so their are more kids in each school as well.

I wish I had an option....we'd move.  It's that bad.  But alas, I cannot afford to move...plus I really like the area we live in (other than the schools now).  So, I'm stuck.  :(

On the upside...if you didn't have time for reading before...you have plenty of time for a book or magazine perusing now. ;)

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The booth is actually starting to pick up.  

I was a little worried at first, I was not selling ANYTHING.  But when I stopped by this weekend there quite a bit missing.  I think I've already made my booth rent for the month.  Yay!

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Other than that, it's days as normal.  

I'm really busting my rear this week to get my outdoor projects done before school starts!  

I started, oh, about a bazillion projects this year outside, that I never finished.  Why do I do that?  LOL  So, I need to wrap those up.  Including painting my pergola! :)

And while I haven't blogged much this summer, I have TONS of projects from this summer to show you over the coming months. 

Fence - Part 2

Until recently there has been no progress on the fence.

In case you missed the fence project and all the drama and lessons learned, check it out here, here and here.


I know, it's hard to believe there have been three other posts about my fence, and yet this post is called Part 2.  Yeah....it's been that kind of project. ;)


Last month I had a huge yard sale to raise funds for the rest of the fence panels. And it was such a success I was even able to get the pergola I wanted!!!  Unfortunately, it needed to be assembled.  Every. Single. Little. Bitty. Piece!!!


So everything has sat for the last several weeks.  BUT...last weekend while I was at my booth doing some tweaking, my ex-husband and my Doodle assembled my pergola!! Talk about a surprise!  


And it is GORGEOUS!!

You may be wondering why I chose a wood pergola when I have a vinyl fence.  Well, one, it was cheaper than a vinyl one.  This cost $189 on sale at Menards.  The vinyl pergolas started around $300.  But more importantly, this one is GORGEOUS (did I mention that?)!  All the vinyl ones I looked at were very plain...nothing special.


I plan to paint this white to match the fence.   

Once I get this painted...once I get the money to buy paint, LOL...then I can finally get the picket fence installed on either side of the pergola. 


Of course, the pergola will be centered, it's not it's proper place at the moment...but this is progress for sure! :)

And you've probably forgotten (how dare you, LOL)  but I was working on this paver border earlier in the spring.  I finally finished it!  Well, I finished it up to as much as I planned to do this year....where the picket fence will be installed.  I'll pick it up again next spring.  This is what it looked like last time you saw it.

And here is what it looks like now.

It took me for.ev.er to complete.

Not so much because it was hard, because it really wasn't.  It was somewhat time consuming, but not hard.  No, it took forever because we've had a VERY hot summer!   I'm not a big fan of H O T.  So, I stopped working outside during the dog days of summer recently.  But I finally pushed through and got it done a few weeks ago.

I mostly used plants I already had by moving them from other, not so clean, locations.  Or finally planting potted plants in the ground!  Can you believe I had a catmint plant that lasted two years in the pot I bought it in! 

I do need to put more sand in the "joints" and put some topsoil and grass seed in the areas I overshot when I was cutting the beds out with my spade.


I guess thinking I'm "done" is overrated. LOL


But considering when I bought this house two and half years ago the only landscaping were the boxwoods and white rocks...I'm pretty pleased with my progress....and so are my neighbors.

Hopefully I can show the final fence photos soon. But for now, I am completely in love with my pergola...and my finished border project! :)

Recycled Yard Art

The first Saturday of every month, our Goodwill has everything for half off.

Since I couldn't find any yard sales this weekend, I popped over for the big sale and picked up a bunch of random glass pieces.

Let's take a step back...there is a booth at The Emporium, where my booth is, that has a few if these really awesome yard art sculptures made from recycled glass pieces.

I always stop by and stare at them! They charge $15 each, which I think is completely reasonable...I just haven't been able to afford that right now.

So.....when I was at the Goodwill it occurred to me that I could make one or two myself and save some money.  I already had the glass glue on hand.

The best part of all this, Doodle actually was excited to help!!!!!  As any tween girl's mom knows....this is a HUGE deal! ;)

So, we grabbed pieces like this old light shade....

and little juice glasses....

And some colored glass, that ironically was a bonus!  I was just buying the container...had no idea we'd end up using the beads inside! :)

And this is what we ended up with!  This one is mine....

And here is the Doodle's....

How stinkin' cute are these?!?  We are both pretty proud of how these turned out.

They sparkle so pretty in the garden!

You can insert a wooden dowel into the ground and into the vase portion for stability if you need to.

I'm not actually displaying them together like this, I plan to spread them out...but I wanted to get a shot of them outside to show them side by side.

Of course, the price is dependent on your glassware choices. These came in at around $3 each.  Not bad, huh?


I'll be posting this project at these linky parties! :)

 

It's a Sign

I made my very first sign!!

I see so many signs in blogland and I have been dying to try my hand at making some for a long time.

I found these signs at the Dollar Tree.

I primed it with spray paint first to cover the stuff that was on it.

Then, I used several different kinds of craft paint to make the lovely gray color it turned out with.  Painting it gray, the watering down some white and wiping it over the wood.  Then, some watered down light gray and mixed that with some black....basically I just layered on colors.

Now, onto the stencil....

I've been talking to Mel from Junkin' Junky (if you don't follow Mel, go check her out, she is super mega talented and not to mention a sweetheart too)  about sign making and how she goes about making hers.  We talked about how she uses her Cricut to sometimes use vinyl to make the words and sometimes she uses vinyl to make a stencil.

We both agree that vinyl is so stinkin' expensive!  So, I was looking for any alternative before resigning to using vinyl.  I asked her about freezer paper, she said I could use that or I could use shelf liner. 

I tried using freezer paper first because it's what I had on hand.  It cut on the Cricut just fine.  But it is so flimsy I didn't feel like it made a good stencil.

I forgot to pick up shelf liner at the store and being desperate to make a sign...I tried using some glossy photo paper I had on hand.  It worked like a DREAM!!!!

Now I can't wait to make more signs!!  Seriously, it might be my new craft addiction. :)

I took this one to the booth/boutique/wall. ;)

I also took some plaques to the booth today.

I really do think my "No Soliciting" sign is working!  I haven't had a solicitor in a long time.  :)