Have a Great Weekend!

There's a little quiet space in our new subdivision to "get away from it all"...

it's quiet

it's calming

it's peaceful.

I hope you have a wonderful weekend too.

Wrap Ups...

I was working on a project and messed it up. Have you ever done that? Please tell me you have...

And I was being so careful, you know, measure twice - cut once.

But, I still messed it up.

So I put my thinking cap on and wondered what I could do with my "new" item.

Hm...enter Pinterest.

Someone out there {I can't find you now} actually, on purpose made these bands!

I had the strips, all neatly sewn and pressed so all I had to do was make button holes and search through my stash of buttons.

easy

Now, do you know what you can do with these?

Bracelet? Perhaps, but I had unruly cords in my house.

I made these:

 

Great, aren't they?

Plus, they're washable if needed!

Oh so much better, and cuter, than my old method of organization!

Quick Fix...

Mason Jars...who doesn't love them?

So many ideas...

Momtastic has a great tutorial for a cute, cute sewing kit, you can find it here. It was quick and easy...and oh so cute!

First you gather supplies:
Mason Jar
Mini Sewing kit (I found mine at WalMart)
Fabric (quilting squares)

I also used a bit of batting for the cushion, pins, buttons, jute, and paper.

This one will go in one of my guestrooms...just in case they need a quick fix on anything.

This one will go in the other guestroom. The jar is larger so I could also include scissors.

Just about every color is included.

 Thanks for dropping by to visit!

Choosing Paint...

Choosing paint is exciting...the choices are endless. 

Where is one to turn? 

Houzz, Pinterest, blogs

Yep...I've been doing a lot of research and have found the exterior colors for our new home.

They are actually part Sherwin Williams, part Benjamin Moore.

For the porch ceiling we chose:

"Lauren's Surprise"  by SW, it's a beautiful, peaceful blue.

The trim we chose was a BM color "Cotton Balls". 

 My contractor only uses only SW so I took the BM sample and they mixed it for SW.

...and they're having a sale this week on paint and supplies! yippee!

For the exterior shutters we chose "Revere Pewter" by BM...again switched it to SW.

Next to these samples is our brick. It's called Lafayette Blend.
What do you think?

Next is deciding on interior colors.

 "White Dove" is all the rage...it has a hint of gray.
Here it is with the "Cotton Balls" I was thinking as trim.
Hm...

I have to think on this one for a while.

Be back soon!

Here We Go!

We bought a piece of property about 18 months ago.

It was fully wooded in a ranch type subdivision.

It's not in a city.

It's rural.

yikes!

It was a compromise...he wanted country, I wanted city.

He got a few acres of country and I'm 10 minutes away from all the city necessities...like...shopping.

Approximately once a week, we'd drive to the lot and mosey around checking out everything going on in the subdivision and surrounding area. 

We'd take a leisurely stroll through the property imagining the layout of the home, finding tracks of wildlife, and new foliage.

These are Beauty Berries. Have you ever heard of them? I hadn't...the animals don't really like them but if all their other favorites are gone, they'll munch on these.

Being rural, we had to take care of a lot of things on our own, one such item was ordering a culvert.

We had to purchase it, but the county set it.

We were proud of our new addition:

I know...it's the simple things, right?

Then yesterday, we saw this big boy parked beside the lot.

This picture doesn't really do it justice...it's huge!

We had drawn out a site map for the driver and he began the task of removing underbrush.

(Kinda reminded me of Fern Gully...did you ever watch that with your kids?)

Yep, the day had finally arrived...site clearing day! 

After months and months of planning we were on our way!

Whooohoo!

Stay tuned!

Rockin' and Rollin'

Did you have one of these growing up?

Yeah, me too.

 I think it must have been the "in" Christmas gift because it seems like all my friends had one too.

They were usually placed in the garage because it was way too loud to be anywhere else. And while I think about it, I believe we only made one "batch" of rocks.

It just seemed to take forever to get those gems to be polished!

Fast forward about 40ish years, guess who went out and bought one of these again?

Yep...me. 

However, this time I didn't want "polished" rocks, I wanted to make "sea glass."

Enter Pinterest.

The place that has just about anything you could ever want to see, find, or learn about!

I found inspiration here and here.

Most of the tutorials were basically the same, however one suggested using acid. 

no thank you

 I decided to go the easier route, no acid, and bought my own tumbler. 

You can find one here.

  

I can't stress the importance of reading through the entire manual...it's a quick read, but very important. The reviews for this product were 50/50. 

The people who didn't read the instructions had problems with the tumbler not working properly or breaking completely.

Once I had a basic understanding of what I was doing I was ready.

Beginning materials were simple:

glass of your choice

hammer

towel

Make sure you use protective glasses for your eyes and a large enough towel to catch all the glass shards.

I kept checking the sizes,  I didn't want anything too large but didn't want tiny pieces either.

Some of the tutorials suggested using regular beach sand, however, the instructions had this in bold print:

Ugh...I had beach sand but no grit. 

drats!

(There are different kinds of grit that are usually sold in addition to tumblers...different grit for the different stages.) 

BUT the great thing about making sea glass is that you only have to go through ONE stage! yippee.

Only one kind of grit is needed, 60/90. You can find it here.

The rest is a snap.

Place the glass in the tumbler so that it's about 2/3 full

Add enough water so that the level is just below the level of glass

Add 1-2 tablespoons of grit for each pound of glass

Close the lid

Put the tumbler on the rails

Turn it on

This model is much quieter than what I remember as a child.

The best part is that this process only takes 2-3 days.

See!

Sea glass!

Maintenance is suggested, but it's very easy.

Just unscrew the top plate and check the belt. It should be loose enough to run smoothly. It is also suggested to add 1 drop of oil on the rails once a month.

easy.

 All said, I've already made about 4 batches.

I'm trying blue glass now, I'll keep you posted!

A Little Investigating...

So I had the television on the other day and while half listening, I learned about this place:

It's a hotel surplus warehouse. 

This particular one is in Houston, but you might have one close to where you are too.

They have rows and rows of "used" things, kinda like scratch and dent.

These solid wood nightstands were $49, they could easily be painted.

This shopping is not for the faint of heart...it's a warehouse with no air conditioning!

Being 100 degrees outside, the doors were open with fans blowing trying to keep things a bit cooler. 

This mirror was $149...it was very large...about 5 feet wide.

It was beautiful!

There were rows of:

chairs, couches, headboards, nightstands, desks, pictures, electronics, hotel kitchen items.
oh my

Most of the furniture was Drexel, very sturdy.

Then there were the lamps.
These were very pretty and quite heavy.

No plastic here!

Guess how much they were?

$20 each.

Can you even believe it?

See the fork lift? Yep, it's apparently needed to handle the massive amounts of furniture.

The red sofas are actually sleepers. They were in good shape.

Can you believe all the chairs stacked upon each other? 

More lamps...and what did my little eye spy?

A lamp just like the one I purchased at an antique store about a month ago!
You can read about it here.

This one was only $20!

ouch

 

And around the corner I saw these! 

In total, there were 9 of these guys,

all in once place!

When I bought mine, I thought it was a "one of a kind"...

hm...
guess not.

Oh, well...it is what it is, right?
At least I have a new place to shop for great bargains,
all it took was a little investigation!