Be Ye Thankful...

I love Thanksgiving! There, I said it. It is absolutely my favorite holiday of the year. I think it is quite undercommercialized (is this a word, really?) and simple. Most people I know look forward to Thanksgiving because of Black Friday. This year was especially good. Our family gathered at our house and I think I've cooked enough holiday dinners that I didn't stress out too much, or maybe I'm just gettin' too old to worry about it!

I love to decorate for Fall/harvest/Thanksgiving. I have done it for years back when nobody else was doing it. Now, I see more and more decorations and people taking the time to dress their homes for the harvest season. Since I pull down all my harvest decorations the day after and start Christmas decorating, I thought that this year I would pull out a few Christmas to mix with the Thanksgiving and fill in some areas.


The centerpiece on the dining room table was a clearance silver tray with dollar store ornaments and a dollar store candle. Turned out nice, don't you think? Dollar stores are so great for cheap decorations but you have to be selective so that what you are getting doesn't look cheap!

This year we were mixing the holiday with a bathroom renovation which added some to the stress. At least we got the new toilet installed so that our guests had more than one to choose from! Geesh, seems like last year we were installing new patio doors. Wow, I think we mark our holidays by home renovations. Okay, I'm off to put up the Christmas decorations. Would it be sac-religous if I didn't put up a tree this year??

DIY Day

DIY aka Do It Yourself Day at A Soft Place to Land.

About a year ago I was helping a friend clean, paint and ready her new house so that her family could move in. Down in the basement, tucked in a dark dingy corner by the furnace was this handmade sofa table. Well, I use the word 'sofa table' loosely but it was a table. Painted, of all colors, 1970s mint green!

My friend glanced back at the table and said "oh, just toss that on the curbfor the garbage to pick up." Horrified, I told her I could not EVER throw out a piece of furnitue, no matter how rustic and beat up it was. So, I took it home stripped the ugly 70s paint off and spray painted the legs and sides black. But, now I was stuck. What to do with the top? Well, it sat on my porch for OVER a year because I truy couldn't figure out what to do with it. I kept thinking I wanted to do a mosaic table top.

Well one day my husband and I were cleaning out the shed and I found these old fence slats piled up in a corner and it got me thinking. Wow, these would make a great table top for my homeless table on the porch. So, I measured them and showed my husband how I wanted them and he started cutting. I then took them into the basement, lined them up and white washed them with pickling glaze.

We then lined them up on the table top and ued some Liquid Nails to glue them to the table. I then sprayed some polyurethane on them (I was really going for this rustic look but the reality was the slats were rough and giving off splinters so I needed something to seal them.), let it dry and it was done. I was SO excited at how it turned out! Could not wait to get it into the house. Ha, I brought it into the house and I couldn't find a spot where I liked it. I tried the eating area, two spots in the living room, the dining room, then back to the eating area in another spot is where it finally landed. So, next time you have some extra fence slats that you don't know what to do with, think outside the box!

Overwhelmed...

Wow, I've been cruising through a lot of blogs lately created by seemingly unbelievable superwoman who are moms, photographers, decorators, writers and on and on. It is just a tad overwhelming! But, I've decided to jump into the blogging world 'feet first' as they say. I certainly don't feel like I have a lot to add but hopefully can contribute something worth reading.

Let me just say that I LOVE TO DECORATE! Okay, there I said it. Whew, I feel a lot better now. I have tried just about everything in the painting world. Most people think I have quite a knack for it. When I discovered HGTV's Rate My Space (which I absolutely love, btw) I got pretty confident and posted pictures of my beautiful home. Oh, how humiliating! People ripped them apart and I cried for days! But I finally determined not to let it deter me from doing what I love to do. So, here is where I will begin though I'm not too sure how or where to start.

Oh, did I mention we are remodeling our bathroom. Wow, what a journey. I never knew it could be so hard. We spent 2-1/2 hours just deciding on the bathroom vanity and that was just one day where we actually placed the order. That didn't include the gazillion (is that a word) trips to Menards, Lowes, The Kitchen and Bath Shop, researching online, etc. I will post before and after pictures and you can tell me how we did.