Painting rocks is best left to cavemen

but I like the results.  Before picture is at the bottom (not digging the whole blogger thing).

  This is after painting it. Color is Clivenden Sandstone by Valspar.

 It's beyond me  why someone would paint rocks the color of gravel. Leave it alone people. Perhaps it was to go with the awful blood red walls that were in here (this is the before picture).

If I designed furniture

I'd probably do something like this

Prickly pair chairs designed by Valentina Gonzalez Wohlers

http://Prickly pair chairs designed by Valentina Gonzalez Wohlers

A tree for Mom

It's my third Mother's Day without a mom to call or send a card to.  It still bothers me. I'd almost rather just pretend it wasn't any kind of special day. Her grave is a couple hours away or so and I've been there only once and that was on her birthday that year she died.  Surprisingly I felt nothing, but then only her body is there. It didn't help that my stepfather had yet to place a stone on her grave and 6 months had passed.  

I've wanted to plant a tree for her in my own yard as a memorial. Somewhere I could go and feel close to her even it it was just in my imagination.  I thought a weeping willow would be perfect. When I was probably 3 or 4 she and I would sing Song Sung Blue. She loved Neil Diamond.  Sometimes she'd record herself playing the piano and I would come into the room and there would be a little tiff between us,  me wanting to go out with one yellow sock and one white sock(you look like a clown!!) or throwing a fit because I didn't want to wear my coat to go outside. Somewhere in her things are these tapes. Somewhere there's a recording of us singing Song Sung Blue.  Both of us surely have done our share of Weeping like a Willow in our lives. 

Her life always struck me as sad. I even had to ask my sister-in-law at the time (who was with her daily) if she was ever truly happy.  When someone spends 30 years of their life with someone who drives everyone that cares away and makes them miserable on a daily basis, you have to ask yourself if they were ever happy.  She always struck me as a weeping willow.

This morning I woke up rather weepy feeling myself.  Hearing about what everyone else is doing with their moms today made me miss her.  I thought going out and doing a little gardening would help. Dig some dirt. Clear some weeds. 

I started pulling the weeds and grass out of the bed where I planted sunflowers last year and right there in the middle of the bed against the fence was an oak seedling. It got me thinking that perhaps this was her tree. Perhaps she was really an oak.  Oak trees hold on to their brown leaves relentlessly in the fall and winter. How hard it must have been for her to let go of this life.  She must have hung on to her circumstances that I saw as misery for for so long for her own reasons that I'll never understand.  The oak is strong and resilient by no means weak or delicate.  Perhaps it grows there to make me remind me that she was stronger than I gave her credit for.  I think she and I both underestimated how strong the other really was and spent too much time trying to protect each other. 

I hope someday I can sit under the shade of that oak tree and remember her how she should be remembered.  Happy Mother's Day Momma.

(Aaron if you are reading this, I really would like to have those tapes)

Cutie Furniture Project

I wish I had time to do fun stuff like this right now. Maybe laters!

http://www.diyideas.com/quickprojects/FurnitureCabinets/decoupage-furniture_ss1.html

Friday Afternoon Goof Off: House Number Numerology

Ours is 304 which adds up to 7. The house of the mystic.

http://www.think-aboutit.com/Spiritual/TheNumerologyofHouseNumbers.htm

Happy Easter

A few pics of the Lady Banks roses on the fence that Mike took while hunting eggs with the kids. I hope the Easter Bunny was good to you all. 

Making a creative space

My back hurts now.  Trying to get my studio/ sewing room/ girl cave put together. I've been in the house now about a year and a half and still haven't really "done" this room.  Originally  I was wanting to paint it a fun color. Like orange. But I'm thinking the color would be all wrong for 2 reasons. One being that the room gets very HOT during the summer months. Like sit and sweat hot. My first summer here I literally had my own sweat shop up there while trying to make a corset for Dragon*Con.  I'm afraid the orange would psychologically make the room feel even hotter. Bah.  The second reason is that eventually I hope to get back into painting and the orange cast from the walls would throw my colors all off.  This might could be solved by making the little dormer alcove there into a painting nook and leaving it white.  

I'm fine with white walls really. It's clean looking and there's lots of way to add color to a room besides painting the walls. The thing is, the walls aren't white.  They have a pink fleshy tint to them that somehow bothers me.  Perhaps a light creamy coffee color would be good. Something neutral yet not white.  

The room has all kinds of slanty ceilings. I suppose it used to be the attic.  See the little makeshift closet they made? It works nicely for all my costume stuff. 

I'm in the process of sorting out all my art supplies and fabrics and putting them in a place.

 With a little help.

I have this  cabinet to stash most of my art books and paints, brushes and what nots.

Also setting up a tiny den area with the futon.  I feel bad putting overnight guests in that mess.  We bought a new mattress for the futon and now it's actually going to make a good 2nd guest room once I get it together.  

I'm pretty sure that everything that  I can't  find is in that room somewhere.  It's just piles of stuff.  Where the abandoned furniture goes. Nothing goes together. The room is schizophrenic.  I have two large work tables from Ikea that I used for pattern cutting and sewing and I'm starting to think maybe I might like to get a small table that takes up less space yet folds out to a good size for sewing.  It's not like I sew all the time.  Right now I do nothing because I really don't like being up there much.  

I've got a good start but now my back hurts from trying to tame that damn futon. Also I discovered tonight that doing "paddle turns" on a rug with no anti-skid stuff under it is a dumb idea. ;/ (the open space was just too tempting). 

In the beginning there was me.......

I moved to Chattanooga Carrolton Ga. in 2000.  I rented a small house in North Chatt. Tiny little house with no yard and no windows.  At the time I thought it was cool but it wasn't. Then I found an awesomely beautiful apartment downtown.  Ten foot ceilings. Huge 9 foot tall windows. Open, lofty, painted beautiful colors. A balcony accessed through the living room window.  Some called it the Friends apartment for that reason.  It was perfect until the owner decided to gut the bottom and top floors (I lived on the second floor).  I endured 2 years of renovations until one day while in NYC for work I got a call from the management office saying "We are bringing the real estate woman by to take pictures at 5."  "Good luck with that" I replied "I'm out of town. Hope the place is a MESS."  It was then, standing there in a subway, that I made the decision that I would buy a house come hell or high water.    Times were good. My car had just been paid off.  I was ready and was able to get a house with no money down.  I got in just right before the market crashed.  The building I used to live in was finished and put on the market about that time too. It sits on the corner of 4th and Lindsay, still for sale.  Karma can be a bitch.

I had always wanted my own house.  God knows we lived in some ugly ones when I was growing up and my mother and stepmonster were certainly not stylish.  I  suppose I've developed some sense of style along the way and people seem to like where I live.  After the horrors that I endured living with holes in plaster and cut electric wires and noise and dust and inconveniences I knew that I no longer wanted a fixer upper.  I found a nice little 40s house in a good neighborhood and made it my own. 

That's where I am now and  this blog is about what goes on in that house.  The projects, the parties, the mishaps, the weedy yard and garden ect.  It's about what happens when Martha Stewart's not looking.