Stuff I Make That Makes Me Happy

I love me some yard art.

There are few things that make me happier than creating something. Usually it's something for the yard. I subscribe to the more is more theory. A bare spot in the garden is like a bare wall in my home - nonexistent.

 

 Flower plates (Lolliplates)

 

Monkey Boots, the Faverolles hen. No, I didn't make her but she sure is a beautiful piece of yard art, isn't she? 

 

Hubcap art

 



Bowling balls and old marbles

 



Mosaics



Garden Totems

and...

 

 

                          

Flower plates - the solution to my plate ADDICTION

 

Needle felted pumpkins

 



Mosaic bricks 

 

 

Another gratuitous chicken photo - Tula (aka, Big Fatty)

 

 

 





 

Color Me Happy!

There's just something about color that speaks to me and I have the 10,784 paint chips to prove it.

When my old friend Ben Moore and I get together, we have the best time! Why just the other day, we were laughing about when I went out with Martin Senour in the 80s and painted my bedroom peach with teal (yes, teal) trim. I think the peach had the word "Foxy" in its name. I have no idea what the teal was called but I'm sure it was something like "Big Mistake."

To make it even more cool I painted a teal stripe around the room (which I eyeballed because measuring and painters tape is for wussies or people who want things to look good) and then painted silhouettes of cats on top of the stripe just to give it that sexy boudoir vibe. To this day, I still don't understand how I didn't end up a spinster because we all know that nothing attracts a man like crazy cat lady décor.

In the 90s, I lived in a THE BIG FANCY HOUSE, in which I used a lot of neutrals because I thought that's what you had to do in A BIG FANCY HOUSE. It was beige and it made me feel beige. So I painted the guest room raspberry and the dining room blue and life was good. Then we moved and I found my soul mate - the ordinary ranch that everyone, including my husband, thought was ugly. When I walked in, it whispered, "come live in me and I will make you happy." And it did.

 

Just like in any relationship, there are times we fight. Some days my house gets a little cranky and just refuses to allow the sewage to go to wherever sewage is supposed to go and our toilet backs up. Once it had a full-out temper tantrum and spewed something unmentionable up in the hall tub 10 minutes before 30 kids showed up for a birthday party. But it's a house that loves color, just like I do!

Photo bombed by "Mooch."

 

 

So Ben Moore and his buddies, Pratt and Lambert, and I have splashed color everywhere!

        

From one end of the kitchen to the other and everywhere in between. Just the way my house and I like it...

 

For more color inspiration check out my Pinterest board www.pinterest.com/puttputtbodie/i-crave-color/

 

 

Kimberly

 

 

 



 



Perfectly Imperfect

I seem to spend a lot of time wishing that my home was something that it's not - PERFECT. I blame it on Pinterest and Martha Stewart.

I mean, as much as I like to act like Martha Stewart is some kind of stuck up freak or an alien being from another galaxy sent to study the human race and sniff out our flaws (if the latter is true, we are clearly an inferior species), I'd really kind of like to be her.

Go OJ, go!

I'm sure she never had a party where someone got up to use the rest room and she had hurl herself over the table like OJ Simpson leaping over luggage in a Hertz commercial (yes, I'm old enough to remember back when OJ was good) to keep said guest from accidentally opening the CLOSET OF SHAME. You know, the closet where you stuff everything when you realize that there is no way in hell you are going to be able to do two days of organizing and tidying in the five minutes before your guests arrive.



 

This is the same closet where you shoved all those things six months ago that were too important to throw away and just never got around to dealing with it. It's like a giant junk drawer but dangerous. Vertical piles are very unstable but I must say, I'm pretty proud of my engineering skills. I can always manage to fit just one more thing in there. I call it The Leaning Tower of Pizza. That's not a typo. I believe somewhere towards the bottom is a pizza box, circa 2007.

 

 Martha Stewart has probably never walked in the kitchen and found her cat licking the Thanksgiving turkey right before it was to be served. It was delicious and I honestly think the cat saliva added a little sumpin sumpin. As much as I'd like to be perfect like Martha, it just isn't going to happen. We have dogs and kids, who "occasionally" pee on the floor. Again, not a typo. My son used to whip it out and pee on my carpet when he was potty training. Needless to say, we now have a carpet-free house.

I also have a garage that is just downright scary. We realized right after we bought the house that the doorway was too low to allow our SUVs inside. After considering every option, including letting of the air out of our tires to lower the height of our cars, we just gave up and threw in the towel. Literally. There is a pile of mildewed towels hiding in there along with old animal cages (R.I.P., Mustard and Mayo) and 78 of  not-the-perfect-color-but-I-might-need-them-one-day cans of paint. I'm terrified that one day those guys from "Hoarders" are going to show up at my house with a camera crew. Needless to say, you don't want to be the kid (or husband) who leaves the garage door open for all the neighbors to see. I turn into a Mommy Dearest that would make Joan Crawford jealous.

My dreams of achieving perfection are just never going to become a reality. I peruse through magazines, cackling with glee every time I spot that perfectly imperfect home with chipped paint on the baseboards or pictures hanging slightly askew. It makes me feel like I'm not alone and that there are people out there who see beauty in the less than pristine.
I am learning to accept the person that I am and the messes that I create as I live my life.

Along the way, I have become a firm believer in the theory that exposing my kids to germs has built up their immune systems and that scratches on the brand new coffee table add patina and the hole in the slipcover on my couch just contributes to the vintage vibe of things accumulated over time. It's a lived-in and loved-in home.

Beeeeautiful - I believe this was the result of over-bleaching.

See how trying to live spot-free can screw up your life?

 

I'm not perfect nor am I ever going to be. The closest I'm probably ever going to get is my lovely Pinterest board, Cleaning and Clutterbusting. You should check it out. It's full of all kinds of awesome pins like how to make your own cleaning solutions from organic herbs from your garden, how to store your Q tips in an attractive container covered in handmade paper, and how to organize your entire life using recycled Altoid containers, a hot glue gun and a label maker. Martha would approve.