calling all armless statues

I'd like a bust. (That's what she said! Oh, I crack myself up.  Just can't help myself.)

What brought that on, you ask?  I bought the Best of Southern Living Magazine, and in it I saw this sun room:

See the bust on the shelf on the right?  Love.  Actually, I love the whole second picture. 


I've been eyeing this one from Pottery Barn for a while:

She seems graceful and pretty. I've been looking for a white marble-ish one, but so far this one's features are the one I like best.


Homer and Aristotle seem like cranky old men:

Apparently Overstock has a selection of busty types, but they seem....eh, for lack of a better term.

Still looking....anyone have any ideas?

no mas dishwasher

Our dishwasher started leaking yesterday morning, right before Greg's birthday party.  Luckily, my father, Mr. Fixit, knew how to fix it, with some helpers.

He pulled out the plastic doohicky thing on the bottom, did something else, went to replace the plastic doohickey thing....and it was gone.

We searched high and low, inside and out. I even got to dump out the trash on my kitchen floor and go through it. No plastic doohickey thing.  Peter is a prime suspect but has refused to give up the goods despite intense interrogation.

So....my dishwasher has gone from leaky to broken.  AWESOME.

Worst Toy Ever

FYI, this Buzz Lightyear Ultra Blast Gauntlet is the most annoying toy on the face of the earth:

 Not only does it shoot flat tipped darts (!!), but it also makes this horrendous, LOUD, buzzy-drilling sound, supposedly imitating a laser.

We will all be blind and deaf by the end of today. 

Thanks, Auntie J!  I look forward to returning the favor.

UPDATE:  hahahaha....Peter is playing with this toy and Greg is yelling "STOP IT BE QUIET!!!!"

letters on bins

A while back one of my aunts gave me some cute carved letters with each of the kids first initial.  (Looking at the letters you will obviously see that my kids are not named Greg, Peter and Princess.)  I've been hanging onto them, not quite sure where to put them.  I've not done much in the way of decorating the kids' room, because I want to move the Princess from our room to in with the boys, but that will necessitate rearranging the furniture and then I'm not sure where the art will go...and that was a long-winded explanation for saying "I have these cute letters." 

Around the corner from the front door into the apartment we have a cube full of bins.  Everybody has their own bin, which is a place for gloves, scarves, hats, etc. The Pottery Barn Kids near my house has bins with letters on them, so I thought I'd try affixing the letters to the bins. I just tied a piece of ribbon through the handle of the basket and the hanger on the back of the letter.  And voila! Kiddos know which bin is theirs.

Sister's nursery on Ohdeedoh!

Exciting news!  My sister's nursery for Denise (seen on my blog here and here) was featured on Ohdeedoh (Apartment Therapy's children's decor site.)  Woot woot!

See her nursery on Ohdeedoh here. 

In my day...

I'm feeling old lately.  Maybe its because I haven't slept in the past five years.  But I find myself saying stuff I never thought I would.

This weekend I took Grandma and Greg to run some errands.  Pretty much any time Grandma leaves the house, especially if she has Greg with her, she comes home with toys.  Which on one hand is nice and very generous. On the other hand, it leads my kid to expect a toy every time we leave the house.

I have attempted to explain that we don't buy toys just because we have left the house.  Unfortunately, now when we go shopping and he asks for a toy and I say no, he says, in his rather loud voice "ITS TOO EXPENSIVE, RIGHT??? WE DONT HAVE THAT MANY DOLLARS.  TOYS ARE EXPENSIVE AND WE CAN'T AFFORD IT."

I have no idea where he got this idea.  I have said, no, we can afford it, but I'm not buying it because you have plenty of toys already, but he persists in announcing to the world that we are poor. 

So we are out shopping this past weekend with Grandma, and Greg picks up a piece of junk toy that he neither needs nor really wants.  I say no.  He starts to pitch a fit.  As we are walking back to the car, I am delivering a stern lecture on appropriate behavior in public, and how in my day, I never got lots of toys, I played with a stick and cardboard boxes and plastic bottles tops (all true, btw, I have pictures to prove it---my mother made me a violin from a dowel, a curler and a Triscuit box) and didn't need lots of plastic crap from China to make me happy....

WTH??? Did that just come out of my mouth??  IN MY DAY??  I'm thirty-freaking-six, for pete's sake.  Next thing you know I'll be telling my kid that I walked uphill both ways to school in the snow, with barbed wire wrapped around my feet for traction, like my father told me. 

Other things my father told me that I find myself saying lately....Life isn't fair, fair is something you pay to ride the bus.  Greg and I have this conversation frequently, although I don't think he's quite grasped the finer points.

And "you've got to suffer if you want to sing the blues."  I spent my childhood pointing out I had no interest in singing the blues. 

Daddy-ism I have managed to avoid saying....I'm game, she said, so the Polock shot her. 

cords revisited

Last we saw my under the desk area, it looked like this:

(Ignore the above the desk area, please.)

Princess has taken to crawling under the desk and sucking on the computer power cord.  That didn't seem terribly safe, so I guess its time to deal with all the cords down there.  And by "dealing" with them I want to shove them in a box and forget about them. 

I had been looking for an inexpensive solution but hadn't really found anything quite right.  Then, a few days ago I was doing laundry in the basement, and saw this:

It belonged to my mother in law, but had been discarded because drawer front broke off.  Otherwise it was perfect--free, three drawers, one of which could be stationary since I planned on hacking up the bottom of the piece to put the cords in. 

I painted it white and spraypainted the plastic pulls red.

I painted the pulls red because 1) they were very cheap grey plastic and looked hideous, and 2) the credenza under the tv on the other side of the room is also painted white with red pulls.

I actually went to Target yesterday to pick up new pulls---yes, I went to Target for the fourth day in a row, we saw the big Buzz Lightyear yet again, and when we pulled into the parking lot the 4 yr old said, Hey! This is the Target we go to EVERY DAY!---but the six pack of pulls that I wanted were $22.  So, back home to the free plastic pulls. 




Luckily, the drawer front was easily reattached to the broken drawer, and it sits on the bottom now, and holds all the cords.  Since I don't need to pull the drawer out frequently, it should hold up ok.

The Mister sawed off the bottom third of the back of the piece.  I could have taken the back piece completely off, but its not the sturdiest thing, and the back piece helped make it more stable.  All of the cords are stuffed into the back and live in the bottom drawer. There is enough airflow so that the power cords don't overheat, since the back is open. 

And voila!  Cords contained, room for other stuff in the two top drawers. 

Of course, the Princess is already poking around back there, trying to get at the cords.