And I generally do not like nasty and gold things. Plus when we took it down to pack it up we realized the whole thing needed to be re-wired to avoid catching fire. I finally decided to tackle this because of the whole craft room renovation. Yesterday morning I thought this was going to be a quick paint the lamp shade project. It turned out to be a paint the whole thing and talk the husband into electrical work project:


I almost didn’t paint the rest of the thing white, how horrendous would that have been leaving it gold/cream faux painted? Ugh. Well it all worked out good.


Daytime/Nighttime view. I asked Bj after we put it up if it was too funky or if it was cool. "I think it’s pretty cool." Okay, me too, but it’s almost too funky, no problem we’ll just balance it out with other funky things. Painted the same color (I think it’s Bahama Sea or something like that).


The clock I

Once you do these little things and you realize how little time they take you start to feel guilty about not doing the other tiny projects, like recovering another little stool thing:


The fabric had previously just been bunched around it real quickly. So I didn’t even know that the seat is removable and has storage underneath. And I have left over state fabric to boot! The cool thing about that is that Salem is a state capital so it’s actually on the fabric, cool! Well since I had the staple gun out:


This chair was on Bj’s side of the bed, but he did not like it for a nightstand, so I swung it around and brought in the lamp that was in the craft room. We have next to no room on either sides of our bed so it’s a bit tricky in there. I think this will work for now though. I did all of this in addition to making sure an old guy doesn’t wet himself. Go me!

Okay so still no news on whether or not grandpa gets released today, though this blog post will most likely be interrupted by a phone call on the matter. But before all of that happened Sciarrino and I worked on an awesome project last week. I had been planning on redoing the craft studio all in one big go and surprising Bj, but it was getting a little messy and he started going off on it so I spilled the beans, (to which he replied, "oh, well sorry, that’s cool though.") and decided to tackle it a job at a time. First up the wall. The paint in here was the hardest of the whole house to figure out and I never felt like it was quite right because though one wall is a different color you really can’t tell and that was kinda annoying. And with the yellow color it makes it hard to hang things up and get them to work the way I want to, so I decided to expand on an old idea. When I first moved in I wanted to do a big eight foot long cork board, I bought molding and was going to attach the cork to the wall and then put molding around so it looked framed. Well the molding went and got all funky on me and I couldn’t find big peices of cork so I thought, what the hell, let’s do the whole wall!

I thought just getting cork flooring would be good. But I got a sample and it’s not squishy enough or thick enough to really hold things, and then I thought it would be a pain to put up because a bunch of the squares would have to be cut. So I did some googling and came across Manton Cork. The invoice says to tell my friends, so this is me telling you, my friend! I ordered up 104 square feet for $237.60, including shipping, which was way cheaper than any other option I found. When it came I went to the hard ware store and got some nasty linoleum glue, a trowel thing, a roller, and headless nails, and Sciarrino and I got to work:


It’s in five pieces total, including two little ones by the door, so the seams are really not that noticeable. And I do want to point out that this is NOT for the faint of heart. I guarantee you unless this wall is the sole reason we can not sell the house in the future it will not be coming down by my hand. That glue is permanent and the cork is going to break into a million piece crumbly mess when it gets pulled off. However it is wood so you can paint or stain it so it’s pretty flexible stuff. It took me a few days to start hanging stuff:


(The morning light coming in here is so cheery.) I can’t seem to find my lapel pin collection, which will go up here, but this is a start. Of course it will be ever changing. Now I made that picture extra big so click on it to see more detail. I’m going to go into this more, but one question I have been getting a lot is, "what the heck do you do with all that thrifted stuff?" Well here is a great example of how it just lives with me. Almost everything here is thrifted:
-it’s all sitting on a cool vintage dresser acquired last summer.
–mini card catalog is from last summer as well and holds scrapbooking stuff. I’d love a bigger one like Nora’s but I can’t find one any where near me. That is something I’ve been looking for for about five years, along with the elusive printmakers cabinet.
-jar full of ribbon and goodies
–stamp carousal from eBay with vintage stamps for crafting
-the little dog I got a few weekends ago joins other finds on top of the card catalog: little scale (eBay), purple kitty salt shaker (given to me when I was little), elephant (made it at camp), little globe (antique mall) big globe (goodwill), small elephant bank (Sciarrino found it for me), Rhino bank (old garage sale find).
-glass box from an antique mall, perfect for in package scrapbooking stuff. This is a great example of a broken find that works great re purposed. I think it’s a cooking dish, but the lid was missing so it was only like seven bucks.
-A bunch of stuff on the walls is thrifted: covers from old art books, an old record, pins, buttons, the big spiral bound teacher’s reader guide that I love, and crafting stuff (like the cable hook).
-Even the lamp in the corner is from an estate sale.

So those links are to blog post from  when I fount/acquired the items. I love all my "old crap" as Bj would say. And I will go into more what I do with it/how we live with it in coming posts. Looking around and seeing that a good 80% of my stuff is vintage/thrifted tells me there will be lots of those sorts of posts.

And a fabulous quote from the not-so-fabulous Nikon class Sciarrino, Luke and I went to last night (how was it not fabulous well she showed two pictures, one vertical, one horizontal and wanted to know what the difference was. I raised my hand and said, "orientation." "No, anyone else?" Some guy said, "oh one is up and down one is regular." She said that’s right! That’s orientation idiot, ahhhh, that kind of stuff gets me.)  We were starting to have trouble paying attention when she whips out this huge lens:

"Now there’s way too much shaft out there. You’re gonna want to hold it close to your body. You want to be able to get the squirrel and his nuts."

Oh my god I don’t know how we kept it together. And the whole rest of the room? Nadda, nothing. Ah I guess we are still young and stupid after all.