So I'm Cheap. I'm Also Stubborn With Expensive Taste.

This is a good combination.  When I was shopping for Emma's nursery (read: drooling at things I couldn't afford) I found the cutest lampshade.  I was doing her nursery in pink and brown, right before EVERYTHING was pink and brown and it was hard to find things that would go.  But I found this lampshade online for a hundred dollars.  Yes a HUNDRED dollars.  For a lampshade!  Really?  Hubs would never go for that.  But it's cute, right?

Yeah, so pretty and soooo out of my budget.  Remember when I said I was stubborn?  That's where it gets good.  So I took an old lamp that I had in my bedroom when I was younger and knew I could make my version.

Remember this sad lamp?  Well, I painted it brown (using the brown paint we already had on hand for the brown flowers and two drawer chest we had already painted.  I bought a pink lampshade from Target for about $10.00.  And I picked up some adorable pink and brown polka dotted ribbon from Hobby Lobby.  Super cheap.  I don't even remember what I paid but it was by the yard.  I took some brown scrapbook paper, which I had on hand, cut out a capitol "E" using the Opposites Attract cartridge for my cricut, and I hot glued it on the shade.  I hot glued the pink and brown grosgrain ribbon along the top and bottom edges of the lampshade.  Then I took some tiny pink ribbon, made a bow, and glued it to the "E".  So. Cute.  So NOT $100.00.  And I love mine even more!

Parnellisms...and What I've Been Up To

I know all of us have those words that our kids say incorrectly and, try as we might, we almost cannot bear to correct them. They are so cute! So I've made a list of words my children use and that sometimes, I find myself using as well!

Fwanket. Emma called her blanket this for months. She has moved on to Bwanket ('L's are still a problem) but I still like to say Fwanket.

Peek a Yoo. Emma's version of Peek A Boo. Alex has started using it as well. I almost exclusively use Peek a yoo. It's SO FUNNY!

Bootball. Pronounced like football, just with a b. Courtesy of Mr. Parnell. Oh he knows the difference between the different balls, we have baseball, bootball, asketball, and soccer ball. But by far, my fave is bootball.

Muck. Alex's version of milk. And sometimes, I ask both children if they would like more Muck. They understand me.

Um, I sort of thought there were more. Maybe there are, but I got nothing. Just asked Hubs (fresh off his second loooong nap of the day - he had a conference call that lasted until 4am last night. Er, this morning.) His brain is fried so he had no
additional comments. I'll let him slide.

So, since that was so short, I'll fill you in on what I've been working on. I redecorated the living room mantle. It just had 6 family pictures and a candle arrangement thing on it before. I didn't take a before picture, hmm...that was bad. I just get these urges and GO! Let me see what I can find in my pictures...be right back. Yawn, right? So I just rearranged and stole from other rooms and stuff and came up with this:

I'll break it down from left to right:
1. old map covered chest/boxy thing that Jeff, yes Jeff, brought into our marriage. It's been on the floor of our bedroom for years.
2. Crystal cross we got as a wedding present that has never really had a great home. Now I love where it sits!
3. Willow Tree figure of brand new parents that we got at Emma's dedication. LOVE.
4. Family picture (that yes, needs to be updated. I agree. It's on the list of my To Dos. Just not very far up there.)
5. candle covered in a pretty beaded wine bottle cover thingy. Loved the wine bottle cover but we don't really drink wine so it's been sitting sadly in a drawer for a few years. I LOVE that I get to use it and see it now.
6. Same goes for the pretty wine cork. See above.
7. Wooden sled my grandmother had (and that I played with as a small girl). There's a story there somewhere, but I'd have to get up and go look it up, but that sled is old. I don't even care that it's a sled and a. we never use those here in Texas or b. that it's a wintery decoration. i. love. the. sled. There, done.
8. Great grandmother's sewing basket. Love.
9. Random red candle sitting on pretty wine bottle coaster. See # 5.
10. Picture of Jeff and I the weekend before Alex was born. I should update this at LEAST so I don't look so fat, right??? How's that for motivation?
11. Glass bottles bound with metal. I think I got this from my mom's house during one of her cleaning out for KCM times. Filled it with some red rocks I got at Pier 1 a hundred years ago and instant love.
12. Token wedding picture in the token glass wedding frame. I love this picture so I do not plan to update it. (come on, what else do you put in a glass wedding frame??)
Sorry the picture is kinda bright. We get yummy afternoon sun in the windows next to the fireplace AND I made a fort with a ginormous blanket using the window ties from the window on the right and I didn't think it would add to the aesthetic if I included it in the shot.


And on to the kids bathroom.  I have tons of storage in there.  But no where to hang towels to dry.  My mom gave me some really cute hooks that I thought would be adorable in the mudroom.  But as you can see in my post here , the mudroom is done.  I had some hooks already in there...why ruin a good thing, right?  So someday I want to add bead board to the upstairs bathroom, and those aforementioned hooks would be perfect in there.  AND solve my towel hanging problem.  So I quickly (seriously, this project took me about 25 minutes) drilled the holes for the hooks and was pleased.  But it needed something.  So I fired up my cricut and cut an A and an E out of chipboard, cut another A and E out of cute scrapbook paper, and then wondered how I would attach the letters to the wall.  It's not the best solution, but it was the best I could come up with.  Before I attached the scrapbook paper, I just took a flat thumb tack and pushed it through the chipboard and the wall.  Then I covered the letters with the scrapbook paper letters.  Viola!  I wasn't completely happy with the look so I carefully pulled the letters off the wall (the thumbtack is completely hidden by the pretty paper), distressed the edges with a brown stamp pad, and hung em right back up!  I love it.  The kids will be able to reach their hooks and hang/rehang their own towels now.

Yes, my wall is less than stellar.  When we bought this house, the wallpaper situation was horrendous.  Oh my goodness, it was bad.  We have managed, over the years, to rid our walls of the wallpaper plague in every room except for the master bathroom.  Just where the toilet is.  But the upstairs bathroom took the cake.  Unfortunately, I didn't get any photographic evidence of the tragic images on my walls.  That was a mistake.  People, we could have been laughing up a storm right now.  Oh man it was ugly.  It was a brownish, tannish background with like peacock blue paisley swirls.  So. Bad.  But here's the deal with the wallpaper in the house (Brenda Gust, you know what I'm talking about!), it is permanently attached to the wallboard.  So when we relieved our house of the ugly that was upstairs, most of the wallboard pulled off with it.  I am a handy gal but I don't do sheet rock.  I don't tape and float.  And I'm cheap, so I won't pay anyone to do it for me either.  So we lived with an exponentially uglier bathroom for a while.  I was pregnant with Emma.  The week before Emma was born, Jeff's brother and family came over and my sweet brother in law spent most of their visit upstairs in the bathroom trying to re texture the walls and fix the mess the hubs and I had made.  We thought we understood how to do it but we didn't do as good a job as he did.  Meh, plenty of time to fix it.  Except for the fact that Jeff's dad and step mom were coming to visit the 13th of July.  And I was due with Emma the 29th of June.  So one day, while I was at work, Jeff painted the bathroom.  "just for now" so that our company would have a prettier bathroom to use.  So needless to say, there are some gouges where the wallboard was damaged in the removal of wallpaper and I don't care.  Today.  Tomorrow, well, that might be a different story.

And now for today.  See, I found this post here , and got inspired.  I have a ton of those florist vases under my sink.  In fact, at Christmas, we clogged out disposal and in fixing it (and hence getting under the kitchen sink) my brother had to pull out vase after vase after vase...after vase!  They were everywhere.  But who can throw them out?  So I have a bunch.  And I also have trees.  So why can't I make this?  So I clipped some dead branches out of my crepe myrtle in the back (See Jeff?  I'm not really crafting, I'm doing yardwork!  Yay me!) and plugged in my glue gun.  Anthropologie can keep their $78.00 vases.  Mine was free!  I'm not 100% sure I'm in love with the natural look.  I think I'd like to spray the sticks black next time, but the center of my table in the dining room looks MUCH better now, thank you.  And so does my tree out back.  :)  I do like how high the sticks are compared to the top of the vase though.  What do you think?  I keep going back and forth.  Try again with black?  Let it go and move on?  I have to marinate on this one for a while, I think.

And yes, I know this is a long post, but I thought I'd just check in with the progress on the armoire.  It's going.  First I ran out of Mod Podge, then foil.  Then I just ran out of steam.  You know when your enthusiasm runs out and you're not really far enough along to be close enough to finishing to push through?  Yeah, that's kinda where I am.  I'm waiting for a good fairy to come and lift the armoire so I can shove some elevating blocks under it (so I can complete the bottom) and some direction when it comes to painting the inside.  It's a long story.  Just relish in what I HAVE accomplished, mmk?
Have a good night peeps.  I'm off the check on the littles and hop into bed myself.  I have a loooong list of To Dos for tomorrow....

'Twas The Day Before Mother's Day

What a busy day. Got the hubs back. Went to La Porte to visit the in-laws. Came home with two children who wouldn't take naps. Alex snoozed in the car for about 30 minutes, woke himself up when we stopped at a red light, and consequently freaked out because he was disoriented. Poor little man. But that was all she wrote. When we actually got home, I put him to bed where he proceeded to talk and play for the next 2 hours. But he was content so I let him stay there. Jeff took a much needed nap while Emma tried to nap with him in our bed but just ended up jumping on him. She came out to the living room to hang with me while I browsed DIY craft blogs. Whoops. Guilty! When the boys got up, we went outside to watch Jeff mow the lawn and wash my car. (Thanks babe!) But see, having the hose out to wash the car and then the lawn equipment meant that I watered some of the thirsty plants in our front yard. And my kids. You knew that was coming, right? Alex LOVED it. Emma squealed and participated just so her brother wouldn't out do her, but she would have been happier playing in the dirt. My sweet prissy girl loves her some dirt. And dirty feet. The blacker the better. I've never been so glad we bought black mulch. :/ But Alex got wetter and wetter and really, if he could have stood directly in the line of fire, he would have. He is my brave boy and by the end of the afternoon, he was s-o-a-k-e-d! And grinning. His hair was wet, his shirt was dripping and his shorts were so wet and heavy they were falling off his cute little bottom. The diapers were FULL (of hose water) so it was time to bring them inside. I grabbed Emma and stripped her skirt off, changed her diaper for a dry one (that also was sans black mulch on the outside) and she was good to go. Jeff was in charge of Alex. Which means that they were playing. And of course Emma wanted to join in. Being dry and inside was no longer fun. I looked outside and Alex is completely naked and Jeff is squirting him with the hose. I assume it was to clean all the dirt off of him, but seeing that little naked hiney was hilarious! I got some really cute pictures which I will NOT be sharing with you! But it was cute. Alex loves water! I quickly wrapped him in a towel and got him partially dressed. We ate dinner and then it was upstairs for more fun in the water. After baths, those kiddos were tuckered out and went to sleep almost before their sweet little heads touched their pillows. Love. Those. Monkeys! Is it sad that at five after nine, I'm ready for bed as well? This mamma is plumb tuckered out! Happy Mother's Day to all the moms I know.
How will your family celebrate?

The Video Proof

I finally got the stupid video off of my phone! It gave me an error message twice. I gave up and posted that entry. But NOW for some reason, it has worked, so without further ado (or Much Ado About Nothing), I give you the counting expertise of Alexander Scott Parnell.

He sort of gives up after 5. Or 6. I don't remember. But he can count to ten, particularly when we are on the changing table. And by we, I of course, mean him. I am on the business end of Alex Parnell when he chooses to consistently start counting and I'm not really in a position to run and grab my camera. So you will be satisfied with what I have. [doing the Jedi Mind Trick on you right now, mmmk?]

Quarter Round

Today is the first day in a week I get my husband back. He's been tied up on conference calls that last up to thirteen hours. Go back and read that again. I'll wait. Yes, you read correctly, thirteen hours. They're working on all the integration stuff for the two companies since the merger and the part he's working on is taking these crazy long conference calls. So I am happy it is Saturday because I get my man back!! All week long he's been here, but with those earbuds stuck in his ears. It's nice to have him interact with the rest of us!

So since today is our first "family" time, I of course, decide to finish up the quarter round in the breakfast room. It is sucking my will to live. We're getting there, and I am LOVING using the chop saw, but it's not pretty. My dad always said "measure twice, cut once". It seems I am measuring twice and cutting even more times than that. :/
I'm getting better, but the best angle match up so far? Yup, the one that will be hidden behind a piece of furniture. Such is my luck.

The ridiculous part? This is not hard!! I kind of don't get why I'm having such a hard time.

Enjoy your weekend!

The downside to crafting

So I am a very impatient person. Very impatient. Waiting 18 weeks to find out the sex of my babies (NO I AM NOT PREGNANT!!) was torture. I want what I want when I want it and the when is usually now. I cannot stand to order things because EVEN THOUGH said item would have been shipped to and have arrived by the time I actually find what I am looking for in a store, I cannot logically wait that long. Illogical, I know. So back to my downside of crafting. Perhaps I should have called this post Lesson #1. Maybe I should go back up and change the title. Nope. Too much effort and then this last grouping of sentences would have to be erased as well because they would no longer make sense. MOVING FORWARD.
OK so what day did I decorate the laundry room? Monday night? Was it Tuesday? Anyway, I hot glued that black ribbon to the frame of the mirror but wondered at its stability. Would the mirror fall? I made sure that nail went into a stud so that shouldn't happen. Boy what if it falls down in the middle of the night, breaks, and also sets off the glass break sensor thus causing the house alarm to go off, Jeff and I to wake up in a panic, and, oh, let's not go there. Mirror will be fine. Zzzzzzzzzzzz.
Next morning: I wake up and go about my business, with all these really cool ideas running around in my head about what I can make over in my house. Get the kids dressed, fed, we're off to take Jeff to the Park N Ride and as I start to unlock the back door, I see it. Flat on top of the white wire shelf, with about a third hanging over the open floor, is the mirror. One side of the ribbon has come unglued. Sigh. First of all, thank you Jesus for allowing that shelf to catch my mirror so I didn't have tiny feet running through shards of glass unbeknownst to their mamma. Secondly, how awful would it have been to have that totally awesome mirror break????? Tragedy avoided. So friends, one of two things happened. Either the mirror is too heavy to have used a hot glue gun, OR (and I'm sort of leaning this way) I didn't let the glue get hot enough. Because I am impatient and wanted that wall decorated now. Lucky for me, spray paint dries quickly in Texas. Truthfully, when I started attaching the ribbon, it wasn't as runny and gooey as glue should be. In fact, the first squirts of glue that I forced out were almost dry as soon as they landed on the frame. Usually a sign the glue isn't hot enough to use. Duh. So lesson learned (can't promise I won't repeat other time saving, er, impatient me actions) and this girl will be buying some Gorilla Glue tomorrow to fix that mirror once and for all.
Side Note: I have started the armoire. I am having a love/hate relationship with it right now. I am almost done the first step but I am not loving it yet. I am not hating it (as I was about 4 minutes into this project) but I'm not fully there yet. :/
We will see how this progresses and I'll show you the before, during, and after shots. I'll share all the guts and the glory (hopefully) with you when I'm done. In the meantime, lets just say that I have an armoire, minus the doors, sitting in my bedroom that looks like its shielding itself from an alien invasion. If you don't know what I am talking about, go watch M. Night Shyamalon's Signs.
I have a metallic-ish piece of furniture calling my name. But because no blogpost should be published without a picture (I totally feel obligated each time!!) I will leave you with this sweet brown eyed face.
Love. This. Boy.

I Am Officially Addicted

Seriously. I am head over heels in LOVE with DIY/crafting/repurposing/decorating blogs. Let's face it, the Parnells are on a budget. My love for decorating has been on a multi-year hiatus. OK so I got to decorate two nurseries and a scrapbook room but my creative juices had no outlet and had sort of dried up. Enter my cousin Megan. She is AH-mazing. I had read her blog off and on as it showed up in my facebook news feed but really started following her to prepare for her visit last month. You know, get a peek into her life, what she liked (hazlenut creamer, good coffee, oatmeal) and get a glimpse as to what I could do to get ready for her (and her sweet family) to visit. Enter her love of crafting, a glue gun, and a budget. My kind of girl. She had a post on her blog about adding tin foil to an end table and it turned out so cool! Check her out here. So my gears started turning. She linked to another blogger who knocks off Anthropologie stuff and posts her transformations to her cool thriftstore finds and I was hooked. That blog led to another which led to another and those creative juices that I thought had dried up? Well, they appeared from whatever corner of my mind they had retreated to and are BACK in full force. If I am honest, I will confess that I spent today's naptime (the kids naptime, not mine!) googling DIY blogs and cataloguing my ideas. So. Many. To. Choose. From. I have ideas for Emma's room, my kitchen, and my bedroom. AH! There are not enough hours in the day anymore.
So, I am sort of a "gotta have it now" kind of girl. I really want to try the tinfoil treatment on my bedroom armoire (that Jeff HATES by the way. He has tried all sorts of ideas to get it out of our bedroom but I stubbornly hold on because while it is not really my style anymore, I H-A-T-E having a television visible. So ugly and dated or not, those doors close and it looks clean and tidy and NO television in sight.) Boy, I am getting sidetracked here. So, I have two rolls of tin foil but no mod podge so I cannot get started. And those sweet babies of mine? Yeah, still sleeping so I can't run to Michaels and pick up some mod podge. Hmm...so I get an idea for my laundry room. We've just finished replacing the hideous pink tile in the laundry room (and I've been working on replacing the quarter round and repainting and that room is finally finished) so that room has been in a state of upheaval. We just got the washer and dryer back in Sunday night and I needed to start getting the other things back in the room. The wall above the white wire shelves has always been bare and I've always hated it.

I remembered some things I had stashed around the house (most of this stuff I had squirreled away in drawers) and started my treasure hunt. I found an old vintage mirror that my grandma gave me which I LOVED but could never find the perfect home for. The giddiness started to build. In the same drawer, I also had a framed picture of Godey's Fashions for November 1866 my other grandmother had given to me. Her mother had it framed decades ago and while I hated the black and gold frame, I couldn't bear to reframe it. It still has the label from the store that framed it for her. Very old. But hidden in a drawer. I also found (in same said drawer) a silver picture frame with my favorite picture of my family in it. Not really going to be a picture kind of wall but it had potential. My friend Tracy had given me a Texas A&M cross and to put it up, I pulled down another cross I had on my Wall O' Crosses and that cross had just been on top of the dresser in my dining room since December. OK, what else. While scavenging that cross from my dining room, I spied a box on a shelving unit. Now I have awesome grandparents for so many reasons, but my father's mother saved everything. And I mean everything. In the box were a pair of what look like hand crocheted baby booties. I think they were my dad's. So cute. And SO in line with my vintage inspired wall I was putting together.
Some may question my decision to spray paint that vintage frame with the Godey's fashion page in it, and I did some serious thinking before I committed to it. That picture, while I loved it, had been tucked in a drawer since I married Jeff because he didn't love it. Do I keep it entirely original and tucked in a drawer to just have? Or do I do what I want to make it mine while still keeping the integrity of the piece and *actually* use it? Easy. I taped up every square inch of that frame and the backing and once the silver spray paint was dry, I sanded it in some places to distress it.
I took the family picture out of the picture frame and cut a piece of scrapbook paper I had left over from making some thank you notes for my sister in law and put that in the frame. Then I pulled the stand thing (whatever - it is what makes the picture frame stand up) off because when hung, you would see the bottom right of that black stand piece and it looked stupid. I ran some black ribbon through the crochet holes in the booties, hot glued some black ribbon to the frame of the vintage mirror, and viola. The hard part was arranging it all.
I love it. Just love it. And the best part? It was FREE! BAM! Love it even more.






Next up? I shall be attacking that armoire. I'm kinda scared, but go big or go home, right? I'll give you the before and cross your fingers that I love the after. I get very moody while doing "projects" and love something, hate it, love it again throughout the process. Here's hoping we end on a "love it" note so I don't wind up biting more than I can chew. (because truthfully, I still have to finish the quarter round in the rest of my house.)