PINK Saturday, Episode nine~

Your host is Beverly at How Sweet the Sound. To enjoy more pink, visit her blog for a list of participants~

Today I'm sharing a TINY sneak peek at our PINK bathroom. I have a window sill! I can't tell you how excited I am, I just love it. Kevin did a wonderful job. (Thank you sweetie!) He also added trim above the window. Much, much better.

MUCH more cottage~y and period correct!

Katie approves~

and I've since painted it.

Yes, just one teasing picture, that's all you get for now.

But remember the before? The sink was cut into the bottom trim of the window... no sill... ugly tile? Kevin moved the sink and electric over. Made the trim on the window skinnier. I painted the tile and sink, and he put up the beadboard.

I just finished patching and painting over the hole where the light fixture used to be. So the light and sink are now more centered on that wall between the shower and window, instead of all crammed together like this.

I know it seems to be taking FOREVER, but we're only working on it on weekends, IF we don't have plans. I was busy today, and we're busy tomorrow and Sunday. So even tho there's not much left to do, it's taking an eternity. But I see the light at the end of the tunnel! Hope to share the big reveal soon! Be sure to click on the bathroom labels at the end if you missed the other posts~ you must be bored or interested to do so of course, lol!

Have a great pink weekend all~

If Walls Could Talk... 100th Post!!... Gift Give Away!!!

Welcome to my 100th post!

(Please don't *skim* over this one, you might miss something!) And as always, click images to see larger versions if you like.

I can't believe I've come this far. How fun it has been to meet all of you, and become part of each other's worlds. I have learned quite a bit in these last few months; about others AND myself. It has been a wonderful experience and I thank each an every one of you bloggin' buddies!

When starting out, I wanted to lead you through each room of our 100 year old home as I gave you the "tour". However, I quickly found out that blogging takes you in many different directions and I haven't stayed on course! You can see the first few posts about our home at the end of May (link in sidebar archives)~ and throughout my blog if you check the labels.

Today I'm going to take you upstairs and show you the front bedroom, or my craft room, as it was when we moved in.

Here is the door leading into the room. The only room with a transom left upstairs. Perty, huh?

It's also the only transom with working hardware. Curious cats!
Closeup of of funky wallpaper
I heard this room was used as a kitchen at one time, when the house was divided into apartments. This is the larger side~
This brown stuff on the walls here is CORK!! Ugh. I kept thinking how horrendous it would be to remove, but we ended up gutting the entire room so it didn't matter, lol!

You can see an outlet in the middle of the left wall, I guess where they plugged in a kitchen stove. We have two of them over there.

So yes, funky wallpaper, cork, and incredibly bright aqua blue paint all in one room. Bamboozling isn't it?

Now we come to a closet. A closet with a window inside and this dinky little door. I wish I had photos of the inside. It was mostly old wooden shelves. This area must have leaked big time, there were stains everywhere and different old wallpapers, which you will get to see soon...

Since the closet had a window and I could tell it was not original to the house, possibly built in the 20's or 30's, I had Kevin take it out. It was still a somewhat hard decision! But I'm so glad we did it.... here's a shot afterwards~ nice and bright!

By this point we had torn into the living room and dining room and found a few old bottles in the debris. So when he started on the closet removal, I told him I hope he finds something cool there too.

You can see the outline of the old paper on the ceiling and such here. This is my little bro, who is married with a baby now. (I can't believe it!!) I think this is a neat pic as Kevin shovels the old plaster into a bucket you can see the dust rising up. Dirty, dirty work. Not fun to breath.

Plaster is down on that half of the room, but lath strips are still up. Can you even tell what a pretty floor that could be? Um~ not now, huh.

Heads up! Plaster coming down!

The window in front of my brother is the parlor. Kevin is upstairs in the craft room, and the window to the left upstairs is our bedroom, below that is the living room, (which you can't see)

YAY! Let the lath removal begin! For those of you not familiar with old houses with plaster and lath, you can read about it here.

What a mess.

But it was worth it.

....because...

As Kevin was tearing out the lath on the closet side............he found THIS~

A drawing of a man in carpenter's chalk with the year 1907! It's quite hard to photograph, so I emphasized the pic a bit here to better show you~

Many people tell us they think it looks like Mark Twain. I guess it *could* be... but that was just the style then. I wonder if it's a self portrait. And most of all I wonder if whomever drew it actually thought that anyone would ever see it again?

You can't tell, but the picture is just above the handle of the shovel. We've since drywalled over it, but when we're ready we plan to cut the drywall out where the picture is. I have a piece of glass to place over it, inside the studs. I can then hang framed art over top and simply remove it when we want to show off our "talking walls".

I had tried looking up what I could about the house at the Court House and such, but came up empty handed. The only info I had was from the previous family, and another family who had lived here in the 70's. So, between our sidewalk out front being stamped with 1907, and then finding this dated *artwork*, I think it's safe to say that our home was built in 1907. (Ok, so it's 100 and ONE years old.... it's just easier to say 100 year old house when I talk about it, lol)

To celebrate our home's centennial in 2007, Kevin made little gift crates using the lath strips from our home, and on the ends I decoupaged this label... only I made it a tinge red and old looking~ (for the life of me I cannot find a pic of the finished product!) You can see the sidewalk picture on that, and I took out our name for safety/blogging purposes.

Here are some of the wallpaper layers found in the closet area. Such beautiful paper. Especially the wide border. Oh, how I wish I could find this today! And upon closer inspection I can see that it was pink and green, the same shades I'm using in the room today!


We are not finished with this room, (it's been about 4 years). We've just had bigger fish to fry lately. So, it pretty much looks like this now, only with MORE of my *junque* in it. Projects waiting to be brought to life, pictures waiting to be hung, windows waiting to be dressed. We need new windows tho, so I'm holding out!
The floor turned out beautifully!

You can see more of this room and it's decor to be in this post.

I hope you all have enjoyed my 100th post. If you've made it this far, then you you simply must leave a comment! I'll be pulling a winning name from the comments on October 1st. I'm not going to tell you what the gift give away is, but I will tell you that it has something to do with The Scarlett Rose Garden; a garden mix if you will. I do hope that the winner will share their gift on their blog once received!

Hugs to you all,

Nikki

Pink Saturday, Espisode Eight!

Your host is Beverly at How Sweet the Sound. To enjoy more pink, visit her blog for a list of participants~

Today I want to share the bridal shower we held for my SIL last year. It turned out pretty cute for a low budget deal!

I chose DIAMONDS ARE A GIRLS BEST FRIEND for the theme. I asked my mom to do a jewelry box shaped cake, and I shoved a bunch of my old bling inside.
(To see more of my mom's cakes, click here!)

Marilyn Monroe was present of course~
I re-used the candle holders I had made from my wedding, but changed out the ribbons. I found these cute little diamond belt buckles; I think they were three to a package for like $1.50 or so.

I stitched up a quick pink veil and put *diamonds* on the comb.
Each guest had diamond note paper. A copy of THE GOOD WIFE was rolled up and held with a diamond ring.

If you have not seen THE GOOD WIFE before, you must click on it to enlarge! This was one of the games. I didn't tell anyone to read it...but everyone did open it. Later I asked everyone to write down as many things that they could remember from the scroll. It was quite funny since they didn't know there'd be a test!

Another game was a jar full of gems~ they had to guess how many.
We served PINK lemonade, and I brought my PINK handled cake servers. There were cute PINK and black napkins, PINK forks, and PINK place mats. The bride was to carry PINK lillies, so I bought some to give away as prizes. I covered black tables with PINK shiny tulle.
So without further a-do, here is a slideshow. I hope y'all don't get bored, there's about 50 pics!

Cowboys and Cupcakes

Thursday was Cowboy/Cowgirl day at Nova's preschool. That's right up our alley! We even have little spurs for his boots but I thought it best to take them off for school.

He was so excited to go, rushing me to get out the door!

I LOVE this shirt! I bought him a 2T a few years ago at Old Navy. He wore it so often. It was too small this year and I mourned the thought of giving it up. I searched and searched ebay. Finally, it was being sold in a lot of old navy clothes with 4 pairs of jeans. I got them all for $20 including shipping, woohoo! This is a size 5. The sleeves are rolled up at the cuff, but I'm freaking out that it fits him this well! Even the reverse side of the cuffs are cute... and those snaps!!

*Click to see photos larger*

It was also my turn to bring snacks. The color this week is yellow, and they're still learning the first three numbers and letters so I put 123's and ABC's on their cupcakes. Yellow cake mix with yellow trim frosting, naturally!
Mmmm, what a yummy mess!
Had to add some sprinkles for more color~ There, that's better!
The boys and girls had a blast, yeeeehawwww! Looks like they've got an outlaw corraled!


What's this? Just one lonely cupcake left? How sad.

Let's take him out of his cup and see how he looks...

MMMWAARRFFFF!

So behind!!!

I'm sorry for being SO far behind in visiting you all~
These preschool hours are kicking my butt! I'm so used to staying up till 1am or so, and getting up at 9 or 10. Now I have to get up at 7:15, and can't keep my eyes open past 11pm at night. And I am NOT a morning person. Seriously, don't even talk to me until at least 11am.
I have OVER 400 posts in my google reader from you guys and I don't even know where to start, so please bare with!

Today I didn't want to post anything, just thinking about 9-11. I saw some beautiful tributes out there in blogland today.

Nova had to dress up as a cowboy at school, (right up our alley!!), and it was our turn to bring snacks so I made cupcakes; post to follow.

My 100th post is right around the corner, so stay tuned folks~ there will be a give-away!

*See* you soon,
Nikki

I won the lottery!!

The POOP lottery that is~

Nova swallowed the penny Saturday, (see previous post), and I found it Monday morning.

I'm so relieved, because the more I read about "swallowed money" the more worried I became. Apparently, pennies made before 1982 were 95 % copper and somewhat *safe*... but pennies made after that are zinc covered with copper and can react with stomach acids and become corrosive as car battery acid, VERY dangerous~ can cause ulcers and upset stomach and even liver and bone marrow damage. You can read an article here. A penny found in a two year old boy had HOLES in it from the acid reaction!!

So, here is one expensive penny~

Lincoln looks a bit pale.

Of course I don't know what it looked like before, but I'm assuming the different color patina is from stomach acid. There are some pits in the penny as well. How scary! And check out the date, 1983. Just ONE year after they quite making the copper ones!!

It's rather pretty isn't it? Like a fall leaf~

Thank goodness for plastic bags and latex gloves. And I'm glad we kept Nova's potty chair to use as a stool for washing his hands. I lined it with a Walmart bag so we could *catch the penny*. Nova wasn't crazy about "pooping in the trash", LOL!!

This may be TMI, but someone might need this info some day... I then squished around on the bag till I felt the penny. SO glad I only had to do this TWICE. I wore gloves and washed and washed. Used an old toothbrush and bleach too. After all that Kevin still didn't want to touch it, ha!

I had been shoving food down Nova left and right too, to *move things along*...

Nova bank~

Here is Nova's Piggy bank~

Here is Nova's Train bank~

And here is our NOVA bank~
Yes folks, today Nova swallowed a penny. Last night we had emptied the pig, (we keep it up on our entertainment center downstairs), and Nova put the money back in.

Then we went upstairs and got ready for bed, and he wanted to empty the train bank as well. So we emptied and refilled the train.

Evidently we missed a penny from the pig in the living room and he found it!!

I was gone doing hair for a wedding party. Kevin calls me and says, "I think Nova swallowed a coin." He said Nova came up to him and said, "you get the money out?" and pointed to his belly. UGH!!! (Insert parental hysterics here) Then he pointed to his esophagus area and said "I broke?" It must have been lodged there, hurting the little guy.

He had been eating raisins, so even if Kevin saw him do it he wouldn't have *known* he had anything else! Thank God he told daddy, and that it went down!

Off to Urgent Care they went. Yep~ looks like a penny, and it was already in his stomach. (Whew!)

Guess I'm on poop patrol tomorrow........

We just feel so blessed. He could've easily choked.

We're still in awe that he even did this! He will not try new foods, and many times will literally gag when trying to swallow something.

You just never know what these kids will do! If this is the worst that ever happens I will be SO happy!

I did it!!

I sewed on my new machine!! I even tried some of the "fancy" stiches! As some of you may recall, I was terrified to use it!

I tackled it a few weeks ago, then finished my first little project last Saturday. Woohooo! I feel so ALIVE! Bwah-ha-ha...



So here's my first victim~ A black wicker(?) rocker that my friend got out of the trash for me! (Thanks KIM!) I don't know what it's made of. It's not wicker, or rattan. It's a rope-like material. Seems to be pretty old. Naturally it has issues. Coming apart from the top and has no seat. I don't care, it's shabby and free and I love it!


Click to see the large version~ if anyone knows what this is made of, let me know!

(don't let my toes distract you, lol)

I asked Kevin to cut a new seat. The chair had once been green and then painted black and I love the patina. I don't want to paint over it. I knew if I painted the new seat black that it would be a "fresh" black and I wouldn't like it. So, I dug in my fabric pile and found some old yellow duck cloth. Perfect! Put some batting over the seat and covered it.

Now for a cushion! I had an extra hydgrangea pad from the front porch set.

Below is my fabric for the new cover~ I've had this for over 10 years! I bought it as a remnant for probably $2, with no idea what to do with it, I just loved it. It's a strong brushed cotton. And what do you know, *JUST* enough for this project! *Squeeeeee!*

Click to see the detail~ The black teapot fabric you see is actually curtains that I made about 10 years ago too... they were for my back porch on my other house. I just loved my porch then, (wish I had pics) and am glad I can do it all over again. It's a rather Mary Engelbreit"y" I think.

Now I won't tell you it all went smoothly. I jammed the machine two or three times. Hmm... probably because I was using upholstry thread on top and regular thread in the bobbin. It's all I had and I wasn't going to the store, ya know?

I did't use a pattern and I'm quite proud of my corners, even tho my stripes don't *quite* match up in front. I had to alter the pic because the flash was so bright on it!

Wanna see the finished look? I can't wait to put it in it's place on my "new" back porch!