the battlefield

My posts are almost always home/furniture/blog/DIY related, but as I shared yesterday, we spent a morning at the Gettysburg battlefield as a family, so I thought I'd share some pictures from that  We live about 6 miles from it, so it's an easy thing to do on a nice day.  As we drove to our first stop, we were pleasantly surprised by a cavalry reenactment. 

My husband is a huge Civil War buff/dork, so he was excited to see it.  I have an interest in history, so I must say it was pretty cool.  There was something powerful about seeing 20 or so horses with riders dressed in Civil War uniforms, galloping down a field with flags flying and sabres drawn. 

So, after the charge, we drove to climb the tower by the Eisenhower farm. 

There are my boys, headed toward their "mission." 

I will state that I am not scared of great heights, but I am scared of falling from great heights and I am scared of man-made towers on windy days.  Not wanting to impose my fears on my boys, I kept my mouth shut and my shaky legs to myself. 

My older son said he "could see the whole world from up there."

My husband started pointing at landmarks and showing the boys where "the north smoked the south."  (Our families are from Virginia, so I don't want to hear any grief from southerners.)

They were fascinated and enjoyed it.  We also went to Devil's Den, but it started raining, so our outing was cut short.  The boys did have a chance to play "Bear Grylls" on the rocks for a little bit, though.  It was nice to get out of the house and to take picture of things other than furniture and projects and rooms. 

This week, I'm going to share more of my office makeover, dish all about my camera, lenses and favorite PSE actions and I have a Stella and Dot giveaway coming up at the end of the week.

 

a poor paint job

I used to shudder at pieces of furniture that were poorly painted.  Drips, major brush marks, streaks and chips.  I felt like my paint job would only be as good as the previous paint job and I needed to sand it baby bottom smooth to make it right.  Well, I have had a change of heart.  I no longer see problems in poor paint jobs.  I see texture.  Amazing texture just waiting to be highlighted and put on display. 

For example...this piece was poorly painted. It was streaky, drippy, chippy and not in a good way. The drawers worked perfectly, though, it's solid wood, has the original hardware and a great shape. 

Instead of stripping or sanding it, I just painted straight over it with a mixture of paint (I'll get into that in a minute.) Once the paint was dry, I sanded it heavily to bring out all of that imperfectly glorious texture.  Now the streaks and drips look dramatic and even intentional. 

As a little bonus, this wonderful spring green color came through under the gray and white layers of paint. 

The paint I used WAS going to be a mixture of ASCP Louis Blue, Paris Gray and Graphite, but I ran out of Graphite.  Hm.  What can I do to darken this color?  Well, I have some black chalk board paint.  What the heck, let's give it a go and see what happens.  Guess what?  It worked brilliantly.  I mixed in some of the black chalk board paint and it still had great adhesion and distressed well.  Who knew? 

I was so thrilled that the original glass knobs were a complete set and in great condition, so I just put them back on after I waxed and buffed the piece.  Oh, I also tried a new brand of wax...Mylands.  It is very, very stinky.  Like, stunk-up-my-entire-basement and I-had-to-open-the-doors-in-my-house-to-get-a-cross-breeze stinky.  Aside from that, I really like it.  It buffed up to a super smooth finish with a wonderful shine, so it's just another option for waxes out there. 

I brought this dresser to Lucketts on Thursday, so we'll see if someone else loves the textured look as much as I do. 

On a personal note, I am thoroughly enjoying the beginning of fall and the cool weather.  I love hoodies and jeans and football and soup and snuggling under blankets and the anticipation of the holiday season, so this is definitely my time of year.  We decided to go out and enjoy it today, so we hit some of the highlights of the Gettysburg battlefield. 

I'll share some more tomorrow.  I really do live in a beautiful corner of the world. 

fresh pasta, ice cream cake and nutmeg

"So, what would you like to do for your birthday?", I asked one of our graduated youth girls (and babysitter/craft assistant) 

She replied, "Can you just make something for me?  I like your food better than any food I can get at a restaurant."

Well, she certainly knows how to flatter a girl.  I love cooking and it's something she enjoys doing with me, so we made fresh pasta with a creamy chicken, mushroom and Marsala sauce.  She also requested an ice cream cake, which I made yesterday (and it survived through our power outage.)

Something you may not know about me is that I'm a bit of a foodie.  I love baking and cooking things from scratch, so I have awesome kitchen gadgets and great cookbooks.  We used the basic pasta recipe out of the Williams Sonoma Mastering Pasta cook book. 

With a food processor and the pasta attachments for my Kitchen Aid mixer, we were able to make it pretty easily.  It is a bit time consuming to roll out all of the pasta (especially enough for a crowd of teenagers), but it's fun to do a few times a year. 

Fresh pasta is amazing.  It rivals chocolate, hot bread with butter and cream of crab soup in my book of the yummiest things on the planet.  It's soft and melts in your mouth. 

Charlene rolled and cut the pasta while I made the sauce, bread and greens.  A trick I learned from the Food Network is to add a sprinkle of fresh nutmeg on creamy pasta sauces.  If you've never had freshly grated nutmeg...try it.  You will never by pre-ground nutmeg again in your life. 

I didn't get a "beauty shot", because I was serving up teenagers and preschoolers and trying to eat some myself.  Then I had to go school some girls in Just Dance on Wii (I had to work off that pasta and ice cream cake!)

This evening the sun was shining and the weather was perfection.  Cool and breezy and perfect for playing ultimate football outside at youth group.  Aside from the fact that hurricane Irene kept me up most of last night, our power went out and I had to boil my bath water this morning, it was a pretty good day.  Tomorrow it's back to getting things ready for Lucketts and finishing up some freelance articles. 

Cupcakes & Craig's List

First of all, I am a guest contributor over at The Design Confidential today, so be sure to check it out!

I know it's cruel, but I couldn't help sharing this picture.

I have taken a lot of flack from the teenagers who hang out at our home ( my hubby is a youth pastor) for having a "Fresh Cupcake" sign hanging in my dining room with no fresh cupcakes to back it up.  So, I finally came through.

In addition to baking treats that I had to get out of the house immediately, I've been trying to unload some furniture (for a change) on Craig's List.  My furniture stash is out of control and overwhelming, so it's time to thin the herd.

I put this Ethan Allen cherry wood dresser up for sale and yesterday I received an e-mail from someone who wanted to take a look at it.  I recognized immediately that it was a couple from our church, so I responded and told them it was theirs for free.  They suggested a "trade" instead.  So, they got a dresser (that lived through middle school, high school, college, and ten moves) and I got space in my basement...

...fresh zucchini and fuzzy green beans...

...home grown potatoes and jarred preserves...

...farm fresh eggs...

...and a bouquet of flowers.  All grown, picked, laid, and made on their property.  I even received an invitation to enjoy their pool whenever I wanted.  I think I was on the better end of that deal!

I also sold my husband's old dresser to a sweet couple expecting their first baby.  She is a DIY blog addict, checked out my blog, and realized she had been there before.  These two are doing a total gut job on their home.  I encouraged her to take lots of pictures and start her own blog.  With a baby on the way, though, this girl does have enough on her plate already without my encouragement. 

I put this headboard up for sale as well and was surprised when the first e-mail I received asked, "Is this Miss Mustard Seed?"  How funny!  And Heather, the new owner of the headboard,  happens to be a finalist for my free design consultation!  I put two and two together when we were talking about her blog.  It's such a small world.


Don't forget to leave a comment to vote for your favorite design consultation finalist.  The winner will receive a free full consultation from moi. 

Snow, Sledding, Soup & Silver Bowls

I've been feeling a little mossy lately and my glue gun has been on fire! I've made wreaths, ball topiaries, and now some bowl topiaries. I'm going to share the bowl topiary tutorial with you in this post, as well as the events of my day. The weather forecast a few days ago projected that we could get about 8 inches of snow. Last night it looked like we might get a foot. Right now we're at about a foot and counting. It looks like we'll have about 15-20+" by the time it's done. My Christmas play rehearsal was cancelled, so we've just been hanging out at home.

I made biscuits, eggs and bacon for breakfast...
My (almost) 3 year son and I baked and decorated about a dozen Christmas cookies...

I made some split pea & ham soup...

My hubby and oldest son went out sledding for about 10 minutes (that's all a 3 year old could take when it was snowing as hard as it was)...

We love being socked in on a winter day like this. My hubby just went out to shovel and there was about 4 feet in front of our van from the snow plow. We might be inside for a while...

On to the tutorial! Collect bowls of varying sizes. I happened to have some unused silver bowls, but ironstone would be lovely as well. Just use what you have. I find silver at yard sales and thrift stores for dirt cheap all the time. I think people get tired of polishing it, but I don't mind a little tarnish at all.

Wad up magazine pages (or plastic grocery bags, newspaper, tissue, whatever) to act as a filler in the bowls. You want to squish them down and arrange them so they make a dome shape in the bowl. This will act as a form and gluing foundation for your moss.
Apply some hot glue to the paper to hold the moss in place. Then add dabs of glue around the edges and tuck the moss in. Try to keep the glue on the paper, but it's ok if you get some on the bowl. When you take the moss and paper out, you can easily scratch off any dried glue.

Aren't these so lovely? I do not have a green thumb when it comes to house plants. I've just never cared enough to read up on what I'm supposed to do to really nurture them. Also, my cats eat them and then throw up on my refinished wood floor. (Why not the linoleum?) Anyway, moss is a great way to add greenery and a natural element without the stress of watering, perfect light, and fertilizer.

These took me about 10 minutes to make and cost only $1.97 for a 2 oz pack of floral moss from Wal-Mart. I used less than half of the bag for this project and kept the remainder for a wreath.

I don't know if you can tell, but the bowl above is a trophy that my grandfather won in a tennis tournament. This is also an attic find.

I love the winter, but I am looking forward to weather when I can paint again. You should see the stash of furniture in my basement! It's ridiculous. Whatever the weather, more great makeovers and projects are sure to come!



I'm sharing this at Donna's Saturday Nite Special at Funky Junk Interiors and