The Leg Lamp

Happy Tuesday!  

  It's that time of year again.  The time where red, green, white, silver and gold are the primary colors seen everywhere,  Christmas trees, ornaments, and snowy window-scapes adorn every store display window, children's eyes are wide with wonder as they walk the mall being toted behind their parents, songs like O Holy Night, Rockin' Around the Christmas Tree, and Mariah Carey's  All I Want for Christmas is You can be heard all over the radio, 24/7, (94.1 the Breeze is Tulsa's 24/7 Christmas station.)  Husbands can be seen scaling ladders and hanging precariously to satisfy their wives by being the first in their neighborhood to put up their Christmas lights.  Churches prepare for their Christmas pageants, with little angels and snowflakes running around, the birth of Jesus, our savior being fully celebrated.

   And then out come the Christmas decorations.  There's so many varieties that it's hard to keep track of: traditional, rustic, vintage, funky, girly, and I'm sure there's some Ducky out there somewhere!  As for us, we mostly have traditional.  Except for our entertainment center.  That leans more towards woodland.  Woodland!  That's one I forgot to mention.

This is one of the more fun pieces of decor we have.  We got it from Dick's .5 & .10 while on our honeymoom in Branson last year. (Which I still can't believe it's been a year already!!)  It's from one of the classic, iconic Christmas movies, A Christmas Story.  I'm sure everyone is familiar with it.  There's a station on TV that plays a 24-hour marathon of it on Christmas day.  And from it, the iconic leg lamp, which full sized ones cost upwards of $80!!  One day we will splurge and get a real one.  And yes, we will find a way to put it in our front window, even though the window doesn't really have a ledge. There will be a way!  Husband loves this lamp.  He also has a leg lamp puzzle that came in a much smaller version of the wooden shipping crate. 

Of course, even though it doesn't really match I had to put on the ornament for my alma mater.

Outdoor Decor

Welcome back, everyone!!  I hope you had a delightful, family-filled Thanksgiving!  Pardon my absence these past few days.  I've been getting spoiled by getting to spend these past 5 days all with my husband, getting to be off work and spending time with family.  Celebrating our thankfulness.  We have a lot to be thankful for.  God has provided us with so many blessings that it's hard to keep track!  I've felt him working in our lives these past few months, bringing us closer together and closer to him.  I can't wait to see what He holds in store for us in the next year.  

  I can't believe it's December already!  That's just crazy.  It's starting to feel like winter and look like it.  Though I've been listening to Christmas music for about a month straight now, I'm still not tired of it.  Christmas is such a happy time of year.  Lights are slowly going up on people's houses, including ours!  We were busy Christmas bees this weekend.  Our house is all decked out and feels so cheery.  

Husband braved the roof to hang up the Christmas lights for me! They went up in no time.  He's so good!  I went up on the roof for a little bit just to prove that I could do it.  It really wasn't too bad...until I had to get down.  That was a little scary.

Once, when I was like 6 or 7 years old, my dad was repairing the garage/laundry room roof and fell off of it...right on me!  That was scary.  None of us were hurt though.  I went off crying into the house because I hadn't known what to do.  It was a life changing moment.

Husband has just been surprising me more and more lately.  This cross was his idea.  He wanted to put it in our backyard so that people could see it from the road.  He made this!  It's 7 ft tall.

"And presents under the tree...."  I've been waiting 2 years to finally put these out.  I got them on mega after Christmas sale from Kirkland's Home Decor back when I used to work there. I didn't put them up last year because I'd forgotten about them.  But this year was the year!!  They look really neat at night.

Dumpster Chair 2

  Happy Wednesday!!  Do you all remember my Dumpster chair from a few months ago?  (You can refresh your memories here.) I've been dragging and dragging my feet on finishing it.  I knew all the elements it needed: a little paint
             a seat
             padding
             and an eye catching fabric to cover the seat.
It was just a matter of getting all of these things together.  For the eye catching fabric, a friend gave me a whole bag of upholstery samples that she got for free from a fabric store.  Score!  That bag happened to contain the perfect swatch of fabric that was the perfect size for the seat!

 

{ I bought a piece of plywood for the seat.  Husband let me use a power saw to cut out the circle. But first, I got to make my own compass out of a nail, string and mechanical pencil to draw a perfect circumference for the seat.  And in case you're wondering, I always wear a crown when I craft.  Makes me feel like a crafting princess.  I then cut out a few circles from an old comforter, stapled it onto the seat, stapled the fabric over it, then trimmed off the excess fabric.  And........

                                                Here it is!!

Thank you all for joining me today!!

It's Beginning to Look a Lot Like Christmas!

 {This is an idea I saw on Junky, Funky, Rusty, and Re-purposed by Sue's Facebook page.  This is my version of it.  My favorite thing about this display?  The wine glasses,  and ornaments were from the Dollar Store. (As are the candles and greenery in the next picture and numerous other things I'm using.  They've really stepped up their merchandising game!!)  So far, our formal living room  is the only common room not yet decorated.  I thought I would do a different style of Christmas decorating for each room, but so far they're all kind of blending together.  For the most part a lot of our decorations are rustic.  I'm trying to incorporate a few new things.  The rest is just a wait and see what I can find!}

{I'm pretty proud of this centerpiece on our kitchen island, however it's missing something for the middle.  Any ideas??}

 {I just love these little snowflakes that I hung up!  I want to add a little more.  What do y'all think?  I got these curtains at Dollar General.  $5 a panel!!  They're our new Winter/Spring curtains.  Husband and I think they really lighten the place up!  Our Summer/Fall ones are from Bed Bath & Beyond and are orange with brown circles.  We love them!}

Happy Tuesday, y'all!!

Owl Always Love You

Happy Friday!!  I've been waiting all week to wear this outfit.  Fridays are jeans days at work. The tank top is one of the ones I got on mega sale from the LOFT.  It was one I got the same day I got the pink shirt from a couple of posts ago.  It was after a stressful morning of trying to get out of downtown after dress rehearsal while the Tulsa Run was going on.  Every way was blocked!  I called my husband, frustrated.  He had his handy dandy map pulled up and was trying to help me get out but everywhere I turned was barricaded.  It was rough.  Tears were shed, steering wheel pounded.  It was not one of my prouder moments.  All I wanted to do was to get from point A to point B as easy as possible.  Of course, all of the 'east as possible' routes were blocked.  I had to go WAY out of my way to get out and around and to the LOFT where my mom and a friend were waiting.  Actually, they were already there and I just invited myself along.  That was before I knew it was going to take forever to get there.  And once there, in the presence of Mama and her friend Marianne, I could relax.  And buy things.  I got a cute blue dress, two tops and a necklace.  All under $40!  Like I said, things were on mega sale.
 
    Once you buy things on mega sale, it's hard to go back to buying full priced items.  I hardly buy full priced clothing any more.  I'm a sale girl through and through.  And there's nothing wrong with saving a buck or $20 here and there.

  The owl necklace was a Christmas present from a roommate in college.  It's funny.  She and I got each other the same necklace, but she gave me a gold one and I gave her a silver one.  Win-win situation!  That same year, and from the same group of roommates I also got another owl necklace, a wooden owl totem pole (which is really cool and unique!  I'll have to post about it sometime...) and an owl t-shirt.  Hmmm One would think I like owls or something...though 'like' might be a slight understatement.  Our guestroom is decorated in owls.

  The earrings.  Yes, those are .22 caliber shells.  Made by my honey.  Who crafted all of those metal links himself and put them all together.  Gifted them to me in a little green jewelry box.  They were the icing on the top for my Steam Punk costume that year.  I have loved them and worn them ever since.  Such a crafty Husband.

  Thank you for stopping in!  I hope you all have a fun, fashionable and crafty weekend!!

Bring on the Cheer

 Though today isn't as gloomy as the past two days have been I still dressed the coziest I've dressed all week.  Checkered flannel shirt under a cozy sweater, paired with a pencil skirt, boots and my favorite coat.  As you can see in the background, I've already begun putting up Christmas decorations! Yes, I'm one of those.  One  of those that puts up Christmas decor as soon as Halloween is over.  I just love it!  It makes me so happy.  You can't listen to Christmas music or put up Christmas decor and be sad.  It brings great cheer and joy.  All of the evergreen garland, red bows, raffia, snowmen, Santa Clause figurines...ah!

The dining room has, once again become the holiday decor headquarters.  I haven't quite gotten to the point to having everything out of tubs yet.  I want the decorating process to be special.  Filled with Christmas music, warmth and hot apple cider, not put it up as quickly as possible.  

As I've said before, I have lots of new ideas to implement this year.  I hope to step up my Christmas decor and take it to the. next. level.  Oh yeah!  I look forward to being able to share it with all of you.  Thank you for reading along!

Homemade Butter

I've always wanted to make my own butter.  I think I might have made it once as a little girl, or had it sometime when I was young.  Something from my childhood got me the taste for homemade butter.  As strange as it sounds, I sometimes get cravings for homemade butter.  There's nothing quite like it.  Nowadays it's much easier to make.  (One day I will make it the manual way.)  Of course, my Grandma was the first person I called to gush to about this feat.  She shared that when she and her sisters were little, they were the butter makers.  Most of the time they shook the cream in jars, while other times they actually used the butter churn.  I opted for the modern butter church: my electric stand mixer. 

It was super easy!  The hardest part is the waiting.  But the process is amazing to see.  It only takes one ingredient really; heavy whipping cream. (2 ingredients if you want to add a little salt for flavoring.)

 Pour heavy whipping cream into mixer and turn on.  I started out on low speed.  This was a mistake.  It took forever for the cream to start thickening.  After about 30 minutes of  this (compared to the estimated 15 minutes I'd seen in other recipes,) so far all that had happened was that it got really foamy.

 I finally turned the mixer speed up to about 6 and things finally started to happen!  Peaks started to form and it started to really thicken up.
By this point, I was getting pret-ty exc-i-ted.  It was finally starting to look like butter!  From then on, things started to move pretty fast.

 The butter will start forming and clumping together and will take on a yellowish hue.  This is when the magic starts to happen.  It goes from looking like a bowl of whipped cream to a bowl of delicious, creamy butter waiting to be spread on warm fluffy rolls!

 The yellow butter will clump together and separate from the buttermilk.  (I learned from Grandma that you can save this runoff and use it later to makes cakes or anything else that calls for buttermilk.  You can save it in a recycled water bottle or any other airtight container.  It should save up to a few weeks.)

Once the butter has sufficiently clumped together, gather it all up into a ball and proceed to squeeze out all the buttermilk.  (This will help the butter keep longer.)  Run the ball of butter under cold water to rinse out the rest of the buttermilk, being sure to squeeze it all out.  For extra flavor, sprinkle a little salt over it and knead it into the butter ball.

Put the butter in a container to store in the fridge for up to 2 weeks.  the 3 cups of heavy whipping cream you use should yield about one cup of delicious butter.  Use it on rolls, waffles, pancakes, rolls, muffins, crackers, toast, pancakes, waffles....(I really like pancakes and waffles...) and use it on just about anything you can think of!!  I'm taking it to Grandma's house for Sunday dinner.

Ingredients
3 cups Heavy Whipping Cream
Salt for flavoring

Directions
1. Pour whipping cream in stand mixer bowl and turn mixer on medium speed.
2. Cream will become bubbly and start to thicken.
3. Peaks will begin to form and it will be like the consistency of heavy cream.
4. Cream will take on a yellow hue and butter will start clumping together, separating from the buttermilk.
5. Gather butter together into ball and squish out all the buttermilk, rinse butter ball under cold water to remove as much buttermilk as possible.
6. Sprinkle with a little bit of salt and knead into butter ball for desired amount of flavoring.
7. Store in a container in the fridge.  Enjoy on every sort of bread product!!

Don't you feel more accomplished now, knowing you just made homemade butter??  I know I do.  I feel pretty proud of myself.  Good luck, y'all!  I know you will do wonderfully.  I have every faith in you that you will make the best butter there ever was!

What to be for Halloween?

 If I haven't already said so, I love Halloween.  It's one of my favorite holidays, if not my favorite!  I love the atmosphere of anticipation and mystery, the decorations, the candy, and the costumes.  The costumes!!  I love to play dress up almost as much as any little girl does.  When Halloween approaches, there's always the age old question of what should I be? What should I be?  Well I have composed a few costume ideas from costumes of Halloweens past. Enjoy!

 If you have multiple parties to go to and don't want to wear the exact same costume to every one but don't want to spend money on other ones, there's always the option of jazzing up your first costume: aka, doing a dead version of your original costume.  You can see that's what my friend Lizzle (the maid costume) did.  I did the same thing, but just recycled an old prom dress that I'd bought on sale from Forever 21 the previous year. (I have a habit of buying dresses that are on major sale, even if I don't really have anywhere I can wear them.  This sure comes in handy for Halloween though!)  I just took that and to make it something new added a little blood and bruising.  My back story was that I was about to be crowned high school prom queen when a jealous runner up bashed me on the head to try and take my crown!

We have Hagrid, a skeleton, Hedwig, a maid, and me in my Steam Punk getup.  ^

(to the right) we have Hagrid, Professor Umbridge, Moaning Myrtle and Doby.  This was at the movie premiere for the last Harry Potter movie.  It was so much fun!  So movie characters from your favorite movies are always an option. Doby was an easy costume to make.  Buy 1-2 yards of a heavy neutral colored fabric.  Fold it in half and tie knots for the shoulders to make arm holes.  (Be sure to wear some neutral colored clothing underneath though!)  For the shoes, (which you can't see) I took a few squares of excess fabric and just gathered them up around her tennis shoes so that she didn't hurt her feet while walking and making the costume complete.
For Umbridge, find a pink suit or other sickeningly girly colored suit.  (The one pictured was another Goodwill find!)  Sew or glue little plush kittens all over it.


There are some good stories behind these next costumes.  This dress is one that I found at the vintage store Deco to Disco.  I was meandering around the shop for a costume piece and saw a girl trying on this dress.  I fell in looove with it!  I left my phone number with the shopkeeper and asked her to call me if the girl ended up not buying it.  Guess what?  She didn't by it!  I turned my little car around and swooped back in to get it. $15!! It made the perfect peacock dress.  I bought peacock feathers from Hobby Lobby and glued them to a piece of felt, (I doubled the felt up around them so the feathers weren't pressing into my back,) and tucked them into the back of my dress.  Of course, I had my trusty zookeeper to keep me in check.  With a cupcake, an 80's glam queen and a peacock running around, someone had to keep an eye on us!
    The cupcake started off with a laundry basket, crinkled poster board folded and glued around it, the hot glue the dickens out of that polyfill stuffing and little pom poms for sprinkles.  I got a few hot glue wounds from helping her with that.

As you can see, it was a pretty interesting drive to the UCO faculty Halloween recital in Hubby's truck.  I get a kick out of this picture ev.ry.ti.me!



I put a spell on you, and now you're miiiine!  Of course you all recognize Bette Midler, or Winnifred Sanderson from my favorite Halloween movie Hocus Pocus.  That purple shift was another great thrift store find from Goodwill.  Stockings were from Charlotte Russe.  It all goes to show, when all else fails for costume ideas go to thrift stores!!  There's really no need to spend exorbitant amounts of money on a costume you're really only going to wear once or twice.  That way, you have more money to spend on the things that really matter, like decorations and candy.  And really, decorations don't have  to be all that expensive either, but that's a whole new post!

This last picture is reaching far back in the archive from 2007 I believe.  We were 'decomposing composers!'  Can you guess which ones?  I (on the left, of course) was Hector Berlioz, my favorite composer at the time.  Kat (on the right) was Wolfgang A. Mozart, her favorite composer.  Muss up your hair, frill yourself up in a dark suit and bow tie, put on pale make up, a little bruising under the eyes with blue/purple eye shadow and you're good to go as a decomposer!

I hope I was able to give you all a few more costume ideas or at least be the catalyst for an idea of your own!