How to Tell When Your Hubby Has Been In The Kitchen...

Exhibit A. 

What appears to be a perfectly messy normal utensil holder. That is until you take a peek from the other side.

 Just look at that missing digit major injury just waiting to happen. A heavy duty pizza cutter in the utensil holder. What?!?! I guess this is what happens when you haven't ever really had the official tour around the kitchen post-wife moving in. Ha ha!

Exhibit B.

Notice the perfectly functional and cute soap dispenser now situated directly beside the hideous plastic dawn bottle. It "doesn't come out good" according to the hubs. Men!! Just can't understand function and form, only function!! I guess I should just be glad he helps me in the kitchen :)

You Tube Tuesday: Take Four

     Not sure if you all saw this on "Late Night with Jimmy Fallon" back in September, but I just love it! What's better than two incredibly drool worthy good looking guys performing all of my rap favorites. For your viewing pleasure...."A history of Rap" with Justin Timberlake and Jimmy Fallon

Sad Day...

    Some sadness hit our family yesterday. My sister's little puppy, Alle, got hit by a car and went to doggy heaven. My poor little sis was so distraut, especially as this is her second puppy to have been killed in a car accident.

      Our house is on an extremely busy road, and Alle and her brother Paxton dug out of the fenced in back yard and ran about 3 blocks before it was realized they had escaped. Alle, being the adorable adventurer that she was crossed one of the busiest streets in town and didn't make it. Fortunately someone was able to stop Paxton, so really we are all blessed that we still have him. Please keep my sister and mom in your prayers. We are definitely "treat your pets as your family kinda people" so we are all taking it pretty hard :(

I love you Annie, and we will all miss your loving little girl!

Sew What ya Think?

     God I love a corny title :) It's my guilty pleasure. I manage to spend a crazy small amount of time dreaming up such titles just for your reading pleasure. Today I bring to you a labor of love, my antique sewing table redo. I found this little beauty at a local yard sale a few Fridays ago. Must be a Florida thing, but people actually start yard sales on Friday here?!? Anyway, I saw it and decided I absolutely could not live without it, despite having NO idea where it would live in my house. But with a price tag of $4.00, I simply couldn't resist. I guess beauty is in the eye of the beholder because here is the horribly frightening before shot...

Not so bad from afar, but take a look at the up-close and personal shots...

Chipping front cabinet door = pain in the butt

An even worse rear-end!!

     Well I rolled up my sleeves and got to work. I started by sanding the entire piece with my birthday sander :) Then I filled in the missing parts with wood filler. Let that dry and sanded the whole thing again. VERY time consuming, but it was looking better already.

     I unfortunately forgot to take any during pictures, but picture, primer (I used killz in the spray can) and then 1 coats of Bejamin Moore's Caliente which I painted on with a high quality brush.  I think used Benjamin Moore's paint extender/ miracle in a bottle mixed with the red paint for the final coat = no brush marks and really smooth finish.
     I really liked the color, but it still needed a little something more. I was going for the old barn look, so I decided to distress some of the edges with 220 grit sand paper, then applied a dark brown glaze which I brushed on with a foam brush and wiped off with an old t-shirt.
     I absolutely love how it turned out. Cue major picture overload! I loved it so much, I couldn't resist taking a million few pictures to show you all...

 And one last look at my cute little rustic table...

P.S. that's my twin sister and I hugging when we were about 4 years old! Cute huh?

     It is now sitting in my guest bedroom and functioning as a little nook to hold a lamp and pictures. After I finished, I decided to do a little research on my sewing machine. Turns out it was built in 1936, right before World War II. Pretty amazing for 4 smackaroos!! Oh, and it still works, just needs a new power cord! Overall I am rather pleased with myself for completing my second ever furniture renovation!

Hope you're having a glorious hump day!!

I'm linking to Primitive and Proper!

You Tube Tuesday: Take Three

     I have recently been majorly entertained by random people attempting to sing songs without actually knowing ANY of the words! I think this might come from my own secret attempt to sing new song in the car when nobody is looking.  This one is particularly hilarious due to the English subtitles which accompany it. For your viewing pleasure, "Touch my body", or something like that...

"Hey Jute"

     Please forgive the corny title, I simply can't resist a song title turned blog post, especially when it's so very applicable!! Plus who doesn't love the Beatles?

Back to the Jute! I have yet another obsession. Jute Rope. You saw me use it earlier on my first lamp shade redo, and I loved it so much that I decided I would create an entire lampshade out of this beautiful rope! Crazy, I know, but bare with me.

First, the dilemma was we needed a lamp for the office/craft room/Adam's man cave. This is the one designated area in our home that was supposed to be solely for Adam. And it was for a while, including a beautiful curio cabinet full of miniature tractors, and even a Mississippi State Bulldog wallpaper border. Yes wallpaper :( Though this wouldn't exactly be my idea of high fashion, it was his space, that is until I ran out of room in the other 7 rooms of the house. I mean a girl's gotta craft right? So needless to say the office decor remains the same, it's just now stuffed to brim full of crafting supplies as well.

I digress. We needed a lamp for the desk that would match the above mentioned decor (aka country comes to town). Since I heart a theme, and there was no turning back on this one now, I decided to just make my hubby a farm meets Mississippi State lamp. How you might ask? Well with a little maroon spray paint and a WHOLE LOT of jute!

No before shot of the lamp base can be found...but it was pretty simple. Already a red ceramic lamp that just needed a slight change in shade of red to match the bulldogs (should i say HIS bulldogs). The shade started like this...

Just your basic white pleated lamp shade. Not my cup of tea. I then removed all of the previous fabric and started my adventure with the hot glue gun and a WHOLE lot of rope. It literally took something like 200 feet of rope and an eternity to wrap, but still ended up being cheaper than purchasing a new lamp. And it's customized for my country cowboy, so it was definitely worth it. Here's the final product...

Doesn't it look cool with the little flickers of light poking out between the layers of rope? I just think it turned out as good as anyone could have hoped for considering my criteria was 1. country, 2. Maroon, 3. match current not-so-wonderful decor, 4. Please the husband who could care less about decorating!

Here's a view in the room (well what I will show you of our disaster area)...

 Nana nana boo boo...my diploma is bigger than Adam's :) he he! And just to add salt to the wound, I remind him daily occasionally that I still have a WHOLE other diploma still in the tube. That's right...2 degrees from a much superior university! Glory Glory to Ole Georgia, and Go Dawgs (the real ones)! Can you tell that I am a little competitive? It is a really good thing we didn't end up getting married on September 25th as we originally planned. It wouldn't have made for a very happy bride with regards to football. Enough Said!

It's a Boo-tiful Wednesday...

     I decided to Halloweenify my house just a tad for the upcoming fantastic holiday known as Halloween. I not only ADORE any excuse to eat excessive amounts of miniature candy without feeling guilty, but it just so happens to be the night I met my wonderful husband (more to come on that later), and thus holds a special place in my heart. I really still wish I could dress up and go trick-or-treating with all the neighborhood kids. I guess I'll have to resort to dressing up our pup. What ya think about this...

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Adam would definitely go for this....

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No, this is definitely the winner for our ridiculously, worthlessly lazy pampered pooch...

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      With that being said, I am not so much into the scary Halloween motif, as the cutesy orange and black fall-like theme. Also I have a budget of around zero for such non-essential home beautification. So with that in mind, I went to the DIY haven known as the Dollar General! The town I teach in has 3, I repeat three different dollar stores for my shopping pleasure! Can you believe this? Only two stop lights, two whole restaurants, 1 grocery store, but THREE dollar stores! Needless to say I bought way more than I actually needed. See a complete shopping list below....

3 black frames
5 spools of wire ribbon
2 glass candles sticks
1 tub of candy corn
1 Christmas plate (can you believe they already have Christmas stuff?)
1 bag of Caramel apple suckers (I adore these!!)

I used the black frames, candy corn, a hot glue gun, and some downloaded scrap book paper from Crystal Wilkerson to create these little cuties for our den...

In case anyone was wondering, downloadable scrap book paper might be the best invention EVER!! I found these lovely backgrounds here. And you don't even need Photo Shop. I simply created a textbox in Microsoft Word, set the scrapbook paper jpg file as the background added the letters, and Voila!! I then decided they needed a little flair and got to work hot gluing the candy corn to the outside of the frames! I love how they turned out. Here's a close-up shot...

 I then decided it would be a shame to waste the rest of the candy corn, so I poured them into a flower vase, tied a little black and white striped bow around the top, and created ANOTHER dollar store decoration...

Secret Confession: I didn't have enough candy corn to fill the jar to the rim, and it just didn't look right. So what did I do? Placed an empty pepper shaker inside the vase and poured the candy corn around it! Genius huh? Thanks. I thought so! This is one of those things that I'm still not sure is considered real decorating, but I thought I'd share it anyway. So do you love Halloween as much as I do?

You Tube Tuesday: Take Two

This submission is brought to you courtesy of my dear friend Rachael! Along with being incredibly fabulous, supportive, and oh so ego-boosting of yours truly, she also just so happens to be the only person I know who loves  humor of the following type as much as I do!! For  your viewing pleasure I bring to you "Shocantelle Brown!" "I Sho-can-tell you're gonna love it!!" :)

Just Another Manic Monday

     Confession...I seriously used to think the words to this song went something like this..."Just another man-eating Monday, wish it were Sunday, etc." I guess that sheds some light on why I am not a fan of Mondays. I'm especially not a fan of Mondays without coffee. Or Mondays without my required 10 hours of sleep. Believe it or not, my body still thinks it is a growing teenager, and thus requires LOTS of sleep to function. When this doesn't happen, it then makes for an unhappy Monday for the hubby who has to drag beg me to get out of bed. All around not a happy morning :(

     Now, onto things that do make me happy!! Somehow in my blogging madness, I forgot to post pictures of my guest bedroom "nook." This was not only my very first table make-over, but also my very first lamp re-do as well. Unfortunately I do not have a before picture of this table, but picture light wood, very plain, used to live in my yard sale pile before I got brave. I painted her a beautiful shade of off-white, distressed her A-Lot and here's the final result...

She looks a little yellow in the picture...guess it's time for a new camera?

And the details of her pretty little legs....

 
     I think I'll call her Lola! Well Lola now sits beside our guest bed and serves as a perfect little night side table. But she was missing something. Bring on the first ever lamp redo. I purchased this little beauty at the Goodwill for $2.99...

     Isn't it cool with all the curves? Very retro in my opinion and a major steal!  With a little spray paint, I had it looking brand new...

     Then I just re-wired it with a lamp kit from Home Depot, added a Walmart lamp shade, placed it on Lola in our guest bedroom, and thus a perfect nook was born! Here are the complete after shots...

And a close- up...

I just love how it turned out! So cozy and shabby chic don't ya think? And i just love the photo! It's of my B-E-A-U-tiful grandmother, affectionately known as Pegasus (after all she is just as wonderful and amazing as the mystical winged horse) at her high school prom. Take a close-up look at this knock-out!...

Don't kill me Grandmother!! I just couldn't resist!!

Here's to hoping you all had a better Monday morning than I did!

P.S. I'm beginning to think that I'm writing into the magical world of the internet/talking to myself. So please give this girl and ego-boost and leave a comment if you're reading :)

Weekly Wrap Up Take Two

TGIF!! Here we are again...the end to another exciting week in casa Kizziah. For you're reading pleasure, my weekly wrap-up:

1. Corrected 63 high-school students from Spanish body part disaster (see earlier post).

2. Primed and completed one coat of beautiful "old barn red" paint (or so i'm calling it) on my sewing table.

3. Successfully cooked 4 out of 5 meals this week for dinner...Southwest Chicken and Rice, Homeade groundbeef and pepperoni pizza, Chinese Chicken and broccoli, and breakfast casserole with potatoes (tonight).

4. Created some boo-tiful Halloween decoration to be shared next week.

5. Determined that I commute exactly 62.5 miles every single day to work :(

6. Realized that when it's "Pink and Denim" day (to celebrate breast cancer research) at school, it might be helpful to own something that is actually pink?! I am not sure how this phenomenon happened considering my closet is completely color coded and I do not at all have any opposition to the feminine flirt color?!

7. Made the hubby play the "guess what Taylor crafted today" game every night this week and would simply not settle for "I have no idea!" How do men manage to not notice when something has been done to their own house?!?! I mean I notice when a book or pillow has been moved. Am I OCD?!?

8. Spent $16.00 at the Dollar Tree. Have no idea what I bought, or how anyone could manage to just be browsing and find 16 different things that they absolutely need want.

9. Visited the Keystone Ace Hardware 3 times. They literally know me by name and we carry on full conversation like we are old friends. Okay, now I am beginning to think my life seems pretty pathetic in writing. Maybe I should terminate this whole blog thing?!?!?!?

10. Learned a very valuable lesson about spray painting while still wearing your wedding rings. Shhh...don't tell the hubs. I think I managed to remove all the evidence, but I may have shortened my life by about 10 years due to the stress.

What have you done this week? Happy Happy Friday!

Head and Shoulders...

**Warning: the following classroom story is rated PG-13 by the Senora Kizziah associated press**

It's body part time in Spanish II! One of my most favorite chapters to teach, mostly because it's like being a kid again; complete with Simon Says (Simon Dice), Put the cast on the body part (Pin the tail on the donkey), and OF COURSE head and shoulders, knees and toes. 

After completing a very inbred looking body diagram on the board, I proceeded to teach the students the very classic "Head, shoulders, knees and toes" including hand motions and 3 time repetition speeding up each time (read, I make a complete fool of myself in front of a bunch of teenagers who already had me rated pretty low on the cool-meter).

Here are the words to the song, Spanish style...

Cabeza (head), 

Hombros (shoulders), 

Piernas (Legs), 

Pies (feet) 

Piernas, Pies

Repeat 2 times

Ojos (eyes)

Orejas (ears)

Boca (mouth)

Y nariz (nose)

Repeat 1st first verse.

Anyway, every day this week I have given my students a chance to INDIVIDUALLY sing and perform this song to entertain their easily amused teacher to earn Pesos (my way of bribing students into participating, by thinking that their efforts will actually affect their grade, all the while knowing it will mean nothing come final exam time). Since nearly all of my students are quite grade driven, I experienced several pain-staking renditions of this song with one MAJOR issue. In their hurried attempts to get through the performance quickly, the words to the song came out something like this...

"Cabeza, hombros, PENIS, pies, PENIS pies :)"

Being my overly mature self, by about day 3 I could no longer contain my internal laughter and was forced to address my not so subtle outbursts when a student stated, "Mrs. K, you aren't supposed to laugh at us. I mean you're like the teacher. That's not very nice!"

I then proceeded to tell the students in a very politically correct way, that what they had been saying to me all week was "Head, shoulders, boy part, feet, boy part, feet." I'll spare you the details of the next 30 minutes of completely wasted class time, and another one of my "I should be fired if they only knew what went on in my classroom" moments. Needless to say, there will be an extra emphasis on the R in pieRnas now and forever!

Adios Amigos!

Finish What You Start

I've been slaving working on finishing projects that I have started. I have a major A.D.D. minor issue with being able to finish one idea before another one pops into my head and I find myself losing the battle of trying to tell myself that I should finish what I started.

With that being said, I officially missed You Tube Tuesday (promise to post next week) and began finishing some of my original projects. For your viewing pleasure today, one of two re-covered lamp shades.

I found a Pottery barn lamp shade that I really liked (see below), but once again encountered major sticker shock. Note to self, if you wait for things to go on sale, you could have the original. The small size is now on sale for a mere $13.99, though I needed the large size. Anyway, now I'm rambling. I decided I could make it myself, and thus began my first attempt at a lampshade. Turns out it's quite simple!!

I bought 1/2 yard of burlap looking cotton fabric from Walmart, and some jute rope from Home Depot. Then I cut a strip of the fabric wide enough to cover the drum shade with about 1 centimeter overhang on the top and the bottom. You don't want to leave too much extra fabric or you will be able to see it from the bottom. Then just hot glue the fabric to the inside lip of the shade on the top and bottm, and you're done with the fabric part. I then did 2 rows of jute twine hot glued to the outside along the border. Just glue about 1-2 inches at a time to make sure it sticks well!!

So here's the inspiration...

And here is my before...

 And here are my after shots....

I think she looks pretty, don't you??

Total Cost Break Down....

Lamp....already had
Shade...$2.00 from Goodwill
Fabric...$1.50 from Walmart
Jute Rope...$5.00 for 100 feet (I only used less than half)
Total = $8.50     Beat that Pottery Barn!!!

Signing Off...

I'm off to the beautiful St.Simons Island, Georgia with the hubs! Going to see my most favorite person in the world....GRANDMOTHER!!!

 

Jealous yet?!?!