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?!?!