Wordless Wednesday

Bad Behavior.

What?

I'm Just Dreaming My Day Away

Question, have you ever built your own home?

Confession.  I have and I love it.  

A lot of the times you hear people say they will never do it again and sometimes you hear people say they will never try it.

  

Me, I say let's do it again!  Why?  Cause I'm crazy that way and I am always trying to get it right.  And I love design and I love homes and carpentry and sheetrock and wood and tile and hardware and furniture and color and the trill of the chase.  That's why.  I love it.

  

The thing I dislike the most about building is, the mistakes I make.  The missed opportunities along the way.  The fear I listened to, not stepping out there and following that little voice that says, "this one" and the one that hurts the most, finding the perfect solution after the fact.  After you have made a decision and pulled the trigger.  I have showed them the money and they have taken it and now I have to live with it.   Yep, that one hurts cause now the voice inside my head won't shut up and why should it, it's right. 

 

So, now I am in recovery phase. And for me that phase looks a lot like remodeling phase.  shhh, please let's just don't say  it out loud, um k.

It took us three years to build this house.  And after that I just didn't want to make anymore decisions.  I even let these words rumbling around in my head find air and pass my lips, "I don't care, do what you want to do".  hahahahaha!  That lasted all of 2.5 seconds when I look right into my builders eyes and said, "so what are you gonna do?"  Then I quickly regained control and made the decision and how high to hang it.  Seriously.  Lighting is the bain of my building existence.

I digress,  this started out to be a "help my dinning room has fallen and I don't know where to start putting it back together again" post.  But that's a lie.  I do know, I just don't which idea to go with.  I have been in this home almost two years now and I spent the first year not making any decisions and now, I am ready finishing some of the things I left undone.  And that, my dear friends, is where you come in.

    

 

I have spent the last two weeks on the Internet browsing, my nose is always in magazines and I bought Betty Lou Phillips' latest book, "The French Room" this weekend.  I love her books.  I have used several ideas out of her books.  But there was one book that stood out for me.

I bought it twice because I let one of my carpenters have it to keep the project we were building front and center in his mind.  This book rocked my world.  I even called her one evening out of desperation thinking that I would leave a message and possibly one of her assistants would call me back and maybe just maybe, they would work with me.  But she answered the phone!  Think what a shock it was for her to find me on the other end of the line.  I went into shell shock and started talking real fast, cause that's what I do when I'm nervous and don't have the luxury of fading into the background.  But I must say she listened patiently and politely gave me some advice.  She really was very kind and gracious.  I don't think I used any of her advice however, cause I was kind of  crazy back then and didn't know where we were headed with this project.  

This dining room, featured in her book "French Room", is rocking my world right now.

  

This picture didn't rotate but it is a close up of the paint treatment on the wall.  How can I make something like that happen in my room?  It's so pretty in chocolate and blue.

See they took the paint treatment from the fabric on the chairs. 

Ooh, how I love thee. 

 

Okay so now for the real world.  I am working with red.  Granted the painted ceiling could go away, though the thought of painting a ceiling gives me a pain in the neck, literally.  It could go but!  And that is a big but!  the curtains can not.  Go away that is, they are here to stay.  

A reminder of what the room looks like now.

and the "luscious" drapes.

So..............I've been thinking, what if...........I mean do I really like that table?  I definitely don't like the chairs.  They have been a problem for ever.  I would love to see some with taller backs and some leather and fabric combinations..............so what if I got rid of the table and what if I went with a round table and added some of those fantastic chairs that I'm dreaming of? 

 Oooooh, that's looking good,

 and what about this rug?

And this chair?  Can he come over to play?

and then there are these.

Surely they could find a home, somewhere.........the bath or bedroom, perhaps.

See my illness?

Oh yea, these chairs are from Horchow, dreaming big. 

Have a great day everyone and stay warm and safe if this winter storm is headed your way.  It's heading right for us, so I am off the stock up on some groceries.  

Get A Snack, I've Gotten Long Winded

I've missed so much since my last post or maybe I should say it this way, I've missed posting so much since my last post. No that's not it either. Oh well you'll get it by time this thing is done.

Oh yea, take the title seriously, I've had a marathon typing session this morning. So without further delay.....................here we go.

My honey and I went to Fort Worth this weekend for the Stock Show and Rodeo. We didn't rodeo, we stock showed although I do love to go to the rodeo. I was not raised on a ranch so understand, seeing cowboys ride bulls was something I had to grow accustom to. The first few times I saw it, I was sure that I was about to witness someone getting killed and I would scream an ear piercing-bloody murder scream and beat on my husband. He put up with for a while until one time - a women sitting on the other side of him, that we didn't know, started to beat on him too - that's when he had to something to say about it. Which was probably something like "get over it". I still watch through my fingers most of the time.

We had a one of our best bulls and some heifers there. For those of you who don't know, a heifer is a female that hasn't had a calf yet. So if someone calls you a heifer you can set them straight and tell them that you are a cow. No need to thank me, I am here for you.

Also our own Tylee Jo won Miss Texas Angus Association Queen. She is a sophomore this year and drives our grandson Tyler to school each morning. He is quite the little man. At the banquet we were standing in line for the silent auction when I notice that he had just buried his face in the breast of a beautiful young women, so I thought, well I guess I better introduce myself. She turned out to be Queen two years ago and Tyler had met her last year and he likes the girls.

After Tylee was announced the winner he turned to me and his Papaw and said, "The Queen drives me to school!" Way to go Tyler. Here is a picture of him sitting by the Miss America Angus Association Queen. Sorry I don't have a better picture of her, she was a cutie and a sweetie and she hails from South Carolina.

Saturday was my youngest birthday. Jeremy and Kristen, twin A and twin B, turned 25 years old. Happy Birthday to one of the hardest and most fulfilling things I have ever done.

He still carries her picture front and center in his wallet before any girlfriends picture and gets mad if a guy says something about her being pretty and wanting to take her out.

Danya was four years old when her brother and sister came into this world. She is the other most fulfilling thing I have ever done, but she wasn't hard............that is until she reached puberty but that's a whole 'nother story. She was one of those children that just make you look good as a parent.

Danya came into this world 2 1/2 months too early. You read it right. She was a premmy and weighed 2 lbs, 4 oz. at birth. She spent two months and two days in the hospital and came home on January 23, 1981. Jeremy and Kristen were born January 23, 1985. I wasn't due with them until February 10th but they were considered just inside full term. I considered it as being as far as I could go. I had spent the last trimester floating in the bathtub. That morning I looked at my husband and said, "today is the day." He said, yea right your not due for two more weeks. But I knew. They came in at a robust and healthy weight of 6 lbs, 14 oz. each. That's right, you read that right too. I don't think I could have gone another day. Obviously I couldn't cause I didn't.

Anyway, God knew what He was doing. He gave me the three most amazing, fun, challenging and loving children and that was just what I needed. They turned out alright. I wasn't the perfect parent but I was there everyday. We fought the battles together and the older we all got, the better we got.

Check out those legs, he won't mind me showing you this, he likes his legs and tries to show them off when he can. One of the nicknames he had in high school football was Popeye, because of his calf muscles. They're pretty.

The best advice I have to give is, you are not your kids friend. Especially when they get to be teens. I loved saying no, because so many times I felt like I was weighing life and death decisions and too many times I was. So, I learned to say no. And I loved to ground them, that way all the arguments were off. I was also a single parent so, it was just me they were arguing against. No fun. Rickey taught me the most about parenting. He taught me that I was not their friend, they had friends and they needed me to be their mother. We could be friends later and we are.

And they made it through the land mine that is the teenage years with the doors of opportunity still open. That was my goal. I figured if I could just get them through High School they will be a little older and hopefully more mature to make decisions that could affect the rest of their lives. They all tried me on at some point and they all had to suffer the consequences of their decisions.

Jeremy didn't pay his insurance like he was suppose to, then he souped up a pick up truck to attract attention. The attention he attracted was the police and what do you know, he got a ticket for no insurance and he didn't pay the ticket and he got arrested and he spent the night in jail. And I did not go get him.

Kristen was a little like a bird out of a cage during her first semester in college. She drank and partied with friends, skipped class and at the end of her semester we told her, "if you make grades like this again in May, don't even bother bringing them to us. Just get yourself a job, cause we're done." Rickey chewed on her in the morning and evening and I got her at lunch everyday during that Christmas break. When she went back to school she told her friends she could still feel our teeth in her butt and she had to study.

She also called me and thanked me that she didn't have the things happen to her that some of her friends had. No unplanned pregnancies, no abortions, no DUIs, none of the big stuff that gets in the way of their future. By the way, I do not advocate abortion, if she has gotten pregnant I would have counseled her on adoption. But that is also another post.

I like to tell new parents that it's not really parenting until the kids outnumber you and don't sweat the loss of sleep, this is the easy part. They don't really like hearing either one of those statements but what can I say, it's the truth.

Also, I have one more parenting nugget that I would like to share; I believe that ignorance is bliss and we have children in our youth because as a grandparent I know too much. I could never walk through parenting so carefree again. I feel for the grandparents that are raising their grand children. But then if it were mine and it was because my kids were behaving like rotten adults, I would probably smack them upside the head and tell them to get their big girl panties on and deal with it. But that's just me, I'm mean like that.

Okay.........so this post went off in a different direction than normal for me. I do have a lot to say, I just don't ususally want to type this much.

But I'm smiling, I'm dancing. It's gonna be good. Rickey is getting better. He is gonna get better, we are gonna get through this and then we are going to go to Africa.

Until then, I need to get something done with my dining room and I NEED to clean my craft room. I can't think with it this way.

Homestead

Before I go into this old house I need to tell you the back and forth saga of my Haiti bound soldier son.  Not.  They left, went as far as Florida, waited all day, loaded back on the plane and headed back to base.  So, he's still in the states.............YEAH.............umm, I'm just sayin.  Anyway, he says they will probably still go, but he doesn't know when, he doesn't know why they turned around.  He says they don't tell him these things.  *shrug* okay - fine I can live with that, whatever.  

All righty then.

This is an old homestead of a family we lease land from.  The man we lease from grew up in this house.

I love the metal siding, I have never seen this style before. 

My dad tells the story of the house he grew up in.  On winter mornings there would be frost in his room and how at night he could lay in bed and see the stars outside.  Burr, that would be some cold nights and mornings.  I bet they didn't take long getting dressed.   

Some might see this as a sad old house, but I don't see it that way.  I like it, it's interesting to me, it has history and from the artist eye, some really cool textures and colors.  I would love to put that siding in my house ..... somewhere.

The Cure for a Bad Day

Grab camera.

Stand at the fence.
Cry to these girls.

They will never tell.

They just have a way about them.
Awe, I feel better already.