Be Awesome

So, I mentioned the last time I was here that I have been spending wasting time on Pinterest. And that is true. Maybe I'll be inspired to write about a few of the other things I've managed to do lately, but last week I read this over at Young House Love.  And I thought a Pinterest Challenge was a great idea, so I took them up on the invitation to create my own spin on something I've pinned.

This week is my brother's birthday, and I had pinned this poster, which I thought was right up his alley. It is a quotation from Barney on the TV show How I Met Your Mother. But I didn't really think he would dig the yellow, and I have no idea if this poster is still available, so I wanted to make my own version.

Source: assets.lukesbeard.com via Sarah on Pinterest

I invested $15 and one Saturday into this project. First, I picked up a 2x4 foot canvas at Michaels with a 50% off coupon.  Beyond that I only used supplies I already had, which included a paint sample I bought to test the color for my bedroom (Smoke Screen in Olympic paint from Lowes), and some red and black craft paint. I think it was $15 well spent.  And I had fun making it, so I can't complain about it costing me a Saturday, either.

I rolled on the Smoke Screen with a mini-roller. I really like this color; it's blue in some lights, grey in others.  I didn't put down anything to protect the carpet because we are going to be tearing it out any day now. (Can't wait!) While it dried I played around with layouts and fonts for the text. I settled on Britannic Bold and Segoe Condensed. Then I printed out the letters I needed to make stencils. I just did this in MS Word. I printed the stencils in landscape orientation so I could fit more letters per page. I used the outline effect on the font so that I wouldn't waste a ton of ink, which was wise since my cartridge is almost empty.

Then I spent a few hours cutting out the letters while watching HGTV Design Star on Hulu. I mostly used scissors, but I used an exacto knife for the little ones and tricky parts. Finally, I got to paint. I mixed together red and black paint to make the dark red and used a teeny tiny brush from a kids watercolor set to paint all the letters. I dry brushed "sad" to make it look a little sad. I painted  "awesome" with straight red to make it stand out. The color scheme kind of reminds me of the St. Louis Cardinals jerseys from the '80s, which is perfect, because my brother is a huge Cardinals fan. I used the lid from a popcorn tin to trace the circle for "true story."  The lid even fit in with the color scheme. I just scotch taped my stencils to the canvas to paint them on, and I eye-balled the placement.

It probably took about eight hours total to do this project. The stencil cutting and painting were both time-consuming, but my method got the job done. It could probably be done more quickly if your tools are superior to mine. If I would change anything, I'd stretch the letters in "awesome" to make them a little taller. If you're more particular than me, you could pencil in lines for guidelines for your stencils. But all in all, I'm really pleased with how it came out, and my brother loved it. Which is awesome.

Edited to add: By the way, be sure to go check out all the other great Pinterest inspired projects at the blogs of the amazing challenge hosts:

Bower Power
Making a House a Home
Style by Emily Henderson
Young House Love

Lightening things up

I mentioned a little over a year ago that my parents were getting their house ready to sell and had been foisting their unwanted stuff generously giving of their bountiful surplus to my brother and me. Well, they have sold their house and are now getting settled into their new condo. They seriously downsized, and the purging of excess household goods continues. Shortly before they moved, James and I spent a weekend at their house helping to pack. James and my brother took a couple truckloads of stuff to Goodwill, and to further lighten the load of things my parents would have to move into their new house, they sent us home with a carload as well. The above picture shows most of the haul on my guest bedroom floor. I'm still working on integrating some of these items into our home and off the floor, but a number of them are already earning their keep. Although, not the ones below.

This picture shows my dollhouse (obviously) and my set of encyclopedias (in the box). Yeah, those are still sitting exactly as pictured, and they are the flagship items for the things still sitting around. Most of them are books or toys. I don't have any children, so the toys are not really going to be actively used at this time. I need to get those boxed up and stored. And our bookcases are full right now. I won't mention how many we have, but suffice it to say, more bookcases aren't really an option. So we need to do some weeding of our books, which James has scheduled for when school lets out.

In the meantime, one of the items we are really enjoying is the lampshade. You may remember it as one of the few items from the first picture not packed in a canvas tote bag. (I love canvas tote bags. I use them constantly. My mom had a million at least a score of these, so I nabbed several.) I'd been wanting a lamp for our living room for quite a while, so I stopped at my favorite thrift store shortly after I brought the lampshade home and picked up this lamp for $2.99. I love it, and it's much cozier than the overhead light. I've found that lampshades with warm earth tones really help warm up the light from those energy-saving compact florescent light bulbs. I'm pretty keen on the retro vibe of the wooden lamp, too.

Christ is born! Glorify Him!

I hope everyone is enjoying Christmas as much as I am so far. After being in a bit of a winter funk this year, it has been wonderful to celebrate the joy of our Lord's incarnation and spend time with family. We are now smack dab in the middle of the twelve days of Christmas, and we are still firmly in the throws of celebration at our house. We have spent time with my family in Southern Indiana and Cincinnati and as well as a day with James' family in Ohio. Today his parents and sister will be arriving to spend several days.

I have been on vacation since Christmas Eve and don't go back to work till the 4th. It's lovely to have most of the Afterfeast of the Nativity off of work. I generally don't have as much time off and find it kind of sad to feel like the holiday is done well before Theophany. It's easy to feel a bit robbed of the feast when the radio stops playing Christmas music on the 26th, and all the Christmas decorations disappear by January 1st. (It must feel even more off kilter for those on the old calendar.) This year I'm looking forward to enjoying several more days of delicious holiday food, games, movies, hanging out with family and several more chances to attend Holy Liturgy in the next week.

Pascha is far and away my favorite holiday, but I love all the family time at Christmas. The Nativity of the Lord is also special at our house because we were Chrismated three years ago on December 23. It both seems like a lifetime ago and also just a blink of an eye. This year we were blessed to attend the Chrismations of some friends of ours the weekend before the Nativity, which was a beautiful reminder for us of our own Christmation. Blessed feast to everyone!

Paring Down, Stocking Up

My parents are planning to buy a condo and are getting their current home ready to sell. It is a fairly large house with a lot of storage space, and they have lived there for 18 and a half years. In that time they have, as might be expected, accumulated a lot of stuff. Since the beginning of this year, they have been sorting through their many belongings and paring them down. One of the basic tenets of house-staging is to remove as much stuff as possible to make the house seem visibly more spacious. Naturally, they will also benefit from the clearing out when they move into their much smaller new space.

When they first mentioned this project to me, my dad told me that he had called someone to get an estimate on hauling off a lot of things they no longer needed. As I recall, the estimate was $800, which included disposal fees for a bunch of working but outdated computer and AV equipment. My immediate response was, "Dad, have you heard of Freecycle?" And I proceeded to tell him about it. The particular assortment of stuff my parents were trying to shed also included old Christmas trees, a punching bag, and a dead refrigerator. Dad was a bit doubtful that people would actually want this stuff, but I assured him it was desirable junk.

A week or two later, he called me to inform me that Freecycle was the "best idea ever!" He was thrilled that for very little effort, people came and hauled away the stuff he no longer needed. Even better was the fact that the people were actually pleased to get these things, would use them and not toss them. Someone even wanted the broken refrigerator. "You understand it doesn't work, right?" Dad asked. "Yeah, I just like to tinker," the guy replied. Dad was so glad this stuff would get some more use before being land-filled.

In addition to passing stuff along through Freecycle and AmVets, Mom and Dad have been getting rid of excess belongings in the time honored way of sending it home with the kids. My brother and I never leave their house empty handed. Lately when I speak to Mom she'll ask, "Do you think James would like those Legos?" or "Do you want me to save the children's books?" Often the answer has been yes. So the as the tide of stuff ebbs at their house, it is flowing into ours.


Last week I brought home these books, and I've been flying through the Nancy Drews. I can tell which were my favorites, because I can remember them clearly, whereas others I have no idea what the resolution would be when I start reading them. I'm glad to have them, and hope Mom will find some of my other childhood books. The bench upon which the books are perched and the tied quilt, by the way, ended up in our home as the result of a similar purge by the in-laws a couple of years ago. I have a feeling I'll continue to bring things home until my parents have settled into the new place and figured out how much they actually have room to keep. Now I just have to find places for all these treasures here.