You might remember that I bought a couple of dressers at a garage sale in the middle of October. I haven’t mentioned them lately, but that doesn’t mean I haven’t been working on them.
I stripped them both, but then decided to work on this one first because it was a more straightforward project: painting.
(Click any image to enlarge)
I did not buy this one for it’s beautiful paint job or the one odd knob – I bought it because it was actually made of wood and I could see potential.
The first thing I did was strip it of all that old, gloopy paint. A long-time friend advised me to just rough sand it and paint over it, especially since I was just going to paint again anyway, but I wanted to start with a clean slate.
I did however simply paint over the ugly drawer colors. Who paints the insides of drawers? Especially alternating ugly colors??
Don’t they look pretty and fresh? I told my friend that I was still planning to put shelf liner in the drawers. She recommended I think about seeing a therapist.
My initial plan was to paint the dresser white, then go back over with a pale, minty green for that shabby chic look. As it turns out, I am much too uptight to do shabby chic. The white looked nice so I stuck with that.
It looks even better than I imagined it would. (And yes, I noticed that gap at the top on the left side and pounded it together after I took this picture!)
Aren’t the new knobs lovely? (They cost more than the dresser did!)
I do need to figure out how to trim the bolts a bit.
If you were to compare my painting style to a famous artist, my style would likely be closer to Gaugin or Pollack than Monet. As much as I am free with the criticism of other people’s painting, it isn’t as easy as it looks. I learned the hard way that horizontal surfaces are “easier” to paint than vertical and that it is much better to do many thin layers than trying to rush things with thicker applications.
Just look what happens when you try to hurry:
I could strip that off and start over, but since 1) it is on the side(s) and 2) I have two more dressers to refurbish, I’m just going to call that paint drool my interpretation of shabby chic and move along…
Any (good) mom will tell you that one of our main job descriptions is being a kill-joy. I’m particularly good at it – just ask my children and their friends.
I love Halloween as much as my children – probably because I remember enjoying it so much as a child – but as a mom? It’s all a bit more conflicted. I love to see how excited my children are by the decorations and the month-long anticipation of dressing up and going trick-or-treating. It was especially fun this year because it was their first proper, American Halloween. I did what I could to make the holiday fun for them while living abroad – we went to their school fair and we trick-or-treated at all the participating apartments in our immediate area (usually no more than a dozen), but it wasn’t the same.
Living in a very family oriented town, in a child-dense neighborhood, the children had an incredible time. They dressed up like zombies and their dad took them out for two solid hours of trick-or-treating. They came home with no less than approximately SIX POUNDS of candy. EACH.
Here’s where the conflict comes in.
As a child, they want nothing more than free access to this unheard of bonanza of candy. I of course 1) don’t want them to eat until they vomit or 2) spend $$$ at the dentist. I let them admire their loot, supervised some trading, and then put their candy sacks away – only to be accessed under supervision.
(Do you want to clean up the puke?)
And yes, there will be dental rinse every night after brushing until this candy is gone.
The fact that I am both the person who makes the holiday fun happen in my various alter egos (Easter Bunny, Santa, etc) and also the one who puts on the brakes on candy gorging is ironic. It’s probably also the biggest reason that my children still believe in those mythical beings – because how on earth could I be both the giver and taker-awayer of candy and fun?
It would be easier to let them gorge themselves and be done with it, but I’ve never been one to take the easy way out…
In addition to the usual housework and shopping / errand running, I have to finish up the Halloween decorations. I’ve been thinking all month about buying pumpkins but was holding off because I was warned about ravenous squirrels roaming the neighborhood who make short work of pumpkins. So I waited… and almost waited so long there weren’t any pumpkins at the store! I did finally find a few yesterday – phew! What’s Halloween without a few jack-o-lanterns?
I also foolishly volunteered to help with my son’s class party this afternoon because I somehow thought that life might be a little calmer by now! HA!
After school, it will be rush rush rush helping the kids to get themselves costumed up for their first real, genuine, American trick-or-treat. I am actually pretty excited for them. I’ve done my best to give them the Halloween experience while we were living abroad and of course they never knew what they were missing, but I did. So glad that they can have the real thing while they are both young enough to participate and old enough to remember!
It’s been a busy week, what with upacking and sorting the bits and pieces of my life.
I started by looking through the many boxes labeled “Memorabilia” from our time capsule so I could get them out of the way before our air shipment from Cairo arrived. That was amusing.
Yes, I used to care enough about wearing makeup that I had a mirror which I could set to “daytime” and “evening” lighting. I also found a cordless curling iron and two unopened BUTANE canisters for it! 1) I don’t remember owning or using such an item (though I did have a corded curling iron I used every day); 2) storing the butane canisters was a very bad idea and I’m lucky that they didn’t combust at some point; 3) a butane curling iron seems like a very bad idea – just add hair spray and POOF!
I also found this. What is it though??
I took pottery lessons way back when and according to the stamp on the bottom, I made it. I was looking at it, wondering if I had planned to display a marble at some point, and in the process of writing this post I remembered: I made it to replace the base of a glass salt shaker that had been knocked over and broken by a cat. Since it is loose and I ran across the loose shaker top, I suppose it didn’t fit!
Our air shipment arrived this week, bright and early Tuesday morning. Fourteen boxes in all, most of which looked as if they’d been run over by a truck before being delivered. It’s amazing that none of our glassware broke, but I am still glad that the box mislabeled “sewing machine” wasn’t actually my Bernina. It was my jewelry box!
Since I was not in Cairo to (micro)manage what got packed and shipped, there were some things that showed up by air that could have come a slower method – or not at all!
Hmmm… I am guessing that I was planning to make A LOT of Christmas cookies at some point. I usually bought the sugar and brought it back because you could not find it in Cairo – unless you had a friend that worked at the Embassy. I guess I better get busy this year. I am now in possession of TWO cookie guns too so no more excuses!
Apparently I also planned to make a lot of muffins! Actually, I used to stockpile these – you couldn’t always find decent muffin papers in Cairo so when I did, I snapped them up. With what I’ve bought since I’ve been in our new house I could probably make muffins and cupcakes for a couple of years and not run out!
(Note to self: make cupcakes for soccer game tomorrow!)
What surprised me most about seeing all these things is how sad it all made me. I’m glad to have my things in one place, but my – how time marches on. One group of items is from a life I put on “hold” while I went abroad. In the time we were away my husband’s mother, uncle, and grandmother died, as did my own mother and grandmother. So many memories of them surfaced as I found old letters, photos, and objects that reminded me of them. The arrival of our air shipment contains the items of a life cut-short. We never planned to stay in Egypt forever, but we never had a chance to say a proper goodbye to Egypt and all of the people who we saw on a day to day basis either.
The only thing I can try to do now is weave the strands of my lives together and hope that the new pattern is pleasing and strong…
I admit it: I have a slight addiction to purses. It first became apparent to me when we moved from our first apartment to our second in Cairo. I had way more purses tucked away in my wardrobe than I thought I did.
Looking back, I know how it started. For years and years I had a standard black leather purse and a standard brown leather purse and that was it. As a student and then a first-time-working person, I didn’t have much money for frivolous things like purses. Years later, when our financial status started to improve, I started to buy a new purse here and there – always with the rationalization “I don’t have any cute purses!”
Now I have almost nothing but cute purses. I have backpack purses in wine and teal printed with elephants that I bought on a trip to Cambodia, a couple of avocado green purses, a giraffe print purse with red trim, an eggplant colored purse, an aqua blue purse, a red patent leather purse my husband bought me in Italy, a couple of straw purses, big purses, tiny purses, evening purses, and… well, you get the idea.
It’s absurd really – I don’t even like to change my purse. I hate to move everything from one to the other and I’m always rushing around so much that I rarely leave myself time to switch purses. Once I put my stuff in a purse it usually stays there for a few months.
Absurd.
I have recently come to realize I have a similar problem with boots. I love boots but I don’t own so many for a couple of reasons. One is that there is no real winter in the Middle East so I didn’t really need boots there. Also, I’m fairly picky about my boots; I want real leather but I wasn’t about to pay real leather $$$ prices to walk everywhere through the trash on Cairo streets. I have a couple of pairs of leather anklets in brown and black but I’ve been looking for taller boots for some time now.
There are things that attract me to boots as well. I love silver studs. And fringe. A fellow soccer mom wore some cowboy style boots in a dull copper finish to a game last Saturday and I nearly swooned. (The above elements need not be included on the same boot!) I adore my new red cowboy boots so much I almost hate to wear them anywhere lest I scuff them.
I didn’t realize how transparent I am with regard to my love of boots until my friend saw these at a thrift store and bought them for me:
Every girl should have a friend who would get her such wonderful boots – did you see the fringe??? – but let’s face it: you wouldn’t look at these boots and buy them for just anyone, would you? I think she’s got my number. I haven’t worn them yet because it’s been wet and they are suede but I like just having them.
Which is of course how I ended up with so many purses…
There was a time, long ago in what seems like an alternate life, when I set a goal to try a new recipe once a month. Since this year was one long disruption, needless to say I didn’t stick to that goal. I did cook here and there, but mostly I stuck to favorite recipes that I could make from memory. Most of the time I was happy if I could make reasonably balanced meals – new and interesting wasn’t on my agenda.
With life finally settling down, last week was one of the best ones I’ve had for cooking in a long time. I made some old favorites and tried some newer things as well, including jambalaya and cream of cauliflower soup. Those are not technically “new” recipes to me, just things I don’t make all that often.
I did try one new recipe on Saturday morning though and I am pleased to say that in spite of some initial skepticism from my children, it was a total hit – Pumpkin Pancakes.
I pretty much followed the recipe as is was except that I followed the suggestion of one of the reviewers and used 2 eggs instead of 1 and upped the spices quite a bit. The result was wonderful. The pancakes were pleasantly pumpkin-y but not too sweet. The next time I make them, I’ll likely try replacing some of the white flour with wheat germ or ground flaxseed (Ssshhh!).
The rest of my kitchen equipment is due to arrive tomorrow morning from Cairo. Once I get it all organized and put away, I won’t have any more excuses not to cook (except time!). My current goal is to cook a nice meal at least 4x a week. The other three nights? I think may need to assign those nights to the other three members of my family! It may mean Cheerios for dinner but I could live with that once in a while if it meant I didn’t have to cook every night
I have always found music to be a real mood-lifter and just playing the radio while I putter around the house helps tremendously as I go about my day. This catchy little song by Andy Grammer has really been uplifting and appropriate this week:
Keep Your Head Up – Andy Grammer
The glow that the sun gives
Right around sunset
Helps me realize
This is just a journey
Drop your worries
You are gonna turn out fine.
Oh, you’ll turn out fine.
Fine, oh, you’ll turn out fine.
But you gotta keep your head up, oh,
And you can let your hair down, eh.
You gotta keep your head up, oh,
And you can let your hair down, eh.
I know it’s hard, know its hard,
To remember sometimes,
But you gotta keep your head up, oh,
And you can let your hair down, eh.
I still have not heard when our air shipment from Cairo will be delivered from Detroit, but since I am tired of living my life on hold I do believe that I’ll be going out and buying some paint and a paint brush to get started on the first of the dressers anyway…
Remember how I said I had planned to bring the dressers inside, off the screened in porch, so I could complete the refinishing process, but that I decided to wait so that the movers would have a place to put the boxes?
Well, what I don’t have is our shipment but what we did get was a nice soaking rain shower with wind that lasted all night. I thought I had pulled the dressers in away from the screens enough, but I was wrong. The nicer, older, darker one got wet. Not soaking, but damp enough that I can feel the wood on the newly naked and unprotected top is rough when a couple of days ago I had sanded it satin smooth.
Grrrr…
Looks like I might end up refinishing the entire body of the thing after all, but in the meantime I am moving it inside to dry off. The movers can just work around it.
This has been a long week and it’s only Wednesday.
I’ve been a bit down the last couple of days. Maybe I’m just tired. Or demoralized. I feel like I never stop bustling around doing this or that or the other thing and yet I’m still surrounded by disorder and chaos and mess. Everywhere I look there is just stuff that needs to be put away. I’m not sure what I’m doing wrong exactly, except that perhaps I am trying to do too many things at the same time. I’m keeping up but seemingly not making much headway.
I am a person who likes to finish projects. When I start a quilt, I finish it. Rarely do I work on more than one at a time, unless they are different sizes and are at different stages – one might be in the quilting process when I start another. I can typically finish hand-quilting a queen sized quilt in 6-8 weeks start to finish. I hate that I had to leave my quilts behind in Cairo ten months ago, particularly one that is unfinished.
The same goes with writing books and I’ve had an unfinished manuscript hanging over me for a year now.
When I consulted with my father about how to refinish the dressers, he suggested that perhaps wasn’t the best time to take on such a project when I’m so busy otherwise. I can see his point of view but here’s the thing: we need the dressers to put away some of the stuff around here and I need the creative diversion. Yes, I admit it: I actually find the process fun and it makes a nice change of pace from washing walls and breaking down cardboard boxes.
My plan was to put down a tarp and some cardboard in what will eventually be my sewing room downstairs and bring in the dresser I intend to paint so I could work on it this week. Then the movers contacted us that our air shipment from Cairo was in Detroit and would be released from customs any day. I decided to hold off on moving the dresser because when the air shipment comes, many of those boxes will need to go into that room. I can hardly complain because the shipment contains my kitchen items and most of my quilting supplies and quilts, but it does delay my finishing the dresser project. Great – more boxes to unpack.
{Insert whining and moaning here}
And just think: if we end up finding a house to buy this spring, we’ll get to do the pack-up-and-move routine this time next year too.
Sorry for the late post today, but it’s been a crazy busy weekend:
* I froze my butt off watching each child play a soccer match on Saturday morning. It was about 50F but the wind was whipping across the flat fields at about 30mph! FYI – I was not the only parent out there all bundled up like this:
(I got this coat at a church rummage sale for $2 )
* I hosted a slumber party for my son’s upcoming birthday with three little boy guests;
* As part of the party, I ate a Happy Meal at McDonald’s so that my daughter, not allowed to attend the party with the boys, could have the Halloween bucket the meal was served in;
* I stayed up later than I wanted to so that the boys could have their fun and I bit my tongue when one of them dropped his smore on my recently cleaned carpet;
(Incidentally, I am thinking of cutting off friend birthday parties at age 10!)
* I drove 2 1/2 hours one way to Toledo to meet a friend who had a BMX bike to donate to my son.
And I did all of the above while on the verge of having a major muscle spasm in my lower back from all the furniture sanding I did on Friday. Thank goodness for heated car seats…
Tomorrow is little man’s actual birthday. I’ll be making a cake and wrapping presents before I lay on the floor for a while for some back therapy.
I write books for fun so why is it so hard to write my own bio? I am an American currently living in Cairo, Egypt. Aside from writing, I'm a married mom of two under ten, a decent (if reluctant) cook, an encyclopedia of random scientific / medical facts, a wine lover (but not a snob!), and a Capricorn. I love to travel, spend time with good friends, and laugh at life's surprises. View of life - definitely half full.
