Category Archives: home

Still here!

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Yes I am! Just trying to get things tidied up and the way that looks best. I don’t know where to store some of my art supplies as I am using my living room, where the tree is, as my art studio! What would be ideal is a long, open up bench in front of my bay window to store all the goodies in. Maybe someday.

I did get my snowbabies in the above mentioned window and will photograph it for the 17th. I think I’ll be making a slide show for the Christmas house tour. : ) My family room isn’t finished yet though. I also want Bri to help me deep clean the berber in there as I can see soiled areas (this drives me batty).

My poor sinuses are bothering me from handling the dusty boxes and just stirring dust up in general. Yesterday morning I sat up in bed and had a coughing attack, not to pleasant. I used my BioAllers before bed last night (which made me have slight post nasal) and I am somewhat better today.

My poor mom is having all kinds of things start to break on her-the dishwasher won’t pump in water and two of her burners on the stove don’t work. I called my brother Ken last night to see if he could look at these and he asked why our mom didn’t call and I said she was afraid he’d get mad if she did! He’s the son for goodness sakes. I said Bri has his dad to worry about and doesn’t even get to his house that often, so it would be hard for him to help mom too. My brother lives minutes away from her house as it is. I know he gets frustrated when he goes in there as it’s so disorganized. But you’ve gotta do, what ya gotta do. I am crazy about Ken, my little brother. He can do anything, is funny and handsome all rolled into one package.

I was hoping to get to mom’s today, not sure if she is up to company, but I think today would be better than tomorrow.

By the way, Mark Wahlberg and Susan Sarandon were shooting scenes for their upcoming movie ‘The Lovely Bones’ in a Delaware County mall near where I worked in a daycare center. I thought that was pretty interesting and would love to be nosy to see, but they aren’t mingling with the public.
From My Big Fat, Friggin Head:

There is a major motion picture being filmed in my hometown of Glenolden this week. And the set that they are using is the Mac Dade Mall, which is the shopping mall that my mother managed for nearly 30 years. It is quite literally the mall that I grew up in.

Today, the mall is practically abandoned, the victim of much bigger area malls and the local Walmart which drove most of the remaining business away. But this made it perfect for a movie set. They remodeled the empty stores inside to look like a mall from the 70’s. It’s quite beautiful. I saw the inside last week. First time in my life I ever got to walk around a movie set as they were building it. I did not get pics of the inside, but others did and they are floating around on the web.

My local stitcher pal Mindy got to meet Michael Nutter the newly elected mayor of Philly a few days ago. Awesome!

Have a great weekend and make some ‘me’ time for yourself.

Lots of red and Cardinals

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I was looking through a catalog and saw a Cardinal tree wreath and decided to copy it the best I could. I’m sure there is grapevine that is shaped like a tree somewhere, but I bought artificial garland greens and shaped it myself. I just don’t know what to use for the base of the tree. I think mine is smaller, but for $10-12 instead of $40, I think it looks pretty. I even added ‘something else’ that I will show you on the 17th! Cardinal tree wreath

My inspiration:

My inspiration
Here’s the tree! I am saving the one that shows the lights better for the blogger tour of homes on the 17th. Mind you, I am still cleaning as I go. I think there are always books in any of my room shots lately. The golds beads in a few areas are antique.

Our tree 07
Here is a close up of a swirly ornament.
Swirly ornament
I went shopping by myself today and got Bri’s big gift. I had a 20% off coupon for Bed, Bath and Beyond. I also got something my mom asked for and got Sean one too. I then went to Michaels and bought the things for the wreath and some more items my mom needed for her decorating. They had gorgeous artificial poinsettias for only $5 (see above). I thought they had glitter on them, so called mom and she said to get them for her and my uncle. The only thing is, the glitter was from other greenery. I did buy a can of glitter to give them a spray before I give them to her.
My last stop was World Market for stocking goodies. I got some more Christmas crackers, but smaller ones like I gave my niece and nephew last year. They were fun to pull and hear pop-and you get a prize! So I had a busy afternoon. I cashed in coins to the tune of $64-so I got two gifts with that! Gotta love that spare change at this time of year!
I’m finding it a little difficult on my sore spot with the seatbelt across that area-it’s tender.
And Happy Birthday to my sister-in-law Mary Anne! I called to wish her a good one and she had her mom making dinner for her while they waited on my nephew and her niece.

My old mug

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From college days
This mug was my favorite mug back in the late 70s. Mom just gave it back to me. I’m enjoying a mug of jasmine tea right now!

Halloween tree
This is a little tree that I hung some tags on that I bought from a lady on eBay. I love other people’s art work and these are sweet. This artist is Honeygirl Studios.

Mums
Bri and I planted 3 mums on the side of the evergreen in the front yard. I also dug up my Persian Shield plant. It wore me out as I had about 4 hours of sleep last night. I got up to go in the bathroom at 6 am and heard the answering machine in the family room beeping. What? So I went in and it was my mom’s # on the caller ID at 2:37 am this morning! I listened to it and it was a lot of muffled stuff. Now it sounded like she had been mugged or something! I didn’t call her at that time of the day, but waited a few hours and she has no recollection on even touching the phone which concerns me. Weird.

Some autumnal decor

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The mantel
I had to take a lot of stuff off here to add a lot of stuff!That’s a mirror I have had there for ages. I like the look of mirrors over fireplaces. I took down the mantel clock. I didn’t want to have any blue glass at all, it just didn’t look right. I keep the little lanterns up all the time, but added the floral garland. I decided to break up the trio of mosaics I had on the dining room table, just too big. So, two went on the mantel with the cornucopia and some Halloween decor. For Thankgiving, I’ll take down the Haunted house and pumpkin guys.

The table

Front window

Mantel lights

Almost a book-tastrophy

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Oh my! I’m not kidding. For a few weeks Bri and I have been hearing the slightest creak, like the house settling. We couldn’t figure out what it was. Today I found out! I came in the family room to grab my purse as I was on the way to the post office and to check out a new natural food market and did I get a surprise!

Bookcase

One of the shelves is removed and needs its support rod. Notice the shelf under the space is also slightly slanted to the right.

One of our 8 foot tall bookcases had shelves that were all on a slant slightly to the right! They are so full, I guess the shelves would have stayed slanted-maybe. So before I could step out the door, I unloaded the top two dusty ones. Seems the top shelf was missing one of its four little metal rods that holds it in place. All the weight from the books was causing the holes of the rods to break away, the noises we were hearing. I have to see if I have another rod thing, maybe I can use a leftover one from the kitchen. I had to start to move up the shelves and hammered the little rods in the holes to be on the safe side. I swear when you replace books on shelves, they never look as good. I have some rearranging to do and some books will be finding new homes or be given away.

The health food market was too expensive. I got some tea and a few snack things for Sean.

I have some nature/flower photos featuring red that I will share as soon as I clean up the book mess.

Inside

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I was taking photos of some of my vintage children’s books for a Flickr group I am in and decided to go around the house and do a few captures.

Blue glass
A collection of mostly light blue glass in the dining room window. The green glass is in the other window.

Curio table
I have a small curio table in the living room and it’s pretty full! I have the ‘heart of the ocean’ replica necklace from the movie Titanic plus a  collectible Titanic music box that my niece Tori gave me.

Stitching girl
One of my porcelain dolls. I use to have many more on display. She is special because she is Victorian and stitching! I actually did the little piece in her lap many years ago. Behind her is one of the ‘tree of life’ lithographs I’ve had since we were newlyweds. That is March for Brian and I have November for me.

Sean’s school photos
Sean’s brass school bus of all his school photos except his 12th grade one. Some are really unflattering, but I love them anyway!

Chocolate pepper?
And last but not least, I believe this is a chocolate pepper (color). I have some of it in my turkey meatloaf, but before I took a knife to it, I think it justified a photo.
I’ll be putting the rest of the house photos plus the vintage book photos in my Flickr album where there is a link in my sidebar.

Happy Move in anniversary to us!

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21 years ago we moved into our house here in southeastern, PA. Sean was due in about 6-7 weeks, but I felt like doing a few things, mainly making curtains for his nursery. We had a lot of people helping us clean and paint, but we still had two rooms to do, our master bedroom and the guest room. Bri did the guest room and I helped by scooting along and painting the baseboard in our room. Not an easy task.

To think back on all the things we’ve done over the years, the latest being the kitchen remodel. There are still areas that need our attention-mostly to be purged.

It’s a glorious day and here I sit. Not too chipper today. I was thinking about going to mom’s, but neither she nor I are quite ourselves. Bri went to his dad’s, so I am fending for myself. What I really need is a nap!

 I got some energy up and did a mini tour of our yard on this special day. It was actually 16 shorts combined. It should be up in Vod Pod soon.

Need a little change

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Now that my boy is gone for 3 months, I feel like I need to change things around in here little. The first thing I did was clean out a circular tin Sean keeps on the back of the toidy. I threw away a ton of stuff and put other stuff in a plastic bag and in the bathroom closet it went (even his old retainer-ugh). Also put his footballs and sneaks that were behind the front door in his room (grrghh). I would put things in his room and out they came. I think when he comes home, he’ll be editing the quantity of what’s in there. There is hardly a dent! The apple doesn’t fall far from the tree.

Back to the change part. Not sure if I just mean to do a change of the table cloth on the dining room table or to rearrange a bunch of stuff. I could start by getting into the autumn themed things-soon.

Sean is fine. He wrote an email and said the trash truck woke him up at 4 am this morning. Said it was hot all night. I told him two 6″ fans were a joke-he didn’t listen. He did move his bed away from the door a few feet. I’m curious to see what the room looks like now.

Wait until you hear this-Sean’s cousin is two doors down! They don’t know each other well, but maybe this will be the time they can get better acquainted. Their grandfathers (Bri’s dad and Ryan’s mom’s late dad) were brothers.

So I’ll have plenty to keep me busy today. I am tidying up for the priest’s visit tomorrow. I hope he doesn’t ask too much about Friday and Saturday as I am still a bit weepy.
Bri has had his moments, but he eggs me on I think. Worries about the car, Sean being sick, all that negative stuff. I’m trying to envision him going to his first football game in the second largest college stadium in the country; meeting a nice girl, you get my drift. Time to grow up. Times change and so can you.

Squashed it is!

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The green beans, my little zinnias, mini sunflowers and most of my squash are gone. : (

However, I did pick 6 more squash, so the count is still growing. I will check again in a few days, but there are so many fallen apples, I’m a bit afraid that the stinging critters will go after them. Mr. Groundhog should be in hog heaven if he ventures out to that part of the yard. When I retrieved the squash, I had to walk on the big, thick stems of those plants. It breaks my heart to see it that way. I wonder if I could replant and get an early fall harvest? We have nice weather until the end of September or beginning of October a lot of times. That of course would mean doing a big clean up and we are going to the beach next week for a few days and the following week is the drive to PSU.

Both guys went out to cut more branches down after a spaghetti dinner, so they were pretty full. When they came in, they got a banana/pineapple/guava smoothie in a new smoothie maker! Sean gets 20% off at work, so he picked one up for us.

I’m in a cleaning mood still (gasp) and did half the family room before doing a few baskets of laundry. I seem to put off the book end of this room all the time. I just start sorting out my books and end up reading them.

Hopefully we can see my mom tomorrow and maybe go to BJs so Sean can get a few large items he needs for college. The time is growing so near now.

Photo Hunt-fake

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I’m not big on fake flowers (I really didn’t even need to add this!), but I do have this fake yellow orchid in my family room window (pictured in dining room window) to give that area a little sunny color.

PSHunt
Grab the Scavenger Hunt code.Photo Theme. Join the blogroll. Visit participants.

Fake Orchid

My mom loves her fake flowers and buys them almost every time we go to JoAnns.