Did you know that coffee beans can catch on fire?

My name is Shel, and it has been three months since my last confession blog post. 

In my defense...Facebook, Pinterest, IMDb, Big Brother, Dance Moms, and Beverly Hills Nannies have ruthlessly taken up all of my free time.  I've barely had time to glitter anything, much less hot-glue stuff to other stuff.  How can I be expected to create beautiful works of craft when there is a Dallas Cowboys Cheerleaders: Making the Team marathon on TV??  Don't even get me started the time-drain that is the Lifetime Movie Network.  Who else is going to cry with Patty Duke and Kellie Martin? 

Once I realized how long it has been since I glittered anything of importance, I decided to google a few crafty inspirational things in the hopes of becoming craftily inspired.  Nope. What I discovered, were blogs such as Craft Fail and Pinstrosity.  I laughed, I cried, I smirked to myself that at least none of my crafts turned out horribly, and I laughed some more.  Then Craft Karma reared its ugly, sparkly head. 

I had a Craft Fail myself.  In public.  At my husband's restaurant.  In front of 27 hundreds of people.

I needed an idea for Autumn-themed tabletop decorations, specifically for candles.  I can't just buy candles and put them on the table...I. MUST. DO. SOMETHING. AMAZING.  I kept finding photos of candles wrapped in fall leaves, pillar candles in beautiful fall colors, and votives nestled in acorn-filled glass bowls.  But obviously everyone was using those ideas for their dinner parties and I have to do something amazing. 

Image via Big Wedding Tiny Budget

 

Image via My Cottage of Bliss

 

I have to admit that I love the bowls filled with acorns.  The fact that I didn't have any acorns lying around wasn't going to stop me.  I began my search.  After I found a whopping three acorns that were a lovely but moldy-looking greenish brown color, I abandoned that idea.  I rationalized my lack of trying any harder with the fact that I would probably have a dinner guest with severe acorn allergies. 

 

More likely...I would be the one with a newly-discovered severe acorn allergy. 

 

Back to squared one.  A shortage of funding led me to the almost brilliant decision to fill some candle holders with coffee beans and votive candles.  Here is the before shot...

 

 

I was fairly pleased with how they turned out.  The dinner party was going smoothly, everyone was happy and devouring the meal, conversation was lively and bright and....rather warm.  Really warm.  Almost too wa....

 

"holy crap!  The candles, the candles, the candles are on fi-yer!"







 

 The after shot...

 

This post has been brought to you by the local fire department and the letters LMN.

Wednesdays without a word

I'm ready for Halloween to get here.  My fuzzy child, Jolie, isn't as excited.

My dirty little secret, therapy, and Jen Lancaster

I have a dirty little secret.

My name is Shel and I have a degree in Interior Design. 




Yep. 

But like the mechanic whose car is always broken down, my house isn't decorated at all.  Not even close.  In fact, I don't even let people come over unless they already love me unconditionally, or have to love me because I'm family.  Sure, I have thousands upon thousands of ideas and loads of creativity...but I also suffer from laziness and a general lack of interest in any of the domestic talents my friends and family have so effortlessly obtained.  At least when it comes to my own house, that is.  I can decorate the heck out of anyone else's house.  I even enjoy ironing, cleaning and dusting when it's at someone else's house or office.  Organizing?  I'm a pro!  Need lots of ideas for planning a dinner party?  I'm all over it!  But in my house...nuh uh.  Ask anyone...I am so not a housekeeper. 

Why am I telling you this?  I guess it is therapy for me.  I don't want to be like this, really.  I want to use all of my many ideas, vast talents and creative knack for good instead of evil.  Well, not evil so much...but sometimes my fingers like to type funny things.  I often crack myself up at the littlest things I've magically typed, and then I get sidetracked and end up looking up 'Real Housewives of Orange County' on IMDb to see if anyone else thinks Tamra is really pretty until she starts badmouthing everyone else.  My favorite is probably Alexis because she can rock the big chest and isn't ashamed to show it.  Then I find out that Heather used to be on the show 'Men Behaving Badly' which starred Rob Schneider, whom I love and hope to marry one day when Brad and I move to Utah and I can have two husbands and then I think that I should totally change my facebook photo to the one of me, Brad and Rob Schneider because we really do make a fine couple (triple?) and then I remember that I needed to charge Jimmy Kindle so that I can keep reading Jen Lancaster's new book, 'Jeneration X: One Reluctant Adult's Attempt to Unarrest Her Arrested Development; Or, Why It's Never Too Late for Her Dumb Ass to Learn Why Froot Loops Are Not for Dinner'

If you haven't read anything of hers...drop everything and run to Amazon.com immediately...after reading the rest of my blog, that is.

See?  Even with this blog, I find myself procrastinating.  I put off blogging because I don't have anything wonderful to show.  My photos often are blurry, or there might be pug fur on my painted masterpiece, or my project just didn't turn out so well and I'm too lazy to photoshop anything into perfection.  But as of now....or sometime next week...I'm going to change all that.  I'm going to get this house in order and start decorating it so nicely that Martha Stewart will call me personally, fly to Texas and offer me a high-salary job showcasing my talents for making small adirondack chairs out of scrapbook paper.

(Martha, I don't know you...and this is crazy, but here's my paper chair, so call me maybe)

These little beauties are going to be used as place cards for the next Wine Dinner I'm setting up.  I had originally planned to make up a tutorial as I went along so that I could showcase these on my blog and hopefully impress my three followers.  Eh...not so much.  Ultimately, they ended up being a product of lots of random folding, paper cuts, cursing and copious amounts of sparkling wine.  But that's for an entirely different blog post altogether now. 

"that's for an entirely different blog post"

So, I realize now that I'm not going to be a perfect blogger, or a perfect housewife, or a perfect Pinterest-pinning person.  My blog posts might have bad photos, or bad results, or be full of bad humor and random movie quotes...but they're definitely ME. 

If I complete (ha! complete! heh heh...that's funny) a project and it doesn't turn out beautifully, I'm going to show it anyway.  Because really?  Who out there is perfect?  (Besides the people I went to high school with...you guys are on a completely different playing field...amazing at what you all can do.  Did we really go to the same school?!!?!)  Anyway, I bet there are more than just a few people out there like me who haven't mastered the skills of domestic goodness and might actually appreciate my clumsy attempts at it. 

There.  The first step is admitting I have a problem. 

Oh, and Martha?  I would totally invite you over for a visit, but my guest room is reserved for Rob Schneider. 

Wednesdays without a word...

(My beagle, Jacey, with a chad on her nose)

Scenes from an Italian restaurant...western style

Every once in a while, you have to step out of the box in your dinner party decorating.  Last summer, I did a 'Spaghetti Western' themed wine dinner.  I wanted something relatively easy to dress for, being that summer in Texas means 197 degree temperatures.  A western theme allowed guests to wear anything they wanted, as long as it went with the theme...somewhat.

I made centerpieces out of old liquor bottles and made 'old-timey' labels for them and filled them with wheat stalks. 

I used bandanas from the craft store, and folded red napkins to resemble hankerchiefs.  Some handmade Sheriff's badges, tin can candles and mustaches-on-a-stick for everyone rounded out the decor. 

Yee-haw!

It's 5 o'clock somewhere...

To celebrate the upcoming Jimmy Buffett concert, I present the Margaritaville-themed wine dinner we had last summer.  I made centerpieces out of various glasses, fake flowers and lots of glitter.  Oh, the glitter.  I still can't get the glitter out of places in the kitchen. 

Side note:  don't ever use glitter anywhere near a self-healing cutting board.  Just don't.

I painted a few signs, and used those for decoration.  In some cases, I used guest's names to make it more personal and fun. I had originally ordered blue tablecloths, but they didn't come in, so I ended up using purple and aqua.  Happy accident, however...they worked just fine!  I covered the purple cloth with a fishnet purchased at the local party store.

At the last minute, I decided that things looked a little boring around the restaurant, so I purchased a bunch of mini-beachballs to hang from the chandeliers.  It was well worth the five bucks I paid a teenager to blow them all up for me.

The placecards were my favorite part.  I played around with scrap paper until I came up with a folding-chair pattern, then made umbrellas with colored toothpick stands.  They didn't stand up well at first, so I punched out circles of a sand-looking piece of scrapbook paper to help stablize them. 

I drew inspiration from one of my favorite Jimmy Buffett signs.

And in my new tradition of posting photos of my "fuzzy children", here is our very own Strange Bird:

Her name is Lola.  She was a showgirl.  With yellow feath....well, you get the idea.

You make me...burlappy, when skies are grey

I've been obsessed with burlap lately.  I love the 'old' feeling of it, the color, the texture.  These days, burlap is being used everywhere in home decorating, weddings, accessories and more. 

As seen on In Honor of Design

It's relatively inexpensive, and can usually be purchased at a fabric store for $4 or less per yard.  But I especially love burlap that was originally used for something else; such as flour sacks or coffee bean storage or....something else. 

Image from savvycityfarmer.com

I'm especially loving burlap lamp shades in particular. 

As seen on my sweet savannah

I really like the painted and/or embellished burlap shades.  Maybe not so much for my house, but I love how they can be personalized. 

Lamp by Carole Hicks Bolton

Feeling inspired, I created my own  (plain) burlap shade and one embellished and painted burlap shade.  One of them, I love:

The other....meh.

(back side of shade)

And because I said I would, here is a cute photo of one of my children...also on a lampshade.



I wanna be a cowboy...or just decorate like one

It's great as a designer to have these really huge budgets to work with, and the sky is the limit for any ideas you might have.  But, more often than not, you are given a huge project to accomplish....with very little funding.  I was called by a friend to help decorate an elementary school nurse's office with a western theme.  I see this blog as a perfect opportunity to teach a little lesson of my own.  Take notes.

How to decorate an elementary school office on a very limited budget:

1.  Beg, borrow and steal....well, maybe not STEAL, anything you can from anyone who will let you.  We were able to snag these awesome denim draperies from a student's mom.  Some grommets, rope from the hardware store, and dollar-store bandannas complete the look.

2.  Paint the existing cabinet hardware to match the theme.  This school had an overall western theme, with the nurse's office being called, "The Okay Corral."  To buy 376 new knobs...okay, 72.... would have been waaaaaaayyyy beyond our budget, so I compromised. 

3.  Think outside the norm.  The nurse needed a privacy curtain, so I fashioned one out of a hardware-store canvas dropcloth, and had the third-grade students design cattle brands to adorn it with.  I made a creative decision to leave out some of the more...uh...colorful designs.

 4.  Turn scrap wood into creative signage:

5.  Splurge on inexpensive wood plaques and a mirror from the hobby store if you can't resist buying stuff at those hobby stores.  I mean, really?  Who can possibly resist buying things from those places?  I can't.  Really.

6.  Look at garage sales for painted canvases.  With a little sandpaper and primer, you can easily cover something ugly into something wonderful.  Just sand the painting, prime it, and paint anything you like over it.  I used some leftover twine to make a frame and added accents with leftover rope.

(I had to paint a few of these....they kept "disappearing" suddenly)

7.  Paint anything and everything that will stand still:

  

On this tree mural, I was able to just tell a couple of the moms and their daughters what to paint and where.  I painted the individual birdhouses myself.  If you watch the sale ads and coupons for craft stores, you can usually find these birdhouses for 50% (or more) off. 

8.  Finish with a few well-chosen items scavenged from your family and friend's houses.

9.  Take a well-deserved break!