more fun with wine glasses

as if wine glasses couldn't get any more fun... well, they COULD get more fun... if you fill them up to the brim with a cool glass of wine. what's your favorite? personally, i like something semi sweet- not overtly fruity like a flavored wine, but not with a bite to it either. my favorite is riesling, but i'll drink moscato. ah, hell, whoami kidding? if you hand me a glass, i'll enjoy whatever it is! ;)

in addition to wine, i also adore birdies. so much so that i actually have three tattooed on me at the moment! in particular, i love these stylized cuties. to make these stencils, i used my big shot machine and sizzix die cutters to cut out the birdies out of contact paper. instead of using the positive images, i used the negatives to stick on the glasses as sort of a "resist" for the armour etch cream. remember that this is super caustic and needs to be used in a ventilated area. if it gets on your skin, wash it off with soap and water.

this was the finished product! little love bird wine glasses... perfect for gifts for your favorite couple or just to make for yourself. ps: my contact paper had been left in the garage in near 100* heat and lost much of it's sticky, so it didn't have a great seal with the glasses. as a result, you can see that some of the etching cream seeped around the edges of the stencils. that's okay since these were a practice run and will be used for the mister and i. when you make these at home, make sure you have a really good seal around your stencil! :)

front porch prettying-up

lately, i've been spending a lot of time on my front porch and i've been taking note of what needs to be done to make it more enjoyable. in talking to the mister about it, we have decided to make it more like a grown-up clubhouse. we had a bench that we had inherited from my folks, that we sanded and painted a year ago, but that was pretty much it for the porch. i wanted to make it a pretty place that i enjoyed being, as i often hide out there when the kids get to be too noisy for me, or when i need to study a bit, or when i'm checking my emails, or when i'm enjoying an evening glass of wine.



the ladder in the above photo was one that the mister made for the kiddos' bunk beds when they were little. they haven't used them in a few years and i found it in the garage yesterday. wanting to put some plants on the front porch, i grabbed the ladder, painted it white and then faux distressed it with the sander and some "antique stain." this is an awesome tool that you spread on with a brush and then wipe off with a rag and leaves the wood looking aged. i found the tin sign at hobby lobby for 50% off and the colors will match the outdoor rug that should be here tomorrow. the cans are simply food cans that we've recycled into flower vases and herb planters. i sprayed them with a butter yellow paint and they look really cute. other cans are sprayed green and others are blue. it's a thrifty way to recycle some planters for herbs and other small plants. plus, it's great for those little wildflowers that the kids are always bringing me.

these little chairs were given to my twins when they were babies... and my twins are getting ready to turn EIGHT this month! they'd never been painted and quite frankly were not my favorite chairs. but, the kiddos loved them, so i kept them around. to fit in with the new porch, i painted them a light blue (those of y'all living in my area would refer to this as 'carolina blue') and then distressed them.

if you stick around the blog very long, you'll notice that i like the 'distressed' look. the simple answer is yes. it reminds me of farms and simple living. i am not the shiny, polished, elegant kind of girl... i prefer cotton and denim, clean lines and things that are worn in. i am also the youngest of 6, so almost everything i've ever own was previously loved before i got hold of it. maybe it all goes back to that. maybe it's because i have 5 kids of my own and i know that shiny and new doesn't last long in my house. 'distressed' is just giving things that will eventually get beat up a reason to look beat up. but really, i like it because i'm a bad painter and i like instant gratification, and the sander fixes a multitude of sins! i have spent time to make pieces have professional finishes and all that sanding and painting, waiting to dry, sanding and painting, etc. is so boring. with the distressed look, i can put on a coat, sand it and beat it, put on some antiquer and wipe it off (if it needs it), and be done. i love it!

instigator and enabler

to fully get the humor behind this post, you're going to need some of the back story.

you see, i look a little bit like a rebel. i am heavily tattooed- both of my arms are very full; my left arm is nearly completely sleeved. my feet are tattooed. my legs are tattooed. i have tattoos in places you can't see. now, they are all tasteful- pretty flowers, girly-ed up sailor inspired pieces, and my newest tattoo, a crafty tattoo. seriously. a ball of yarn and knitting needles, spools of thread, buttons, scissors, a tomato pin cushion, etc. my hair is always different colors (though because of nursing school, it has to be in the "realm of natural colors" and thus is staying a shade of red or black for the time being) and i have a few visible piercings. i'm loud and i've been told i have a big personality, for what's it's worth.

i have a friend who looks like my complete opposite. she is always well put together and polished, and though she has tattoos (including a very large one on her back), they are not as visible as mine. she is the vice president of the honor society at school, active on campus, was mentioned by name by the college's president during his speech at graduation. she's a wonderful person whom i adore, but for some reason, she has repeatedly been called a "bad influence." i think it started out as a joke by a professor and just grew from there, but everyone we've talked to about it says, "yeah, i can see that." maybe it's because she's so clean cut and you just KNOW that those girls have a wild side. even my four year old agrees, calling her a "party girl." what HE knows about party girls, i've yet to figure out, but when i do, you'll be the first to know. for whatever reason, it's been a running joke for us for a while now.

while on the phone with her this week, her husband chimed in on the topic. he said she's not a bad influence, she's just the "instigator." and if she's the instigator, he said, then i am the "enabler." this made perfect sense to me, though my friend immediately took offense to it. ;) which of course meant that i had to take the joke and run with it. my first thought was: wine glasses. because, well, i had a wine glass in my hand at the time. and the planning started right then and there.

the next day, i went to visit another friend who has a cricut machine. side note: if you don't have one, get one. they are super cool and make my big shot manual crank cutter look like a joke. if you can't afford one (ahem, like me), then make friends with someone with one and have craft parties at her house. seriously worth it. at any rate, we cut out the letters for "instigator" and "enabler" out of self adhesive vinyl and stuck them on the wine glasses:

the vinyl didn't stick very well to the glass, and i was concerned that one wash and they'd come off, so i decided to use glass etching to make it permanent. this stuff is caustic and not meant to cover large areas, i had a really hard time getting it even, but that's okay.

they are not beautiful by any means, but still pretty cool personalized wine glasses for my instigator and me. i think i'm going to keep at it, playing around with designs and cheapo wine glasses to see what other kinds of designs i can come up with. next time, i will follow the directions a little better and not cover the WHOLE glass with the etching cream and instead will just do small areas like it suggests.

popping the blogger cherry!

so, all the cool kids were doing it. call it peer pressure. here i am. actually, i was itching for a way to get some things out on paper. or the computer screen, as it were. as my kids come of age, they'll be journaling in much the same way, i presume.

it's summer time! no school for another 48 days for the children (and 55 for me). yes, i'm counting down. if you aren't, clearly you don't have older children... and/or puberty hasn't hit your home yet. puberty has hit us. HARD. it has chewed us up and spit us out and we haven't even hit the ugly stages of it yet. it has taken my normally angelic children (ahem, cough) and turned them into, well, not so angelic children. and i'm just talking about the eight and ten year old girls right now! enough of the whining, i suppose.

puberty has actually brought us to an issue that i wanted to address, though. we live in a small house. a three bedroom for the 7 of us. the girls share a room and the boys do, too. until now, it hasn't caused an issue. the basement is semi-finished into a playroom for the kids and there is plenty of space for them to play, plus all of the great outdoors, too. the girls, however, are getting the age where sharing space is causing more problems than connections for them. the mister and i have mediated discussions between them, tried to play therapist, had them talk to family members, had them write letters to each other, had them work with each other in the church, even. it's still an issue. they fight dirty. the old adage that boys beat each other up and then are buddies again, but girls hold grudges is definitely true in our home. i've seen it with my own eyes.

we've tried to come up with some solutions to this problem while still having them share a room, since building on to the house is not in the budget at this point. during a recent trip to ikea, i found their TROMSO beds, which are loft beds. i brought the idea up to the mister about un-bunking the girls' beds and either making loft beds or purchasing the TROMSO beds from ikea for them. i would then hang a curtain from the underside of each loft bed, effectively making that area each girl's "room." we'd make them a new desk (currently, they share a double desk), and i want to buy each one a beanbag chair because they remind me of my childhood and i was never allowed to have one when i was a kid. also, because the 10 year old is a huge reader, she definitely needs a wall lamp in her "room," thus making another trip to ikea necessary. ;) if you stick with the blog, you'll realize my deep love for all things ikea very shortly.

i think my plan will work. i just need to figure out a way to do it on a budget and if i can find some easy to re-purpose pieces from the thrift store, that would be even better. as much as i love my little wild monkeys, they do drive me crazy when they are fussing and fighting, but if this will help them get along better, i'll do what i can!