a happy DO year update

Happy Wednesday. 

There is a serious issue in my life right now. I am about to share a detail that many may know, but putting it into words is going to make it very REAL to all of you. 

Here we go. I have a real, crazy, unpredictable, over-the-top, drives me crazy,  never imagined I would love what I am doing but I do --- FULL TIME JOB.

I sell something everyone needs and something everyone IMMEDIATELY knows when it is not working. 

I sell plumbing materials --- yup --- pipe and water heaters and toilets and sewage pumps. Bathtubs ant faucets and sinks and and and. I know how to put said things together. I know a lot of troubleshooting steps. I can operate a set of hand trucks. I have blatantly refused to learn to operate a shovel. But a "sharkbite" fitting, that I can handle. 

Some days it is crazy. 

Some days it is fun.

Some days I teach.

Some days I wrangle idiots.

Some days I learn. (well most days I learn something from somebody. Lots of it is useless, but I make a really great member of a Trivia game team  - just saying)

The picture below was taken at my desk. 

Now for the very ugly secret.  Actually, it is not a secret and, well, depending on who you are, it's not all that ugly. And it directly ties in to the happy DO year part of the title.

I have hoarding issues.

After the wedding, and the subsequent mess that is still being sorted and put away, I determined to reclaim my studio. I am actually doing quite well on that front.

I pulled the lace from several paper hearts that were on the chair backs at the wedding. Then I added those lengths to the lace that I had pulled from and dug through and such and so forth. I carried all of that back to the studio on Monday night. I then pulled out the other boxes of lace and started putting away and detangling  all of the scrummy beauty of pile.

First I boxed several spools of assorted laces. yards and yards of it.

That left me with this pile.

I attacked it. If a piece was less than 12 inches long, I stuffed it in a jar on my table. I WILL USE THOSE FIRST in my creations.

I folded the 2 inch or wider lace and separated those.

I also pulled out some bright purple and lavender that will be used for the RELAY FOR LIFE event decorations at the church.

Then I grabbed the scrap cardstock pile and started smoothing and wrapping the lengths around scraps of paper.

After two hours last night --- the pile looked like this.

And the storage box looked like this.

I will work in this pile again tonight. After I get this sorted and put away, I will make a few skeleton key necklaces.

I reward myself with "making" after I get one of these areas cleaned up.

Another phase of the HAPPY DO YEAR is to complete and utilize this wonderful hoarded material stash.

There are seven new Bundles of Joy coming into our lives. Friends of mine (who are obviously  MUCH older than I am) are becoming Grandparents. Some of my favorite people are adding littles to their lives. It is a wonderful time in the life of all those folks.

I have made a goal to do all seven of these baby gifts without purchasing anything.

I delivered the first one last night. A blue crocheted blanket for Kris Youngblood's new Grandson. Yarn I bought for making a blanket, then never got around to it.

Then while I was in the studio, I gathered the things for baby #2. A plain white flannel blanket (a flat flannel piece with surged edges) a strip of floral cotton, some crochet thread, and some bias tape. I bought several of these blankets at a fabric warehouse a long time ago, they are sold to hospitals for the infant nurseries and are a very high quality of flannel.

Here is the little grouping ---

It will be my travel project for the next several ball game trips.

There you go -- confession  ---- and a plan to continue destashing.

Have a wonderful day.

Its such a hard life

Being a dog at our house. Poca (also known as monster dog) is all puppy. Grabbing skirts, pants legs, shoe strings, the sofa skirt, hands, fingers, whatever - she is chewing her way into the dog from H*&& description. We swat her, distract her, try to bribe her - all of the normal training tricks - with minimal success at this point. Still we spoil her.

I got out of the shower this morning to find this .......


Yup - Monster Dog is in the bed (my bed) with the Man at My Address. I did crop this picture to protect you guys from the visual I get every morning.

Last night I got home to find that she had shredded the paper training paper into quarter sized bits of confetti.

This morning she learned how to push the screen door open and then play a rousing game of chase with three teenagers and one cussing mom. This was not a one time occurance either. We chased the little sucker twice. I broke a sweat before I left for work today.

About work - My friend Lannae called on Monday and had a kitchen faucet leak. We looked at faucets on the phone and online - and ordered her a new one. She and Will picked it up yesterday.

Seems Will had the impression that I was a teacher as my job - that was way too funny. But I told her to bring bread and that we would feed the animals out back.

Photo below - stolen from Lannae's blog.

Will said over and over "I just don't know about this" as we fed the critters. This is Mama Goat - yes that is a pipe taped to her horns. She pokes her head through the fence and gets caught, so we tape that on there to keep that from happening. I love taking kids out back to see the animals - Earl the donkey always talks to us - and I am glad Will came to see me.

I hope Lannae likes her new faucet - it looks great on her granite.

Ya'll have a wonderful day.

Monday Monday - weekend bits too

This is for Tiffany. We have goats and donkeys at work. Earl is our miniature donkey - grey, small, with attitude. This is Sugar - she is a rescue and she has been tremendously skittish, even aggressive at times. We have patiently fed her and talked to her and just generally worked on getting her accustomed to being around nice people.

The little boy in the picture is Sam, the son of a customer. He always wants to feed the "doats and the donkeys". This is from this morning, She ate NutterButters right out of Sam's hand. Everyone was excited - she has responded well to all the positive attention. I even got to scratch her nose and ears this morning. She is so sweet (or getting that way).


I was "puny" most of the weekend. Not really sick, I just was not at the top of my game. I did get a few stitches in on this little sampler. I have a plan for this one that involves it staying at my house. So much of my stuff goes to others, so it will be nice to have something of mine at home. It is a kit that came from my MIL and includes the frame. I work a few stitches at night, sitting in my chair and am liking it a lot. It is also relaxing to just sit and stitch.

Now - I have a question. What is your most hated laundry chore? Which one do you put off the most? Apparently mine is mating socks. We just mate them as we need them out of a basket in the laundry room. I also have a big bag of socks with no buddies.

On Saturday, I dumped the basket(s) - yes plural - on my bed and proceeded to mate socks. Despite the looks of these, they are clean, ballfield dirt basically ruins them colorwise, they all look dingy. And ya'll know that we live at the ballfield. I now have a big basket of mated socks, a dated bag of socks with no buddies, and a plan to toss those without buddies if they are still lonely after a month.

I also have a family who understands the blogging thing, because both the Softball Princess and the Man at Our Address took pictures and asked if MaggieGrace would be confessing to this many unmated socks. LOL. They each thought I would be too embarrassed to tell this. NOT.

A sore throat and generally not feeling well, yesterday found me lounging around - watching The Next Food Network Star reruns - and the finale last night. I like Melissa, but I really thought she would lose that last round. Softball Princess thought Jeffrey was creepy - so she was happy with the results.

I hope all of you have a wonderful Monday.

The View from My chair

My office smells wonderful and this is the view from my chair as I write this. The gardenias are in full bloom here and a friend always brings me a vase of them. Aren't they oh so very pretty (I like having my little bottle here too)

If you could see the rest of my desk you would understand why I need this oasis of calm.

I stumped my toe on a chair during the night on Saturday night and stuck a corner piece of plastic under the nail of my big toe. I had hoped to avoid any long term effects, but that was not to be. Today finds me with swelling drainage, and inflammation around the nail from potential infection. I am in open toed shoes and treating the nail with antiseptic and soaking. Now I just hope I do not lose my toenail.

I continue to crochet and work on the WIP's I have already shared, so the next few days will feature details and other nonsense.

Have a great day -- Teresa

Weekend recap

The Kitchen and Bath Industry Show (www.kbis.com) is normally this huge event held annually and is the key show for most Plumbing showroom managers. That is where I have been. However, the economy put a serious damper on the show this year. Many of the major players in the industry were not represented at all.

The light fixture above is designed for Baker Furniture by Laura Kirar. I did not see this fixture, but I did spot a sculpture in this design at the Ann Sacks booth hanging over a kitchen island. It was stunning and it was fun to watch people enter that booth looking up at the sculpture.

I have no photos (the show has a fairly strict policy about photography) but I did make several sketches for ideas that I will interpret in my displays.

To name drop a bit. We sat through a cooking demonstration by Martin Yan , one by chef Brian Duffy (he taught us how to cook the perfect scallop -- yum), drank hawaiian shooters at a booth, and the young lady at our statesboro store managed to get a picture with Eric Stromer from HGTV. It was exhausting - but informative and fun.

Now back to our regularly scheduled goodness for the next few days.

Have a wonderful Monday.

Glimpse at my weekend

I am a little (more like a LOT) competitive so ribbons this color makes me so very happy. Especially when the competition - and former employer - had to step out of the way for me to receive my award. Kick ass moment -----

Paper roses and lace - an elegant romance themed booth - now what am I going to do to top this next year.

Those paper flowers drew much conversation - and people into the booth - accomplishing what you want to happen.

Paper cones of spring flowers - add just a pop of right color. At midnight Thursday night I was hand stitching ruffles to make the top trim of these cones.

I sprinkled color and accents through the booth. I used the College Freshman's prom outfit from her Senior Year.

The ring pillow from my wedding - a vintage string of pearls - the dresser that I use in MaggieGrace World and the table from beside my sofa.

Even the shower heads made an appearance.

What do you think? The cool part - I got a side job decorating a retail spot for one of our customers. A pool place is adding patio furniture to their offering and I'll be using my handy inexpensive tricks to separate an area for this display from pool chemicals etc.

MaggieGrace had a good weekend - I wore some of my jewelry and everyone loved the flowers etc. So I'll be adding more stuff to MaggieGrace's repertoire.

Happy spring all - if any of you want to help me clean and reassemble the showroom - just let me know.

Have a wonderful day.

Ready for this - I spent less than 60.00 for booth decor items - not too shabby right?

Roses Are Red - I mean beige

Fold Staple Fluff - Fold Staple Fluff - over and over and you get a box that looks like THIS ....

Pretty just like it is. The guys at work discarded two boot boxes with nice little carrying handles. You know the crafter in me had to grab them to use to carry and store crap in.

After I made all of these - I added pipe cleaner stems.

Poke - Fold - Twist.

Then book page leaves. Cut out using a cardboard template and tracing it - yes - I did these the old fashioned way. I love my die cut machine - but it sure did feel great to have paper and scissors in hand.


Hot glue - craft wire - masking tape. Makes a fairly good sized pile of leaves. I used the only floral experience I have to wrap these little bundles.

Add leaves to stems - more masking tape wrapping. Watching the Real World on MTV (confessions of mindless stupidity). Result - beautiful bundles of paper roses. 50 individual stems - bundles are for temporary convenience - I'll show you on Monday how I used these.

But - just in case you want to see this - here is a single rose just for you - sorry so dark - I took this in the house at 1 AM this morning.

I wont be here tomorrow - I'll be at our classic center setting up for a grueling weekend of work ---- be back Monday.

I do have to say - mass immersion in craft has helped my mental outlook more than any drug or drink I might indulge in. Off to do more of this.

Have a wonderful weekend.

Random Babble

I need your help. Each year we do our local home and garden show at my real world job. Each year I have a very limited budget for this booth design and display and I have won several awards in the past for the booth design as well. It is a massive undertaking to come up with something new and different each year. I look for inspiration everywhere. I have used book pages in the past . I have built partitions from pipe. All kinds of stuff.

While I was searching for images in those Anthro catalogs over the weekend, I found the image below.

I used it on my shelf and it became a bit of inspiration. The booth will feature a very romantic and feminine decor. A big bathtub - an antique furniture piece fitted for a lavatory. Instead of candy hand outs, I'll be using cheap silk flowers with our address attached.

I plan on using the flower design below (I kept all those book pages from before) and some red painted muslin and velvet panels as my background - then attach the recycled item flowers randomly to the wall. I am so inspired by Curious Sofa's site and all those Anthro windows.


Tell me - do you think this creates an interesting and eye catching booth that will draw you in? It is "green" and it is different, both things that I am known for. Should I make any changes to the flower design? Plus I get to keep all those flowers for my art show booth in November.

Now - about that shelf....

It is not hanging - I could not find my brackets. Above you see the little flowers I glued in the corners.

Above are the bottom three shelves. I adore the image of the man and boy peeping through the window. it is from a late 50's magazine and I have been hoarding it to use in a project that makes ME happy. All the other shelves have Anthropologie Catalog pages.

The last picture is the top three shelves. The entire thing is 10 inches wide and almost 42 inches tall.

Feels good to be creating again. Feels good to be back in the studio.

Hope you all have a wonderful day.

Out of the Office

Off to a day long training in the big city of Atlanta --- yeaaaaaa!!!!! (insert eye rolls and heavy sighs here) Be back tomorrow.

Have a great day.

CERTIFIED NUTS......

Yesterday, I brought the flowers into the store with me to take the pictures. My boss - a funny man (no sarcasm there - no way) - looked at them.



Here is the conversation (condensed and edited for appropriate language)



Boss - "what are those?"



Me - flowers



Boss - Don't you have a barn?



Me - uh-huh



Boss - A good sized barn



Me - uh-huh



Boss - where you could make table sized things?



Me - uh-huh



Boss - you have a barn where you could make big things and you work on tiny little stuff like that? I can't even see those without my glasses.



Me - uh-huh - I wear reading glasses when I work.



Boss - crazy



Me - one of the criteria for working here - I just brough in proof to validate my employment status.



Boss (walking off) - uh-huh



Lst night found me spending a couple of hours measuring and making thread lines on linen. I made these "boxes" 2x3 inches and left space between for the trimming to ATC size. It was getting late, but I had to get one of my silk ribbon pieces stitched in.





The flowers are just laying there for now. I'll stitch them on last. Each of these will be a little different, but the idea will be the same for all of them. I'll show you all of them when I get done. I think I am on track to be able to demonstrate the inspiration to completion process.

Next is for my buddy JenB.

Shoe shot of my favorite boots. Got these on today - I finally have them where they are comfy enough to wear all day and walk - dance - play. Love me some cowboy boots. Wear them a lot this time of the year.



Have a fabulous day ------

I've been certified as nuts - how about you.

Where my day started off....

The very first thing I saw in the parking lot at work this morning. The goats were out enjoying those fall berries. We have a pasture out back and all of us have been called on to feed - water - and herd. It is a great way to bribe kids into good behavior in the showroom. We also have two donkeys. Yes - I work in a very different environment than most people.

These are quick snaps from a magazine my mom gave me. My hoarding tendency apparently came from her. The magazine is dated 1967. Look at the detail of the crochet lace dress on the right and the floral pattern down the side of the skirt on the left is almost an exact match to some scrapbook paper I have in my current stash.

Love this image - and these colors are still so fresh and current. The blue knit suit is gorgeous. And pink and black ---- perfection.

I'll be copying these (above and below) onto some colored paper - I am in love with all of this.

I adore this little tartan plaid kercheif.

The crochet suit on the front in this bright lemon yellow is a little too much for me, but if you can let go of the color - the pattern crocheted into the fabric is wonderful - worth studying for a scarf or a shawl.

After pondering the comments from yesterday -- looks like all of you agree with the pillow. I am still leaning that direction, but the softball princess added another option - a journal - sketchbook or scrapbook cover. I did finish all of the stitching on it last night. I also packaged up a few things to take to the post office AND accomplished some domestic duty things around the house.

Hope this finds all of you well and happy.

wonder where.......

This image is one of many posted at my friend Ellen's place, Growing Gills. I have nothing for you today except a story of my grown up girl job from many years ago. Please forgive me for posting your image Ellen!!!!

When I saw this at Ellen's I was transported back to an inventory weekend many years ago. I sell plumbing (have for many years) and annual inventory has to be the most stressful and hated time of the year for all of us. The way it works is really simple - close the store at lunch - form teams - take count sheets and physically count everything on your sheet - return sheet to the controller - he compares the number you got with the number the computer expects you to have - then you recount until somebody is convinced you can count.

The pipe in this picture is fairly large (looks like 2 inch pvc). My team was assigned 1/2 cpvc. it comes in 10 foot sticks and we had15000 some odd feet in stock. I counted little circles in a pipe rack at least 10 times in the dark that night before we got even close to what the computer siad we should have. I finally went and got the box of coffee stir sticks to keep up with where we were in the stack.

As scary as all the counting was - an even scarier admission. After we finished with the stir sticks, we put them back in the box and back by the coffee pot for plumbers the next morning. Nobody got sick - nobody died - and my count was right.

The moral of this - I bet every one of you will now wonder about your stir stick before you use one next time. LOL

Have a great afternoon.

strange and stranger

I am off today - which is obviously not obvious to some showroom customers. I was going to take off just the afternoon, but I decided to take the whole day. A customer just called my cell phone - not a contractor or a plumber - no - a showroom customer who wanted me to help him select his fixtures today. He is in the showroom - I am at home waiting for the couple we will ride with - and he is walking around asking me how much things are.

I just completed the first stage of a whole house selection process over the phone.

The customer had a notepad. He described the material and where he was in the store. I told him what the product was and the description he need to write down so that I can complete a quote for him on Monday. I'm thinking with a little more technology installed in the store I can work at home in my pj's.

The fact that I have chosen to sell toilets as my career is strange, but completing a showroom consultaion AND it resulting in a happy customer is even stranger.

We are off to Columbus - but I have a request. Hop over to my friend Lannae's Place and leave her a comment please. Welcome her to blogland. We all remember how great those first few comments felt.

Have a great weekend

Just fun stuff ...

A few random images - some to fit themes going on in blogland. Some just because. I know somebody starts these themes, but I did not follw the links to find out. Sorry.

I left a comment on a blog for a new shop in Barcelona and won a little prize pack from them. (that is always so much fun) My package came yesterday. White pear tea, Chocolate, and a little beaded something. Go to www.vonblum.com to see the shop. Looks like a fun place.

A picture from work on Monday. In my grown up girl real job, I am a plumbing showroom manager. Yes - I sell toilets for a living - no - it was not what I always wanted to do. Yesterday a young couple was here to pick out the fixtures for their house and Jeremy chose to try on the tub. I know this couple and took the opportunity to snap this shot while he was sitting there. If you must know, lots of people get in the tubs, and many actually sit on the toilets to try toilet seats and heights. In 20+ years only twice has a child "used" a non working toilet in the store.

What I was doing last night at 11pm. I started earlier in the evening, and managed to get two coats of blue on this bookshelf for the studio. The top three shelf backs will be decopaged tonight with pages from an old boy scout handbook. The bottom shelf won't be noticed, so I simply painted the back of it.

Playing along - studio storage. Fun metal typeset dies in one of my printer trays. Loving the macro setting on the camera.

Another playing along - seeing RED -- a tiny bit of bright red crackled paint remains on this folk art flag hanging on my barn. This was painted by Liz Lampe - a wonderful friend of mine - many years ago on a salvaged piece of tin roofing.

Busy planning the graduate's beach trip - the softball princess is in the heat of summer workouts - playing the travel ball tournament schedule - working on the studio - summer is our busy time at work.

Miss Molly will be taking the camera to the beach next week. I need to plan some pictures ahead - any requests for things you would like to see around MaggieGrace World. Or even some open ideas for photos I'll be needing 5 ideas ------- help !!!!!

Hope this finds all of you having a wonderful day.

digging .....

Free Dover image. Sign up for your own emails images at www.dover.com.

I have spent the entire morning. looking at design and color trend ideas all over the internet. At my real job, it is time to redo some things and just freshen up with paints and "fluff".

I am leaning into adding some pantone blue iris accents into the store. And there is a lot of wall space that needs accenting with some artworks. It is all a very neutral brown and gold right now, but that has to change. So I am creating inspiration boards for a meeting with the boss. It would seem this is an easy part of the job and sometimes it is, but trying to sell these ideas to "a man" who really could not care less about it makes it all the more difficult. I also know what I like and often my style is more eclectic than staying on current "trends".

There are areas of the store that even I don't venture into unless I must. There is also a wall that blocks the view from the front of the store that I would like to partially take down.

This is taking all my brain power today. I actually have put this off for way too long. Now it feels like I am rushing to accomplish this. Any design, home furnishing, fashion, trend sites you can give me for inspiration????

Help.

So there you have it- a glimpse into the grown up girl job that I go to every day.

Have a wonderful afternoon.