SnOw DaY

We had over 18 inches of fresh, heavy snow fall from Thursday night into Friday due to a Nor'easter making its way up the east coast .  Living in the NE, you would think this is just another day in winter and well...pretty much it is.  However, in this case, schools and even community colleges were closed.  A warning of "no unnecessary travel" was put out over radio and television across central NY until 6am Friday morn.  

All in all this is not a problem for us NE'sters (yup made that word up) when there is an abundance of snowplows, snowblowers and shovels helping to keep the snow accumulation cleared from roads, driveways and sidewalks.  However, when one relies on a contracted snow removal from one's drive that doesn't show up, then you have a slight problem-o.   Here are some pics from our 'little" bit of snow and the "fun" we had trying to remove it.  I felt muscles that I didn't even know I had!

Can you find the steps???

                                                                                 

That's over 15 inches of snow on top of the car

 

That's my daughter's car  on the right which we were trying to get unburied so that she could get to her college class... thankfully they officially closed at 10am.  Yes, even the college students have snow days!

This pic above shows about 50 feet of drive near the main road.  The end of the drive slopes up to the road plus the huge snowplows push more snow into it.  There was probably at least 24 inches of snow at the end of the driveway!

It is said "that behind every cloud is a silver lining"....well how about "somewhere behind every snow cloud is a bit of sunshine"  Here is some long awaited "shine" that made it's entrance not a moment too soon.

 



I just love how snow looks with the sun glimmering on its surface.

(click on pic to enlarge and see the big hunk of snow flying from K's shovel...didn't realize I had an action shot!)

The end of the story....we were eventually able to get out of the driveway once we found a kind soul to plow us out...and well...THEN we were doing the achy breaky happy dance!  

The sun has since melted all of the snow in the driveway...and.I.am.so.SO.ready for spring!

Have a great weekend!

~judi ;)

The Lamp Revamp

I've been really excited about revamping, repurposing, and renewing since I found  JunkMarketStyle.com and the Shanty2Chic blog.  I had this great lamp in my living room, a gift from my sister many years ago when I was into "theme" decorating.  We purchased new furniture a few years ago and it just wasn't working for me.  So, it went off to the craft studio for extra lighting.  Then last July we had a multi-family yard sale and tried to sell it for $10.  I even tried Craiglist but not ONE person wanted this poor lamp.

After surfing through blogland, gleaning ideas, I had a lightbulb moment. (I think it may have been when I was painting and spraying everything black).  The lamp had great lines being a jug style and several blogs including Design-a-holic were referring to lamps such as this from Pottery Barn (no longer available):

 

and this French Canister Lamp from Shades of Light

another from Park Designs

and these Park Design milk can lamps from Country Porch

 

And what's a lamp without the perfect shade?  I love the following except for one small detail....
This 18" shade is from Anthropologie and a mere $148...yes that's JUST for the shade!   I do love the graphics of this "All Around The World" lamp shade and surely a creative mind could replicate this style quite simply. 

but I digress... 

Here is what my "apple" lamp has now become...

The lamp shade was found in the clearance area at HomeGoods for a mere $5!  It is fully lined and the style is so perfect.  The lamp is not quite finished as I'd like to add a stenciled number to the body...just not sure which number to choose.  It will come to me in time....perhaps "28" would be fitting since my dh and I will  be celebrating our 28th anniversary this year!?

*I do need to get a taller harp but was too impatient to wait until I bought it before posting.


I leave you with this simple vignette of black and a few of my favorite things.

* edited 11/10/10

I used Krylon black satin spray paint

There's Hope for Me!

If you're new to blogging like I am, you probably have been frustrated at times with various aspects of posting, layout and pictures.  This has been a learning curve for me and very time consuming due to my lack of knowledge.  The wonderful thing about this blogosphere are the wonderful people out there who have taken the time to alert us newbies about the "how to's".  I would like to give a shout out to Susan at BNOTP for her recent blog post about heading tabs. 


I have been trying to do a variety of things to my blog to make it more "me", appealing and friendly.  I now have hope and am slowly succeeding at this.  I finally was able to apply the heading tabs to my blog, use linkwithin that will add those nifty little "you might also like" post pics, buttons for my sidebar, AND add a pic for my title!  The aforementioned was accomplished thanks to Picnik and its easy peasy photo editing.  I have Candy Allen from JMS and  Junk Sophisticate to thank for this information when I was struggling to learn how to resize pics. 
I still need to tweak some pics and blog areas but at least I now have the "know how" to get the job completed.   

Etsy is my next venture which I have been holding off on for some time now.  I have my site up but still have the shop appearance and items to sell that need to be loaded on.  One must have merchandise right!?   I am a visual, hands on learner and thus I'm very suh..low!  My one big hold up is how to figure shipping for each item.  I'm not sure if Etsy helps with that or one needs to weigh each item or both?  I sure would appreciate any help that anyone out there has..a webpage, etsy page or blog that addresses it.

Be sure to check out all the links that I"ve added for your enjoyment, you'll be glad that you did.

Also, I haven't forgotten about posting more of our kitchen remodel...really!  It's just that life has gotten in the way of my blogging.  The great thing about Blogger is that you can draft a post and work on it when you have the time.  I just need the time!   ;)

LOVE words

 there are many ways to say "Love" ...can you count the ways?

 

here's a bit more help...

and

there's  also this way....

flowers from my thoughtful hubby... his way of saying "love"

fuji mums and pink are my favorite!

have yourself a special day of "Love"

~judi ;)

I'm Getting Sentimental Over You

Valentine's Day is almost here so I thought I'd join in on the V-day blogging.  Here are a few little ditties that I found while perusing a quaint little antique shop a few weekends ago.  I'm not one to do much decorating for Valentine's Day as I don't really go for the cutesy, cuddly, heart stuff.  However, find me some vintage cards, tins and records and I'm there!  The prices on these antiquated items were better than my local thrift store, so you can imagine my intense desire to... 

"squeal with delight"!!!

but I didn't  (sigh)

I held my potential outburst to myself, remained calm, nonchalant and paid the nice lady the ridiculous low price that was asked.  Ok, so without being overly verbose, let's get on with the "finds" for my decor.

 

The 45 rpm record in the background was a steal bargain for $.50.  This is one of 3 that was in the window display that she so graciously dismantled for me.  That's $1.50 for three old 45's!

The cookie cutters are from my stock acquired from the estate of dh's grandma.

The tins in the foreground were $3.50 each!  I LOVE the graphics...cute huh!?  The OXO cubes were bouillon for soup stock made in England.   The first cubes went into production in 1910.  Here's an advertisement for them way back when and how they're packaged today.  The cube is a little "x", isn't that sweet!?

Anywoo....here's a little vignette that I pulled together for your enjoyment...

Pay no attention to that man thing behind the curtain hanging out behind the lamp...I guess I could have removed it before taking the pic...oh well.

Here's another staging with the "hugs n kisses" box...it is just too stinkin' cute, dontcha think?!

If you can't read the song titles, here they are in clockwise order:
"Temptation" , "Two Hot for Love", and "I'm Getting Sentimental Over You"
The titles and the color of the records was just "too cool for school" if you know what I mean.  Not only that but the "Temptation" record is sung by that hot American-Italian tenor, Mario Lanza.  He would have been the same age as my dad, if he was still alive.  He was the Josh Groban of the 1940-50's.  I don't know about you, and maybe it's because my dad had a nice tenor voice, but tenors just give me goose bumples.  We had a Placido Domingo song sung at our wedding some twenty-something years ago.  But hey, I'm rambling on here. (sorry)


I also found two sweet little Valentine cards that I have slipped in the edge of my hoosier door.  The graphics & colors of the cards were so great back then. 

 

 Do you love the vintage as much as I do?

Happy Valentines Day to my blogging buds!

~ judi ;)

 

Under Construction

Please bear with me as I revamp my blog background.  This blogging business is all new to me and I have decided I want something that's more 'me'.  So, if you happen to see that my blog has changed 10-20 times in the next few days...you'll know why!  

I got excited today when I learned to "LinkWithin".  This html/java is a new language to me, and when I finally understand it, I will be doing the happy dance!

Thanks for being patient.  ~judi ;)

Kitchen Remodel Part 2

As part of a series, here is Part 2 of The 1829 Farmhouse kitchen project.   This project was started in October 2008 and finished December 2009.  This is our journey.

Here is our carpenter removing the ugly retro pink-speckled counters, 

backsplash and end cupboards 

Our carpenter, Ed, had the toughest time pulling out the end base cupboards as they were built onto the subfloor.  He also removed the huge cast iron sink.  We were originally going to have the sink resurfaced but after some advice decided against it.  The metal trim around the edge of the sink must be carefully removed and it doesn't always go back in correctly.  

Not so bad...we were able to get a black e-granite deep & wide (reminds me of a sunday school song) sink to take its place. LOVE it! (stay tuned for those pics)

Here is the kitchen with ugly retro pink-speckled countertop and backsplash removed. 

  (can you hear the clouds parting and the angels singing?)

Th picture above was taken 12 hours before the hot water turn-off valve decided to spring a leak sometime during the night. (the rubber gasket had a pin-size hole in it)  We awoke Sunday morn to smoke alarms going off around 6am.  This was  a bit of a heart thumper to say the least.  We cleared the cobwebs out of our sleepy heads, gathered our thoughts and realized it wasn't a fire but water hissing.   We carefully opened the stairway door to find that our first floor had  been remodeled into a sauna, which wouldn't be so bad if we hadn't needed a kitchen, diningroom & livingroom!  It was like old faithful had taken up residence in our kitchen.

 

Can you see the bucket in lower left corner of pic?  It was filled with water that covered several power tools left by our carpenter.  After the clean-up company came in and dried everything out, they were still working!  Just amazing.

Steam bubbled up paint overhead near the ceiling

Needless, to say, this put our deadline back another week and right before Christmas.

But with ...

"Every adversity, failure, heartache carries with it the seed of an equal or greater benefit."

~Napoleon Hill

The mess (thankfully) was covered by insurance, required that a portion of the hideous vintage linoleum flooring be removed which in turn led to our beautiful wooden floors (that were lying underneath).

This isn't the recommended way of doing things but alas we didn't have any say in this part of the remodel!

So until next post...