Liberace Pumpkin–2011

You may or may not have seen my Liberace pumpkin from last year. I was pretty new to blogging. It’s okay if you missed it. It started from a sweet little pumpkin I spied outside my bathroom window.

It was a trash pumpkin growing behind the neighbor’s shed. It WANTED to live with me, so I stealthily stole across the lawn and hoped no one saw me, erg, I mean I marched, bold as brass, right up to the fence and liberated the pumpkin. Liberating led to Liberace and you can read about it on last year’s Liberace post if you missed it.

The sweet little pumpkin lasted well past Halloween. In fact, it was going strong still at Thanksgiving. It would have lasted to Christmas, if I had let it. I pulled out all the pins from the pumpkin and put them in a baggy for this year.

See, I’m a smart girl. I remember that it took a lot of time to Liberace up that pumpkin. I also remember it hurt my fingers to pull them all out again. I have plenty of beads and sequins. I didn’t HAVE to save them. It just goes to show how deep that whole frugal thing runs in my veins.

Being the smart girl that I am, I decided that Liberace needed to be a faux pumpkin and not a real one, much as I loved my little cutie from last year. By the way, I saved the stem, hoping to use it to make a velvet pumpkin, but I haven’t gotten to that project yet.

I used an extra pumpkin I had from last year. It’s the twin to my Faux Mercury Glass Pumpkin, which is still getting some blog love.

I painted some copper and fairy tale blue paint onto the pumpkin.

You can see that the colors are off. The pumpkin is more coppery, while the sequins are more orange. It all works out in the end, though. Trust me.

I wore a leather golf glove to protect my thumb this year and shoved the pins, willy-nilly like into the pumpkin. I did pull out my jewelry wire snips to cut the pins shorter so there was less to force into the pumpkin.

Without further ado, here is the new, and improved, Liberace Pumpkin.

She how she sparkles and shines in the sunlight? She’s such a show-off!

I love the little pops of color from the beads. I left the metal leaves off the pumpkin because she’s pretty enough without them. I may use them on my velvet pumpkin.

Even though I love to take pictures on this plant stand by the window, the pumpkin is really living on my piano, across the room.

I’ll give you a better glimpse of the room tomorrow. For today, let’s just enjoy the 2011 (and forevermore) Liberace Pumpkin.

Oh, one more thing. I almost forgot the most important part. Since I had all the supplies in my stash, this little pumpkin was FREE! Cuteness I can enjoy year after year, at no cost! That makes me a very happy girl.

Suesan

Our Own Campground

When Hubs and I were married, I knew I was getting a camper. We basically spent our honeymoon at a Boy Scout Camp. That was my first clue that camping was going to be a part of our life.

How convenient for us that our new home came with its own campground.

We spent this last weekend cleaning up the area to get ready for a party we are having this coming weekend.

The shed on the left was a horse barn at one point, but it’s basically empty now. It’s now used as a serving area for gatherings.

Everything here was left by the owners. I love this guy.

Being on 12 acres that is mostly wood, it is good to have a burn area to deal with all the fallen limbs and wood that is always around.

We cleaned up the Adirondack chairs, but they’ll need a new coat of paint in the Spring.

There’s always something interesting to see out here. I’m sure these flowers are some sort of weed, but I love their pretty purple petals.

There was an old outhouse down here, but Hubs knocked it down and plans to rebuild it. He’ll make the new one a single seat. The old one was a double-seater. I can NOT ever imagine a situation in which I would want to share an outhouse experience with someone. Ever.

There is also a horseshoe pit. I raked the leaves out the way, but I’ll have to do it again on Saturday if anyone wants to play.

We also have a volleyball net. Which reminds me, we need to try to find the volleyball, although I think there are a couple around here.

See that stack of 2x6’s between the two trees? Also, look at the trees just to the left of the barn, near the center of the photo. I’ll come back to those trees in a minute, but first, Hubs had a plan for some of that treated lumber.

On Sunday, I took a nap and when I woke up, Hubs and the boys had built a picnic table. Since we had nearly all the hardware, it cost us about $6 for some bolts.

That man is awesome!

Okay, so those trees I pointed out? Here’s what we did with those.

This was a totally free project. The rope was in the shed. We sent Kiddo up a ridiculously tall ladder to get the rope up on the branches we wanted it. I couldn’t watch. It makes me sick to my stomach to see my people in precarious situations.

The seat was a scrap of treated wood. I asked Hubs to make the seat wide enough for me. While I am not THAT wide, I certainly appreciate the room. It was so fun to swing on this. It’s on a hill so you swing out over the down side of the hill and it feels like you’re flying.

Katie loves it, but she was a little nervous at first.

On Monday night, we took our dinner down to the campground to test out the new picnic bench.

Don’t let that exasperated look fool you. Kiddo loves me taking his picture! (That’s my story, and I’m sticking to it.)

He’s growing so fast. He’s hovering somewhere between 6’1” and 6’2”. I’m convinced he’s passed Hubs up, but he’s not even 14 yet, and Hubs does not want to accept that Kiddo may be taller.

I can’t believe Buddy is 16 tomorrow! He was very interested in building up the fire. I asked him not to get carried away with the fire. This is his “Who Me? Get carried away with fire?” look. Note the lighter in his hand. He’s not that innocent.

Yeah. This isn’t carried away at ALL. He chucked that giant log onto the fire. I think it’s still smoldering down there.

We sang some campfire songs before we called it a night. It was a great weekend playing in our yard.

I’m sure we’ll have the scouts campout down here before the year is out. I told Hubs I want to turn this into a Glampground.

Wouldn’t one of these look great down here? It might just make me want to campout if I had this to sleep in.

Source: luxuryvacationsource.com via FrouFruGal on Pinterest

 

Suesan

Ohio Fall & Front Door Update

It’s a beautiful day again in my neck of the woods.

Fall has come to Ohio. I was walking to the house yesterday and I couldn’t help but notice how pretty the trees are right now. This is the view from my house.

Here’s another view.

With the lovely weather, you’d think that I could be out enjoying it. Most of yesterday was spent inside painting the house. But in the morning, I worked on the front door.

Here’s where we are today.

The color on the door and side lights is an oops color. It was supposed to be the color of the house, but I grabbed the wrong paint swatch. Since I didn’t want to buy more paint, I went ahead and used it for the door and side lights.

What I really want is this (if only painting were as easy as Paint.NET):

It’s a color Baby Girl and I like to call Ugly Yellow. So ugly it’s cute. Actually this color is not quite Ugly Yellow, which is more of a dried mustard color. We have dark green shutters, so all the colors all go well together. Maybe in the Spring, we’ll shoot for a brighter color.

For now, I’m elbow deep in paint with my kitchen, living room, office and Kiddo’s room all waiting for their turn with my brush. Oh, and the master bedroom also needs to be painted.

The kitchen is looking good. It’s amazing how much a simple change in paint can alter a whole space. You only need to look at that yellow door to see what I mean.

I still need to scrape paint off of glass. I’d much rather scrape paint than tape off all those squares. While I’m scraping, at least I’ll have a great view.

Have a great weekend.

Suesan

The One in Which I Make a Desk Out of Closet Doors

In our new home, we have room for an office for both Hubs and me, which is great, but caused a need for a new desk. I had been using the desk we got from Hubs’ grandfather, but the desk was too tall for me and I never really liked it. Hubs is using the desk in his office, so I needed something for my space.

I work from home, so I have an office/craft room/Mom Cave. I wanted a space for work and projects.I got creative with some doors that we found in our new home.

With all the expense of moving, I forced myself to be creative (read: I didn’t want to spend any money). There were a couple of 6-panel doors that were left in the house. I think they are supposed to be for the closet in Katie’s bedroom, but they don’t fit. They are solid wood and would be perfect for what I needed. 

Enter these tables. Our neighbor sold us these tables at the beginning of summer. We bought 4 of them for $20. You can see the tops are in bad shape, but the hardware was all good.

The tables are 8’ long. I didn’t need them that long and my doors are not as wide as the tables were, but like Tim Gunn says, I thought I could “make it work.”

The first step was to remove all the old hardware.

I’m surprised more church bazaars and spaghetti feeds don’t end in table-crashing disasters because the screws that hold this stuff in are very short. Particle board may be heavy, but it doesn’t take much effort to break it apart. Note the missing chunk out of the corner.

It took me about 10 minutes to remove all the screws from the old tables. It was hard moving these heavy tales and doors around by myself, but my menfolk were gone and I wanted this project done.

With the hardware removed, it was time to start building. I needed to measure the parts to see how they’d fit on the new tables. The leg braces were too wide, but a hack saw took take care of that problem. I taped some duct tape around the end of each piece to mark where I would cut.

The only reason I used Duct Tape was because I could find it at the time. We still had most of the tools still in boxes at this point. Easy to find was a top priority. Plus, it was bright yellow, so it was easy to see.

I cut off the yellow end of the leg brace. Hacking away on metal in the heat was the hardest part of this job.

I used a square to mark where the new brace would go. Again, there was no other reason for using a square other than it was right there in the garage in plain sight. No digging around for a tape measure was required.

I placed the hardware on the door against my mark and screwed it in. Easy Peasy.

One of the tables had a clip on the end to hold the legs against the table when it’s folded up. I didn’t really need it, but decided to put it on since I had it.

That’s it. I made two desks in about an hour.

I have two pieces of glass that a former tenant left behind in our Utah home, that I was smart enough to haul out to Ohio with us. The Gods of DIY smiled upon me, since this glass is the exact same width as the doors. It gives me two sections of smooth work space.

Eventually, I’ll pay to have glass cut to fit the whole top, but this works for now.

I have the two desks configured in an L-shape in my office. I still want to build some shelves and actual storage under the desk. I needed to use the tables now, though, so in the meantime,  have a couple of plastic drawers that hold office and sewing supplies.

I have big plans for Office/Mom Cave. When I get my room in better shape, I’ll be sure to show you my plans..

Cost Breakdown:

• 6-panel Doors – Free
• Table Hardware – $10

Total Project Cost: $10

Have you built anything lately?

Suesan