not quite martha

when we were house hunting last december, our realtor was REALLY excited to show us a particular room in our soon-to-be-purchased house. he said that i would just LOVE the little girls room. i was pretty excited to see it too. the previous owners had a little girl so i figured that they must have done an extra special decorating job in her room. boy did they. extra pepto special.

i remember walking into the room and having to take a step back. my eyes were assaulted by fuschia overload. ON EVERYTHING!

the ceiling fan:

the walls:
the ridiculously cutesy lightswitch:
the curtain rod and tie back(not visible):
i HATED it. but we bought the house nonetheless. it's a good house. the perpetual pink problems were all cosmetic. like zitty skin, all the room needed was a facelift.

(scarlett in february at the beginning of the project.)

and for some reason, i thought i was the woman for the job. i took design classes in college, i consider myself an unpaid professional. so i cleaned walls, taped the molding, picked out colors, and ordered bedding. and then the real work began. who was i kidding? i am no perfectionist and this room is evidence of that. i think of my special closet full of half- finished crafts and random projects that i never got around to finishing. it looks like where bad crafts go to die. indeed, a bad craft graveyard. martha would shriek.
the pink paint was nearly impossible to cover even with my tinted primer. i scraped the bottoms of the cans of paint like my life depended on it. i should have purchased more paint. instead, i was tired of painting and considered the job finished. shortly after finishing thomas told me that if i had wanted, i could have hired someone for the job. that was information that would have been useful in january. people who have seen the room probably think i am trying to get all romantical with them since i only show it to them with the lights dimmed. my mistakes are less visible that way.



even with a flawed room, littlebigmouth still loves me.

(this was scarlett yesterday, at the end of the project. yes, all the decor details took me forever to finish. a true labor of love. someday when scarlett is an insolent teenager, i will remind her of this often. and yes, i totally put her in that dress for my little photo shoot so that she would match the room.)

my "theme" was southern belle. someday i will let scarlett pick what she wants to have in her room. that day is not today. and tomorrow looks cloudy too. perhaps when she starts bringing some money to the table i'll let her have opinions.

my little gone with the wind collection. until she can make up her own mind, i am forcing her into being a miniature fan. i sewed that table runner. the objets d'art are covering the mistakes i didn't feel like fixing.
the ceiling fan was probably the hardest thing to paint. it looks terrible. if the fan is on, you don't notice the splotchiness of the paint. i am quite pleased with the black ric rac trim. i am a glue gun extaordinaire.

in this pic, please note the FANTASTIC gone with the wind signage above the closet door. prolly my favorite item in the room. facing the closet is a print of some majestic georgia oak trees. it reminds me of the street we lived on in savannah.
feeling romantical?
you can find ANYTHING on ebay. like this switchplate. and it was only $6! someday i plan on bankrupting our vast fortune on gone with the wind knick knacks. like the cookbook i spied yesterday. or the metal character magnets. and salt shakers. and lamp. and juice glasses. and a handmade version of the infamous red velvet dress marked down to the bargain price of $400. perfect for grocery shopping. i will be the belle of wal-mart and everyone will be vying for me to come through their check-out line. this will be about the same time thomas commits me to the asylum. but frankly i won't give a damn.
in short, (but when i am ever short?) i am hanging up my paint roller. the drop cloths are retired. this was my first and last major painting project. from here on out i will be in supervisory positions only.

the end.

everybody's got their something. these are mine.

mindi (are you guys reading her blog yet? you should be! funnystuff) confessed her guilty pleasures on her blog and i was inspired to share mine. she, of course, had some guidelines to follow like favorite guilty pleasure movie, favorite guilty pleasure food... but i couldn't follow those parameters, so i just made a list of my guilty pleasures, in no particular order:



1. watching burn notice.

it's great. and ridiculous. it's a one man A-team. and it's got gabrielle anwar from wild hearts can't be broken as the sidekick/explosives expert/love interest. so it is sooper great. and ridiculous. and they all carry shiny guns. i would love to whip a gun out of my purse one of these days. i bust out laughing at least once during every episode because of something funny. and it is usually not meant to be humorous.

2. the ORIGINAL beverly hills 90210 in reruns on the soap channel. i never watched this show back when it was in it's heyday. all my little pre-teen friends did, but not me. i was too busy reading. and being a social outcast. a 90210 marathon played over labor day weekend that started from the first episode and i was hooked. i have about 14 episodes in the queue. hurray. the early nineties never looked so good.

3. rereading Gone With The Wind for the bazillioneth time. for reals. i know i should be reading the scriptures, or the ensign or something i haven't read yet, but i can't help it. i especially like to carry around my copy that looks like a gigantic old-fashioned Bible. just to throw off people at the gym. how funny would it be to see someone on an elliptical maching reading a HUGE Bible? that's some serious heavy lifting. maybe that's just funny to me. i just finished reading it again last night. bawled my face off again, but i always cry at different places each time i read it. last night i cried because bonnie dies. i usually don't care too much because she is so ugly in the movie. and i cried because of lovely melanie. have i finally learned to appreciate her? i consoled myself by thinking of ways i would rewrite the final chapter. one version involved a scarlett o'hara/belle watling shootout. (i know they aren't real people. the line between reality and fantasy isn't that blurry over here.)

i also told legaleagle that he needs to grow a rhett butler moustache.



because it totally works on him.
and because it really doesn't work on me.
***and if anyone in the comments section decides to make a comment about how much they hate scarlett o'hara, and how much they like melanie and that i should have named my daughter melanie, you will be dead to me. you and your mother. mark my words.***




4. britney spears. i know what you are thinking. you don't even need to comment. but, have you ever listened to the heartbreak of "lucky"? or the power in "stronger" or the heart-wrenching sadness in "toxic"?

5. mariah carey. i just love her screaching high pitched voice. and her desperate lets-hold-on-to-this-relationship-ballad. and her pseduo-gangsta-ishness. do you know how hard it is to find a picture of her that i am not embarassed to have on my blog?

6. reading blogs of perfect strangers just because they wear fantastic clothes. boring posts=amazing outfits. it's all eye candy.



7. watching anything on E! while i am running on the treadmill. it's amazing how many miles i can put down while watching some of their educational programming. today it was the top 20 young royals. i also like E! news with ryan seacrest and giuliana. it's like i am running and reading a tabloid at the same time.

8. blogging. does it get guiltier than this??? few things accomplish so little and take up so much time and i can't help but LOVE IT! i keep a list with me at all times of things i would like to blog about. you never know when you will be inspired. it is right next to my list of items of clothing i see on other people that i would like to own too.

9. reading obituaries in the newspaper. i find it really heartwarming to hear about all the nice things they accomplished in their lives. it's a tad morbid. i look forward to it. i am already writing my own.

how 'bout you? what's your guilty pleasure?

dear uncle bonecrusher

dear uncle bonecrusher,
my little brood and i would like to thank you for the fun 5 weeks that you were here this summer. we especially enjoyed the last few days as we tried to pack everything that we had not yet accomplished into the few remaining hours of daylight.
el presidente still asks for you each day and he was pretty upset when he discovered that you weren't at the icecreamqueen's house. littlebigmouth hasn't said anything about your departure. that's how choked up she is about the whole deal. legaleagle would sure like your opinion on the byu/washington game.
we hope that you enjoy this semester of school and we can't wait to see you at christmas.

love, me(just a gentle reminder that i am still accepting nickname suggestions.)

the final week with uncle bonecrusher recap-

all summer long, uncle bonecrusher and i had planned on revisiting several places from our childhood in this 'hood we call KCMO. we decided to have the first annual KANSASCITYDAY. we were so busy and had to cram most of the activities into 2 quick days. interestingly enough, one day was nice and warm 85 degrees, while the second day was a surprisingly cool and rainy 58.(thank your hurricane gustav.)

SIN-tennial pool was visited, where most of the bikinis worn were deemed a sin. i mean seriously, being proud of your body no matter how many donuts you ate for breakfast for the last 15 years is one thing, protecting the eyes of the innocent is another. unfortunately, no pictures of that display.

uncle bonecrusher flexing for the camera.
as you can clearly see, we were the two oldest people, by about 15 years, jumping off the diving boards and going down the slides.

can you see my smiling face in this one?
on the way home from the pool...
we decided to drive by the "cave"
the "cave" is our local polygamous cult. see, not just in utah! the cave operates under the guise of being a science academy, when in acuality, it is the residence of our local crazy man who decided he was the new prophet and collected more wives and took his family and went and lived at this compound. the place has a complete absence of spirit. i get chills thinking about it. anywhooo, being the adventurers that we are, we drove to the entrance to take some commemorative pictures.
yikes. double yikes. i triple dog dare you to call the number.(not really, please don't. the thought frightens me.)
uncle bonecrusher was braver than i was. i barely got out of the car to take this picture. when he picked up the phone i was worried that the gates would swing open and we would be dragged inside by their tractor beam and you never would have heard from us again.

moving right along. day 2 of KANSASCITYDAY began with a fun lunch with aunt heather(no nickname yet) at our favorite diner winsteads, home of the skyscraper milkshake.

the weather was so dreary that we had to wear jackets and sweaters. uncle bonecrusher was defiant against the weather and wore shorts.


after lunch we enjoyed shopping in the rain at the plaza(plah-zuh for you pretentious types) and the fantastical and free nelson atkins museum of art, home of the world famous shuttlecock scultptures.

uncle bonecrusher just loves art so he was in heaven. he studied each piece carefully and took the chance to mentor young el presidente in form and beauty very seriously.

posing next to my favorite, water lilies by claude monet. didn't know i was so cultured and refined did ya? i try and keep that part of my life secret since my incredible intellectual acuity tends to alienate the unwashed masses.

uncle bonecrusher and the world's largest bong.

el presidente getting excited at the thought of exhibits on buddhism and impressionist painting.

did i tell you that uncle bonecrusher is thinking of going into animal proctology? he practiced on the brady bunch horse.
so clever. i am the first person to think of doing this.
uncle bonecrusher and el presidente got stuck in the revolving doors.

two great thinkers




russell stover, headquartered in KCMO. please visit. i need another excuse to go to their outlet store.

finally, the gigantic and shiny and new bass pro shop in independence. i felt a little out of place being that i don't even know how skin a buck, let alone run trout line, but they had a fudge shop, so i felt remarkably at home.
bess, the 103 lb catfish.
country folk can survive.
the end. who says kansas city doesn't have any class?