Pillows!

Thanks to the boss at work...I ended up with the perfect idea for a new color scheme/pillow combination for the living room.

And thanks to Mom G-K's superb sewing skills...my plan became a reality!

As a housewarming gift, Julie purchased some awesome place mats for us (among other things). She suggested that they'd make great pillows and that she'd seen it done before with the exact same place mats.

Great work Mom G-K! Thank you!!!!

Back Stairs - Completed (sort of)

Long time...no blog!

Well here's an update for you.

Michael (finally) finished re-building the stair outside our back door. It looks great too!

Only thing missing is paint to match the rest of the staircase.

I'm impressed. I'll be more impressed when there's PAINT. I suppose it's just a detail though....

Update on the Gourds

I tossed the suckers the other night. They were bad-looking clutter. Dust catchers if you will.

I also purchased some pumpkins made out of twigs a few weeks back. I was thinking...sort of fall-ish without being overly fall-ish. Turns out they shed little twigy pieces everywhere and I don't like holiday decor. What a realization! After sitting on our dining room table for a month, I returned them. Typical.

I hate clutter (aka stuff.) Enough said.

Fall Wreath

As you all know, I typically associate wreaths with Christmas. Being Jewish, I never really considered the idea of having a wreath on my front (or back) door. Growing up, we got creative with "door decorations." There was the "Blank Door," void of all decoration. The year of the Fall-ish leaves as "door decorations." And then there was the year (or was it years) of the always famous "Hanging Ears of Dried Corn" as door decoration. This decoration served several purposes; to feed the squirrels and chipmunks, to alert us to someone coming though the door, and my personal favorite, as a constant source of ammunition for both neighborhood and family mockery.

To get to the root of our whole disdain for wreaths, we have to travel back in time to when we were living in San Mateo. One day Dad K arrived home from one of his many trips with a "gift" for Mom G-K. I say "gift" because we weren't quite sure if he thought this gift was supposed to be received with great surprise and happiness or rather, with shock and horror. Let's just say, it wasn't received with a smile and a great big "THANK YOU, I LOVE IT" reaction. Let me take a moment to describe this "gift" to you. It was a wreath. One of the ugliest things I've ever seen in my whole life. (Sorry Dad K, but it's true.) It was made from dried leaves. Mixed in with the leaves, towards the bottom of the wreath, was a rather oversized stuffed hand. Yes, you read that correctly. No one would allow said "gift" to be hung anywhere in any public space in the house. We (us kids at the time) wanted that "thing" as far away from us as possible. Just think...that hand could potentially attack us in our sleep! HUGE STUFFED HAND! So...the wreath lived in Mom and Dad K's bedroom. It moved from bookshelf, to office chair, until one day, Rajah attacked that wreath. He knew it had no place in our home, so he tore it apart, shredding that hand, ensuring we wouldn't have to live in fear of that wreath for one more day! Victory over "The HAND!" Thank you Rajah Boy! I hope there's an endless supply of rawhide bones and doggies to listen to you bark your head off up there in doggie heaven. You deserve that much!

Anyhow...the point is, what does one do with a blank door? Put a wreath on it of course? What's more welcoming than a wreath? Something seasonal, but not Christmasy. Hmmmm....time to get creative!


I purchased this at AC Moore:


And turned it into this:


All I used was a glue gun and wait for it...coffee filters! 179 coffee filters to be exact. Oh and a recycled ribbon from my gift wrap stash. Add in a front door and here's what you get!





What do you think? Should I add a giant stuffed hand to it? Dad K, what do you think?

Raking...Raking...and More Raking...

Last weekend we spent most of Saturday raking the yard. Fun times! No really though, great excuse to be outside and burn a few calories in the process. The main reason for this "must rake this weekend" attitude was that the town picks up yard waste twice each fall and we were about to miss our pick-up opportunity. Since we don't have a pass to the yard waste dump, we didn't want to miss out. Here's a little glimpse of our experience.

Our day started like this...
The husband told me to get out of bed because we needed to get to work on the yard. He got dressed and went downstairs. I followed, went straight to the "mud room" put on my coat, shoes, (and gloves!)...and headed for the great outdoors. After about 30 minutes of raking I started to wonder why it was that I was outside all alone. Interesting! I went inside and discovered that the husband had parked himself in his usual spot on the sofa with a mug of coffee, dirty breakfast plate discarded on the tray, and his sock covered feet resting comfortably on the ottoman. I just stood in the doorway for a few minutes taking in the sight, wondering what on earth he was doing "relaxing" when he made me get up early, not to mention why he hasn't offered me any breakfast. How rude! Finally he looked up and said, "There you are, where have you been?" To which I responded, "Don't you remember how you told me I had to hurry up and get outside so that WE could rake the yard? Well I've been outside raking!" Blank stares followed this exchange. I turned around and went back outside. A few minutes later, someone followed me outside.

You can imagine how the rest of the morning went.




Here he his acting like he did all the work. Not so my friends. Not so! Lazy.


For the record, the whole yard is covered in leaves once again.
sigh.