Living Room Part 1

Portrait Silhouettes

I have been redecorating my living room for about 4 months now. I had in mind to do country style, as it would fit nicely within my log cabin country home. Somehow, I got no where near country. I had an open mind when I started and I just let the ideas flow one into another. I started with a new sea foam green couch, then painted the walls antique Violet, tan and the trim (when I actually get around to painting it) will be off-white.

I will show pictures of the room as a whole when it is done. For now I am just going to share some of the artwork I made for the walls. I tend to do a lot of painting when I decorate. It's cheap and can be used on almost anything. I have a painted rug on the floor, painted doors on my TV stand, a painted antique chest etc. I also tend to use a lot of color. Having lived in a log cabin with log interior, before we added on to the house, I got sick of the dark and brown interior.

I saw these old style silhouettes on a design show recently and thought, huh, those would look good on this part of the wall. One day, while T was watercolor painting, I made these. They were made from photos, cut out then painted. Arthur's profile needs retouching as you can see. I plan on matting them. The background paper is sea foam green and the silhouettes are dark purple, which is hard to tell here.

T Profile

E Profile

Arthur Profile

Cokee Profile

I had one of these done professionally when I was a kid. Here is an interesting history of the Silhouette Portrait.

It's Finally Here!

No, not my Satellite Internet service, PREMIERE WEEK! Every Fall I get soooo excited about premiere week. Ooh the never ending possibilities, ooh the wide eyed wonderment, ooh the naive hopefulness that one day there will be a remake of The Bionic Woman! Ohh, that's not it though, this year I am also doubly thrilled that someone very creative out there has decided to make a show about a crime fighting police officer VAMPIRE! I can ask for nothing more, my dreams are fulfilled.
Well, I could ask for more free time to watch all my favorite shows. I made up a tentative schedule just for this week and it is not looking good. And no I don't have TIVO, I do have a working VCR though, and East and West coast channels through Direct TV. I would get TIVO, but I think I would just end up with the same problem I run into with my VCR. I end up with 2 or more tapes full of shows and I can never catch up. UGH!
If I didn't have to work 3 evenings a week, if I didn't have kids and if I didn't like reading so much, I might have time to really enjoy all my shows.

Here is my tentative schedule for this week:

Key: Old favorites, new soon to be favorites

Monday 9/24 8pm 'How I Met Your Mother', 9pm 'Two and a Half Men', 10pm Journeyman, 1am CSI Miami(tape it)
Tuesday 9/25 Work, Tape the following shows 11pm 'Bones', 12am 'House', watch 1am 'Law and Order SVU'
Wednesday 9/26 8pm watch or tape 'Kid Nation', 9pm 'Bionic Woman', 10pm 'CSI New York', tape 12am 'Criminal Minds'
Thursday 9/27 9pm 'CSI', 10pm 'ER'
Friday 9/28 Work, Tape the following 12am 'Moonlight', watch 1am 'Numbers'

This does not include any new shows on other networks like Bravo's 'Top Design' or any cooking shows( I learned 10 different ways to make macaroni and cheese the other night-priceless).

I Did It, Drama Queen and Bad Mama

I Did It!
I finally ordered Satellite Internet service. It will be delivered and hooked up October 6Th. It was $100 cheaper than what I was quoted when I first inquired and $10 cheaper per month. Wow, I should have played the lottery yesterday too. So look out all you in blogger land, Mama will be visiting more often as I hope it will not take me 10 minutes for each blog. Maybe I will even put a video on my blog. I will also, I mean my kids will also be able to play with their Webkinz now.

Drama Queen
My daughter joined drama for the first time this year. She is in fourth grade and hasn't shown much interest until now. She missed the first class, which by the way are held from 6:30AM-8:00AM Tuesdays and Thursdays, because of my failure to take her to sign up, therefore not knowing when the first class was. Well, she didn't get a part when they were handed out on the second class. She was really upset, called me at work crying and distraught like the world was going to end. I offered my condolences and told her to not give up, if she wanted a part she should show her dedication by showing up each class and get involved somehow with the production. And I also told her that surely someone will drop out when they discover they can't handle showing up for school at 6:30. Sure enough a couple classes later, 2 kids dropped out, 1 of which had a part and the teacher gave it to E! She again called me at work and was so excited, I was sure she must have gotten the lead. Not the lead but a part none the less. She has one line "That's a wrap!" . I am very excited for her. What is also exciting for E is that the play will be performed at a real Theatre, as opposed to the school gym. The teacher promised parts for everyone in the next play to be held at the end of the year in the gym. I am proud of her for sticking to it.

Bad Mama
My husband came home unexpectedly from work one morning because he forgot some tools. I apparently was asleep in the bedroom and didn't hear him come inside the house. T was awake and up out of bed, which I knew because he wakes me when he gets up and keeps waking me about every 5 minutes if I fall back asleep. He says "I don't see you walking". Anyways my hus came in and gave T breakfast and then left. When I called him that afternoon he told me what he did and he accused me of leaving T all alone. I did work the night before and didn't get to bed until 2AM. It takes me all I have to get out of bed sometimes, so on the days my hus takes E to drama on his way to work I usually sleep until T wakes me. Well, I felt guilty, what kind of mother leaves their 4 year old unattended (in the next room) while they sleep? So after I hung up with my hus I thought about it for a few minutes and called him back and turned things around. "What if I had a stroke or heart attack and was just lying in bed unconscious or I was dead and you left me there all day?" My hus said "Oh yeah, I didn't think of that" and I said, "what about you falling asleep on the couch while the kids are awake, a bomb could go off and it wouldn't wake you" and he said "I don't sleep on the couch" HA!

Satellite Internet

I am going to do it. Next Thursday, payday, I am going to order Satellite Internet service. It's the only high speed Internet available in my area. I have put it off because of the expense, I didn't want to take the money from savings so I have been slowly saving up for it. The monthly cost will only be around $25 a month more but the initial cost will be around $300. I am a part time nurse so must save for anything that expensive and I am not a charging kind of person. Well, just a little.
The phone company is promising DSL to 90% of Vermont by 2010. I can't wait that long, I am going insane with this slow dial-up. Loading, loading,loading,loading........2hours later.....loading...You get my drift. And I am sure I will be in the 10% of Vermonters who never have it available!
I would like to know if any of you have Satellite Internet or know of anyone who has it and what you/they think of it.
Thanks

Nine Going on Fifteen

What happened to my sweet little baby girl? The one who used to like to wear pretty dresses and let me do her hair? The one who used to come running to me when I would pick her up from pre-school? The one who would talk for hours non-stop? So much so that I would have to ask her, beg her for some quiet time. She's still there, I know she is, living somewhere perhaps not so deep inside my sweet big girl or trapped in the pages of my scrapbooks. She's the one who won't wear dresses or let me do her hair and now who now gives me attitude instead of kisses when she comes home from school. The one who keeps secrets from me because she shares them with her girlfriend instead. Sometimes, especially right before falling asleep at night, that little girl returns. Maybe it's because she's tired she lets her guard down, or maybe because at this time I can really focus and listen to her and her alone, that at night sometimes she comes back to me.

She is a big girl now, all of 9 years old, going on 15. She used to have pictures of kitty's on her wall and hearts and frilly little girl things. She couldn't go to sleep without her ballerina music box playing. Now she begs to stay up later so she can watch another teeny bopper show and her walls are covered with posters of her favorite idols. She has a best girlfriend who she talks to on the phone about school and TV shows and whatever 9 year old girls talk about everyday. She even went to her first real teeny bopper concert a few weeks ago.

E tries to be a good girl and I try to be a good mom, but it's not easy. We can become easily frustrated with each other and while I am supposed to be the adult, sometimes she can bring me down to her level without much effort. I try to empathize by remembering how hard it can be for a kid, all the pressure of schoolwork, relationships and especially new feelings, body changes, bullies and extra curricular activities can make them tired and decrease their ability to control themselves. Same goes for mama's, especially the tired part. I yell a lot more when I am tired, it only makes sense.

The pictures above were taken of E's bedroom when it was in the loft. We recently had to move her to a room closer to our bedroom because she "can't sleep soo far away" from us. I guess she is not such a big girl after all.

Just for fun, and because I like flashbacks, here are some of mama's teen idols.

The Good,the Bad and the Ugly...Hair Pt7 Finale

When I was 17, I moved from Massachusetts to California with my friend Stefanie. She was from LA so she wanted to move back. I went with her to keep her company and because I thought that if I stayed home with my parents I was sure the CRAZY would suck my soul away and I would lose my mind.
Stef did her best to keep the crazy away from me. However, being that I was a teenager without any goals at the time, a different kind of crazy found me. I could write several pages on the short time I spent in California, but this is a hair post. Maybe I will write more about those days another time.

This is no faux-hawk this is the real thing people. I would shave my head Friday nights after work and by Monday it would look like this. On weekends I frequented a club called Fenders , somewhere in Los Angeles,where they had local punk bands play. I also went into the Pit once to slam dance. Only once because at the time I weighed under 100lbs and kept getting knocked over. The people in the pit were nice enough to pick me up, but I was scared I might actually get injured.
Well, now you know my favorite hairdo of all time. I also still love punk rock music. Maybe one day I will give myself another Mohawk.

"I'm not crazy...institution... your the one that's crazy...institution!"...Suicidal Tendencies

The Good,the Bad and the Ugly...Hair Pt6

I have posted everyday for 6 days and I have one more hairdo surprise for tomorrow. It has been fun, but I will probably have to go back to just once a week posting. We will see.

This funky flip hairdo is apparently from 1983 which is time stamped in the corner of the right picture. Of course it is a bad replication of the famous Farrah Fawcett flip. I used to love Charlie's Angels.

These pictures were taken while I was on a trip to Texas visiting family. I wasn't really drinking beer. And that is the one and only time I ever wore a cowboy hat.

I just noticed the tie which was made up of different color ribbon like strings tied together. Anyone remember those?

Oh, and how many of you had braces? I had to wear the ridiculous headgear prior to having mine. What a Dork, E would say. When they finally were taken off I was supposed to wear a retainer. I didn't like that at all. Once on another family vacation to Florida, I left it in the hotel room hidden under the mattress. OOPs. Too late to go back when I finally admitted I had "forgotten it" half-way home!

The Good,the Bad and the Ugly...Hair Pt5

I have always liked this picture of me. I would of course like it better if my hair wasn't 2feet tall. And it is quite frizzy. My hairstyle these days is pretty similar only much less tall and much healthier.

I think I made a mistake when I wrote that the first hairdo I posted was from the late '80's. This in fact was my hair in the late '80's. The other was a few years later. I remember having this and other black and white photos taken of me by a friend who was taking a photography course. I was majoring in fine art. I wanted to be an artist, painter, sculpter etc. But after I graduated changed my mind. Mostly because I just didn't think I was good enough. Maybe I was, maybe I wasn't. Now I just mostly do crafty things and I am good at that.

Recent conversation with my husband regarding this photo:

Hus: "Are you going to put that picture out?"(I was holding it and also a frame)
Me: "Yeah, why? You don't like it?"
Hus: "It's a bit scary"
Me: "What do you mean?"
Hus: "Your hair"
Me: "When I first showed you this picture many years ago, you said I look pretty, so if you say I look pretty in a new photo, maybe your just saying that?"
Hus: "Of course I think you are pretty, I think your beautiful, I love you"
Me: "Alrighty then"

He can really turn things around, can't he? Pretty slick.

The Good,the Bad and the Ugly...Hair Pt4

I really am hesitant to post this picture. I am not sure why it bothers me more than the rest. Maybe because it is the most recent (7 years ago) one I have posted. And I think I should have known better. Confession: Sometimes I cut my bangs TOO short! And WTF? Is that a SKORT? (Hey that sounded like a Dr Seuss Rhyme) What was I thinking. I guess I was going through a "I want to look like a normal clean cut mama"? And it's any ones guess what color that is. Loreal #24,357,890,787.54?

Sorry I can't show my little mini-me. Hus would be upset. She also has bangs which are too short and also crooked, but her natural color. I think she is around 2years old in this picture. I was doing Weight Watchers at the time and had lost most of my E weight. I had gained 10 back by the time I got preggo with T. And I am not saying how much I gained while pregnant and that I still haven't lost it! Needless to say, this may be the most recent picture you see until I join WW again...

Or let my bangs grow.