easy crafted hair bow organizer

I made something! Something that didn't require glue dots! It came together so quickly I forgot to take real photos,  so here are just a couple from my phone.  I present to you TC'S new wall hanging hair bow organizer:

 It took less than a half hour to make and and under $20. For the base I used a 17" square canvas from the craft store, I think it was $12 regular so less with the ubiquitous coupons.  The fabric has bright little monsters on it and was $7.99 a yard, I used slightly over half of it.

I pulled it tight and used a staple gun to secure it to the frame. Then I ran three strip of ribbon across the front and stapled them to the frame in back. For extra security I stitched through the canvas and fabric and ribbon in a few places and adorned the stitches with a few beads I had lying around. This keeps the ribbon from bowing under the weight of the clips. Voila!

I'm so pleased! I actually might add more ribbon rows since we filled this up pretty quick, but I love that it is bright, organized, lightweight,  and basically makes functional things into art. Cheap and easy is also a bonus! 

Potties and Procrastination

Awesome Tuesday Accomplishments:

1. Trimmed TC's talons (fingernails AND toenails!)
2. Bought a new toilet seat and installed it all by myself
3. Started entering tags for the next JBF sale (May 10-12 in Woodbury) at which I hope to unload much stuff

All the other stuff on my "to-do" list yesterday? I told it to take a hike. TC was in an EXCELLENT mood, and even had a few rare episodes of cuddliness which severely outranked running errands. My new life has fewer deadlines, or maybe I'm just realizing now that all of life has fewer deadlines - sure, it would be great if I dropped off that load of crap at the consignment shop today...but is it that much worse if I do it tomorrow? I'm not going to be seriously damaged by a little procrastination, and in fact the benefits abound. I got to cuddle with my snookums for OVER AN HOUR which has never happened. She's been in constant motion since she started walking in November, and other than the 5 minutes it takes to read a book, she doesn't like to sit in my lap for long. This morning it was kinda chilly and quiet and gray, and I pulled her up on to my lap  and wrapped her in a blanket and we watched Hulu on my Nook. Yes, I know that's "screentime" for a child under 2, and yes, you are free to judge, but damn it felt great to just veg with her.

Then I chased her around the living room for a few hours, so we got our exercise too :) She was full of laughs, and all the errands can be saved for tomorrow. The only semi-deadline was on the toilet seat, needed to get that situation solved before we had guests again, so MISSION ACCOMPLISHED.

Also: New toilet seat has a magical magnetic potty seat attachment:



Yep, that is my life now - well, will be sometime in the next year or so, so when evaluating all the glorious options in toilet seats these days I figured might as well go for the whole shebang. It "removes easily for cleaning or storage" and magnetically attaches to the lid unless you pull it down specifically, so shouldn't be in the way (and would be way less in the way/icky than having an actual potty chair to empty, so I'm hopeful). Plus it has "whisper close" technology, so it won't slam down like the previous one did. Taking the old one off sucked more than putting this one one, and looking at the disgusting state of my bathroom up close was the most painful.

But I'll save the cleaning for another day.

Romp in the Swamp Louisiana Halloween Party - Gator Farm

This was the last room I decorated, and possibly the most frustrating due to a few mishaps, but in the end I think it came out really cute! It took me a while to come up with the idea, but once I did it all came together pretty quickly. I present the main bathroom: Georgie's Gator Shack!



I replaced the vanity lights with green halogen party bulbs, and wrapped a string of green rope lights around the medicine chest. It was fun to leave the door open and see green light pouring out.



I picked up the burlap at Menards in the garden department - a role was $10 and I used it all, just cut big chunks and draped the walls with it. I primarily used 3M hooks to hold it up, but when the temperature took a nosedive they stopped holding. It was mad frustrating, and I ended up just using green thumb tacks - which worked just fine and only left a few tiny holes.



The vines are from a dollar store, I just poked them through the burlap, and the inflatable gators were tied on with fishing line. The signs were just slapped together in power point - I downloaded a scribbled font from 1001 Free Fonts, and printed them on 11" x 17" paper - had to add a little humor :)



Baby Gators grew in the tub - literally :) These were those tiny animals that grow in water, I found them at Michael's for $1 each. I learned a lesson from my snakes last year and started these guys in a bucket of water a few days before, so they had time to grow much bigger by party day.



Our shower curtain already had green bamboo designs on it, sort of a swampy/bayou effect, especially with the green lights. I've had the gator heads for a few years - they're masks, or really hats, that I found at the Dollar Tree a while back and knew I'd use someday. I had one more sign I forgot to snap a photo of - it said "They think you taste like chicken too." :)



Other than wasting about $40 in 3M strips that didn't hold, the green halogen bulb I broke (immediately after hubby finished cleaning the bathroom top to bottom), and the fact that I'm hormonal and emotional so these two frustrations resulted in tears and moping, this was a pretty simple and effective room!

The Blood-Soaked Bathroom

I'm in a Halloween state of mind again today, starting to feel a little frazzled about pulling off the party I want when I've yet to have a free moment to start planning...but excited nonetheless.

So here are a few more re-caps of last year's decorative elements - this time a room a lot of people ignore, but one that has tons of possibilities - THE BATHROOM!

We have an all-white bathroom, which sounds great at first - you can personalize it to whatever you want - but in reality, it's like a giant blank screen that every little fleck of dirt and hair shows up on. EEW. Though it's nowhere near the top of the list, I'd eventually like to destroy this bathroom and trade it in for one with under sink storage and multi-colored tile.

But around Halloween, it works great! I picked up a few packs of the gel-cling blood splatters, and they stick to tile, mirrors, and as you can see, even the toilet :) They contrast really well on the white, so I thought the effect was pretty cool. Our Medicine cabinet has 4 light bulbs, and at first I replaced all 4 with red bulbs (I get the compact fluorescent "twirly" bulbs at Walgreens, they are AWESOME and don't break like classic light bulbs), but that was too dark and I didn't want to deal with anyone (GUYS) "missing" and have a mess to clean up later - so for the party I alternated red/normal/red/normal.

I found that the really heavy "drips" sometimes wouldn't support their own weight, I picked up the ones I had tried to hang on the glass doors of the basement shower after they peeled themselves off and plunged to the floor - to be covered with carpet fuzz. The smaller drips were fun but straightening and assembling all the pieces got tedious - they're just gel, so they don't hold their shape when peeled off the plastic, they sort of wilt like picking up a piece of jell-o, and you have to arrange all the "legs" of the more splotchy blood spatter. Some of them had what looked like razor blades embedded - these looked so real, but were just a foil paper!



I packed them all back in either their original packaging or on plastic plates wrapped in cling wrap, I'm hoping they are re-usable for many years to come.

I love decorating the bathroom because people are less likely to notice if it's not sparkling when they have something to draw their eye. The low light helps with this as well :) And the bathroom is generally a relatively quiet, solitary place that people can relax and really look around at your details.

Snakes in a tub

This past year I tried to decorate every possible room in the house that people would be mingling in, and of course that included the bathrooms! I was really excited to find these snakes at The Dollar Tree that supposedly grow 300% in water. Unfortunately I didn't read the fine print - they grow to that size AFTER THREE DAYS. Yeah, didn't plan that far ahead and couldn't give up my bathtub that long anyways, but I still tossed them in, and they definitely grew! I drained the tub at the end of the evening and didn't notice till I jumped in the shower in the AM that they leave an invisible and perilously slippery residue behind when they dry out and shrink back to their original size. YIKES! But other than that, it was a cheap and fun way to spice up every inch of the house, and a lot cheaper than buying a big plastic/rubber snake (which is really expensive!)