Welcome to my first video how-to! (Do I have to tell you how much I hate my voice?) This is a tutorial on one of the most common problems in everybody’s house: a leaky toilet that’s constantly running. This is such a super easy problem to fix. Anybody can do it!
It is time at our Elementary School for the semi-annual book fair. Which I hate. And not just because we are on a very limited budget and the last thing I want to be spending money on is the hardcover version of Super Diaper Baby. I’m just playing; Super Diaper Baby only comes in paperback. I’m serious about not liking the book fair.
I don’t get how Scholastic totally nails it with dandy cheap books in the book orders, but turns the book fair into a super deluxe full-priced book store (that they have the audacity to suggest I work at). Yeah, it’s some sort of fund raiser. I get it. At least this way we’ll have books to show for our contributions to the school and not vile cookie dough.
But this jumps to the conclusion that I want a hard-cover copy of Pinkalicious. I don’t. I really don’t. I am extremely picky when it comes to the books my children read (my husband, not so much. Which explains why we actually own Super Diaper Baby. I made the foolish mistake of sending Jasper to the book fair with Daddy last year. And now said book is hidden because once Mister read it he was appalled that the title character actually battles a giant poop. I’m all, “Duh. What did you think it was going to be about? Tea parties?”)
There are some really great books at the book fair. I’m not knocking Scholastic. But unlike a book store or Amazon where I can pick out what I think is appropriate for my children, at the book fair they are dancing around with some sort of Poodle Princesses nonsense, begging and pleading and writhing on the floor that they will never be happy without this book.
But, as usual, I have to play mean witch stern mother and tell my kids no. “No, Ada, I just bought you two books for your birthday nine days ago.” That doesn’t matter because everybody has rich mothers who buy their children everything they want from the book fair. At least that’s what my children say. I’m so wretched I won’t even buy the $5 Justin Bieber poster.
There is all this peer pressure to buy, buy, buy.
I am getting severely tired of this so I’ve taken matters into my own hands. Here are a couple of books that I “bought at the book fair”. I’m sure my kids will be thrilled!
Last week amid the birthdays and lice and Easter preparations, Mister and I escaped to the Round Top Antiques Fair. I always write about this because it’s so completely great; when are you guys going to believe me and go yourselves? Who cares that it’s the middle of nowhere in Texas? Tori Spelling made it out last year! You should too!
This time my main shopping trip was to Marburger Farm–which is one small part of Round Top. I think Marburger has the best items and displays, hand-down. Keep in mind that this takes place in the middle of a 40-acre field. There are several giant tents set up, but there is no paving or air con. Despite this the sellers do a fantastic job making their booths look gorgeous. This is especially amazing considering how many of them come from around the country.
Marburger also has wifi and nice Kohler bath trailers (with actual toilets!) so it’s not completely primitive. These were some of my favorite things that I came across. (Not nearly as kitschy and oddball as the flea marketish parts of Round Top.)
I thought the shells were nice but an actual zebra head? That’s kind of a niche market.
Of course.
Because who hasn’t thought, “you know what this mantel needs? A turtle shell.”
Have you ever seen so much Ironstone in one place? I haven’t. I noticed a really pretty cake stand that I thought I might splurge on until I took a look at the price tag.
$1600 for a cake stand??? For that price I expect it to be painted with the tears of 18th Century Chinese concubines. I think I’ll stick with the ceramic version from Pier One that costs 97% less.
Also pretty but way too expensive:
Antique napkin rings. At between $150-$200 each this lady has sunk a lot of money into inventory. And think of all the polishing! Oy! I don’t even own any cloth napkins. I think that officially makes me tacky.
So no, I didn’t buy much at my trip to Round Top. But let me tell you, it is the best window shopping on Earth. So mark your calendars; the next fair will be October 3-7.
To find out more about Round Top, you can read my post from the last fair here.
If you remember the 70s and 80s very well you’ll recall the popularity of The Blonde. Farrah Fawcett, Olivia Newton John, Christie Brinkley, Jessica/Elizabeth from Sweet Valley High, and pretty much every smiling face in Seventeen Magazine was a girl with shiny blonde hair. The brunettes in the media were represented by Joanie on Happy Days or Sabrina on Charlie’s Angels or Janet from Three’s Company; none of whom were particularly pretty or smart or spunky. (Chrissy had flaxen ponytails and short shorts but Janet had a disgusting mullet and boring dresses with pantyhose. So unfair!) All I can guess is that the brunette was supposed to be the “normal” person whose job was to make the blondes look more fantastic. (Yes, eventually Jaclyn Smith showed up on Charlie’s Angels but by then I had a pre-teen girl crush on Cheryl Ladd.)
Then there was Barbie. I always hoped for a brunette version but Mattel decided that nobody would want to play with a brown-haired doll. I was forever trying to dye my Barbies’ hair (Brown crayola markers do not work well, FYI). Sometimes I would just get sick of those golden inches and I’d chop it all off.
One day I was at the mall waiting for my mom outside of my all-time favorite store, The Canary and The Elephant, which sold a broad assortment of gaudy 80′s plastic jewelry. (My favorite piece was a big silver bracelet with plastic ice cubes hanging from it. I was the belle of 8th grade, take my word for it.) I had been watching all the blonde girls go by (although this was Michigan. There can’t have been that many. Heaven help me if I’d lived in California or the nation’s capital of blondness: Utah.)
When my mother showed up I wistfully told her how I wished I were blonde. She stopped dead and looked into my eyes. You’d have thought I’d just announced I wanted to pursue a life of prostitution. “You don’t ever want to be blonde.” She said slowly. “Do you have any idea how terrible they look without makeup? So washed out. There is nothing worse than a blonde first thing in the morning.” She thought for a moment before continuing. “They look like they have no eyelashes and sometimes no eyebrows! A blonde without mascara looks horrible. They aren’t lucky enough to have well-defined eyes like us. No. Be thankful that you were born with brown hair. A striking complexion will win the day every time.”
And with that we walked out the door into the Detroit slush.
Her testimony of the superiority of brunettes stuck with me. It blossomed until I didn’t try to peroxide my hair anymore. I rolled my eyes at the yellow-haired girls on the TV screen. “I know what you really look like,” I said to them. (I was completely unaware that most blonde adults color their hair anyway.)
I love my brown hair. I mean, it’s not as great as red. That’s my dream hair. But it least I can skip the mascara sometimes.
And although I hate Bella from Twilight, I was thrilled to finally find a Barbie that has my coloring.
My birthday yesterday was glorious. Nothing terribly exciting happened other than that I ate so much delicious food, which is really the whole point of a birthday. And I got some lovely presents and laughed a lot.
The birds seemed especially chirpy, the clouds were extra billowy and the wildflowers looked gorgeous. I shall assume it was all for me. April is the best month for a birthday!
Last year I made this pin for my friend Tamara. She’s very modest about her birthday so I thought it would be perfect to announce it to everyone. She loaned the pin to me yesterday. And not coincidentally I was offered free dessert twice. (Of course I said yes!) Although I did spend the first couple of hours replying in an amazed voice, “how did you know???” until I remembered that I was wearing a giant ribbon announcing the fact.
My sister made me the cutest little herb garden set. She claims not to be crafty at all but look how adorable this is! I can hardly wait for the seeds to bloom.
Did any of you read The Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother? The author is an overbearing perfectionist who, for her birthday, receives some handmade cards from her elementary-school-aged daughters. She decides that the cards aren’t good enough and that her children haven’t put enough thought into them so she throws the cards back at the girls and demands that they redo them. Yikes! Who wants a gift that has to be forced and coerced (her, apparently). My kids did a lovely job with the cardmaking so there was no need for me to toss them back in their faces, lucky them!
You should wish me a happy birthday. I want to have lots of comments because today I turn the not so magical age of 41. You can do that for me, can’t you? Especially all the foreign readers; you are very tight-lipped.
It used to be that I’d wait around for people to make my birthdays spectacular. Like everyone was just wracking their brains trying to think of ways to celebrate my birthday. But this is the thing I didn’t really understand: nobody cares about my birthday even remotely as much as I do. (And I care about it a lot.) I lucked out by having an amazing husband who almost always plans a fantastic birthday for me but it’s usually in the evening. The daytime is for friends, relatives or whoever happens to be around.
Now I just plan what I want to do and invite everybody along. And guess what? It’s a lot funner than sitting around getting my feelings hurt because my friends can’t read my mind.
So happy birthday to me! Donuts, BBQ and much sugar will be consumed.
Over the last week I have had about a quatrillion things going on in my life including volunteering at three schools (which I generally avoid because it pushes me to my limits), all sorts of church meetings, prom dress shopping, drivers license tests requiring two separate trips to the DMV (But I now have a child who is legal to drive! All I have to do is cough up an extra $100 per month for insurance!), book club, track meets, helping Mister make breakfast for the entire ward (homemade waffles with two kinds of homemade syrup), doing all the Easter crap and celebrating Ada’s birthday.
Oh yes, and I spent four hours picking nits out of people’s hair because ALL MY CHILDREN HAVE LICE. (OK, not India. She’s cured). I also did the treatment where everyone’s hair is doused in olive oil and wrapped in plastic wrap. They must sit like this for three hours. And then everyone has to wash their hair two or three times to get all the oil out. And then nits must be picked. Basically, it was the worst Friday night I’ve ever had in my life. I was done with life by the time I went to bed.
Poor Ada had her birthday the next day. Because I could not get my act together after my long and gruelling week, I did not make a special lunch for her. She picked Chick-Fil-A as her meal of choice (We have started ordering the 64 pack of chicken nuggets for our family. It’s a little surreal). I also didn’t make a special dinner. Instead I got chips, salsa and creamy jalapeno dip from Chuy’s Tex Mex. Ada doesn’t even like Chuys. But I do.
I did not even make a cake. I actually took my kids to the cupcake shop and had everyone pick out a cupcake. I can’t get over how loserish I feel about this. Pretty much like the worst/laziest/most selfish mother ever. I simply could not muster up the energy. To my credit, though, I made rainbow cupcakes from scratch for Ada to take to school the day before.
And then there was Easter.
Something about the Resurrection makes people want to eat pork. Everyone here was so insistent about not wanting ham, though. They’re entirely sick of it, it appears. So I made this instead. Nothing says Easter dinner like bacon.
I ran another trillion errands today. My kids had a five day weekend and are finally going back to school tomorrow. I love them but they get on my nerves when they’re covered in blood-sucking bugs. The good news is that the olive oil and high-quality lice comb have worked beautifully so they’re off to school in the morning!
Today is the 7th birthday of my youngest girl, Adelaide Amelia Clementine. For her birthday she asked for a skateboard, a Texas Longhorns T-shirt, new tennis shoes, and a basketball hoop that is more her size. Can you say tomboy? (Sweet shot, Ada!)
Finn, on the other hand, did not want to try out the skateboard or even attempt a basket. This is what he did instead.
Not sure what to make of all this. Maybe that my kids do have one thing in common: they’re all strange.
My MacBook Air is pretty much my best friend. We spend a lot of time together, even when he quit speaking to me a few weeks ago. After reinstalling software, zapping the PRAM and all sorts of miscellaneous tasks, my speakers and headphone jack refused to turn on. The mute button on my computer was grayed out and simply wouldn’t work.
So I combed the internet for answers; always a daunting task. Mostly it was a bunch of people complaining about the same problem and no solutions. Finally I found a guy in Siberia (no joke) who said the sound cable in the MacBook Air is notorious for being rotten. And I could either pay $200 to get it fixed or try to do it myself.
I do not have $200 laying around, so I uttered the dreaded phrase: “how hard could it be?” I always pick the DIY option even when it’s foolish. It’s in my DNA. Although let’s face it, there is a lot more that can go wrong with fixing a computer than hanging a towel rack.
I found a great online site called ifixit that provides not only computer parts, but marvelous tutorials on how to replace each part that you buy. They also have a huge Q&A forum of various computer problems and how people have fixed them. According to the website, replacing an audio cable is not all that hard. I was a little skeptical since I’m so feeble at computery things that I can’t even get the printer to work half the time.
But I payed $30 for a new audio cable and a spudger (a weird little plastic tool that is incredibly handy when fixing computers) and had them in my nervous little paws within three days.
Mister is getting up there in years so his eyesight is currently in need of bifocals. Which he doesn’t have. He also doesn’t have dainty little fingers that are just wonderful at getting into little nooks and crannies. So I was left to do the repair myself. I made sure to do it when he wouldn’t be around to breathe over my shoulder and act all expert-y.
Opening up a computer is one of the most daunting things I’ve ever done. I can’t imagine being more stressed if it had been a human being lying on the table in front of me. There are so many scary little wires and pieces and . . . stuff! How computers were ever invented, I’ll never know. There was a horrifying moment when I realized one of the teensy, tiny screws was already stripped (thanks Apple repair guys!) but I said a prayer (not kidding) and managed to get it out. Phew!
The instruction photos from ifixit were huge and detailed and the entire repair took about 45 minutes. Not including the time it took to find a brighter lamp, dust all the crumbs out of my laptop innards (!) and yell at my kids three times to leave me alone. But the important thing to know is that IT WORKED! I did it! I fixed my computer!!! I laid its guts out all over my desk, fixed it and put it all back together.
Ifixit is my hero. Next time your computer/ipad/iphone has an ailment, I’d recommend checking the site out (only if your item is out of warrantee, though. If you can get it fixed for free, then do it!). And no, I didn’t get paid a single penny for this. I’m just so thrilled at the idea of fixing my own computers that I wanted to share.
It’s How-To Tuesday! Today I’ll be showing you how to make a fantastic cork board jewelry display. Like most girls I love jewelry. But there were lots of pieces that I rarely wore because they were in a giant jumble in my jewellery box. I tried to find some way to organize all my necklaces and bracelets and earrings in an easy-to-see way, but I have a lot of stuff and there just wasn’t anything that really fit my needs.
I was browsing at the Container Store a few months ago for–get this–a container. I needed someplace to stash my knitting supplies, but instead I found a really cute magnetic bulletin board. There was a necklace hanging from one of the pegs and the wheels in my brain started to spin. I considered buying the magnet board to store my jewelry on but it was $50 and the magnet pins were $12 for 8 of them. Way too expensive.
After wandering around my second favorite store, Hobby Lobby, (my favorite, in case you had to ask, is Target. Duh.) I decided to do a corkboard jewelry display, using an empty picture frame.
The great thing about a corkboard holder is that it can be completely customized to whatever your jewelry needs are. Using push pins makes it possible to change your storage as your jewelry collection changes. Have a lot of long necklaces? No problem. Suddenly get obsessed with bracelets? Just add a bunch of pushpins and you’re all set.
This is an incredibly easy project. It requires zero artistic ability. Things can get a little spendy if you go out and buy a brand new frame (use that 40% off coupon that most stores offer online!). There are lots of frames at thrift stores or you might have some ugly art around your house that can be tossed while still using the frame. All the materials you’ll need (besides the frame) will cost about $20. Considering how much jewelry boxes and displays are, that’s a real bargain!
I originally made my corkboard from a pre-made frame that I got at Hobby Lobby. But I also made a corkboard for my daughter, India, and used a hundred-year-old frame that that my grandma gave me which had an ugly, faded print in it.
The important thing is to consider your jewelry collection. Think about how many necklaces you have and how long they are. What about bracelets? And earrings? Do you mostly wear post earrings or danglies? You’ll want to consider how much square footage you’ll need. You don’t want to make too small a corkboard. Remember that bigger is better since it’s likely that you’ll be accumulating more jewelry through the years.
Another thing to consider is where you’ll put this thing. Mine ended up being 28 inches x 32 inches and that’s not exactly a size of frame that can be stuck just anywhere. I wanted mine kind of near my closet but not out in broad daylight for my kids to pull stuff off of. I ended up putting it in what I fondly call, “the poop room” (the little room in my master bath with the toilet in it). It works for me.
These are the items you’ll need to make this:
Picture frame. It doesn’t need to have glass or a backing. Just the square frame.
Thick foam mounting board. This can be cut to size at any craft store or picture framing shop.
Roll of cork. This can be found in most craft shops.
Spray Glue.
Pushpins. India opted to make some cute pushpins but I prefer clear.
Ribbon for dangly earrings (optional). I used thicker ribbon to make it easier to see the earrings, but any width of ribbon is fine.
Utility Knife.
You may also need a heavy-duty staple gun for the backing.
I highly recommend using the thickest mounting board that will fit in your frame. The cork is actually pretty thin, it’s the foam board that will do most of the actual holding of your jewelry.
If you’re using a frame that has something else in it, pay attention to how the print and glass are held into the frame. Sometimes there are little nails called brads. These can either be removed or simply bent out of the way with a flathead screwdriver.
Before you start assembling your project make sure your mounting board actually fits in the frame. This is especially important if you had it cut at a store. If it’s too big, use a utility knife and a ruler to cut it shorter. Once it’s the right size it’s time to stick the cork to the backing board.
Cork is very brittle. It’s incredibly easy to break it or even stick a finger through. It’s best to roll it out on the ground and not lift it. If your frame is big, it’s nice to have an extra set of hands helping out. The cork board we’re making today is for India’s room, so I’m having her do most of the work. Teach a man to fish, right?
Roll your cork out on the ground using something (or someone) to keep it unrolled. Some heavy cans of food will work.
Spray both the cork and the foam board according to the directions on the glue. It’s sticky, smelly and messy. You should absolutely do this outside!
Place your foam mounting board onto the cork and press it down thoroughly. If the edges aren’t attached well, spray them again.
Once the glue is dry (it should only take a couple of minutes), use a utility knife to cut off the extra cork.
If you want to do a ribbon across the cork board to hang your earrings on, this is when you’ll do it. I put mine along the bottom, but you can do it wherever you like. India wants to use hers as a bulletin board so she didn’t want a ribbon at all. If you do want an earring hanger, hot glue one side to the back of the board. Once it’s cooled down and is very secure (at least five minutes), pull the other side of the ribbon extremely tight. The ribbon will eventually sag if it’s not as tight as possible. Even so I put a few pushpins in the ribbon to keep it from drooping in the middle.
Once your ribbon is all finished, you can flip the board over and place it in the frame. Hopefully yours already has a wire for hanging. If not, you’ll need to install some hooks and wire. You can figure that out because you’re smart. And good looking!
If you used a frame that previously had artwork in it, you’ll hopefully be able to use the clips or brads that were there before. India pulled the brads out of our antique frame and hammered them back in so they were nice and secure (are you totally digging my pink hammer? I have a pink drill too!)
Once you’ve gotten your cork board all put together it’s time to hang it up on the wall.The final (and funnest) step is to stick your pushpins in and hang up your jewelry! It will feel so wonderful to have everything organized and right at your fingertips!
