Bulletin Board and Other Bedroom Updates

Life got a bit nutso there for a bit. I got sick, then there were some layoffs at my company, and then I got sent off to Dallas. I was not let go, but my boss, and my dear friend Katey were. It hit me very hard; these are people I love dearly and had a big impact on my day to day life. I miss them.

In the midst of this, I've been working on the bedroom! So many of you posted many nice comments, and many of you asked about the bulletin board. Funny thing is, I started with that part of the room first.

Here's the old bulletin board. Why I didn't take other "before" pictures, I can't say, but I got this one:

It's fine, but it's dated. So here's what I did. I realized that I could probably purchase a frame on the cheap and re-vamp it to be a more stylish and grown up bulletin board.

After trying a couple of Goodwills, I landed at HomeGoods, which is owned by TJ Maxx. I rummaged through their clearance artwork, and happened upon this beauty. The glass was missing, and the frame itself is dinged and yucky. The art is OK, but not my style. And, the kicker? This guy cost $7. Seven bucks. Done!


The bones were there. I planned on gutting this thing and putting in a cork board behind it. I knew that you could get a snazzy pack of cork pieces from Target, and those ran about $6.

I got the "art" home and started working. First, I pulled the art out of the frame, which was backed by cardboard. Everything had been held in place by some small nails, so I pulled those out. After I saw what I had, I decided I'd keep the cardboard (as well as the frame)to use as the backing for the cork.

I put the cork from Target on the cardboard, piece by piece, and trimmed the extra cork away from the back. After all that was done, I decided to cover the cork with some white wrapping paper from Ikea, to hide the cork. I knew I was painting my frame white, so I wanted everything thing to blend in.
With the backing underway, it was time to get painting the frame itself. I picked white (Rust-oleum American Accents Blossom White) because I also had plans for the bedspread, and I wanted to even out the colors in the room.


Two coats later, the frame looked like this out on the patio:
We're almost there! Once the frame was almost dry, I took my fingernail to it, and scratched away some of the white paint to give it a more "rustic" finish. Thanks to Layla at the Lettered Cottage for that tip. She did that on a bed frame, and the results were fantastic. (And its so easy!)

To attach the cork board portion, I slid it in to place, with the white paper facing out, and used duct tape to hold it into place. Last thing, I put on some hanging mounts (the old "art" had been portrait/horizontal, but this would be hanging landscape/vertical.)

Today I glued some shells I found at the beach to the frame, I thought it was a nice nod to how my guy and I love walking the beach together and try to do it at least once a week.

And, here's the finished product:


Details with the shells:


I'm pretty pleased. The grand total came to around $15, including the spray paint. Not bad!

So, what have all of you been up to? Any cool projects recently?

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Some Dreamy Bedroom Ideas

I've been working on various rooms of our apartment, and the next up is the bedroom. I've been delighting in plain white backgrounds with punches of red. I thought that I liked the latest turquoise and coral theme, but then red kept showing up in my life. So, I think I need to go with with the universe is sending my direction.

Over our vacation, we were given this pretty watercolor painting by my guy's artist grandfather. I see this in an oversize white frame, centered over the bed:


On another wall, we already have this Florio poster, which is over sized and happy:


Here's some of my additional inspiration:

Martha Stewart Living, June 2009 Beach House Bedroom:
A gorgeous reddish bedroom from Gabbi Tubs via Please Sir:


An idea to redo my bulletin board and update it to a more grownup and romantic framed look via Country Living (photo by Adrian Briscoe) - I have an idea of how to do this for cheap with my existing bulletin board:



Southern Living Habersham cottage - check out the gorgeous red nightstands.

And lastly, I'm drooling over this adorable white bedspread from Target, the Kissing Pleats bedspread:

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Back in Time

I'm back from my vacation to the East Coast. There's so much to share and so many cool things to relay ... I will try to do the trip justice here over time. I'd planned my time around going to a single class called "The Bible through Art and Artifact;" a week long course at Yale Divinity School (my alma mater). It was amazing. We held 6000 year old letters on clay from the Babylonian collection (originally from Assyria), we saw the oldest known copy of Ephesians. We saw a Mummy and a Heart Scarab, a piece of art from 1270AD, and we got to see the brand new Taylor & Boody organ being played in the chapel.

It was a trip back in time, in so many ways. I got to see people and places I hadn't seen in about ten years, and I got to trace back the Bible and ancient civilization in ways I never had before. We went to Boston, too, and saw so many of the very cool buildings that are part of our country's Revolution.

And now, I'm back at work, doing what I do ... and missing all those things and people and places that are now just a little bit of my own history.

The Sterling Divinity Quadrangle - Yale Divinity School

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The Place

I'm sitting in a floral dress at an outdoor fish restaurant called "The Place" in Guilford, Connecticut. Today alone I've seen artwork from 1270 CE, read and studied along the sunny shore, stopped to take pictures when the urge hit. I had lunch with two dear ladies I used to work with. I stopped in some favorite shops, enjoying every single second. After I eat my dinner of fresh caught lobster and roasted corn, I'm headed to a free concert within the courtyard at Yale Law School. I'm utterly thrilled to be on vacation. My guy gets in tonight, and I've felt brave and adventurous eating alone and doing my own thing for the past two days.

Packs of people are gathered around bright red tables sitting on tree stumps. A girl behind me is having a birthday dinner with her friends before leaving on a few days out of the country. No one else here is alone, no one else is dressed up, and yet I can't imagine that anyone else is as grateful and excited and delighted to to be here as me. A night of good food and music and vacation after a wonderful day. It sure doesn't get much better than this.

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Leaving on a Jet Plane

One of my favorite stories from my friend Kathy (my Yale roomie) was from when she was a little girl. As a child of divorced parents, she had family in both California and Texas. She spent her summers in California and the rest of the year in Texas.

Airplanes took her back and forth. She said that as a kid in the airplane, she often felt in between parents. Almost like she didn't really belong to any one person, as if she was in suspension on her way from one parent to another. In those hours in the sky, she was her own person, with no one to report to and no one responsible for her.

As she left one set of arms to later be greeted by another pair when she gof off from the plane, she recognized that some children might be afraid without a parent, without someone there to look over them. She realized that while she did not have a parent, she had God to watching over her. She had one Father as she flew through the sky, with love sending her on her way, and love waiting to receive her on the other side.

I love this image of love. Of knowing that when we leave the warm embrace of family, that we can lean into God's love when we go forth on our own. Destinations may be uncertain, our paths unclear to us as we go through this life. But God, and God's love is constant for us as we fly like tiny birds through the many skies of our life.

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The Book of Genesis and Adamah

This evening, on the way home from work, I started doing my reading for summer session. First up in the Women's Bible Commentary was the section on Genesis. Now, I love me some Hebrew Bible. I took four years of Biblical Hebrew and I loved every second of it. Well except some of the verb tenses, but reading Job and Genesis and Exodus in their original language is really fun for me. It was also super challenging.

So tonight, I came across the note that the word used for the first human was adamah, which in Biblical Hebrew means "dust of the earth" or "ground." This is of course symbolic and deep, as the name "Adam" comes from this Hebrew root. God created both of these things, and named them. I love this passage and the fact that Adam's name and his source and creation are all embodied in that one word.

Just like later, when Jesus says to Peter, "Epi melli thethi Petros" (bad transliteration there) or My Church will be "founded upon a rock." Peter's name and the word rock (petros) both have the same root. Peter is the first Pope and he is the rock, just as the Church is the rock of Jesus' teaching. I love this.

Tonight though, I was struck by the name Adamah, as in Bill Adama from Battlestar Galactica. While I am a self professed fan, it really delighted me that the name of our hero is one in the same as the first man on earth. Now, there are some plot issues with this fact (and a spoiler, if you haven't seen the finale), since in BSG our genetic "Eve" is little Hera. Perhaps there is a Lee Adama junior on his way as time progresses on earth? I don't know, but this Hebrew word opened up a whole new line of fascination for me with BSG.

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It's Not Easy Being Green and Other Updates

It's always frustrating when you make a mistake and really have no one to blame but yourself. Yesterday when I grabbed the dishwasher detergent, I pulled out the Greenworks Dish washing Liquid. I loaded the dishwasher, threw in the soap and turned it on. Then I left to go clean the living room.

When I returned, I was horrified! Who knew that dish washing liquid (not the same is dish washing detergent! and it says "not for use in automatic dishwashers" right on the side!) would create big, fluffy bubbles of cartoon proportions that would cause the dishwasher to overflow? When I came in to the kitchen, there were suds and water all over the floor. I stood there stupefied, and then we grabbed towels to soak up the mess. Four big towels later, the water was gone, but we still had a ton of suds to deal with, both inside the dishwasher and out.

There were also suds seeping out from below the dish washer. We pulled back the metal footer and discovered that the entire area beneath the washer was full of bubbles, too! Two more towels later, we had most of that cleaned up.

We rinsed the dish washer again and again, letting it suck the water out, and then refilling it with fresh water. Finally the suds subsided. We pulled out the fan to dry the kitchen out. I would never have imagined that dish washing liquid could create such a mess. But now we all know, and I won't ever make that mistake again.

I've also been hard at work on a new venture with my co-worker, Chrissy. We've decided to start a business together!! We'll still keep our day jobs :) but we've already had a ton of fun working on plans for the other work. Right now, we're waiting for our logo to be finished by an art director friend. As of right now, we're planning on a site, Etsy shop, and a blog full of things that inspire us. I promise to reveal more in the next days or weeks to come!

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