My Ribbon Roses

I'm going to say this ONE MORE TIME for those of you who haven't read it before or don't know this: If you send me a question asking for help, then you need to send me an email address to respond. If your "settings" in your blog do not allow me to see your email and it comes as NOREPLY-COMMENT@BLOGGER.COM or as a Wordpress.com blog and there is no email to contact you on your blog, I'm just going to ignore it. It does no good if I have no way to get in contact with you to answer a question or offer help. In fact, it looks to me like the comments are simply spam. Plus the fact that if I try to find someway on your blog to leave a comment and you haven't posted for....oh say, 6 months , 2 years or EVER, then that leads me to believe you're not serious about your question or even worse, (gasp!) a serious blogger. Tell me it ain't so! And I handle spam by deleting it! You won't get past me, trust me, so don't waste your time. Okay? I'm really not mad, just wanted to make this very clear. :-)
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I just noticed the date I'm posting this and let me say since it's been 11 years today that our country was attacked and my heart still remembers it.

I had just gotten out of the shower when my phone rang and my neighbor told me to get over there immediately since we had no television. I stared in horrific wonder at those two buildings coming down. I still get teary thinking about it. I hope with all my heart our country never, ever lets that happen again. Being a very religious person, I knew the end times were going to be tough and our Church advises us to be prepared—economically, temporally and most of all, spiritually. But that day just stuck in my mind, thinking about the moms and dads who wouldn't be going home that day. I also think about those brave NYC firemen and police who tried to help and lost their lives doing so. So mostly I pay tribute to them. I love our brave soldiers, firemen, police and emergency personnel. (I'm blubbering like a fool typing this.) Just be prepared, my friends, to defend our country.
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First of all, I'm doing something on this blog post that I don't normally do. When I was selling on eBay, I would make the photos 2 different sizes so when they clicked on the photo it would enlarge. This can only be done when using a template, which I use every single time I sell on eBay or do these blog posts. This took a bit more time and I decided early on not to do it with my blog. However, I did it on this post with only my own photos. I can't do it with photos I didn't originally take. So if you click on each photo of mine you'll see a larger photo of the roses, etc. I really like large photos but they take up much more storage space on Photobucket or any image hosting so I rarely ever do it here. Enjoy.
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One of my passions is making ribbon roses. I don't use a lot of them most of the time so I don't make many now, but with the redo of the chandelier shades I'm going to make some. I'll need five of them. Below are some of the ones I've made in the past. I have more than I'll ever use but I love making them. It gives me peace when I craft. My dilemma is which one I'll like the best on the shades.

A flower I made years ago. It isn't velvet; it just looks like it. Red—and purple, for that matter—are very hard to photograph unless you are a professional. I'm not!

This is a flower I had hot glued to a craft—can't remember what at the moment—and I took it off. Yes, you can get them off using a heat gun (hubs') but I do not recommend it as you can burn your fingers severely. I haven't so far but I'm very, very careful when I remove things I've hot glued on.

I have no more of this exquisite ribbon or I'd do the flowers I want in this. I can't even find this ribbon anymore.

I wanted to see how a 7/8" ribbon would work. Way too small.

This one worked pretty well.

But this is my all-time favorite ribbon rose besides the red one. They are assembled differently. This one is much quicker to make. Both are lovely.

Making the red rose requires much more work and time. I'm just starting this one to see how it comes out.

This is another favorite of mine. I pinned it to my jacket to wear to church recently. Simple and very quick to make.

My craft room and table are a horrible mess at the moment. I'm very fortunate that I have a room all to myself and can just shut the door if I have someone come over.

I'm thinking of doing a ribbon rose in this polka dot. The only down side is that it's one-sided. Hmmmm...maybe and maybe not. I hate to cut into this ribbon and destroy the 2 long pieces. We'll see. Oh, btw, that's me and hubs during one of our frequent trips to Mexico, but the picture was on a sight-seeing day cruise on the ocean and a dinner. They put that silly hat on him to take a picture. He hated it but was a good sport about it.

While I was in the craft room I noticed a pillow I had. I made this pillow out of some leftover fabric from the 2 chairs in our family room. They have since been recovered in another fabric, but I doubt I'll ever part with these pillows. It's a moire fabric and beautiful, but you all know how photos don't do justice to the actual item. Even though Ethan Allen makes pillows to come with the sofa, I may put these on there in place of or rather with the other pillows. We'll see how they go.

Now, enough of me. Look at this glorious area in a homemaker's kitchen. Cute!

These lamps are among some of the most elegant I have seen. I'd take these in a heart beat.

Haaa, you thought I wouldn't include a little cottage-by-the-road, didn't you?

And more from Green Gate for you to see. Isn't it a "fun" kind of dinnerware?

And a beautiful bouquet of roses in a french pitcher.

And I leave you this day with 3 boxes of beautiful candy, cookies and cupcakes! :-)

I know this is a long post but back here I promised to a few more tidbits on our U.S. Presidents and their Secret Service men from this book, In The President's Secret Service. So here's another tidbit.

At a dinner party given at the home of a personal friend of this President, the Secret Service gave the hostess some recommendations that she really had to adhere to so that the President and his wife could have this small, personal dinner with her and a very small group of friends.

The SS agents asked that draperies be put up on her windows. Agents were stationed everywhere around the yard and no-parking cones were put up in front of the house. Another request was that she empty a closet nearby big enough to fit at least two men as that was where they would take the President in case of a threat. They also selected where the President would sit. (Going out to dinner with friends as a U.S. President requires a lot of preparation. It's not done lightly!) She acquiesced to their demands and she then asked a question about what would happen to all the other guests and what they should do in the case of an emergency. The agent's response was, "Madam, I have only one client: the President." I wonder if she thought about reconsidering the invitation!
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Linking up with WOW and At the Picket Fence.

My Treasured Heirlooms

First of all I need to alert all of you to something that has come up this past week. I received an email from a woman who didn't realize what "goodies" I have on my "sidebar" — all those little "thingies" on the sides of the actual blog posts. Well, when she saw that I had a blogging tutorial and a blogging etiquette she really liked it. I put them there sometime last summer from a tutorial I did for an ebay group I belong to. A lot of chicks were having trouble getting around Blogger so I did this tutorial to help them. I'm very computer savvy and this has helped them quite a bit. I'm happy to help anyone who needs it. But if you'll check on the right side you'll see the "Blogging Tutorial" and the "Blogging Etiquette" so you can click on it and be taken directly there. You'll also see that I've updated my "Home" and "Laundry Room" widgets on the side. I took some newer photos recently and added them there. You are most welcome to view it. I try to keep my blog free of superfluous and extraneous stuff but I do add a few things from time to time. Sometimes things get lost in the "fluff"!! But check it out and see what you might learn.
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I received a package a few days ago and when I opened it up I just squeeeeeealed, chicks. It has pink peanuts in it. Leave it to Cathy to simply delight my senses with what I won from her. Well, actually, I won a gift certificate and this is what I chose. I do believe this magnificent cherub included extra things in it! Hmmmmm, just a guess, but I don't remember a roses pitcher or tea towels being ordered. And I was just thinking a week or two ago how much I needed some new tea towels. Just brightened my day, I tell ya!

These vintage glass bottles are gorgeous and I'll just put them around where they'll look best but right now I'm thinking the guest bath would be a nice spot to put them.

These are absolutely the most real faux candies or truffles I've ever seen or felt. They have a heft to them. I love everyone's faux candies though, truly I do. Cathy had them nestled on pink crinkle paper in a little bag - just like you'd buy them in a candy store.

Just look at this little beauty. All pink and roses. It's not real big but it could hold some chocolate for a cold winter's night snack.

Thank you, thank you, Cathy, from the depths of my heart. I shall treasure them and they'll be passed on to my daughter.

The Pink Painted House

My greatest treasure is hubby. He gives me license to do as I darn well please. Whatever I want to do is just fine with him 99.9% of the time. Well, there is the occasional "I wish you wouldn't do that", but they are very few and very far between. When I said I wanted to paint the house pink, fine with him. So these are the first photos of the living room, kitchen and dining area for you to see.

I feel like I'm living in a confectionery store now. I absolutely love and adore it! How can a simple color make such a difference in a room and in a mood? Yesssss, it truly does. It just lifts my spirits up. As most of you know who've seen this blog before, I recently did my office/painting room and my sewing/craft room in a vibrant pink. This time for the main areas of the house I went a shade lighter. I did it this way.

A trip to Home Depot and looking at their samples got me thinking about a paler pink than the other two rooms simply because if I changed any furnishings in the living room it might be a tad hard to "coordinate" things with the wall color if it was too bright pink. So I picked a color I love, Behr's candy tuft, and had them make me up a quart with 1/2 the colorant in it. When I came home and painted it on several walls to test it, it seemed more lavender because the only colorant in it was magenta. Magenta has blueish tones to it. So I picked another color, Behr's cupid arrow. It had different colorants in it and after getting them to put in 1/2 the colorant again, that color seemed perfect after I came home and painted patches on different walls again and lived with it for a couple of days. The paint stores will do anything you want. You don't have to accept just their "colors." Then I bought 5 gallons to start the painting. It was definitely pink but not "in your face" pink, which I really like anyway, but wanted something softer in the main rooms and hallways.

Then there is the concern of getting the "pink" to show properly on different monitors. These past 3 weeks I've been on my laptop and notice huge differences between it and the desktop and huge monitor in my office. So I tried to pick settings that show it accurately. Impossible, chicks!! The closet I can describe it is "a tad more than light pink but definitely pink." I'm loving it.

I also decided that I had put too much stuff on the old beige-y walls to try and obliterate the color with the frou-frou, so this time I "scaled" down a bit - scaled down is a relative term here. I "reassigned" things to different places! ;-) Case in point - the living room. I brought the shutters I painted white from the dining area into the plant shelf in the living room. I like it much better here than in the dining area.

Notice the uncluttered look in that area now. Something here, just less "fluff" and the pink shows quite well. I brought in a picture that my brother and his wife gave me from the living room and put it on the right side of that entry.

I also brought the leather chair from the family room into the living room. It looks much better in there than in the shabby chic style family room. I prefer my living room a tad more formal than the family room.

The archway separating the living room and the dining area is only about 4" wide and being from California, I don't want anything up there that can kill me if it falls so I've had these little blocks of wood that I put little roses decals on and put the up there for a little bit of pizzazz.

Yesssssssss, the train limited edition prints still went up there to satisfy hubs but I put the pink suitcases back up there to "feminize" it a bit and only one suitcase did I leave in its original vintage state. But by the white door is probably the most accurate of the color of the walls I could get on THIS monitor. Yours will appear differently probably. That hallway on the left is still the beige-y color. The painter's wife went into labor and he had to leave! I'm soooo excited for them, but not sure when he'll be back to finish the hallways. You can see he prepped by putting up tape and can definitely see the color difference from the walls in the room to the wall on the other side of that archway.

Another view of the dining side of the archway and the wall to the right of that plant on the living room side is the wall in the hallway that still has the original color on it. See how much brighter and cleaner it looks. Squeeeeeeeeeal. I love it, chicks!!!

To be continued.................

Pink Saturday 8/23/08

Here it is again - Pink Saturday. Last week there were 80 participants and that's good. I, however, never did get around to visiting all of them and for that I'm very sorry. That's just a lot of surfing and I simply didn't have time with all the other things in life.

I have favorite bloggers I visit. Some just because they may need a lift that day. Some because I simply like reading what they write. Some because of the "eye candy" it provides and we ALLLLL know how I feel about "eye candy"! ;-) Some because I have a history with them and they make my day and make me happy - my ebay group. :-) Some because someone said, "Connie, you're gonna love this blogger so go see her." Well, I've whittled my favs down to about 120 now. Yep, that's just the ones I visit pretty regularly. I have a feeling I'm going to have to "whittle" some more. But I definitely try and visit as many as I can. I may not leave a comment if it doesn't particularly warrant a comment but most times I do.

Now, part of why I blog is to help all you chicks make your homes beautiful. That can involve many, many things - from having a loving home to having a comfortable home people like to visit for the "comfortableness" to simply making "all things beautiful" in the home. (Messy teenagers excepted here!) So let's look at how you can have gorgeous containers out of some "mundane" things.

Old pickle, olive and marshmallow creme jars are what I've done to make these lovely jars. Spray the lids, add roses to the tops if you desire, add some decoupage of your kitchen or whatever you desire (I always do roses.) - and this can even be pix of the munchkins(!) - and then start putting "stuff" in them. I've combined things in these jars and still have to add more stuff to a couple of them, but I'm putting nails, screws, picture holders, etc. in one of them. The other has just snippets of ribbon, fringe, just anything that adds color to it or that you can think of that you'd use everyday and want to be handy while "pizzazzing" up the place. So don't throw those jars out; put them to good use, chickees!

My little wall pocket where I put papers until I'm ready to file them.

My packing supplies! Yep, I will occasionally send out something in these pink envelopes. They sure do get noticed when someone pulls them out of the mailbox!

This is a faux rose and you've seen it many, many times over in my photos but it is the most realistic rose I've ever seen in silk. It has fooled just about everyone who has seen them in my home. It is truly exquisite and I was lucky enough to buy all that the store had of these. I have them all over the house. I've never seen them again anywhere. :-(

Since it is "pink saturday" I thought I'd show off this "pink" coupon I got. I've obliterated some of it so it can't be copied and taken advantage of, but not many "coupons" come in PINK! :-)

Steal of the day..........uhhhh, I mean my "best deal" of the day. These sheets were $7.99 each and the pillow cases were 2 for $3.99!!!!!!!! Squeeeeeeeal!! Now, I'm not needing sheets at the moment but I simply could NOT pass these up. They are high-end decorator sheets and pillow cases. PLEASE enlarge the pix to view the tone-on-tone loveliness of these beauties. Just so gorgeous and SOFT!

I have been waking up at 3 or 4 in the morning lately because I'm so jazzed with energy. (My ebay group is starting to worry! Hah) But I'm fine, just so much to do I need to start early. ;-) Anyway, I got up and started making a pillow for the popup trailer Love Bunny just got. (Yes, it will be frou frou-y and I'm working on it!) I have this quilt that I finally cut into and made this darling little pillow to take camping. The quilt is double sided so one side of the pillow is one pattern and the other side of the pillow is the other rose pattern. Came out quite cute I think. The one in the background is a bed pillow that just may get to travel to the campgrounds also. ;-)

A cute little card someone gave me last year. Pink mice chicks having a cup of tea.

I made this polka dot rose to put on this little letter holder about 5 years ago. It is on a paper holder for a wall next to a desk. It has specialty rose papers in it also. Now I've learned there is a blog called the Polka Dot Rose! Cute.

A sweet tag given to me last year for my birthday which is coming up next friday the 29th!! Yippeeeee...........

Okay, little chicks, get busy and make your home gorgeous - no matter what your style. I've given you enough "hints" for this day..............

Remodel Day #2

First of all, I want to show you my Giveaway Win!! I cannot tell you all how thrilled I was to win this little beauty!!!!!!!!! It's one of my favorite things now. I so appreciate this wonderful little cake plate or dessert server and the huge rose that came with it.

Mr. Bob had this done within about 3 to 3 1/2 hours last night. The remodel is coming along just fine! Not much mess at all from this part, but he was very careful to put up plastic sheets to help hold down the "mess" and I appreciated that. Ooops, I see a strip of blue tape stuck to the wall in the pix below this one.

Just thought I'd "throw in" these faux desserts as a bit of "eye candy" for ya chicks!! :-) I spend an entire 2 days just making these things. Ya never know what I'll do with them. ;-)

I heard someone the other day refer to "young wives" of "older men" as "arm candy" and I had to chuckle, I tell ya. I've always told Love Bunny if he did that to me when I die I'll haunt him till the day HE dies!! And I would, too. Trust me on this one! I truly do not even believe he would dishonor me like that though.

Roses & Easter Arrived Yesterday!

Oh my gosh, look what arrived in the mail yesterday for me! Some things I ordered but some were just a "gift" from Rhea and what a surprise. Just meander down and take a look!! I was sooooo excited that I forgot to take pictures until I was reminded. I had already hung some of these things on my lattice (thank you, Miss Rhea! :-) ) so I had to take them all down and put them on the kitchen counter to photograph.

First, there are the parchment roses I ordered from Lori and they are lovely.

Then some little millinery "posies" from sweet Rhea. A "bling" C - my initial, some little white plastic hearts, tags, birds and a cupcake.

Would you just look at these sweet chicks?!?! I call all my gals "chicks" because we really a gaggle of chicks!! Hah! Look that word up and it means: informal or disorderly or noisy group of people. Yep, that's us chicks!! Right on the nose!

Another shot of the little tags.

And theeeeennnnnn we have some sweet little birds in their own little white tissue nest. How cute. And notice how sweetly Rhea wraps them. I think I'm gonna take a clue from that and wrap better when I send something.

Now, the sweetest thing of all!!! A non-caloric cupcake (eye candy for us computer people......hah! I love eye candy!! Isn't he too cute? I've named him Mr. Ed - not after the old show by that name but after sweet Rhea's hubby who is not only a hunk but a really sweet guy......according to Rhea, of course, and she would NOT lie about that, trust me!!

And looooook at this cloche!! It's tiny but so adorable. I just love it because of it's tininess and look of fragility. The rose is under there for now but I'm thinking of other things to go under it also. I'm so glad I got it!

When I first opened the package and saw these I thought they were giant lollipops! Oh, be still my heart......candy?!?! So I opened them up and here's what they actually where. Are they not adorable?!?!?!?! Maybe even better than candy because I won't eat these up. Hah!

And just to keep some of you up to date on my office/crafts room this is how far I've gotten in a week or two. Pathetic, huh??? I'm still working on it though.