Projects | Madame Bizarro World

Simple Ikea hack

July 28th, 2011

Take one of these. Which is designed to hang on the wall and hold these and these; put it on your laundry room wall and presto!

Categories: Projects | Tags: Ikea Bygel, IKEA Hack, My House, projects | 5 Comments

Return of the modern middle ages

July 21st, 2011

OT for a sec..I could have sworn I made another post after the one about automatic updates. Weird. Anyway.

Some of my vast readership (bwahahahah) might know that I belong to a group called the Society for Creative Anachronism, or SCA. It’s been an on-again, off-again relationship for a long time (1988 to be exact). I’ve made tons of friends, a few enemies, and a lot of memories. I met my husband in the SCA.

There were times I was totally involved and on a fast-track for big things (awards, etc.), then we had our son and played a bit, then not..then some more, then was out, then came back, blah-de-boop as my daughter says.

Recently, I introduced a pair of friends of mine, Ms Pushing Furniture and her hot boyfriend, to the SCA and damned if they didn’t take to it like ducks to water. Really active; she’s being her OCD self and turning out costumes and doing all sorts of things, including helping another relative newbie learn to sew.

And I’ve managed to get myself appointed as Chronicler (I do the baronial newsletter), which is the first ever office I held in the SCA nearly 23 years ago. *arched eyebrow of confusion* But back then we did it the hard way, cut and paste on blue-line boards, now I just use Adobe InDesign the same as I do for the newsletter I do at work. Easy peasy, as they say. That is if I could get people to submit articles and things. I think people just don’t care anymore. It kind of went to pot over the last couple of years because the woman doing it didn’t have time..or something, not sure what, so I think people just kind of gave up. The newsletter is a requirement of being a barony, so we have to turn one out, but I think unless we start getting submissions, it’s really a redundancy: everything you need to know is on the website.

So, anyway…we’re “active” again…sort of. I’ve gained so much weight that none of my costumes fit anymore. And I had made some pretty nice ones, too. And my husband’s stuff doesn’t really fit, and my son has none…and the whole barony seems to be on this EVERYTHING MUST BE LINEN kick. Yes, linen was period, cotton wasn’t, at least not how we use it. But not everything was linen, either, and I see a lot of clothing being made out of linen that should really be wool or even silk. BUT. It’s Texas, so I’m totally willing to give them that one.

Linen is much more available than it was 20 years ago, but most of what you can get locally in Austin is all in trendy colors or is a linen/cotton blend. The blend is sorta-kinda okay for certain things. It is cooler and doesn’t wrinkle as much…but then that signature wrinkling is part of the linen “mystique,” if you will. The other nice thing is that if you order online, you can get a number of different weights of linen in white and then dye it if needed.

The point of this post originally was to lay out all that I need to do to even go to an event. List making ftw! We shall move apace in the next post.

Categories: Lists, Projects, SCA | Tags: hobbies, lists, SCA, sewing | Comments Off

Digging around, planning, thinking…

August 31st, 2010

First off, I’d like to say how disappointed I was to find that this lady is no longer keeping this blog smoke and ochre. Rats. There are so many nice, nice pictures and all on it. But, you know…a kabillion, bazillion, and 93 blogs on the intarwebs and so little time.

Now that the energy devil is not sucking my aura away every day, I’m finding I have enough get up and go to get a few things done. After we decommissioned the old building on Friday, I skated. R had the day off (LBJ’s birthday, doncha know), so he took me to work, went home, slept in, then came and picked me up. We didn’t do much..picked up Taco Bell and came home. I crashed at some point and foo…what did we do Friday evening. I don’t even remember….OH! Crap, of course! Sylvan‘s party! Oy, such a knucklehead I am. Her first novel is coming out, officially on Tuesday! I’ve read the first…second?…draft, but changes were made after it went to the publisher…anyhoo, her BFF, the self-same Laura of Pushing Furniture fame, threw a surprise party. R, W, and I went. It was fun, and we totally surprised Ms. Author.

Then we came home and I was kind of sick at 4 AM. Nauseous…and for awhile didn’t know which, erm…end….would be a problem (hoping that it wouldn’t be one of those, ah…double-ended things. I HATE that). But as soon as I “went,” the nausea went away and I was able to go back to sleep. Got up about 9:40 yesterday and spent a good bit of the day washing dishes and general clean-up, then went to Lowe’s and Tar-Jay. Spent way more money than I should have. Dammit. But I had most of the $50 GC Laura’s BF gave me for my birthday left. I bought a composter thingy. Now to get it set up. I had made a really cool FREE composter out of hardware cloth and a hula-hoop, but the dog can knock it over too easily to eat the scraps and eggshells. I’ll use that for grass and weeds before adding to the bin.Dorky dog. I got some plastic potted plant pans, a nifty cobalt blue glass mister (on clearance for $1.62!), and some hose parts to repair hoses. At Target, I got some groceries, another pair of black leggings, and a few items of make-up. Yeah, make-up. Gotta problem with that?

I also picked up a metric-ass-ton of paint chips at Lowe’s and then sat on my bed and played with kitchen design until two AM!

One of the reasons I never get anywhere is…well, it’s a many-layered thing…like an ogre. It is my decorating ogre. I can’t make up my mind…then I have no money…and I change my mind…things go out of style…I have no money….I get more craptastic hand-me-down furniture that needs “fixing” (refinishing, etc.) and just looks like early Salvation Army meanwhile….then I change my mind…and I can’t decide on a color scheme…ad nauseum.

I’ve gone from warm, earthy tones in the great room to working off the grey and charcoal palette in a print I have, back to the warmer tones. I want a mind of Mexican feel to the kitchen and since the two rooms are, um…rather linked, to suddenly go to greys and blues would be weird. Also? I have this olive fabric, like 22 yards of it, for a slipcover for the sofa, and it wasn’t fitting in with the greys in my mind. Well, it would, but there are tones of blue, charcoal and a deep, deep red-brown in the painting. I dunno, it might still work. Otherwise, I’m not sure what to do with that piece. Feh.

So anyway, here’s the latest grouping, sort of, of colors. It seems a bit washed out on my monitor. paint link

There’ll be more of this, but I started this post three days ago, so I’m posting now.

Categories: My House, Projects, Week in Review | Tags: Kitchen, My House, projects, remodeling, Self | Comments Off

Things needing done around the house

August 15th, 2010

Each one of these is a project–and a story–unto itself, and will engender a list, or lists, of its own.

Repair pavilion
Sort, organize,purge bedroom and closet
Build my bed
Build outdoor cat run
Build and install catwalks, hidey-holes
Tear down roof over back deck
Demolish existing deck
Build new deck cover, screened in
New deck..patio…?
Landscape front yard
Landscape back yard
Repair drain in hall bath
Replace tub, surround in hall bath
Floor in hall bath
Repair or replace dryer….or put up permanent clotheslines?
Replace garage door
Build kitty loo
Finish sewing/craft/studio/office…room…space
R’s bedroom…paint, floors, etc.
Kitchen…OMG.
New curtains in bedroom
Rework wall’o'books in living room
Finish purple desk
Finish washstand
Finish “buffet” chest for kitchen
China cabinet project
Dining room table and chairs
What to do with family antique chairs?
Table for deck/patio
Coffee table madness
Slipcover for couch and Loveseat
Paint and attach plant platform to top of dog crate
Crabitat project
Tame the jungle in the kitchen
Finish building R’s chair (I’ve only had the wood–already cut into the proper pieces–for 11 years…ELEVEN)
Put a coat of wax on Big Dot’s bookcase
New colors for bedroom?
Scrape that GOD-AWFUL popcorn texture off the ceilings. Can you believe my Auntie J LIKES that shit? I’m thinking of sending it all to her in a box when I’m done. When they remodeled the house they’re in now, she asked for that crap, on purpose, and had sparkles added…. >.< This is a woman with exquisite taste in everything…except, apparently, ceilings.