Rainy Day Projects

I wrote this post on Monday, and I  considered not publishing it considering after the tornadoes in Oklahoma caused so many people to lose everything. It suddenly seems petty to be worried about how my walls look when some people do not have walls at all. I decided that life must go on, but my thoughts and prayers are with the people that suffered so much tragedy this week.

Although I live in New York, the events hit close to home for me. My family moved to Oklahoma while I was living in Venezuela in high school. My father and sister still live there. I am a graduate of the University of Oklahoma. Though, I am not “Sooner born and Sooner bred” I am a Sooner through and through. Oklahoma is a special place for me, and Tuesday was a difficult day while I waited to hear from my dad, sister and friends. My family safe, and so far I have not received any bad news from or about my friends in that state. I was back visiting my father and friends after the tornado in 1999. The devastation at that time was overwhelming to me, and I cannot imagine what Moore must look like now when the tornado was worse. My heart is with you.

The following post is exactly as it was written on Monday. My disappointment over the weekend now seems like nothing, and I am extremely grateful for how much I have been blessed. I am lucky to have wonderful things in my life, but more importantly I am fortunate that all of my loved ones are well.

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I was bumming this weekend and have to admit that I am more than a little bitter towards meteorologists right now. The forecast last week called for a sunny weekend, but we had rain most of Saturday and allllllllllllll of Sunday. It was disheartening since we were looking forward to working in the yard and going for what would be my first bike ride of 2013.

It was probably good for us. Douglas even said last night that it had been a long time since we had just chilled out at home and not worked on a major project or hosted company. He had to work both days, and I did some cleaning around the house, but we both did some lounging. That felt so good.

Of course, I was not content to only lounge. I felt that we needed to accomplish something with our time, so I decided that it was time to put up some shelves and an extra mirror we had laying around. I started with the mirror. Douglas brought this home from a run two weeks ago. He found it in the trash.  If you know me, you will know how happy I was. If you do not know me, you should read my post Mirror, Mirror on the Wall. I have a slight obsession with mirrors.

The mirror is old but nice. There is discoloration behind the glass, but that does not bother me. The frame was also worn, but I was able to clean it up a lot with some Restor-A-Finish. The pictures are not great because it was such a cloudy day, but I think you can see that it does look better.

I have been planning to put something else on this wall for a while, but I was not sure what that would be. When Douglas brought that mirror home, I thought it would be a good place for it. There can never be too many mirrors, can there?

First, I had to fix the hardware on this mirror that was visible from above. I did not like that the hooks were visible at the top of the frame.This mirror also came from the trash, so I cannot complain too much, but I can switch out the hardware using a hanging hardware kit. Crème helped.

I put on a wire instead. Crème was not happy about my work and tried to take it off. She was unsuccessful; I guess I put it on well.

After putting up the second mirror, I think that it needs something else in the empty spaces. What do you think? I have a plan, but it is going to take at least a week to put into action. Check back to see what I put there.

The shelves that we put up Sunday are invisible book shelves that I bought four and a half years ago. I had them in my apartment at that time but have not installed them since I moved out. I have been wanting to put them up in the Cape of Dreams for a while, but we never got around to it. I bought them hereif you are interested in buying some.

This was mostly Douglas’ project. I marked the height that I wanted them, and he was in charge of getting them level and even with each other.

Once he was finished, I styled the shelves.

Then, I tried to take some pictures of my nicely decorated wall, and somebody got in the way. This time it was not Crème.

After a couple of hours, I still was not satisfied with how they looked so I moved some things around.

I am still not sure. There may be more changes ahead. What do you think? Be honest; I can take it!

Happy Homemaking!