Weird Candle Science

I wanted to set out some candles today now that (1) I've glued together the one candle stand that's been holding up the process and (2) I remembered I own candles, and came across this while unpacking the box:


There's a vivid red candle in there that has apparently dyed the paper towel AND the plastic baggie AND the items that were around this candle! (Just more baggies & paper towels, nothing important thank goodness.) The candles have been packed like so since May 2009, exactly one year ago; none of the other red/colored candles bled like this (har har punning again). I wonder what dye was used for this particular candle. I'm glad nothing important got permanently dyed this time; I will make sure that candles never touch anything important in the future!

DIY Decorating a Niche In the Wall For Less Than $20

I've always wondered what to do with the niche in the wall or shadow box cutout thingie that some houses have. I've also wondered what to call them exactly. If it's deep, you can put a silk flower arrangement in a nice vase, but what about shallow niches that won't hold flower arrangements?

We have a niche (for lack of a better term) in an odd place, tucked in a hallway next to our master bedroom. (Instead of a niche by the front door or front entry, where I usually see one.)
It's shallow and the top is arched in a half-circle.

We've lived in our house for 2 years, and it wasn't until we were getting the house ready to put on the market that I was forced to deal with it. Before then, the niche contained a bunch of our wedding photos and other photos of John and me, along with some candles, and my brothers-in-law called it The Shrine. I guess that's code for "decorate this thing already."

A year ago at Michaels, I'd seen a promising wrought-iron thingamabob that looked like a garden gate and was arched on top. Pretty sure it would fit in the niche, though I'd need to measure it. It's still at Michaels, but I'd held off on buying it because I wasn't sure if that's what I wanted. It would be attached to the wall with many large holes, and if we ever moved, we wouldn't take it with us, so why spend the money on it? Indecision ruled, and procrastination settled in.

Then of course we had to put the house on the market, and on his initial walk-through, our realtor said that something else had to be done with the niche. (Not to mention, we were told to remove all personal photos in the house, and the niche was full of, um, personal photos.) Having already spent some money on other things to spruce up the house for buyers, I didn't want to spend another $40-50 on something that we definitely wouldn't be taking with us when we moved.

Semi-solution: Hit the stores and see what other alternatives there were. I had a vague idea of hanging "some kind of nice picture in a frame" in the niche instead. Went to Wal-Mart first because we might as well start on the cheap end. Sure enough, Wal-Mart didn't disappoint: I found a frame with that was really 4 connected frames that overlapped each other, creating a kind of 3-D effect - better than a flat frame and perfect for a niche.

But that would hang on the wall; what about something to rest on the "floor" of the niche? It would look bare with just a hanging frame which wasn't very large. Headed to Ross, which always bothers me because of the general sense of disorganization that permeates the air. But good deals can always be found there, even if I didn't have a firm idea of what else to look for. John found a wrought-iron piece with votives that was simple but would work well (without contributing to the Shrine atmostphere I was trying to eliminate).

Next, the pictures for the frames. We couldn't use personal photos, so we turned to our travel photos. I selected a bunch of Europe photos that we had - choosing a mix of vertical and horizontal since the frame I'd bought had 2 of each orientation. I converted them to sepia tone using Photoshop Elements and printed them (at Wal-Mart, of course). Then we went through the photos and chose 2 horiziontal and 2 vertical. In the end, the 4 pictures were all taken in Rome, which suited our thematic senses: the Coliseum, the Borghese Gallery, the Saturn Temple at the Forum, and St. Peter's Cathedral.

Picture frame: $12
Developed pictures: less than $1
Wrought-iron votive holder: $6
Votives: already had, so $0
Total cost: $19

Here's the frame with the pictures:

And here's the finished niche:

The frame could stand to be bigger, but not bad for something thrown together in 1 day on a budget.

DIY Fall Centerpiece

Everyone is switching out the fall decor for Christmas stuff now, but here's the centerpiece I made 5 weeks ago when we put our house up for sale.

I had to have a centerpiece fast so that I'd have SOMETHING on the table when we got our house pictures taken for a real estate website. Of course, already-designed silk flowers cost a fortune, so I used my Hobby Lobby birthday gift card, bought the separate pieces, and put them together myself. After cleaning the house from top to bottom (including closets! since that's what our realtor told us to do), "make centerpiece" was last on my list of things to finish before the house photographer arrived. I had just 10 minutes to put this together (then an extra 5 minutes because the photographer was late).

Total cost value: less than $30
Actual cost: $0 (because of the gift card)
Number of pieces purchased: 4 (container, floral foam, 2 bunches of fall foliage)
Tools: wire cutter
Time spent arranging: 15 minutes; I had to cut each stem off the "bunch" since they were held together by a larger plastic stem

It's not floral-design-school perfect, and I confess, I MAY redo it next year (take everything out and start again), but it's not bad for 15 minutes and a person with no floral arranging education.

Christmas decorating is next, and I do have some money left on that gift card....

Decorating Principle #217: Use What You Have

A.K.A., Decorating With Books

John and I love books. What can we say. If Bibliophiles Anonymous existed, we'd have to join. We love going to bookstores not just to buy books and look at them, but to be around them. My first year of college, I took only a few books with me. Then when I went home for Christmas, I packed up 2 boxes full of my favorite books and shipped them to school, just to surround myself with a few more books. I didn't have a roommate second semester, so something(s) had to fill the void.

So it's no surprise that I love to decorate with books, which is part of my principle of using what you have to decorate. Almost every corner of our house fulfills this idea:














You get the picture.

Inside the front foyer of our house, there is a large ledge on the right side, which forms the ceiling of the bathroom and coat closet below. For months, this ledge was empty and thus drove me crazy, though the guests we had during this time didn't notice the ledge at all. About two months ago, we bought a trunk at an antique mall, so that sat on the ledge for a long time in a random fashion.

We finally acquired a ladder so that we can access the ledge and Decorate It with books (and other things), which we spent an hour today doing. John was a great help with details that I overlooked or didn't consider. (Yes, sometimes I miss details! Hard to believe!) The trunk is the only item on the ledge that we bought; everything else we already owned. And most of what's on the ledge is Authentic. (Translation: not a "new antique" from Pottery Barn, much as I love PB, no offense PB!)

This typewriter still works perfectly. It was used by my grandparents to type Christmas letters; labels for VHS tapes full of Murder She Wrote and Dr. Quinn, Medicine Woman; and many other things. I have no idea how old it is. Possible 1930s or 40s?? There is no "1" key - you have to use the lowercase "L" for that.

This is what the ledge looks like, finished. The railing separates the ledge from the office in the loft. The rest of the items on the ledge, besides the trunk we bought, are from my other grandparents. The encyclopedia set was bought by my grandfather in the 1950s for about $150; when John boxed them up to bring home, we found the original receipt. The quilt was made by my great-grandmother (I think); the back of it was made from white sacks that held feed "for fattening hogs." Like many of us, its good side is showing, but the rest of it is completely falling apart. Don't worry - the quilt is beyond redemption, so it can safely collect dust in its new home (better there than hiding its light under a bushel in the linen closet).