Thou Shalt Not Covet Thy Neighbor's Airstream

There has been a huge cosmic mistake. This woman has my life. Or at least she has the one that I think I want but we all know that the life I need is the one I have but still....

I frequently whine about wanting a vintage caravan to park in my backyard to use as my own personal art studio/sanctuary. However, it would also be nice if the caravan was roadworthy and large enough to provide a comfortable temporary habitat for family road trips. Maybe an Airstream would be a better choice and maybe it would look something like this:

Perfect! This little jewel belongs to John Gray and Robin Brown, owners of Magnolia Pearl. Since I did not ask their permission to use their photos on my blog, please go buy something from them so that I won't feel guilty. I would do it myself because I love everything they have but there are no prices on their website which to me means if you have to ask you can't afford it. But just look at how cute their stuff is!

I want to be girl #4 in that picture. I want to wear long gauzy bohemian dresses with ruffled pantaloons and scuffed booties. And I want to have naturally curly blonde hair that I don't even comb because I'm just cool like that. And I want to live on a farm and be tan all the time and have teeth as white as my boho fashions. And if it's not too much to ask let's just go ahead and kick the clock back about 20 years so that I can wear my lovely sleeveless dresses without worrying about my arm wings flapping in the wind.

That's who I was supposed to be. I'm just sure of it. I want the life I was supposed to have, complete with this darling little Airstream that I pull behind my rose covered 1958 Rolls Royce Silver Cloud.

















I want to take my Airstream to antique shows where I sell my overpriced garments to middle aged women who wish they were me.


















Then after a long hard day of separating the old bitties from their cash, I want to relax in my antique french claw footed tub (yes, that's IN my Airstream) then sleep in my custom made Princess and The Pea bed where I will dream about how fabulous it is to be me.
















Seriously, is that too much to ask??

Between The Sheets

I'm a linen whore. There, I said it. I love linens such as bedding, towels, placemats, tablecloths that I'll never use, curtains, doilies, hankies, etc. When I go to Goodwill or a thrift store that's usually the first thing I look for.

I also love hotel sheets. I love their high thread count softness and the way they layer a comforter between 2 flat sheets. I don't know why that makes me happy but it does. I've tried that at my house but it doesn't work well since we can't use a down comforter because of my allergies and the down alternative ones just aren't the same. Besides, Jayson gets too hot during the night so I try to keep our bedding as light as possible since he has so much trouble sleeping. That might sound magnanimous but it's really not since I'm narcoleptic and can sleep in pretty much any environment. Except if my feet are too cold or too hot. That's the only thing I've found that will keep me awake at night. The rest of my body doesn't matter but my feet must be at the optimum temperature or sleep will never happen. Hence my unusually large collection of slipper socks in various weights and fabrics.

Another thing I love is sheet washing day. I don't love washing the sheets but I do love putting the beds back together. That might be weird if all of our beds had one set of sheets and a matching comforter, but none of our beds have that. I've finally collected enough thrift store bedding so that I can mix and match sheets and blankets and coverlets so that the beds never look the same way twice in a row. I love that.

Taylor's bed doesn't have very many options but it's her bed and her responsibility so I don't even count that one. The bed in the art room has limited options because it's the only other full size bed in the house besides Taylor's and I'm still collecting linens in the right size for it. My bed and the guest room bed have the most options because they're the same size so that's what I buy most often. And I finally found a set of sheets that I like that will fit the air bed, which is queen size, so that one will have options soon too! I love having options. And lots of linens.

Here's my bed this week. I don't have a lot of pillowcase options yet because we recently switched from king size pillows to regular ones. I don't use a comforter or blanket on top anymore because I'm going for that hotel sheet sandwich thing only with blankets in the middle instead of a comforter.

I also need more fitted sheet options for our bed. I have several but these chocolate brown ones are the only ones whose pockets are deep enough to keep the corner from popping out on Jayson's side which has nothing to do with the extra weight on that side of the bed. I'm sure. The top sheet is from a pretty pink and white striped set that my mother in law gave to us. Under that is a matelasse that has a grease stain on it from when we took it on a car trip and it got slammed in the door. Oh well. Then there's another sheet, a thermal blanket and the final sheet. Sometimes I'll add an extra sheet or two just because.

The guest bed also has assorted layers of sheets and blankets as well as the king size pillows that we don't use anymore. I have a thick set of sheets on there that I got at Overstock.com and usually save for the winter but I'm using them now since our last house guests nearly froze to death. I used to make fun of how my grandmother's house was so cold it felt like a morgue. Now that I understand middle age hormones, I live in the morgue too.

This pretty sheet is my most recent thrift store find. It's soft, it has a beautifully embroidered border and it was $3.

This is the bed in the art room which doesn't change much. I don't have enough sheets to make a sheet sandwich for it so it just has two blankets and one sheet for now and I feel kind of bad about that. The bed belonged to my paternal great grandmother, my maternal grandmother made the little dutch girl quilt and the toys are from my childhood. I need to add something of my mother's since that generation is missing then add something of Taylor's. That would be cool. My paternal grandmother made the rag doll whose name is Mary Jane. The pink elephant is Linda and she was my all time favorite toy. The pink possum is Penelope and I just rediscovered her when I cleaned out some boxes that were stashed in the attic.

Although I adore lots of nice soft sheets, they're not just for the bed. I'm still working on my rag rug which has sheets as well as other scrap fabrics. Plus I'm also collecting sheets to use to recover my sectional couch. That's an ambitious project for me so I will likely be talking about it for quite a while before I actually do it. Bed sheets may seem like an unusual fabric choice for that, but I have a plan :)

I'm also collecting sheets, and will need lots of them, to make some rag curtains similar to this:

{Via}

Mine will be more neutral colors with some vintage floral fabric and sheets thrown in as well as some strips of lace. And I will hang mine over a window like a curtain instead of in a doorway. So you see, I'm not buying excessive sheets just for the heck of it. In fact, I've got a long way to go and should probably quit wasting time and go get some more sheets right now.

My cup runneth over.

This is in response to a couple of friends who have encouraged me to switch to the Diva Cup. While out running errands today I had to come home in the middle of it all so I could change clothes due to an unexpected surge in hormone related activity that I am unable to predict or prevent thanks to perimenopause, or as I like to call it, Hell Lite.

I'm sure the Diva Cup is a fine product and I do love that it saves money on those disposable supplies we are forced to buy every month. I also like that it is environmentally friendly since those disposable supplies eventually end up in a landfill somewhere.

However, today's episode reminded me that until they make a Diva Cup the size of a Super Big Gulp, it's not for me.

That is all.

Tip #8: Don't be Trashy

On some of the blogs I read, the bloggers will frequently get "featured" on another blog and will blog their excitement all over their own blog about being featured somewhere else. Since I'm not a "real" blogger I don't really understand all that but I think I almost know what it feels like now.

Earlier this week I got an email from a blogger asking for permission to use a picture from my blog in one of her posts. She very kindly put a link back to my blog so of course I didn't mind at all if she used it and it was nice of her to ask.

She has a lifestyle blog called Everyday Polish which is just lovely and is pretty much the polar opposite of my blog. I browsed through a few of her posts which seem to offer tips and advice on how to "polish" or add style to your everyday life. I picture her delicately dropping sugar cubes into long, slender crystal champagne glasses at cocktail parties while I'm hunched over a hand mirror with a flashlight and pair of tweezers, trying to pluck a chin hair whose root goes all the way to my brain.

Yeah, we're at slightly different places in our lives but that's okay. I was pleased to see that the picture she chose to use in her blog post was from my Everyone Should Have a Grenade Cozy post from last summer. It's the one where I dumped the contents of my purse onto my couch and took a picture of it.

Her blog post (I hate to keep calling her "her" but I don't know her name) entitled EP Travels: 10 Things to Consider BEFORE You Get On That Flight gives a list of helpful dos and don'ts to consider before your next flight. The photograph of my purse puke is used to illustrate her tip #8: Don't be Trashy. Basically she says to keep a small Ziploc in your bag to hold the trash that would otherwise get shoved to the bottom and start piling up on you. Sage advice. Not advice that I'm capable of following but sage nonetheless.

So if you leave my blog feeling like you need a shower, pop on over to Everyday Polish for a mental palate cleanse. I'm not technically being "featured" on her blog but by gosh my picture is on there as an example of what not to do and I am darn proud of that!

Time To Lick The Donkey

I was going to post pictures and commentary about our stay-at-home vacation this past week but you can see all that on Facebook here and here. I'll be adding more pictures over the next day or two so check back to see what's new.

Instead of a boring play-by-play, which I can't even remember, I'll just hit a few vacation highlights for you. Some friends from Louisiana spent their family vacation in Houston this year and since they stayed at our house we figured it was fitting punishment for them to have to take us along.

Fortunately we all adhere to the same strict diet and made sure the kids ate all their bacon cheddar fries before they could have a Zinger.

We played a little miniature golf at Choice Tee in Spring, TX. In addition to a cute 19-hole course they also have a fully automated driving range, meaning Jayson will surely be making a trip back there. Early on in the game, Jayson developed a pattern of picking up his ball if it was within 5 feet of the hole and saying, "Just go ahead and give me that one, you know I'll make it". Jamie and I tried saying that at the tee box but it didn't go over so well.



 
The Downtown Aquarium is definitely one of the cheesiest aquariums I've ever been to. We won't be going back there any time soon.  Fortunately we all had coupons for B1G1F admission tickets, otherwise it would have felt like a bigger waste of money. The only cool thing there wasn't even a fish, it was a white tiger that attacked Jayson through the glass of her cage. He says he didn't do anything to provoke her but he says that to me too every time I want to rip his head off.

We ate lunch at Five Guys Burgers then went to check out the Waterwall at Williams Tower. Okay that was cool. Literally. The temperature was hovering around 99 so the spray off the water was quite refreshing.

We were all sweaty again by the time we hiked back to our parking spot so we decided to take a nice relaxing stroll around IKEA. Jamie and I both found a few things we couldn't live without and everyone agreed that IKEA is the most awesome place on earth.

NO dancing on the bus.

 Our next vacation destination was NASA, or the Johnson Space Center depending on how technical you want to be. I enjoyed it but not as much as I thought I would. I love space and I've watched all kinds of documentaries on the space program. This felt like one big long documentary with cheesy props....for the most part but not all of it. Saturn V was cool and the kids liked the play area and I finally got my question answered about how one pees in space. Well, I pretty much knew the answer but this time I got a visual to go with it. You see there is a space potty and there's a tube with an attachment that you pee into and obviously that attachment looks different depending on if you're a man or a woman. What I didn't realize (and should have cuz...yuck) is that each astronaut not only gets their own personal pee attachment but it is custom made to fit them as well. That's right. Custom made. Now we all have the same visual.

The Children's Museum of Houston is a must-see whether you have kids or not. We did all the activities the kids did (well, pretty much) and had a great time. The whole thing is completely hands-on and sometimes you can scare the little kids away from the stuff you want to play with.

We built some awesome paper rockets to launch in this big cage they'd built for just that purpose. Chad and Jayson launched theirs all the way to the opposite end of the cage. I put my carefully constructed rocket (The Starship Secondprize) on the tube and stepped back to stomp on the launcher. Just before I did a tiny little girl maybe 2 or 3 years old squeezed in front of me and stomped on my launcher with all her might then she ran off to the next one. My rocket barely scooted to the end of the tube then pitifully flopped to the floor right in front of the launch pad.

There she goes...sabotaging some else's rocket.

I was stunned for about a second then doubled over laughing! I had visions of my rocket sailing past Chad and Jayson's and maybe even breaking through the cage to become the most awesome paper rocket ever! Instead it just fell off the end of the tube and lay helplessly on the ground, robbed of its full potential.








Chad found out about an observation deck in one of the downtown buildings that I hadn't run across before so we went to check that out and it was pretty awesome. It's on the 60th floor of the J.P. Morgan Chase Tower and you can get a pretty impressive view of a good chunk of the city. The only catch is that you have to go there during business hours during the week, it's not open on weekends.

Taylor needs to be a Charlie's Charmer.

Jamie had a gift card to Charming Charlie's burning a hole in her pocket so me and her and Emily and Taylor went to see how much damage we could do. Not much, turns out. We browsed a lot and I bought a couple of things off the clearance rack but that was it. I'd never been to that store before so I had fun browsing, especially because of the way they have all their jewelry and accessories grouped by color. There's a blue table, a white table, a pink table, a black table, etc. Very efficient :)



Earlier in the day I had painted Emily's face at the children's museum and she and I had a long discussion about favorite colors. Hers is lime green (same as Taylor) and I explained to her that I don't have a single favorite color. I can name 5 colors that I really like but I can't pick one that's my favorite.

We all went our separate ways at Charming Charlie's and Emily began to get concerned after she'd not seen me for a while. She told Jamie, "We'll never find Ms. Shannon in here, she doesn't have a favorite color!" I thought that was hilarious.

We ended our group vacation with dinner at Tonino's and seriously felt like we were guests of the mob. And I mean that in the most respectful way possible. We got there around 9 p.m. and were the only ones in the place. The waiter had someone shadowing him which we figured was a training situation but we couldn't determine who was the trainer and who was the trainee. It's not a large restaurant at all but there are hundreds and hundreds of wine bottles all over the place. They're even in boxes between and under the booths. And there's this stack of lockers with bottles of wine in them that are private collections.

We were pretty sure that Guido and Carmine were in the back room making plans to whack whichever waiter screwed up first.  The music they played was pretty much typical Italian restaurant music...lots of Deano and Sinatra and the Godfather theme song which cracked us all up. But there was also an out of place Italian Christmas song that we had trouble identifying at first. Taylor and Lauren thought it was Dominate the Donkey. I thought it was Time To Lick the Donkey. We finally understood it was Dominick the Donkey. We had a ball making fun of that song but the background music ended when it was over and we got a little nervous, thinking maybe we had disrespected the Dom or something.

Creepy mafia feeling aside, that was some darn good Italian food, let me tell you. We will definitely be eating there again, if it pleases the Godfather. We drove by today and noticed there was a "help wanted" sign in the window so I'm pretty sure our waiter sleeps with the fishes. I suggested to Taylor that she apply for a job there, she might pick up some good tips. She said definitely not because if she ever quit they might hit her. Jayson assured her they would never hit her. They would whack her or put a hit ON her but they wouldn't hit her. For some reason that didn't comfort her.