And another thing...

Martha Stewart, eat your heart out.

This is a really long winded post, I won�t be offended if you skip this one. Ok, I will be offended, but I will understand. Just be thankful that I am not posting all those found photo�s directly on this page, but have used my limited knowledge of HTML to link to them.

I love to decorate. If you ask my son, I over do it. As these pics from what I call "the bond" room will attest. I am also cheap, so none of the following cost me very much to do. I mostly used things I already had, and rigged up what I didn�t.

A little background.

My son was really into James Bond, and not just the new stuff, but he would rent the old stuff with Roger Moore and Sean Connery. He was 7, so it was a bit strange. So when he said he wanted a James Bond room, I ran with it.

I painted the border (since Wal-mart doesn't sell 007 borders) and made my own stencils from covers of all the James Bond books, and of course the logo. Then I printed all the book covers and framed them and hung them above the border. I painted his dresser and put phrases from the movies all over it. Things like "shaken not stirred". You get the idea. I copied autographs of all the actors who ever played James Bond and transferred them on one wall. Most people would stop there....but not me.

I had to do this. This is the actual size of my son at the time, made from huge stencils and transferred on the door. At this point my son said "STOP", it had been a week and he wanted his room back. I was spent anyway, the stencils for the border were the most time consuming, some of them were 4 colors, so I had to do them 4 times. I was very pleased with myself, but as luck would have it, we didn't live there for very long and I am sorry I didn't take better pictures of it.

When we moved back to town, my son picked a very easy theme (hockey) so it took me a day to do his room. But one night ....really late, I was sitting at my desk thinking �I should re-stain this thing�. This made me go and look to see if I had any left. I did, it was a stain and varnish in one, the color was pecan. I opened the can to see how much was left and spilled some. I grabbed the first thing I could find and cleaned it up. Now I had an old t-shirt full of stain, and for some reason, I rubbed it on the wall. Must have been the devil in me, but I looked at it, and it looked good. So, at 1am I started to rag roll my bedroom with this stain. I thought it looked great.

The next day, my brother walked in and said, "looks like dirt".

WHAT? Hmmmm it does look like dirt. Now I am in decorator mode. What goes with dirt? Leaves! I searched the internet and found pictures of fall leaves and made stencils. As an application for all my newly made stencils, I decided to make a canopy for my bed. (something all little girls dream of) I had a brand new set of sheets, and I proceeded to stencil fall leaves on them. What you have to understand is that this was in the wee hours of the morning, and you just can't go out and buy material, but when I get into these moods, I just use whatever is handy.

I don't always do things the right way, but I always get them done. So now I have the canopy up. Now the walls look bare. I start to stencil leaves falling off the top of window sills and door frames. I am totally out of control now.

There is also a window in my room that looks out onto the door that the upstairs tenant uses. When she forgets to turn out the light it shines right into my bedroom, keeping me from sleep. So, I put mac-tak, (that sticky shelf paper?) on the glass and stenciled leaves on that.

Now it is 3am. I am looking at the windows wondering what I am going to do for curtains. I get a brainstorm, a week before I was at a yard sale at a lumber yard and for some reason I made a weird purchase. I bought window pane frames. These are for when you have one big frame and you want the look of an older 6 or 8 pane window. I bought a whole stack of them. Why? I have no idea.

Now, I dug them out and lo and behold, they fit exactly into the window openings in my bedroom. Which is freaky, because this house is over 100 years old and you can never find anything to fit anything here. So while I watch Steel Magnolias on Showtime, I paint the frames and staple the leftover sheets to the back of them and (you guessed it) stenciled leaves on it. This is the result. I liked it so much, I did it in the living room too.

I literally did my room in two days. I was possessed. Once I start something, I can�t stop, I think it is a little of the OCD. But I have to do things, until they are finished. The next week I decided on a Friday night at 9 or so, I needed a headboard to go with my new "fall" room, so I picked up some 1x3's and made this. (notice that keeping with the theme, I also did the beadspread) This impressed even me, because I didn't wait for the right tools for the job, I just did it. I didn't even have a level, so it is a little wonky, but I think it works.

One last note, I have to show you one more thing, I saw this in a magazine and had to make them. They are book shelves. Get it?

Ok, boring story over. Continue on with your lives. I don�t think Martha Stewart needs to worry about her job�..although they may need someone to take over while she is in the pen.