Painting and Accessorizing

  The past week or so I've done my fair share of both buying and making. Most of what I bought was to be used for the making of something else. Having just moved into a house, I've purchased a few things focused on home improvement, primarily painting supplies. I decided I wanted to have one wall in one of the rooms covered in chalkboard paint.

There are quite a few recipes out there for making your own chalkboard paint (for example), but most entail grout, water, paint, and later, sandpaper. Determined to make these recipes I then became determined to find a local hardware store. I don't know why but I was sort of surprised at how few of these are still kicking around! I think Lowes and Home Depot have really taken the market. I was reminded of my dad at this point - a couple months ago he asked me to keep an eye on my grandmother while he went out to buy a new screen door. He said he'd be about an hour because he wasn't sure which of the previously named boxed stores he'd need to go to. Twenty minutes later he was back. He said that as he was leaving town he remembered the local place a block away from his house and went there instead, "They didn't have the most amazing selection but I might as well keep my tax dollars local". Right on.  Luckily, one of the few local shops left is a mile away from me so I headed down there and got painting supplies. Long story short - my recipe didn't quite work out and I ended up buying chalkboard paint from Lowes. While I am happy that I initially focused on seeking out the local shop, I still have work to do in terms of pre-purchase reflection and patience. The local shop did not have chalkboard paint, however they had superbly helpful and knowledgeable staff that would have happily ordered it for me if I had held my horses. Instead of being patient for probably no more than a week, I went the big store route. I'm going to keep patience in my mind as something to reflect on next time I'm in a similar situation. Also, if patience is a problem for me in shopping, it's probably a problem for me in other areas of my life.

As I mentioned, I also did a chunk of making this week (see pics below). I have a penchant for drinking carbonated beverages, particularly Sprite Zero. Upon moving, I resolved to make this a treat food only. To remind myself of my soda drinking ways I made a pop-top bracelet. I also made two hats and one scarf with my newly found crochet skills (not sure skills is an appropriate term yet, but oh well). And continuing on with my apparent accessory craze, I made some earrings out of random buttons I found and bracelets out of remnants of pantyhose. I have several pairs of stockings kicking around that I don't really wear because the elastic waist bands give me hives. Yet I bought some of these stalkings a year or so ago rather impulsively and probably because of their bright colors. While I don't often wear stockings, there are a couple dresses I made recently that really lend themselves to some questionably bright leggings, so I got to altering. I cut off the offending waist band and then the feet and that was pretty much it. They're now wearable for me - and wear them I have! I turned the waistbands into bracelets and I haven't decided what I'll be doing with the feet yet.

Last but not least, I made soap yesterday. I have a couple friends up from NYC and Philadelphia this weekend and after using one of my new soaps in the bathroom my friend asked "So what made you decide to take that project on?" I answered "Well....we needed soap". And that was pretty much it. We have a big bottle of castile soap on the kitchen counter and it's been playing quadruple duty for a bunch of cleaning purposes but we really needed some soap in the bathrooms. So I was either going to go the store and buy some or go to another store and buy stuff to make my own. I made two kinds - yellow and green cucumber melon soaps with some buttons in them for fun, and vanilla-almond scented soaps with coffee grounds for exfoliation and cocoa butter for softening.