Fixin' Some Stuff... and a Weather Interruption

So I had some issues with starting my cabinet project. First off, don't use your tailgate as a sawhorse. When you accidentally cut into it, that metal WILL mess up your blade, and then you have to take everything apart and drive to Lowe's, because OF COURSE you don't have extra blades for your circular saw. And then it snows, and of course we Mississippians are complete pansies and WILL freak out when it snows.


This was sometime around midnight on Sunday night. There's around 7 inches at least built up at this point, and it's still coming. This morning when I slid open the barn door, there was (I swear!) something like a foot of drift. Crazy, man! Also, if you look closely, you can't tell the new damage to the truck via the saw vs. the old damage. LOVE my beater Tundra! I swear, if I had a nice truck, I would have started crying.

So my cabinet is on hold, along with my slipcovers (which are left on the wingchairs, half-finished, in Jackson, until I get back there during a break from school), AND my intercession class (how on EARTH are we supposed to make up TWO days of a TEN DAY class?!)... which leaves me with ...

I dunno.

I started reading Vanity Fair, which villifies poor Becky a lot more than the movie did.

I rode in the snow, which was ethereal. A broad pasture full of smooth, unblemished snow is dizzying - almost like you're riding across a white void. Fancy kept having to slam on the brakes and put her nose in the snow, just to make sure the ground was still there. Yay for an insecure horse! lol

I fixed her warm blanket. I'm not sure how she did it, but she yanked one of the rear leg straps clean off, in the middle of the strap. So I washed the whole thing, twice, with plenty of baking soda to get the poo smell out, and then used my handy-dandy new sewing machine to fasten the strap back on, and then reinforce some of the other straps where they were coming loose at the joint (is that the right word? where they connected to the blanket). Now if I can just get some fabric to fix the neckline, since it sits so badly on her withers... drat this area for having only one fabric store, in a very inconvenient location, and two Walmarts with ridiculously stupid crafts sections. Obviously I didn't change my thread, but I figure she'll stain that white into brown quickly enough... The strap on the left is the one that she snapped. But I'm VERY happy to have my sewing machine. Otherwise, I'd have had to consider this blanket messed up, wasted, and it would have been trashed (or horded, since I likely would have been convinced that someday I could fix it or something...).

So now, considering the temps, we'll likely still have a frigid, snow-covered day again tomorrow, and no class YET AGAIN (I wonder, will I ever learn illustration techniques at this rate?), I get to wander through yet another aimless day. Maybe I'll accomplish something though, who knows?

Also, please, please, please don't judge me for the trashy looking area around where my truck is parked, or the nasty vinyl "wood" flooring. I rent, and I get what I get. The fact that my horse lives downstairs has made almost everything bearable. ...except my landlord, who has bad temper tantrums... lol

Also, just to throw this in, I had the obligation honor of decorating my folks' house over December, pre- and post-Christmas. So here's the mantle, since I haven't shown it off yet.

For Christmas.

I wish I had pictures from previous years. This is a HUGE improvement. For all that everybody always expects me to churn out something interesting every year, I was never really given much to work with. But this year, I was allowed to pick a theme and run with it - complete with credit card. The apothecary jars, garland, and mirror are new. I felt like a mirror was necessary in this really very dark room.

Post-Christmas.

Keeping with the apothecary jars, and the ever-present brass candlesticks, I changed out some of the white tapers from Christmas, put my grandmother's mantle clock back up, and started fiddling around with little decor things from around the house. Ended up with a bird theme, and then pulled out my grandmother's Lady with Lamb figurine, and my Dad's rather corny anniversary gift to my Mom, the Snuggling Couple figurine. Never leave him with no gift ideas!

It still looks rather unfinished. Since the whole thing is essentially a frame over a big, colonial reproduction cooking fireplace, it really needs to be done *just right*. And I haven't figured that out yet. And of course, the antique candlesticks are varying widths, so the ability to get straight-looking tapers varies, and kind of looks silly.

Meh, that's it. Wholly uninteresting, I'm sure.