Displaying Random Weird Stuff that you can’t throw away…

So, I’ve been sorting through some “stuff” and I’m determined that any item in our home will either be displayed or will be gotten rid of. No more storing of “stuff” in totes. Dang, Rubbermaid made a fortune off of me.

Anyway.

We’ve been schlepping around this collection of items that belonged to my husband’s great grandmother: The bottom to churning stick thing, a butter paddle, a candle snuffer and a thingy-ma-bob for darning socks. I am not a consultant for technical terms. Deal with it.

An advance apology – these are all cell phone pics. If I had to drag out the real camera, take staged photos, retouch and apply watermarks – this post would not get written. Also because these are all photos from my brand new iPhone that was about 1 hour old when I took these, and I’m not quite happy with the quality, but it is what it is. I’ll post better ones later. Maybe.

I was going to use a crate that I had purchased from some craft store awhile back, but it looked so new and needed some kind of treatment done to it, so I’d been putting this project off.

Then, last week, while cleaning out the garage, I was organizing Mr. Crazy’s bee-keeping equipment and I decided to steal this. I don’t know the official name of it, but it’s used in hive construction/assembly.

Looks like a crate to me!

First I had to brush the heck out of it because it was kind of grimy from being in the garage. That’s all I did to it. I’m in minimalistic expenditure phase when it comes to energy, time, resources and money right now.

Then, I took some copper wire that I had (you could use florist wire, but I couldn’t find mine) and wrapped it around each item and secured it in the back by twisting it with my pliers. Then I trimmed it and smashed it down a little to make it look better:

And here is the completed project :

I purposely mounted the items higher up on the bee crate thing because I intended on this being displayed above my kitchen cabinets and I knew the lower part would not be visible.

Here is the crate displayed in the same area as a spinning wheel and some kind of wool yarn winder that belonged to the same great grandmother:

And while waiting for it to be time to link – I was doing some more rearranging and found this sign that an artist friend (now deceased) had made for Mr. Crazy back when he was selling honey at a little fair. I think it’s perfect!

 

Mr. Crazy has informed me that this is a fruit crate. Even though it was the same exact size and shape of the other wooden items with the bee keeping equipment, it was not bee equipment and had nothing at all to do with bee keeping. I’m all for pretending he didn’t tell me that.

Thanks for looking.

Christine

Carved Celtic Knotwork

I married Mr. Crazy in 1997. In doing so, I married a woodcarver who came from a long line of woodcarvers. So, there was little to do, but try my hand at woodcarving. Below is the very first (and last) project I carved. Of course, being the over-achiever that I am – I designed a Celtic Knotwork Pattern to carve. Yep, it was hard, and it’s not perfect, but I did it all myself.

Unfortunately, I carved this about 10 years ago and it’s just been hanging around in an unfinished state.

So, I did some final sanding on it and stained it:

Then, I hung it and a Scottish Thistle carved by Mr. Crazy’s uncle Clarence (I told you it runs in the family!) and hung them over the nasty screw holes that were left when taking down the kitchen cabinet above the peninsula/bar:

OOPS! Not a good job of dusting the thistle or hiding the fact that we haven’t installed the new outlet covers.

Let’s try that again:

There, that’s better!

And what’s even better is – I didn’t spend a cent for this. I had the sanding sponge and I had the stain. FREE ART!!

I’m not crazy about the spacing of these 2 plaques, but due to the placement of the screw holes, this is where they had to be. I’ll be adding another piece between them to balance it out. Later.

PS – If you pay attention to tags, you will find “Irish Decor” on this one and a lot more to follow. Between Mr. Crazy and I, we have Irish, Scottish and English blood coursing through our veins, so Celtic music and art are a huge part of our lives. Stay tuned for much more decor in this vein as we turn our dining room into an Irish Pub.

Kitchen: Christmas 2011 Revamp

Here’s some photos of some kitchen work that I did as a Christmas present to my hubby. He is the chef of the family.

I don’t have “before” photos. Well, I do from when we first moved into the house, but they’re from my film days, so I’ll need to scan some photos. As soon as I find them. 😉

There were 3 major components to this job:

1. Installation of laminate flooring
2. removal of cabinet above stove & cabinet above peninsula
3. installation of pot rack above stove & stainless backsplash

Funny story….I started this work as soon as my hubby left for work in the morning and hoped to have it done by the time he got home at 4PM. The cabinets came down quite quickly, but the floor was hard to get started, PLUS, since this was a surprise, I didn’t ask DH to pull out any tools for me, so when it came time to find the right saws, etc for this job, we (DHs best friend helped) were at a bit of a disadvantage. We assumed DH owned the proper tools, he did not and we had to experiment for awhile until we found something that worked. Next time I’ll get a jigsaw first.

DH wound up picking up fast food for us on his way home from work and then pitching in to help. His buddy left about supper time and DH and I continued working until just past midnight.

IN PROGRESS Floor photos:

Halfway done with the floor at 9:40 pm

Floor finished at 12:11 AM whew!

AFTER photos, sort of – these were all cell phone shots – I know – BAAAADDDD!!!

Stainless steel backsplash & new pot rack for utensils

View from the dining room. We still have some additional work to do. We’re going to add on a real bar with an overhang and then get bar stools that are the right height for it. These will do for now. I already had them on hand. I also already changed out the cabinet hardware, but haven’t taken photos.

And it’s real obvious that I have not yet learned how to stage photos. (I’m a people photographer, they don’t need staged. Much. 😉 )