Year: 2010

  • I can’t apologize enough for this video

    Late yesterday afternoon I decided I should probably take some pictures to serve as a visual aid for my pouf tutorial. I can say with all certainty that it was the poorest assortment of photos that have ever been taken and would have shown nothing other than what a horrible photographer I am.

    For example:

    I don’t even know what step I was attempting to photograph.

    Honestly, I don’t even know that I have a clue what I’m doing or if my poufs will stand the test of time. They’ve only been up less than a week and could fall down at any moment. One good tug and I might have myself a drapery house of cards.

    And I have to give one more shout out to The Nester who is the founder and inventor of window mistreatments. She has so many great, creative ways to mistreat windows that go way beyond what my limited decorative sensibilities can comprehend. Also, I was inspired by the pouf achieved by Katie at Harrington House. She made me aspire to heights of great poufiness after I saw her beautiful mistreatments. Lastly, I have to thank Holly for writing a great post full of links for great drapery tips.

    Seriously, did I win an Academy Award or just make some cheap curtains? Maybe I should get over myself and my homemade draperies.

    Anyway, after my poor attempt at documenting the process in photographs, I decided I was going to have to do a video tutorial even though I semi-swore to myself that I’d never do another one after the scarf-tying video. It’s just too painful to hear the way the camera makes me lisp combined with video evidence of how flat my hair looks by the end of the day. But because I love y’all, I recruited an amateur videographer to help me out.

    Disclaimer: If you’ve never suffered from vertigo, you will after watching this video.

    The Pouf from Big Mama on Vimeo.

    A few things:

    1. The camerawoman could not be cuter is spite of her tendency to interrupt and put in her two cents. She also doesn’t really get the concept of holding the camera steady or not getting your own feet in the video.

    2. I don’t have a lisp in real life. It’s the camera. I promise.

    3. However, my hair is that flat.

    4. If the poor quality of the video isn’t enough to guarantee I’ll never be featured on HGTV, then the chip clip sealed my fate. Also, my Doritos are now stale.

    5. I had to cut the video short due to uploading difficulties (most likely due to user error), so I’ll explain the final steps as best as I can. Continue to clip the fabric across the top, making sure you have all the folds in the ring clip (or chip clip) until you get to the other side. Then fold in the outer edge like you did at the beginning and clip it. Carefully, CAREFULLY, hang the rings on your curtain rod and then just gently pull out the folds of fabric to make the poufs. There is really no scientific method, just pouf and pull until it looks like you want it to look. It definitely works better if you have some fabric with a little bit of substance to it because the linen stuff I used in the video would have given me virtually no pouf at all since the fabric is so flimsy.

    6. There is a very good chance that I have no idea what I’m doing. In fact, I’d say it’s 70-30 that there’s a better way to make a pouf, but my lack of knowledge has never really stopped me from sharing information.

    7. If you really want to do this on a budget, then check out how cute The Nester made these draperies look without even using a curtain rod. Oh, and she also hot glues trim to her edges on occasion which looks beautiful but is beyond my skill level unless I decide to give myself second degree burns one afternoon.

    8. I have nothing else to add. Carry on.

  • Dizzying heights of fun

    Several of you asked how I achieved the poof on the top of my new drapes. I promise I will do a photo tutorial tomorrow, but at the moment I am suffering from a touch of the vertigo after spending the afternoon at the Rodeo Carnival.

    Since the kids were out of school for President’s Day, Gulley and I decided it was the perfect day to take them to the rodeo. It was a little chilly, but the sun was shining so we headed out to the fairgrounds full of hope and optimism.

    The kids all agreed that our first stop needed to be the ferris wheel.

    That look on Will’s face is what he refers to as his “sweetest smile”.

    Gulley and I decided we’d join the kids on the ferris wheel.

    Holy Rachel Zoe. Were the stores out of the large sunglasses?

    After the ferris wheel we wandered around and let the kids ride a few more rides, including a worm in desperate need of some orthodontia, the bumper cars and the Pirate Ship.

    Finally, Gulley and I couldn’t stand it any longer and insisted that it was time to go where all the real carnival magic happens.

    We started with corndogs with a side of Texas Twisters, which are homemade potato chips that were gone before I was able to get photographic evidence that they ever existed.

    Then I was torn between the turkey leg or the gordita. Ultimately, the gordita won out because there is no gordita like a rodeo gordita.

    However, I am sad to report that the gordita was filled with beef fajita meat that had never met any kind of tenderizing treatment. I finally just threw the rest of it out because I felt conspicuous standing in the middle of the fairway re-enacting one of those scenes from Wild Kingdom where a lion is trying to choke down an elephant.

    I found some consolation in the arms of a funnel cake.

    Anyone who says that food is not love has obviously never enjoyed a funnel cake at the rodeo.

    The kids were impatient to get back to the rides, so we headed back in that direction and saw something that stopped us in our tracks.

    Chicken fried bacon.

    Oh my word.

    It’s served fresh from the fryer with a side of coronary bypass.

    Oh, and Caroline saw what she referred to as the “Pickle Bird” and wanted to get her picture made with him.

    We finally made it back to the rides and Caroline and Jackson announced that they wanted to ride that ride where you ride up to the top and then it drops you and you do a free fall for about ten seconds but it feels like a thousand lifetimes. I can’t remember what it was called but I will henceforth refer to it as the Tower of Doom.

    For some reason I decided that it would be fun to join them on the Tower of Doom. After all, I spent most of my childhood summers as a frequent patron of Astroworld where I regularly rode the Dexter Frebish (later renamed the Excalibur, but it will always be the Dexter Frebish to me) and the Cyclone and the Sky Screamer. I laughed in the face of danger. Give me some turkey legs and a Gravitron and get out of my way.

    (Seriously, just thinking about the days of yore at Astroworld makes me want to weep because it no longer exists and what kind of childhood will Caroline have if she can’t experience the Alpine Sleigh Ride?)

    So we waited in line, let the scary carnival worker belt us into our seats and lower the shoulder harnesses, and then panicked as we began to ascend hundreds of feet into the air only to plummet back to earth. I can still hear the screaming. Mainly because I was the one screaming.

    As we got off the ride, Jackson announced he wanted to go again and Caroline looked a little shell-shocked. Me? I was just trying to keep down my corndog.

    Because you know what doesn’t really mix as well as it did thirty years ago? Vast amounts of junk food and rides that defy the laws of physics and gravity.

    I never really recovered after that. I think it might have given me a case of vertigo.

    So Gulley had to take one for the team and ride this swirly, spinny thing with the kids. TWICE.

    After a big day of fun, we announced it was time to head home and everyone commenced with the wailing and the whining. Gulley and I were forced to join in the chorus of mothers who were saying “What you ought to be saying is THANK YOU for the great day, Mom, instead of whining about it being time to leave, FIVE HOURS LATER.”

    In fact, I’m a little embarrassed to admit that I think I pulled out the phrase, “Maybe you should examine your heart”.

    But by the time we made it back to the car, they all agreed that a good time was had by all.

    Even though it ended too soon.

    And I got the vertigo.

  • The longest before and after post ever

    P and I began dating in March of 1995. That means that we’d almost been dating for one year when our first Valentine’s Day as a couple rolled around. I was hoping for a ring. Instead, I received a large tin full of cinnamon-flavored popcorn. It’s not that the popcorn wasn’t delightfully delicious as much as the fact that there wasn’t a diamond solitaire anywhere in that tin. And, trust me, I looked long and hard and very subtly as I ate an entire tin of popcorn in three and a half minutes under the guise of being hungry.

    The problem was, even after a year of dating, I didn’t know P well enough to know that he wasn’t a fan of any holiday that he deems to be a passel of lies being sold to the American public. I should’ve realized it when he chose to spend our first New Year’s Eve hunting at the ranch with his friends instead of taking me out to a romantic New Year’s Eve dinner which led us to spend the first day of 1996 breaking up as we argued over what constitutes a holiday (according to him a holiday isn’t a day that falls during the height of deer season) but love is blind and optimistic.

    Now, fourteen years, a wedding ceremony, one mortgage, a child and two dogs later, I totally agree with him on the whole made-up holiday thing. Oh sure, you may say that he’s trained me to disregard Valentine’s Day and New Year’s Eve, but it’s really no different than how I trained him to do his own laundry after one week of marriage. Frankly, I think I got the better end of that deal.

    And just to be clear, we haven’t robbed Caroline of the Valentine’s Day experience. In fact, she got a Hello Kitty DVD and a new pair of binoculars this year because that’s what she wanted and how is a girl supposed to get by without her own pair of optics when she’s afield?

    The thing about P is that he does really nice things for me all year long. He gets up first in the morning and turns off the ceiling fan so I don’t freeze, he brings me flowers for no reason, he doesn’t ever care when I announce that I’m too tired to cook and I’m calling in some Mexican food to go, and he never questions the fact that every purchase I bring into the house was bought for the bargain price of $15.00. And last week he completely outdid himself and installed a new kitchen faucet (even though he killed my farmhouse sink dream) and hung my new curtain rods.

    Remember when I wrote about Holly and how she was helping me make some changes to my living room? And then remember how I showed the bird cage and the old suitcase that I found at the antique store? And then remember how I haven’t said anything else about it in a month?

    One of the things Holly suggested was that I add some drapes in the living room. What Holly didn’t know was that I am deathly afraid of window treatments. They intimidate me. I blame it on some ill-conceived JC Penney drapes that P and I had in our first apartment. They were so unfortunate with their green swag of fabric draped across the top.

    But Holly insisted that drapes were the way to go and I was too embarrassed to tell her about my long-standing drape phobia. We began to look for fabric and ultimately found this beautiful Robert Allen fabric that was on sale at Fabrics.com for $6.95 a yard. It was exactly what I wanted, something soft and subtle that would add some texture to the room and coordinate with the fabric we’d chosen for some new pillows.

    However, I let my fear keep me from committing to the fabric purchase until Holly told me that I needed to go ahead and buy it because it was great fabric at an unbelievable price. She even calculated that I’d need about fourteen yards and I’m forever grateful to her for doing that bit of math for me because I don’t know what my guess would’ve been other than JUST WRONG. So I went online to order the fabric and it had been reduced to $1.95 a yard. ONE DOLLAR AND NINETY-FIVE CENTS A YARD. You can’t buy burlap for $1.95 a yard.

    Or maybe you can. I really have no idea.

    Procrastination has never served me so well. I ordered all the fabric I needed for less than $30.00. But then Holly began to mention words to me like “drapery lining” and “sewing machine” and I felt frightened all over again. I actually own a sewing machine but only because my mother-in-law was getting rid of it and asked me if I wanted it and why would I turn that down? That would be akin to admitting that I’ll never learn to sew and I’m totally going to learn how to sew. SOMEDAY.

    Holly realized that all the sewing might never happen and the drapery lining was wishful thinking at best, so she suggested that I might want to just “mistreat” the windows with the fabric a la The Nester. (If you don’t read The Nester, you are missing out on a veritable wealth of home decorating information) I knew that Sophie had mistreated her windows with much success and since I know she and I function at about the same level of non-crafty, I felt that there was hope for me and the mistreating of the windows.

    So I bought new curtain rods and clip rings at Lowe’s. Then God smiled on me and it rained all day Thursday causing P to say out loud in my presence, “I’m bored”. Which led to this pleasant development.

    I don’t know that he’ll ever utter the words “I’m bored” again.

    I rolled all fourteen yards of fabric out as best I could given the fact that I don’t have a room that’s fourteen yards long and then I nearly caused my brain to explode as I tried to compute the measurements of how much fabric I needed to cut for each window. A timely call from Sophie saved me from what would have been a terrible tragedy because I was about to cut the fabric right down the middle because I was in way over my head.

    Words can’t describe the level of stress I felt as I debated cutting into the fabric because Holly had stressed that it was very important that I line the pattern up and each panel needed to match. My head hurts right now just thinking about. But finally I looked at P who was sitting on the couch trying to figure out how on earth I’d decided I could make my own drapes and said, “Well, here goes nothing. At least the fabric only cost $28.00 if I totally screw this up.”

    He replied, “Yeah, but if you screw it up you’ll never find that fabric at that price again.”

    It wasn’t really the word of encouragement I was looking for. Also, please note that I told him the actual price of the fabric because it was such a good deal and I needed him to know how much money I’d saved him. It totally makes up for all the other $15.00 items we have around the house.

    I took a deep breath, hyperventilated for several minutes and began to cut. And now I have drapes in my living room.

    Here’s the before.

    Let us never speak of that fake plant again. It was the devil’s foliage.

    And here’s the after.

    Please don’t mention that vast array of animal prints. I was a woman on the edge who just made my own curtains and I threw that pillow and the footstool over there. I’m not attempting any sort of safari theme.

    New pillows and other accessories will be coming soon. And, no, I’m not making them myself.

    But the good news is they’re only going to cost $15.00.

  • Fashion Friday: Edition how hard is it to put on some real pants

    Today is the day that I am going to speak some truth in love.

    Several people sent me a link this week to something called Pajama Jeans.

    Their slogan is “Pajamas you live in, jeans you sleep in”.

    I am all for some comfortable clothing, but that is just wrong. Pajamas are for sleeping and for wearing when you drive school carpool in the morning. That’s it.

    I’m just concerned that we’ve reached a point in society where we feel like we need a casual alternative to jeans. Gulley reminded me this week that I called her several years ago to discuss my disbelief that grocery stores were actually selling frozen, pre-made peanut butter and jelly sandwiches. At the time, I honestly believed that America had reached the pinnacle of laziness. After all, how hard is it to slap some peanut butter and jelly on a piece of bread and call it a day?

    But now I’m wondering how hard is it to put on some pants that require a button and a zipper?

    We’re better than this, America.

    We’re better than this.

    Although I have to admit that I saw several commercials for the Hoodie Footie yesterday while P was watching Nascar (we lead a rich life) and maybe it was just because it was freezing cold and rainy outside, but I found myself wishing for my very own Hoodie Footie.

    Needless to say, I wouldn’t wear it in public.

    Or try to pretend like it could take the place of an actual outfit, although that hood is kickin’.

    I just think if you can’t muster the strength to put on a pair of real pants then maybe you should just stay in your pajamas, eat a block of cheese, and admit that you’ve given up on life.

    It’s a harsh word, but I say it with love. LOVE.

    1. V-neck sweater

    Remember how I’ve repeatedly mentioned trying to replicate this look that looks like an outfit Sandra Bullock wore in The Proposal?

    So I found the grey stripy scarf at Old Navy, but hadn’t really found the right sweater. But then Lindsee sent me the link to this coral sweater from Land’s End and it’s pretty darn close.

    Now if I could just get my hair to look like Sandra Bullock’s hair. Too bad there isn’t a link for that.

    2. Chambray Drop-Waist Shirt Dress

    My friend Steph told me about this dress this week. I think it would be so cute with black leggings while the weather is still cooler or with some cute sandals and bare legs once the sun decides to show up again.

    3. Ode to a Grecian Tunic

    I have no idea where I’d wear this or how many pushups I’d need to do to get my arms in shape to wear it, but I think it is so cute.

    4. Tiered Printed Skirts

    I can’t remember if it was last summer or the summer before that I declared it to be the summer of the skirt, but I do know that these are the perfect skirts for Spring and Summer. They are great with a cute tank or a t-shirt.

    5. Embellished Linen Blend Dress

    I saw this dress in an email I got from Nordstrom this week and fell in love with it.

    However, right now I’d need about eight coats of spray tan for that yellow color to not make me look like I have the jaundice.

    6. Princess ring

    This ring is so soft and pretty. Love it.

    7. Pintucked tunic top

    I linked to this on my Daily Links page earlier this week because it is the kind of top that I adore. I’d wear it all summer long with turquoise jewelry.

    8. Embroidery Tunic

    I think this would look great with jeans.

    9. Studded Circles Cuff

    My love for bracelets tends to run hot and cold. On the one hand (I’m so sorry) I love the way they look, but on the other hand (Could not be sorrier) they can drive me crazy with all the moving up and down on my arm.

    But this one might be worth it.

    10. Woven trim ruffle tank

    This would look great with a cute skirt and a denim jacket over it. Or even just by itself.

    Of course considering it was 34 degrees and rainy here yesterday, I probably won’t be wearing it anytime soon. Or I may be wearing it next week because it’s Texas and it might be 80.

    For more fashion, you can visit Jo-Lynne at Musings of a Housewife.

    Y’all have a great Friday.

  • Everything but the kitchen sink

    About seven years ago, we did some renovations on our house. And by we, I mean that P contracted the entire job and worked tirelessly to make sure everything turned out the way we wanted while I cried every night because I was worried that the house wouldn’t be ready on time and OH MY WORD what if we have to bring our new baby home to this rental house instead of her new pink nursery?

    I’d like to blame pregnancy hormones on all the obsessing over when the house would be finished, but I know I’d act the same way tomorrow except I wouldn’t be able to sing a chorus of “In the Ghetto” by Elvis Presley to drive home my point because the words “and a baby cries…in the ghetto” wouldn’t have the same impact now that the baby is six years old.

    We moved back into the house exactly two weeks before Caroline was born, in spite of the fact that we had no kitchen countertops or any other necessary components that make up a kitchen but we had the pink nursery and that’s all that really mattered. Who needs an oven when you have darling whimsical letters that spell CAROLINE hanging on a pink wall and a fresh, white crib that the baby won’t actually sleep in for several months?

    The countertops were finally installed the day before I went into labor along with the sink and the kitchen faucet. Everything was installed, the baby was born, and, approximately one week later, the sprayer component of our new faucet quit working. Actually, that’s not totally true. It worked fine if you didn’t mind the fact that it got stuck and would randomly decide to spew water all over the kitchen. It created a surprisingly non-hilarious situation when you factor in a newborn baby and sleep-deprivation. The kind of situation that is like shaking up a bottle of crazy sauce and then watching it explode.

    Ultimately, P worked his plumbing magic to unhook the sprayer and so it has remained a non-functioning component of our sink for the last six and a half years.

    Until he decided on Tuesday morning that TODAY WAS THE DAY to fix the sprayer. I don’t know why it was the day because I don’t bother to ask those kinds of questions. Why is the sky blue? Why do people watch Jay Leno? Why does Lionel Richie never age? JUST BECAUSE.

    All I know is that he asked me to help him get everything out from under our kitchen sink and our kitchen looked like this.

    It has continued to look like that for the past 48 hours. I try not to look directly at it because that would be like throwing a match on a powder keg just to see if it would explode. It would. It totally would.

    And it certainly doesn’t help matters that, in addition to being a haven for amateur plumbers, my house has been transformed into some sort of Valentine’s Day sweat shop. Caroline’s only homework for the week was to sign her name on Valentine’s cards for everyone in her class. But, OH NO, she wanted to hand make her cards and write “Happy Valentine’s Day! Love, Caroline” inside every single one. It was barrels of fun for the first two cards, but quickly became some kind of Hallmark factory gone awry as I stood over her and insisted that WE MUST CONTINUE TO MAKE THE CARDS. YOU CAN HAVE A SNACK WHEN YOU FINISH ANOTHER CARD.

    But oh she is SO TIRED of shaking the silver glitter. It’s exhausting.

    Anyway, P wasn’t sure that he was going to be able to fix the existing faucet because the something was leaking into the something and the bottom line is that my new bag of Pledge Grab-its got damp along with our last roll of Viva paper towels. I was out running errands to distract myself from the plumbing when he called and asked me to meet him at Home Depot so I could pick out a new faucet.

    I don’t go to Home Depot very often because it is my kryptonite. One loop around Home Depot and I begin to dream about new toilet seats, granite countertops, and fancy showerheads that make you feel like it’s raining on the inside. (Shout out to Amy Grant) But I met P on the kitchen faucet aisle and found a faucet I liked. He asked, “Do you want to go ahead and buy it or do you want to see if I can fix our existing one?”

    “I don’t know. I really like this one but I’m not sure it will work if we end up getting granite countertops and a farmhouse sink.”

    “Well, realistically speaking, in light of all our other financial obligations, I don’t really see that there’s going to be a time when we’ll spend money on granite countertops and a whatever-you-just-said sink.”

    Why does my husband want to kill my dreams of granite countertops and a farmhouse sink on Aisle 6 at Home Depot?

    So I said, “I don’t want the new one. Just see if you can fix the old one.” And then I walked out of the store and past the granite displays with a wistful glance.

    He bought approximately 782 parts that were supposed to fix the sink, but none of them worked. I went back to Home Depot yesterday and bought the new faucet. Which I actually really love because it’s got the sprayer thingy that pulls right out of the faucet and, yes, that’s exactly how it was described on the box. It’s pretty and shiny.

    And it would look great on a farmhouse sink.

  • The tooth, the whole tooth and nothing but the tooth

    The night after we discovered Caroline’s first tooth was loose, I was helping her get dressed for bed when she asked me how long I thought it would be before the tooth next to her loose tooth became loose. I said, “Well, it probably won’t be too long because I can see the permanent teeth trying to come in. What usually happens is the permanent teeth push the baby teeth out of the way and that’s why they get loose. I bet that other tooth will be loose in no time.”

    “Wow, Mama. Did you used to be a dentist?”

    “No, I was never a dentist.”

    “Then I guess you don’t really know then, do you?”

    And she’s right. I had no idea what I was talking about or if any of it was even true. I just like to spout random pieces of trivia based on what sounds good. I’ve been doing it for years. It was a skill that served me very well throughout all the years I worked as a pharmaceutical rep. But my child totally called me on it.

    When I picked her up from school yesterday, she walked out of the building with a HUGE smile on her face. A smile that revealed a little gap where her tooth used to be.

    The Lost Tooth from Big Mama on Vimeo.

    I have to make a few comments:

    1. She is a fan of the extreme close up shot. We probably need to work on personal space.

    2. I’m not totally sure that it was the first tooth she ever “growed”, but she liked the symmetry of that story so I’m sticking to it.

    3. I know who Tilt is but I’m not sure when Caroline decided it was okay to drop the “Mrs.” from the name. Or if her name is even Tilt.

    4. I do know that she was DYING for Tilt to pull the tooth and had mentioned it several times. Apparently, Tilt is the Mr. Miyagi of tooth-pulling up at the school.

    5. I think she’s going to be disappointed to discover that her tooth fairy isn’t a high roller who throws around ten dollar bills like the tooth fairy at Trevor’s house. His tooth fairy probably drives a miniature Escalade and makes extra cash selling baby teeth on the black market.