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Annie Sloan Chalk Paint, what do you think, it it worth the hype ?

I'm sure you have all heard of Annie Sloan Chalk Paint, it's all over the WWW, everyone is talking about it on all the painting blogs or designer blogs. Miss Mustard Seed, painter of reinventing furniture with a few swipes of paint ravs about it and her pieces look fabulous. {she is also going to be coming out with her own line of milk paint} yippee skippy! I'm sure it will be a fabulous painting product too. For a few months I have been wanting to try ASCP out. They have classes in some of the stores that sell her paint. I have yet to do that because my schedule will not allow it so far but I figure with some online tutorial from Miss Mustard seed I can tackle it and I have a perfect guinea pig...Remember this table?

I think this would be the perfect specimen to try out on..................

AnnieSloanChalkPaint....it is sitting right now in the garage loaded down with stuff crap because the farm table is being used for our dining room table.

 Which I like inside but I like it outside too...

But as the weather starts to warm up I LOVE to eat outside...just LOVE it, nothing is more relaxing than eating a Barbecue dinner with fresh garden salad and drinking wine under the ceiling of stars.  So out it will go....but before I take her out I have to replace it with the round pedestal table and it needs a paint job, so why not try on ASCP? But what color?  There is so many...I really need your help...Here is my dining room...when we first moved in...a year ago...

Without the tables in it, the rocking chair has been moved to the family room.  Now to pick a paint color......

                            Annie Sloan chalk paint in Cream......

                                                in Old White

                                    in Country Grey

                                in French Linen

                                                        in Duck Egg

                                            in Provence

                                            in Louis Blue

         Or a Pure White, which you can not see, so use your imagination

                                        or back to black in Graphite?

 

Decisions? Decisions?    Please I would love to hear from you, please email me or leave me a comment or message me on Facebook too!   

 

 

 

Happy New Years 2012!

 

We the people who reside at the Cottage on Cullen St.  will be celebrating quietly with a nice steak dinner and bubbly apple cider, maybe a bit of Champagne and lighting off some poppers at midnight!  

Wishing everyone a HAPPY, HEALTHY and Prosperous 2012!  Cheers!

House of Horrors 2011

It all begins in this room...the "Patrons" see a short film while waiting in this room.  It is about a family who has teenagers and the parents ask if they are mature enough to stay home alone for the first time at night....well the short film  takes on a  "Blair Witch" feeling  with the kids doing their thing, listening to their Ipods, watching T.V. , shooting some hoops in the Backyard...then the boy is up in is room checking in on Facebook and starts to hear some Circus music playing somwhere, {he has no idea it is coming from the basement} he brings his handheld laptop to film what he sees and goes to investigate, as he opens the basement door someone or something grabs him.  The girl hears a scream and calls for her brother she also begins to hear the Circus music and so she follows the musci and it leads her to the basement door where she hears the sound coming from...as she opens the door...a Scary clown with a menancing face and green hair  is there waiting for her..and grabs her too and pulls her down into the basement.  That is where the story of the House of Horrors 2011 begins....

The "To-be-scared" walk through the small, creepy door, the same door you see in the film...this is what you see on the far side of the hallway...."THE CLOWN", that is somehow "off" in his own demented way......

the "to-be-scared" go through a series of hallways and rooms and the first one is the Demented Clowns' Room, he is there with all his buddies from the Circus..

When you leave the Clown Room you go through a hallway of floating ghosts...and webs...

Then the graveyard with all kinds of corpses laying around and popping out...

from behind coffins....or popping out of tombs....

Old brides who have died of a broken heart....hang in the corner...

When you leave the graveyard you go through the Witches Hallway....

In the Witches Hallway...you'll be touched from the walls by a slight sensation...{brushed with a feather} all along you be stared out by creepy old painting of dead people.....then you go into the dot room, where there are neon colored dots on the walls and real bodies covered in dots will lunge out at you....{for some reason I did not get any images of this room}...

The next hallway is the Spiders Web Hallway.  Spiders in all shapes and sizes....even going so far as wrapping up humans in their web to suck their human blood....

If you make it to the end of the hallway...you might be checked into the Menancing Medical Room/Morgue....{this is the room that my girls where Zombies in and I got to participate in creating it}

The nurses check in station, where you will be "checked" in and never checked out!!!.....

As you walk past the nurses station, the mecical rack is loaded with  jars with all kinds of body parts and gruesome stuff......

Bodies in mid-autopsy.....laying on tables...hopefully now one was cut into alive....Every Morgues has the Cript.....where all the dead people are in their own cubby...

The cript with the hand of the Music teacher.......

The Cadaver gurney....where the dead await...the knife!!

 The House of Horrors was a great success and everyone had a great time creating it and participating in it and we all can't wait until next year so we can plan the next House of Horrors 2012!!

 

Baby Shower in Historic Neff Barn..

I grew up in the City of Whittier but my family lived in an unincorporated area which was sandwiched between the City of La Mirada so that is most likely why our area was part of the Norwalk-La Mirada School District and not a school district in Whitter. Growing up I spent more time in La Mirada and even worked for the City of La Mirada while attending my local junior College. 

 One of my jobs was working at Neff Park where the founding family's Ranch was located in the City of La Mirada.  The Neff Barn was owned by the McNally's {of Map Rand-McNally fame} they lived in the Big House and during the weekends you could take tours of the Grand House. 

When I was working on the weekends I had the key to the "Big" house {as seen above} because  weddings would take place in the Gazebo and then the reception would be in the barn.  I can remember one time I went there at night  with my boyfriend {now Mr. Incredible} to show him the house.  We pretended like it was haunted and tried to picture us living there if we owned the place or thinking back in time what our town would of been like way back then. Sometimes we used to make out on the front porch...shhhhh don't tell on us.  Mr. Incredible grew up in a house less than a block away and went to elementary school which is next door to the park. 

 Not only that when he moved to the next street over {finally moving out of his family's house,  I practically was living with him I stayed over at his house so much his roommates wanted to charge me rent.  But one, summer day while I was working at Neff Park doing the Summer Day Care he drove up in my convertible VW and had loaded up all my belongings and broke up with me right then and there. I won't go into the details of why...let's just say I was not the only girl in his life at the time.  So we as a couple  have a lot of history of good ol' Neff Park. 

  {here is the backside of the barn facing the park, and in the background is the caretaker's cottage}

                          Isn't she charming?  I think so..I'd love to live there!

This past weekend we revisted the Neff barn where we held a Turtle themed/Barnish Baby shower for my BFF's Daughter, Jessica.  Since it is in a RED BARN I thought it would be neat to have a bit of a rustic feel to the decor, after all it is taking place in the barn, the shower not the birth!   Valley View Farms dairy that was so part of this area's history existed for along time, they closed a few years back.  I can remember the smell of the dairy when we drove past the dairy.

                                {old milk jugs from Valley View Farms}

   Old pictures of the farm hands..along time ago...McNally Ranch

We used some burlap as table runner and milk jugs for the Flower vases.  The Mommy~to~Be wanted use Chocolate brown and Lime Green along with Turtles....

Fairy Godmother Flora {Monica, my BFF since I was 5}..made the Turtle Fruit Salad bowl...is it not the cutest thing?

                                    {Fairy Godmother Flora with her neice}

The cute baby clothesline....yep she is having a boy!

Fairy Godmother Fauna on the right....with my BESTie from High School, we both worked at the Neff Barn at the same time that I did.

  Good Friends and daughters..with their mothers....young and old mingling.

Recipes being shared as they were requested by the whole group..

The Mother~to~be with her cousin reading all the advice the older mother's have for her....

From Left to right.. Mimi {grandmother~to~be} Flora, Mother~to~be, Fauna and Merryweather.  What a great time we had planning and celebrating the new life coming into the world in December!!!  Good Luck Jessica..WE LOVE YOU!!!

Baby Shower Time!

It has been long time since I've planned/hosted a baby shower.  My BFF {remember this post about her}  daughter is pregnant and we are throwing her a Turtle Themed Baby Shower!I feel like Fairy Godmother Merryweather {along with Flora and Fauna} in Sleeping Beauty when it comes to her.  But I better git....I have Oriental Salad to make and toes to paint!  Have a great day!

I'm baaaack..

 I LOVE technology and I HATE technology...computer had a corrupted Windows program and got really, really slow....finally had to call in the Computer Doctor for surgery.  I think she is all better now and I have lots to post about. 

Yea!  My girl Meg won on Design Star....I thought for sure they would run with the "whole crimes against decorating" theme, I thought that was a cute idea. 

I'm also excited for the Fall Season of T.V. to start running their shows this week!   My favorite is Modern Family and I was so excited to see that they won 5 Emmy's.  My BFF "T" is such a Claire Dumphey....from Modern Family.

 
I swear they wrote that one episode where she turns into "Fun Mom"....on my BFF's  life. Here is my best friend.....

 
Don't they look a lot alike?  This vintage Corvette was out in front of a hotel where we were having cocktails at and so I snapped a picture of her posing in front of the convertible.  "T" holds her whole family together, she works full time as a Science Teacher plus is raising 3 teenagers{along with her dedicated husband}.  But that one episode when Claire turns into "Fun Mom" had me going that is so "T".  She plays the bad cop in the discipline of her children and one time she said, "I'm tired of being the bad cop and told her husband you be bad cop, I want to be "fun MOM".. So the next morning the kids all had Ice Cream for breakfast.  Then they spent the whole day at Disneyland. The whole day kind of went like that, but the funny thing was she would say "I'm being FUN MOM"..with a bit of resentment in her voice and all the while gritting her teeth.  It was such a funny story....so here is to you My Claire Dumphey....you keep me laughing with your  Family Life stories....{I've been trying to convince her to watch the show } I'm glad Modern Family is sticking around this season, it always good for few laughs and the end of my Wednesday Night .  

The girls and I also like to watch GLEE, The Middle and Dancing with the Stars. What shows are you excited to watch and are their any new ones that you think might be good to tune into, I'd like to hear your suggestions. Cheers to our new Fall Shows this Season....I'm tuning in!

 

 

I have TWO MIDDLE SCHOOLERS!!! Oh MY!

 
 
Can you believe it!!  They both were so excited to go this morning.  Big girls now..in their skinny jeans ....

 
 
in their Joes {not Toms}....I think they look exactly the same minus the label. 

 
Backpacks loaded with new school supplies.....and carried by happy hearts....

 
 
Weekly beach days....will have to wait until next summer...

 

 
 
Daily reading...for pleasure gives into reading for school....

 
Bike rides will have to be saved for the weekends.....

 

 
Weekly pool dates will come to an end....ahhh  as our summer comes to a close with the beginning of school so comes the fall season.....early mmornings, Halloween and the Harvest Festival, cooler mornings, packed lunches and meeting new friends and more and more soccer games on the weekends.....

 
sooooo long days of leisure....I'll miss you!!

 

 

Soccer is a "damn good" sport!

 
As a long time soccer player and a mother of a soccer player I love to watch the game....I'm very passionate....that's how I would describe me watching..my family on the other hand..says I go "crazy".  Yeah, so what?  I've been tuning in to ESPN and watching the Women's World Cup...on Sunday they played Brazil...who are also very good and passionate soccer players...it was a really, really good game...

 
Abby Wombach....I'm so in awe of her awesome headers in the goal, she is just plain "damn good"! as I quote....her fellow team mate...

 
Hope Solo....who in my opinion is "damn good".....

 
in fact the whole team is "damn good", yes you said it best Hope your team is awesome...I hope that my girl....will one day "dribble" in your foot steps...

 
Here is my girl receiving her medal, as her team took 2nd place in the OC Revolution Tournament. {it was a very emotional, hard fought game, one of the players got hurt and had to leave by ambulance}, they actually lost to their sister team...

 
Here she is with her fellow team mates and fellow classmates, they all attend the same Middle School.

 
Here she is with one of her BFF's, who plays for the sister team but couldn't play because of a dislocated knee.   Soccer is NOT for wimps...

 
Here are both teams...converging under the shade...I have no doubt that these are Women's World Cup players in the making.....they are "damn good"!

An Organized Kitcthen{pantry}..the key to every Womans HEART...

Slowly I have been unpacking the stacks and stacks of boxes that are housed in the garage.  All of the bedrooms are unpacked, still things need to be hung up on walls but all and all the rooms are pretty organized.  This week the kitchen got organized and everything is in it's proper place.  The other house before had deep and lots of cupboards with a pantry-like closet so I decided to turn a hall closet near the kitchen into a pantry. 

 
 Here is the hallway looking from the front door entryway and the first closet on the left is the "new" pantry area....

 
Here we are looking back into the kitchen and the third door on the right is the pantry...

Kathy our fluffy cat loves lying around on the hardwood floors but at night I see her sneaking up on the White Slip-covered couch...leaving all her black hair!!  So I have several of those lint rollers to pick up her fur!!

 
Here we are all organized, you can see this closet is meant for linens because fo the two shallow shelves but since I use my sideboard for linens I did not need to use it for that so I house my packets in there...

 

 

the second shallow shelf I'll keep my grocery bags. I don't know around your parts but certain grocery stores around here are charging you to use the plastic bags they bag your grocery with.  It is better for the environment to use reusable bags which I try to do my part to bit more green. 

 
 
 
As you can see there are three good size shelves in there with the two shallow shelves.  The bottom shelf has the dog food in a big plastic clear box, which is conviently located near the dog food bowl.

 

We will build another shelf in there above the dog food to house more food items.  I'll show you the kitchen tomorrow and you can see those shelves are crammed full of stuff and need a bit of relief.

 

Officially Summer begins!

 
Yahoo!   It is no secret I love the BEACH and I love the Water or being near the WATER, if it is hot, hot..love going in the water.

The days are longer...

nice evening walks with the family and the dog

popsicles everyday and special trips to the Shave Ice Store

long, lazy days just lounging around in PJ's if we want to

pool days at really good friends...

eating salads for dinner so we don't have to turn on the oven

fresh picked bouquets from the garden and enjoying garden fresh produce

staying up really late because WE can!

watering the yard to stay cool....

our once a week Beach Days, packing a lunch and enjoying meeting up with friends, digging my  feet into the warm sand and getting that after beach glow...

barbecues on the brick patio {now that I have one} and dining Al FResco!!!

sitting in the house or sitting on the front porch and listening to the neighbors riding bikes or taking walks, the thing we call LIFE!

{Disclaimer: that is NOT me in the above picture...I only wish, isn't her swimsuit too cute?. by the way they have one at Target that is very similiar}