Sophie's Chair

You might remember this chair from when I detailed its restoration in an earlier post (click here).

Well, Sophie seems to have claimed it as her own.

How can you tell a face like this, that this isn't her chair?

She's apparently willing to fight you for it.

Or bat those big, brown eyes until she gets her way.

Or she's just going to look the other way and pretend she's doing nothing wrong.

Personally, I'm a sucker for the brown eyes....

And she knows it.

My Blog is Suffering from ADHD

OK, time for pictures. I got home late so these will be oldies but goodies. I'm not complaining about getting home late, though--there may be some exciting news pending...hopefully more on that later.

For now, sit back and enjoy the show....

This is Jennifer. We've been friends since we were 6 years old. She loves to travel, and she always brings me back the neatest things, which is so nice of her. Here she is in Italy.

My brother was married last September. It was a rough trip, not knowing if I'd be able to get back in time to pick up Paula alive. It's terribly sad that because of a mistake I made in trusting someone I shouldn't have, these photos and memories are bittersweet. I did love seeing my family though, like my beautiful little cousin Rachel:

Yes, my brother is a dork. I think Lauren actually likes that, though :)

Completely random change of topics, but I didn't even know I had these photos still. This is an old chair my dad and I got out of an old, dilapidated schoolhouse. We threw this nasty old chair in the back of my Rav4 (after shaking the mice out of their home). My dad kept saying he couldn't believe I was taking this nasty old thing. What would I do with it? It was just junk, he said.

Of course the first thing I had to do was strip it down and CLEAN it good. Can you say ewwwww?

Then I sanded, stained, padded, and upholstered. Here is the finished product, which in 2006 appraised for over $500.

Not too bad for mice-ridden, free chair.

Hope you enjoyed the show. You all come back now, ya hear?!

Inside Edition

Since I brilliantly sunburned myself yesterday (think "lobster"), I decided to get a bit of much-needed work done inside today. Fortunately I finally stumbled across a full size mattress at a give-away price nearby (they were holding a community garage sale in town), so I could finally get my guest bed put together.

Let me go back.... In February, during that fateful trip to my dad's where I killed my back, I picked up this bed out of my grandma's barn.

It used to be in this house, probably decades ago, and it belonged to my great-great grandparents when they lived on the property.

They actually homesteaded the property--my Great-great grandfather William A McCandless...

and his lovely wife Lula Mae (Adams) McCandless.



Lula is the one on the right. Her twin sister, Lois Irene, on the left, froze to death in a tent during a blizzard after their house burned to the ground one winter. Life on the prairie was hard....

Which probably made a bed like this one quite a luxury. It must have been something very special when they first got it. Then it was relegated to the barn, where it gathered dust for at least as long as I've been alive.




A LOT of dust...enough that even after a 5 hour trip in the back of a pickup, a heavy coating of dirt still remained.




But you can tell the beauty underneath that dirt.




So I began cleaning...




And cleaning...

And cleaning.


And now it's back to its former glory, for guests to enjoy when they stay over at my humble little abode.

The quilt was hand-made by my grandma 22 years ago. The colors are very difficult to match so I rarely display it, but I think this time I'm up for the challenge--just something about family makes it all go together. I still have a lot of decorating to do, but it's already hopefully feeling like home.