Ancient Chinese Wisdom

Hello... Is there anybody out there? Just nod if you can hear me... After a couple of months of radio silence, I'm back and ready to blog. It took me a couple of months to recover from the holiday hoopla, and then everyone had the flu for three straight weeks, so my only projects were Lysoling and cloroxing everything. Plus, it's hard to get motivated when it's cold and gray, and you're still poor from Christmas.But Spring is springing, and I'm ready to make everything pretty!! I have a list a mile long, but we'll start slowly.

I have finally painted EVERY SINGLE ROOM in this house. My oldest son was a holdout. He liked the weird, bilious, grey-green that his room was painted when we moved in. But a few months ago he wanted to move some furniture around, which meant we had to move some art around, and he was finally ready for a paint change. He chose a dark, moody grey that totally fits his dark, moody teenage attitude!! I don't have many pictures since he turned it back into a disgusting hovel of dirty dishes, coke cans, and sweaty clothes basically as soon as I closed the paint can. This is as much as I could snap before the filth began to creep back in.

This is the only clean space in the room

I also managed to finally paint the kitchen trim that looked like it had been through a war. But I don't have any pictures because it's boring. Painting trim is the least satisfying project ever, and I only have about five miles of it left to go. Yay...

But I did do a quickie project the other day that makes me smile every time I see it- and it took me less than 5 minutes and cost $1. I'm a big fan of fortune cookies. Not the actual cookie- those taste like slightly sweet cardboard, but I love a good fortune. And every once in a while, you'll get one that's really great. When that happens, I like to keep them. But it's very hard to keep up with an inspiring message on a tiny slip of paper, so I turn them into art. My husband and I got these years ago, and they sit on a shelf in our bedroom.

It's been true so far!

The other night I cracked open a fortune cookie to find this little gem, "You will overcome difficult times." Now, I realize that's generic, but we've had a few mild struggles lately, so it spoke to me. I saw it as both a promise and encouragement and worth keeping around. Luckily, I already had this tiny dollar tree frame sitting around. They're actually meant to be place card holders, but I'd picked one up to frame a sweet note that one of my twins had written me on a mini post-it, and I grabbed another while I was at it. All I had to do was glue my fortune on a scrap of sparkly cardstock I had on hand, and slide it in the frame, and voila'- art for a dollar!

Well, I guess technically it would be a dollar and the cost of Chinese take-out, but my in-laws brought that when they babysat my kids, so it only cost me a buck. And now I have a little bit of encouragement on my kitchen windowsill for the days that I start to doubt myself.