Grocery Shopping, Lamp Angst, Stuffed Green Peppers and Yearning for a Chain Saw

Hola everyone!  This is a long post, part rant, part news, part whatever.  Settle in with your beverage of choice and (I hope you will) enjoy. 

Just got back from the Pick 'n Save -- what a MOB scene, geez!  I left the house at 3 p.m. figuring it wouldn't be quite so crowded.  WRONG.  Seems no matter what time I go on Saturday it is crowded crowded crowded.  I wouldn't mind so much if people would not block the aisles so that those of us who know exactly what she needs and wants to get in and out of the blasted place with a minimum of hassle (like moi).  You know what I'm talking about -- they stand on one side of the aisle looking for something while their cart is parked on the other side of the aisle.  They ignore you (and countless others) as you approach and unless you shout EXCUSE ME they refuse to move. Sometimes they refuse to move anyway. Extremely irritating.  Screaming children, also extremely irritating.  They should be removed to the car, muzzled or left home with dad.  Infants are one thing; babies will cry and like many other females, when I hear an infant wailing my first instinct is to run toward the sound and find out what is wrong; toddlers and bratty ill-mannered seven year olds are a different thing entirely.  I appreciate that parents are able to block out (as in going totally deaf and blind) even the most horrible obnoxiousness on the part of their precious offspring, but the rest of us bratless are left to suffer.  The little monsters usually steer clear of me though, because I give them the EVIL QUEEN STARE.  In extreme cases, I rub my hands together and lick my lips like I'm going to EAT them as I "pop" my eyes out at them.  Mom doesn't notice, of course.  She's too busy blocking the aisle. 

While I was searching for lemon juice, I came across a little boy who was playing with the Ramin Noodles packages.  He was having a lovely time smashing them together - BANG BANG BANG - and them smashing them back on to the shelves, arranged in an order only he could appreciate.  I saw no evidence of a parent ANYWHERE.  As I stood there watching him for close to a minute, he seemed totally oblivious to me.  I was not only horrified by the boy's behavior, I was horrified at the thought that any pervert could have walked off with him in a matter of seconds and no one would ever know.  Parents, PLEASE leave your kids at home if you are not going to properly take care of them while out and about.

Okay, enough ranting about shopping with idiots.  No doubt I've made countless enemies out of moms who haul their kids to the supermarket and let them loose on an unsuspecting and weary world.  That's fine.  I don't like YOU (or your nasty offspring), either. 

I wrote recently about the "stacked elephants" lamp I recently bought from Kirkland's.  I had purchased the lamp specifically for my desk in the front room.  It arrived.  I unpacked it, put the shade on, popped in a light bulb, and put it on my desk.  First on the left side, but I did not like that because the elephants had their heads turned toward the wall rather than toward the center of the desk; then on the right side, where the elephants were now facing inward toward the desk, but the balance was incredible off!  Here's a picture:

I moved accessories around, and even thought about removing my Medieval map of England from the wall and putting something else up, but in the end I decided it was just easier to move the lamp somehwere else.  The scale of the lamp compared to the area just was not working.

So, after experimenting a bit, here is where the lamp found a new home:

Queen Anne console and stacked elephant lamp in the morning.

Yep, I moved the Queen Anne console from the dinette to my bedroom, and from my bedroom back downstairs to take her place on the right side of the fireplace.  I've probably broken a thousand decorating no-no's not only with my arrangement on the table top but with my arrangements of the furniture and accessories on that wall as well, but it works for me :)  I love my stacked elephants lamp!  I can feast my eyes upon it Sunday mornings when I sit in this room for hours reading nearly every bit of the Sunday newspaper whilst sipping my coffee, and in the evenings when she is lit, she casts an intimate glow through her burlap covered shade up and down the walls in the corner.  Here she is just a few minutes ago (it's 5:15 p.m. as I'm typing this):

This is my view across the room when I turn to the right in my desk chair.  Please ignore the tinfoil underneath the legs of the coffee table.  I gave the table a good cleaning and polishing earlier and put the tinfoil underneath the legs so I wouldn't have to worry about getting stuff on the rug underneath. Look at the glow cast by my elephants! 

Some of you may be familiar with this "I bought a new thing into the room and now the rest of the room needs to be totally redone" syndrome from which I am suffering right now.  Sigh.  I got my lovely stacked elephants lamp after months of thinking about her and now, lo and and behold, after shuffling around the other lamps in the room, I am not happy with them.  Alas, it seems that the lure of Kirkland's lovely lamps has cast a spell upon me...

I have spent an inordinate amount of time lately at Kirkland's online ogling their table lamps.  I have narrowed my choices to two -- both are on sale but won't be for much longer.  One is $19.99 and the other is $24.99 and I like them both.  Maybe I should just buy them both and put the two lamps I have in here now in storage until I can sell them (that is a whole 'nother story worthy of its own post).  I don't know why I'm so reluctant to pull the trigger on the purchase(s).  Perhaps it is the dichotomy of the lamps?  One is light, and one is dark.  I mean - come on!  Am I never to have any piece (pun pun - peace) from the black and white of the chessboard, where the never-ending clash of the alleged battle between evil and good (or good and evil, as you prefer) has raged since the dawn of mankind? 

On the side of the White Queen we have, appropriately enough, Kirkland's Old Cross Ivory Table Lamp:

She is 21-1/4 inches tall and has a hardback shade in white satin, with cross charm.  She is on sale right now for $19.99. The cross charm is shaped like a Crusader's cross (cross of the Knights Templar).  After the Knights Templar were outlawed by the greedy "saintly" King of France in about 1344, that shape of cross was appropriated by pirates who roamed the seven seas.  Some say it was the Templars themselves who roamed the seven seas with their cross anathema boldly flying for all to see.

The Dark Knight makes his appearance with appropriate flourishes:

This is the Isaac bronze lamp from Kirkland's, on sale for $24.99.  He is 22-1/2 inches tall with a hardback bell shade in tan linen.  This lamp also features a gold-toned charm decorating the shade, as well as raised gold-tone decorations on the faux-bronze finish of the lamp, and a fleur de lis finial. 

The shapes of both lamps are classic.  The Dark Knight lamp reminds me of Chinese design in its form and base.  Note how face on, the Dark Knight features a five-point design, five being a number of "masculine" power in ancient Chinese iconography, pre-dating the Han Dynasty (circa 220 BCE - 240 CE).  Around the entire lamp, however, there are probably 12 designs total around the body of the lamp base (4 around the top, 1 centered on each of the 4 sides, and 4 around the bottom).  The White Queen lamp uses an ancient open weave design that has been around since mankind first started making mats and baskets out of grasses, rushes and reeds.  Amazingly, remnants of offering maps woven from rushes have survived in ancient Egyptian tombs dating back about 5,000 years ago.  The ancient Persians were probably the first culture to elevate the art of "the weave" to hardscape tile designs, which were spread throughout much of the ancient Old World through trade in circa 630 to 720 CE. 

Hmmmm, looking at these lamps yet again but close together here, I'm pretty sure that if I buy any lamp,  it will be the Dark Knight. 

Lately, the weather has affected me.  It's made me want to COOK!  So much so, I've written a whole post just about the stuffed green peppers I made last night.  Tonight I'm going to try my hand at lemon chicken.  The idea came over me while I was manuveuring my way through the mobs of obnoxious shoppers earlier today at the Pick 'n Save, talk about INSANE!  I have NO idea how to make lemon chicken.  NONE.  But that didn't stop me.  Read the next posts if you want to dive into my insanity with me.

THIS is the sight that greeted me just before 7 a.m. Monday morning.  Sometime between 4 and 4:30 a.m., there was a big whoosh of wind, strong enough and loud enough to wake me up, and in my half-awake fog I heard a loud THUMP CLUNK.  At first I thought it was the raccoon jumping up on the table to look for hazlenuts (I put them up there for the squirrels, out of the reach of the chipmunks), but then I thought no sensible animal would be out in that storm and it was probably the chairs and/or table blowing over (not yet packed away off the deck for the winter).

I was wrong!  It was this big honking branch that came down and somehow, miraculously, did not take the electric, telephone, U-Verse or cable wires down with it!

So, what's a single woman who works outside the home 40 hours plus a week to do?  She leaves the mess until the weekend, of course!  The weather is NOT cooperating, though.  Today was crappy. Tomorrow is supposed to be dryer, so after our investment club meeting, I'll change into junk clothes and tackle said small tree with my hand-saw, loppers and clippers.  Sigh.  Several hours of work ahead of me.  Well, at least yard waste pick-up is this coming Tuesday so I can get rid of the carcass quickly.  I wish I were not so absolutely terrified of things like chain-saws.  I sure could use one to make short work of this small tree.  Last year I went through much the same thing, slowly hacking away at three large limbs that came down during a series of wind storms that followed one another, just like the past week.

I hate this climate.

Can this lamp shade be saved?

Bonjour, darlings!

I should be busy reframing my little birdy prints into my beautiful $5 matted wood frames from Walgreens, in preparation for hanging them - somewhere - in my newly gussied-up bedroom, but since I'm still suffering from a major brain blockage when it comes to just, exactly, WHAT to hang and just, exactly, WHERE to hang it, I'm distracting myself instead.  Medicine 101.  When you cannot cure the patient, distract the patient with shiny objects...

And so, VOILA!

This is one of my woe-begone lamps banished inside a large black plastic trash bag, stashed underneath a junky old melamine kitchen table in the basement.  As you can see, a not very attractive basement, complete with spiders, EEK!

At some point during its existence, the neatly pleated light beige cloth, suitably trimmed out around the top and the bottom of the shade, got so old that it started delaminating away from its base.  There were bubbles, in other words.  Eventually it got to the point where it looked awful - like giant chicken pox all over the shade.  One day, in a fit of madness, I ripped off all of the glued-on material and was left with a sticky, icky, plastic (I think), under-shade, with some glue residue on it, to give it a sort of "texture."  In short - this (photo) -- before I got "artistic" and decided to try and revive it with some paint.  Hmmm, where did that dent come from???  I don't remember a dent in this shade.  Maybe a mouse tried to eat it one day...

This lamp is very old as things at Maison Newton go.  I inherited it from my sister, Debs, back in the 1980's, when she got married and totally redid new digs with her hubby, and this lamp no longer fit in.  It has a beautiful teal blue base (yeah, I know, teal is really BIG right now), and a shiny chrome bottom that is still in excellent shape, despite years of abuse.  It's not really a classic ginger-jar shape, it's just sort of funky with this roundish body.  "Mod" maybe?

Now what on earth ever possessed me to sponge paint this shade in gold and bronze, when the base is chrome -- only Hera knows. That was done - oh, 2004 maybe?  For awhile, the lamp resided on the dresser in the guest room, in all its blazing mis-matched glory!  Then, about 2007 or 2008, I got a pair of matching little lamps for the guest room dresser and the teal lamp was banished to the dungeon basement, kicking and screaming all the way, let me tell you...

Now yes, I know, I could just go to Target and get a new shade.  I even looked online at some.  But it seems all the shades I like, well, let's just say it would be cheaper to buy an entirely new lamp.  And no no no, mon amis, that just won't do!  Mind you, I've no idea where I would put a totally revived teal blue lamp in my home of mostly neutrals, with some shades of red and green thrown in.  But I'm now obsessed, obsessed, I tell you, with reviving this shade, if it can be saved at all.  Perhaps it has seen it's final days???  Should I, at last, send it to its final resting place in the county dump?

The thought makes me shudder!

So, I went on a hunt for possible ways to resurrect this lamp shade (although it isn't, quite, dead yet).

My oh my, what an overload of information is available on the internet today, to be sure, darlings!  I first tried "painting a lamp shade" or something like that.  A kajillion sites, all about women (are there no men doing this kind of thing???) painting millions and millions of lampshades in millions of clever ways to revive them.  Let me tell you, if all of that creative female energy could just be directed toward solving our country's economic problems, we would never experience a recession or depression again.  Ever.  Ever!

Narrowing down the selections (ahem), I found this blog entry extremely interesting, about how to use lace to create a beautiful pattern on a tired old lampshade (like mine):

I love the look of this lamp shade, it's just drop dead gorgeous.  The lamp base - meh.  Paint it yellow or blue, or even better, put on some lace appliques and ...  OHMYGODDESS, it's that damn decoratitis causing a brain fever again, oh no...  Back, back (Jan now desperately fighting off decoratitis...)

Then I found this lampshade fished out of a pond after a long, hard winter.  No kidding!  Since this is the sort of thing that can happen around Maison Newton despite not having a pond, it had me inappropriately screaming with laughter at the office while I was supposed to be working:

After being fished out of pond, but before the remake...  Gee, I think my seriously ill lampshade might be saved after all after looking at this baby!  But you know, I do wonder what this shade would have looked like had the mildew and algae been allowed to grow/petrify in the normal course of events.  Never-before seen on the internet shades of earth tones and greens, complete with a unique texture...  A perfect lampshade for the Creature From the Black Lagoon?  Bringing new meaning to the buzz-word these days "GREEN!

Well, I'm all for easy and as little work as possible.  Frankly, I don't have time to be scootching around doing all this decorating revamp stuff (it's the disease, the disease, I tell you!) and while I love the lace overlay look, and the LET ME AT IT AND NO PRISONERS TAKEN approach of just globbing on tons of paint (after bleaching -- she never mentioned bleaching...) the pond scum lampshade and it's ultimately unique opaque look, both approaches seem to have taken quite a bit of time.  Time, precious time.

So, then I had a brain flash - SLIP COVERS!

Seriously, darlings, who the heck makes slip covers for lamp shades?  I did a google search and lo and behold!  Could not believe my eyes.  Surefit makes slip covers for lamp shades, for one!  I fell in love with this look, and thought it would be perfect, and I'd even pay over $30 for it, too!

Unfortunately, as far as I can tell, at present Surefit only offers this Shabby Chic (har!) lamp shade slip cover in large and small drum shapes instead of the shape in the photo, above, which would be a perfect fit for my poor lampshade!  SIGH. 

Isn't that always the way it goes?  You find what you think is the perfect relatively pain-free solution (yes, it costs $$ but it uses practically none of your precious time at all) but nooooooooo, the damn thing isn't in stock anymore, or was never actually made to begin with because, after all, other than me, who the hell has those quasi-"coolie" shaped lamp shades these days, anyway?  So politically incorrect, you know....  ARRRRGGGGGHHHHHH!

So, I don't know what the hell I'm going to do with this lamp shade.  I thought about making my own slip cover and I may yet try that.  I did find some online general guidelines about how to proceed.  And, being a college graduate with a higher degree under my belt to boot, I should be able to figure it out, doncha think?   ...

An honorable mention to the venerable and venerated Martha Stewart.  She has instructions online for how to make a pleated paper slip cover for a lampshade:

OHMYGODDESS!  While I took a short break and was digging around in one of the upstairs closets for potential art work to hang in my bedroom, I came across ---- TWO MORE LAMP SHADES wrapped up in black trash bags!  I thought those suckers (the trash bags) were supposed to decompose after a certain number of years in an anaerobic atmosphere...

They are not in as sad a shape as the bronze and gold sponge-painted number (see photo at top of blog, ugh).  Oh no!  Now I've got three possible resurrection projects.

Anyway...... what I thought I could possibly do to revive the lampshade - the one in the photo at the top of this post painted bronze and gold, that would be sort of putzy but not really hard or complicated work, is this:  print out a mess of Paris related pics from the internet in black and white, see if I can find toile patterns online and do likewise (like from places that sell wallpaper?), cut out a mess of images and modge-podge the mess onto the lamp shade.

It will be opaque, but I'm not looking for a reading lamp, I'm looking for mood and attitude.  Do you think I need to paint over the gold and bronze first, with white?  I've got lots of white primer in the basement.  Well, some of it is 21 years old, but when I shake the cans I still hear stuff sloshing around inside, so it should be good to use if I maybe add some water and stir and shake the hell out of it -- good exercise!

Oh oh.  That means I've been subconsciously thinking about using this lamp shade in my bedroom, to tie into the Paris-themed bathroom just down the hall (it serves all three upstairs bedrooms and is, therefore, fairly gender-neutral).  Black and white toile, Paris, le Tour Eiffel, all that jazz...

And that means I would need to repaint the other lamp I used to have in my formerly really girly pink bedroom (because I cannot bear the thought of painting over that beautiful teal lamp with the pristine chrome base).  That other lamp is, at present, pink sponged over white.  It is the lamp that has the cheap (really really cheap) PLASTIC ribbon lamp shade.  The base, however, is a classic ginger-jar shape.  It shares a place in the dungeon basement, wrapped up in a large black plastic trash bag, with the teal lamp. 

Oh oh.  It just occurred to me.  I have absolutely no place in my bedroom as currently configured to stash such a revamped lamp, should I ever get around to actually doing this project.  It wouldn't really fit on the night stand, I'd have to pull the night stand too far away from the wall in order for the lamp to fit properly on its surface, with the wide shade; otherwise, it would be smushed up against the wall.

Oh my oh my oh my.  What to do, what to do.  Maybe I need another room. 

Oh oh.  it just occurred to me.  I have another room.  The middle - junk - room.  It used to be a "den" of sorts and even served as a guest-room for a short time, and still houses 3 really junky bookcases, a 2-drawer file cabinet and a computer hutch that houses an old desk top computer that, try as I might to hook up to the wireless network in the house, refuses to update itself into the 21st century by continuously bouncing itself off the network.  Rebellious wench!

Oh Goddess.  I feel sick to my stomach just thinking about all of these possibilities.  I think I need a big glass of wine and a good rest up in my recliner.  And then a big, juicy fat steak.  With a mountain of mashed potatoes, smothered in sauteed mushrooms...

A Lamp Dilemma

Soooo, the bedroom is rearranged the way I want it and although it's a little funky looking with the bed poking out from a corner at a strange angle (it's not centered on the corner, but off-kilter, sorta like me) I like it, I like it! 

Redecoratitis had a hiatus yesterday while the ladies of the investment club were here, and then I had a friend come over with her computer -- she was having issues with it and I offered to see if I could get it up and running for her again.  Couldn't - major motherboard issues it appears.  So, her 3-year old Acer is dead and she's out of luck because the Acer schmucks won't replace the defective motherboard despite it being a well-known issue from a batch of computers they shipped in 2008 (the year she bought it), since she is no longer under warranty.  If it were me, I would seriously consider hauling Acer's butt into small claims court in Milwaukee County.  They have to have a registered agent in the USA and it's simple enough to track down who it is; I'd pay good money to have that registered agent served with a small claims Summons and Complaint, ha!  You bet I would!

I do not plan on replacing the two "boudoir" lamps on my triple dresser.  They are wood and have light brown (or, if you prefer, dark tan) shades.  Well, they're not "boudoir" lamps, strictly speaking; they're buffet lamps I bought online for real cheap!  But I like how the look on the dresser.

So, I've got the new lamp I bought from Penney's on the nightstand.  It's shade is really dark brown and if I want to stick with my "idea board" (which consists of half a dozen pics printed off the internet from searches for "black and white bedrooms"), that cute little lamp doesn't go in the direction I want to go in at all!

The lamp isn't crooked, but this picture sure is, whew! The photo quality isn't the greatest either; I took these pics at night using the "scene" mode on my camera (yep, still on "scene" mode).    Notice my genuine vintage princess phone in grunge beige!  Yeah, I still have actual telephones in the house - no cell phone for moi.  So, you can see from this "close-up" that the shade really is pretty dark brown, and the faux marble body is, well, brown speckled.  The rest of the lamp is antique bronze (now they call it "oiled bronze finish.")  All in all, a very brown statement. 

It looks great with the wood color (even the plastic wood color) of my bedroom set.  I'm not going to be painting that set, either!  No white or black paint will besmirch the pristine, dented and somewhat faded beauty of my bedroom set! 

What to do, what to do?  I pulled out the lamp from the guest bedroom that sits on top of the bookcase next to the wing chair and took it on a test run in my bedroom:

I tried to get this photo at the same angle as the top photo, but this shot is a lot closer to the night stand.

And a close-up of the guest room lamp:

It's got swing-arm action.  It's not a white-white, it's sort of a creamy white.  Hmm...  Of course, with about 250 million different shades of white, it's going to be nearly impossible to get a room where some of the whites don't clash, I suppose.

I moved the new Penney's lamp into the guest room, but it takes up more visual "space" than this lamp, and so if I keep it in there I will have to re-hang the pics that are on the wall above the bookcase so things look more in balance (it's just a two-shelf case that provides room for books and storage as well as a convenient surface next to the chair.  Actually, the guest room set-up makes more sense than my bedroom set-up!) 

I'm torn right now, not sure if the guest room lamp is the right fit for my bedroom; it looks slightly out of scale to the night stand.  Since the lamp has a painted finish to begin with, I wouldn't feel any qualms about spray painting it a whiter white or trying black on it to see what it would look like.  But only if I decide it fits in my bedroom better than in the guest room.  I would hate to paint it white white or black black, and then have to repaint it again because I want it back in the guest room!  What a lot of work that would be for nothing.

I also have two very old junky lamps wrapped in plastic bags, stashed in the basement.  Either one could be painted, but the shades, oh my, the shades!  I would need a new shade and depend upon it, I always go for a shade that costs more than I'm willing to pay.  Argggghhhhh.   One I painted a couple of times, at least, after I ripped the old wallpaper off of it.  Yeah, it's been through several remakes already; one is so old I actually bought it from Woolworth's when they were still in business and it's not a cloth shade at all, it's wrapped in some kind of plastic material!  Honest -- although you can't tell it's plastic unless you feel it; it looks sort of "silky." 

Well, I shouldn't be fretting about lamps right now anyway; I've got a canopy to hang!  And then I have to figure out what, if anything, I'm going to put on the walls.  With the bed poking out from that odd angle into the room, it's really broken up the wall space so there is no clear vision now of where to hang art/pics.  And once the canopy is up, that will obscure things even more...