Scenes from an Italian Restaurant

Okay, so it's not really "an Italian restaurant" so much as my favorite Borders.

And it's not really "scenes" so much as ideas I've gathered from my stack of magazines and books to look at while I'm hanging out which I will return to the shelves before I leave for the night.

But when I tried to think of a good title, "Scenes from an Italian Restaurant" stuck in my head.

Deal with it.

This afternoon was kind of rough, so I jumped on DH's offer to basically take the rest of the day off in exchange for various {ahem} favors.

And now I'm at Border's.  Alone.  Ahhhhhhhh....

I decided to list all the fabulous ideas I gather tonight.  Whether I end up actually USING any of them remains to be seen.

• Lay a Tray - create a decoupaged tray using egg shells that have been thoroughly cleaned and broken into small pieces.
• Go Gaming - make a centerpiece kind of tray thingy by gluing misfit game pieces on a plain charger.  Note to self - figure out what a "plain charger" is.
• Check out DSIRE.org to figure out if we can get a free home energy audit.
• This one woman featured in this magazine had no room for a separate pantry, so she opened one kitchen wall to expose the studes and added 2x4s cut to size for shelving.
• Go to diyadvice.com/paintcabinets for some much needed advice on how to hopefully paint my kitchen cabinets.  Or maybe we should just remove the doors altogether?
• I need to replace the awful, huge, fluorescent light in the kitchen - maybe with a "chic pendant lamp" from IKEA and one of those pot holder thingies.
• IF (and this is a big IF) we had an "extra room" that could be used as a guest bedroom, there's an article here on how to make it do double duty as a craft room by using a Murphy bed. 
• Oh my goodness - I cannot IMAGINE taking the time to wrap presents so they will look as fancy-schmancy as these do in this craft magazine!
• Hmmm...these rooms with white, shoulder height paneling look great.  And by layering different styles of molding on top of the paneling leaves a nice sized ledge to use for display stuff.
• I want to take everything out of our shed, apply painted pegboard to the walls, and hang everything from the walls.  Install hooks and buckets to the insides of the shed doors to hang lots of stuff.
• You can use a kazoo to blow bubbles!
• Use a six-pack carton as a car caddy to hold tissues, hand wipes, granola bars, whatever.
• Go to ginseystore.com to buy a $3 sippy straw cleaner!  We don't use sippy cups anymore, but all three kids love silly straws - I wonder if it would work for them.
• Volunteerspot.com to set up help for J's school party (I'm the homeroom mom for the first time).
• I want to install an indoor swing or hammock seat in the kids' playroom.  It appears that IKEA sells an Ekorre swing kit and mounting hooks for a total of $17.  Sweet!
• To make a pegboard to use in the entryway, paint it first with a base coat.  Trace the objects you want to hang with a pencil, and then use a paintbrush to paint inside the lines with the second color.  It looks really cool.
• $20 canopy for J's room: Buy tulle ($2.50 for a nine by three feet sheet), hang it over her bed with four small nails or sturdy pushpins - it's that easy!
• Preschool idea - find vintage rotary wall phones and hang them on the wall
• Just as I have always said - you will NOT catch a cold simply by going outside with wet hair.

Okay, the person sitting next to me is eating vegetarian sushi and it smells SOOO good, but they don't sell that here, so now I have to ask him where he got it from so I can immediately go there, buy some, and head home.  Of course, he's deep in conversation, so I probably should at least wait until there is a slight lull, but before he throws the packaging away.  

I hope you enjoyed the ideas I found as much as I did!