Fresh Eyes

I was downloading pictures to my computer today and when this one came on the screen, it took me a while to figure out what it was.  Any ideas?  It has to do w/ what's been occupying most of my time the last couple of weeks, but only tangentially.  I'll explain at the end of the post.

It's been a busy couple of weeks, mostly because I've been procrastinating.  I am hosting an Open House on Saturday, and waited until the last 2 weeks to get things done around the house that should have been done LONG ago.  I will still have things to do Saturday morning, but hopefully, all of the big stuff will be taken care of by Friday.  I had help from my favorite pre-15 year old niece and one of her friends today.  It's amazing what Chick-fil-A and Rice Crispy Treats as a bribe will produce!

I now have much a much cleaner picture window, the front curtains are mostly free of cat hair, and the furniture has been "taped" clean (we used tape to get the cat hair off).  Oh, and several boxes I'd had stacked in the dining room to take out to the garage eventually, were taken to the garage.  Whew.

I still have some UGLY wallpaper to finish removing in the hall bathroom though, and some general tidying up.  It's a sad state of affairs when the ugly paint under the wallpaper is less offensive than the wallpaper.  Consider though that the house was built in 1957 and our family has lived in it since 1963; the kitchen cabinets are the original white, enameled cabinets.  The bathrooms are partially tiled (one in a nice shade of blue, and the other in yellow); again, this is the original tile.  The wallpaper being removed is a yellow bamboo pattern.  It's just too much yellow as far as I'm concerned.  So, the wallpaper has been slowly (VERY SLOWLY) coming down.  I'd originally wanted to have the walls painted for the open house, but now I'll be happy just to have the wallpaper off by Saturday!

And believe it or not, the picture above is part of all of the cleaning, organizing, and yes, hiding.  I love finding new uses for items I'm no longer using for the original purpose.  Duct tape as a decorating tool is one of my favorites.  I have a LOT of the colored and patterned Duck Brand duct tape, and have used it to cover the worst of the stains and/or rust in those ancient kitchen cabinets.

Yes, that is a tie-dyed pattern of duct tape, along w/ the pink and purple.  Granted, it's not decorating for a show-room style house, but it is fun, and it's completely ME.

The place I've re-purposed items the most for is that hall bathroom.  I stenciled paw prints on some of the tiles and on the sink when my beastie boys decided they had to join me when I was "busy" in there.  I also took some of my rub-on transfers for scrapbooking and used them on tiles as well.  My favorite though was when I realized I could use the Hello Kitty post-it notes w/ Mod-Podge on the tiles.

And, the latest repurposed item?  A shoe organizer turned into a towel "caddy" hanging on the shower curtain rod between the shower curtain and the liner!  I also had to make use of some Hello Kitty Duck Brand duct tape to create a loop to hang from the rod in the right direction.

After this hung for several days, I did find that it was too heavy with towels in all 10 slots (the duct tape loop  couldn't hold it and it slipped off); I only use every other section now, and it's working just fine.  If you look closely, you can see the wallpaper I'm removing at the top of the shower wall . . .

So if any of you guessed that first photo was a towel, you were absolutely correct!  It's weird when I take a photo and then don't recognize it when I look at it on the computer (but it's happened more than once).  I don't think it's weird because I only take traditional pictures (can't begin to claim that with some I've already posted here), but because I tend to remember most of the shots I take.  But it is fun to see a shot I don't remember and look at it with fresh eyes.  Hmmm . . . seems I need to forget more things so I can look at them with fresh, unprejudiced eyes.