Is It Weird To Hang Pictures Of Random People?...

... Because I'd really like to.

Among other things I have a long standing love affair with old black and white photos. Tin types are even better. Particularly the older old ones of people who aren't smiling. I don't know why, they just appeal to me... Don't look at me like that, you all shouldn't be surprised! I'm one of those 'interesting' people who would buy victorian photo albums at the antique market or on ebay just because they're so appealing. I've curbed the desire thus far, but for how long? Then what what would I do with them all? No doubt Mr. Pretties would be all getting his knickers in a knot about becoming a storage facility for other peoples memories who's families obviously didn't care enough to hang onto them. I personally am okay with that however. I guess we could add that to my list of things I feel sorry for, old abandoned photos with no one to sit with a nice cup of tea and fawn over them regailing in times long past.

So anyways... Mr. Pretties brought home a box of photo albums that belonged to his parents and grandparents. I couldn't have been more thrilled if he'd brought me a bag of money. Srsly. It was like a card board treasure chest to me, I could hardly wait to put the kids down for their nap so I could pile them all on the bed and absorbed their musty marvelousness. Much to my extreme joy there were a couple black and white wedding albums. Big score! Black and white wedding pictures are basically the creme de la creme as far as black and white pictures go. We've decided that the empty wall in our livingroom will be devoted to black and white wedding photos of our parents/grandparents/etc... and we'll set them all up in various black frames. I'm stoked, it'll look pretty fab when it's done. Along with the very exciting find of the wedding photos we also found an album full of photos from the 1930's that don't appear to be family at all. Not only do we have no idea who or where they are, all the descriptions appear to be in french. Yes I am Canadian, no I cannot speak french. Sorry. I know enough to figure out basics like 'This is a picture of my daughter' but other than that I haven't a clue. None of Mr. Pretties family is from Quebec (Or France for that matter) so we have no idea where this very old gold guilded album came from but it's got the best pictures in it! We're suppose to return the albums to Mr. Pretties sister once we're done copying the pictures we want, but I'm thinking I might just forget to put this one in the box... she wont miss it. One picture inparticular in this album is of a nun and a priest sitting on old chairs on an old veranda. It sounds lame, but it just looks so neat! I'm having it blown up I think. Then perhaps I'll print it in sepia and hang it in our kitchen. So like I said, is it odd that I'd want pictures of people we don't know hanging in our house? Probably...

We're picking up 2 for 1 batteries tomorrow so I'll try to take pictures of the pictures (Does that ever actually work?) and post them. Maybe I'm the only one who gets enjoyment from things like that, it's entirely possible. I probably also the only who has saved a dragonfly out of a big puddle, a cicada from my cat, a fly out of our pond, climbed a 6' fence to feed a hobbling cat that looked starving, and debated putting yellow food colouring in the BLP's milk for yellow snack day all in a weeks time. Oh, and last week I saved a squirrel that one of the cats had stunned. Mr. Pretties face was priceless when he came home from work, went to put his coffee on the table on the porch only to discover a squirrel sitting in a cage watching him. Good times. For me. Mr. Pretties wasn't a happy camper, he thinks I'm trying to kill him...

Incase you're not familiar with Cicadas, this is what they look like:

There's just something about them that makes me laugh, they just look so hilarious! They're totally harmless, butt ugly, and make the weird noise in the trees in the summer. My cat likes to catch them because their wings make a weird noise when they fly, making it an excellent cat toy choice!



So if no one reads this blog after this post, I'll totally understand... I might stop reading it too actually...

I'm also a huge lover of old abandoned houses.

But I think that'll be tomorrow's post. I could easily dedicate an entire post to old abandoned houses. Add that to my list of things I feel sorry for too. I'm waiting for Mr. Pretties to win the lotto so that I can buy up all the old houses and renovate them, then turn them into no-kill animal shelters, veterinary clinics and bed and breakfasts'.

Ribbon...

Some of the ribbon I ordered weeks ago arrived today. Oy. I love ribbon, I really do. And the fact that it arrived in this big pile where it had nicely knotted together was great, truly, I even had to resist the urge to throw it up in the air and roll in it. Then a couple things occured to me. For one, I am not a cat. And two, I actually need to use this ribbon to beautify some sweet little darling's hair. So I began to untangle it.

Holy sh... shoot that was A LOT of work. Don't love ribbon so much anymore. Really don't love the person who mailed it to me either. I even paid a handling fee... do you think the handling part was when they smushed it up in a big ol' ball and jammed it into the envi? Yes? Me too. That's it, I don't pay handling fees anymore, we cannot risk having this fiasco again. I'll probably have ribbon induced nightmares now. As if I don't have enough problems sleeping at night.



Also, I have now enraged the boss. I had to spread it out to untangle it properly (and rewrap it onto ribbon cards) which meant I also had to use my other hand to wrestle the ribbon away from the cat who, for the life of her could not figure out why I was not sharing these goods with her. She eventually got fed up with my selfishness and stalked off with her tail in the air and will likely ignore me for the rest of the day. Good. She's not all that helpful with the rewrapping part anyway.

In addition, I listed some hair pretties on Kijiji last week. It was a great idea! Accept for the part where I took orders, and my husband, we'll call him, Mr. Pretties kept 'helping' by bumping the ad. For four days. In four different cities. When he he knows that I was bought out by another Kijiji mom and that I'm waiting on the rest of my ribbon to come in. I am beyond stoked to get to work with some of these moms to get their sweetie pies some hair pretties for their hair (or almost hair?). Usually I make pretties for mom sales and craft sales, so I make the clips and people buy them. Now people are knowing what they want and I'm making them especially for them. This requires so much more love, but that's what makes customs so much more fun! I finished off 20 clips today for a couple of moms, and have too many more to go. In addition to the extras for the Etsy shop. I go to sleep thinking about hair pretties, I have dreams about them (Who knew you could have nightmares about something so adorable!), and I wake up thinking about them. Now that's dedication! Everyone is so easy to work with and most are so appreciative just of my taking their order. Love it! Some people were quite angry that my ad was reposted on Kijiji when I was clearly out of clips. Totally understandable. Perhaps Mr. Pretties should have these emails sent to him. I don't like hate mail before I have my cup of tea in the morning. I think I smoothed all that over though, phew. I want everyone to like me and love my pretties. I know that can't happen, but a girl can dream can't she?

I convinced Mr. Pretties to go 'junking' with me this morning. Please note that Mr. Pretties does not like junking. Garage saling, yes. Junking and antiquing, negatory. But he put on his big boy panties and came with. Now we just finished repainting our kitchen this weekend, it only took three weeks. No it's not that big. Mr. Pretties just likes to take his sweet time. Please note that I painted our long hall, our little hall (these are technical terms now!), our diningroom, our bathroom, and the big wall in our kitchen in three days. With the kids up. I'm 8 months pregnant. But I got it done. I digress. But our kitchen was the most awful shade of orange and light orange (this is a rental) with white cupboards. It was very... cheery? In a nauseating kind of way... Now it is a much more acceptable 'Pony Tail'/'Noah's Ark' combo. Very trendy. And wouldn't you know, all my old crappy pieces of antique something-er-other match beautifully. I was telling Mr. Pretties that I required a clock for the kitchen, a real clock. Not one that glows green, gets angry and flashes at me, or other wise is unrealiable in the event of power failure. Mr. Pretties agreed. I found the clock on Ebay. 80 years old, wind up, still had the keys. It was only $171.00 + shipping. Mr. Pretties disagreed whole heartedly. I could not win this battle before the time was up. Literally. SO in our junking today I came across this little piece of heaven:

I know. Be still your heart. (Yeah, tilt your head side ways... I can't fix that) This IS now a picture of my clock, I had it sent over especially for the blog, because you all care so much about it... Let's go with that okay? So this is it in all it's glory in my kitchen, in it's 'shabby' (Read: Crappy) antique cupboard that now so perfectly matches my kitchen. It's one of those items that you walk into the room and go 'Wow... that's just so right!' Mr. Pretties does not understand this logic. He thought maybe we should throw away our digital alarm clock in our bedroom and put this one in there... uh... not so much. This was not made for our bedroom (I don't care that it's an alarm clock!) it was made for the kitchen. Mr. Pretties was the religated back into the bedroom to reinstall the alarm clock he had taken the initiative to unplug and prep for garbage. Doesn't he understand that at night I do require an ugly green glaring display of numbers telling me exactly how many hours of sleep I have left to enjoy at night? And what time I got up to go to the bathroom/let the cat in/get a drink/check on the kids so that I can then report it all to him in chronological order in the morning? I guess not.

Well after that little piece of beauty I think your eyes'll need a rest. I told another mom I would take some extra wonderful pictures of my pretties for her selection tomorrow and I sort of need to get on that. Although I told her I could email them tomorrow, thinking I could upload them onto my aunts computer, but I'm not so sure about that now. I'll have to find my USB thing. Good lord. Better get on that too... this could take awhile. After the whole obstetrics appt., uploading of fantastic photos (Hear me camera?! f-a-n-t-a-s-t-i-c pictures. Not half as... arsed!) I have an appt for the first pedicure I've had (Besides the only Mr. Pretties issues occasionally) in six years. This is a birthday present from my cousin who must love me more than Mr. Pretties and my mom since they did not obtain this particularly wonderful event as a gift for me as well. Can. Not. Wait. I'm sure I'll be able to crank out pretties at warp speed with my toes looking all beautiful and girly like! Not to worry, I will not be posting after photos of this (Or befores for that matter, be extra thankful!) so you can still check back tomorrow and not have to worry about temporary blindness/nausea/or faint.

Now where is that USB cable... Next computer we're going blue tooth!