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  • Helping a Poor Old Lady

    The Boy helped an old lady this weekend. No, not this old lady: This old lady: That’s right! We started working on stripping my antique desk – the Great Deal. I’ll write more about the process of rehabbing this baby, but let me just say: She was coated with at least eight layers of paint. […]

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  • What Do You Think of the New Me?

    Yesterday, when I opened my blog I discovered a floating “photo removed” window. Very irritating. After a bit of digging I finally realized what had been removed – my blog background! Well, fine. I’d been intending to update my blog anyway. Now was as good a time as any! One thing led to another…tweak a […]

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  • Weekend Project #2 Update

    I fell in love with a neat-o bulletin board featured in a catalog earlier this year: The only problem was that the smallest bulletin board was $79! The next size up (a standard sized bulletin board) was $119. Outrageous if you ask me.So I did a Shannah-version of the bulletin board.Take one cheap Ikea cork […]

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  • Weekend Project Update

    This weekend’s main task was to finish my nativity display cabinet. It’s been a work in progress since the middle of April. Definitely past time to finish it up! A reminder of what Carter delivered to our house on April 17th: I’d asked for your input in color selection. By an overwhelming margin, the vote […]

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  • Quick Change-A-Roo

    We’ve had a problem in the downstairs half-bath: no one can find the light switch. I wonder if the pattern-matched switch plate had any role to play? While it is amusing to listen to folks fumbling around, it seemed long-past time to upgrade the situation. A $9 bronze switch plate and the Hayley House screwdriver, […]

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  • Where Have You Been?

    Ah, Floetrol….where have you been all my life? Mixing a tablespoon or two of you into latex paint makes brush strokes just disappear. Work is easy, painting is quick – sandpaper, a thing of the past. Pick up a quart of the stuff for yourself at any big box hardware store. A quart sells for […]

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  • A New Home

    Those fun red baskets have a new home! I love having a large pantry in the Hayley Home, but have learned that the large pantry actually has me. In other words…I can’t find anything. I purchase duplicate items. Or worse, I don’t purchase what I need. Something had to be done! Enter the red baskets! […]

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  • Going Downhill

    Things are not going well for the Hayley Herb garden. A reminder: here are our baby cilantro plants on May 10th: Here are our cilantro plants nine days later: What’s going wrong? Too much sun? Too many thunderstorms? The curse of the red pot? Thoughts, advice and good luck charms welcome in the comments.