Friday, February 27, 2015

The $4 Jar Light

I didn't like the light over the kitchen table.  If you have time to kill, you can see it here when the video gets to "Open Kitchen with blah blah blah".  I forgot to take my own before picture but it was

Frosted glass
trimmed with brass
and now I'd better stop rhyming.

So I spray painted it with oil-rubbed bronze paint (which is what I did to every brass thing in our MI house, and which is why it sold in a week.  That, or we listed it for $10,000 less than what we should have.).  This time the spray paint failed me.  The light wasn't any prettier, and now it was also much less functional because I painted the glass along with the brass.  Alas, I forgot to take a picture again, but it was

Dark
like the far side of the moon,
The kitchen transformed
into interrogation room.

Then I found a $4 jar at Walt-Mart, and one of Julia's naps later our light looked like this:

The kids think it's stupid, but I'm proud of it.  It's functional, anyway.  And best of all, it still inspires bad poetry:

Home made Jar Light,
Twinkling like Star Light,
The children think you mar light
and call your design lunacy.
Their opinions don't matter:
The kitchen is not a democracy.

Sunday, February 8, 2015

The Work Party

Professional photographers at work parties are the best.  They help you pretend you went to Prom with your spouse.  They also help you remember forever, if you're me, that you never wear the right thing work parties.  Every year when Jake tells me to save the date, I think, "I'm going to get something to wear for that."  Then, the party sneaks up on me, and once again, I'm left scrounging around in the closet for something that isn't there.  One of my [not so] secret [anymore] fantasies is that some day I'll be a millionaire with a person who does my shopping for me.  Someone with impeccable taste, so I never end up at another work party looking like a middle school teacher who thought she was going to Back to School Night, but somehow ended up at the fanciest hotel ballroom in town.  Where everyone else had the right thing to wear.  Oh well.  Jake acted like he wasn't embarrassed to be seen with me, anyway.