Woodpecker Attack and Solution!

Just about two weeks ago I heard some drumming in the house. I thought it was one of the kids but quickly realized it wasn't anyone inside the house. No, we were under attack! Two woodpeckers found our home a perfect place to peck at. I quickly scared them away but they came back. WARNING: If you hear woodpeckers at your house scare them away for good right away. I wasn't that smart - but I've learned my lesson.

Our woodpeckers were beautiful Northern Flickers. Don't be fooled, as beautiful as the bird is - you don't want it pecking on your house!

Just a week later I woke up way too early with the kids. They watched shows while cuddling their sleepy mom on the couch. About two hours later I realized that there had been drumming that entire time, but it was way too early for the neighbors to be out working on a project. That's when I bolted from my seat, ran out the patio door, and quickly scared away another woodpecker. This is what I saw next:

There were two woodpeckers and we're certain they were trying to make our house a home. I searched for all sorts of solutions but most of them were things like: call animal control, buy this spray (which took 5-7 days to arrive), buy a fake owl, hang some reflective things up, etc. So I kept looking for something cheap. Finally I found THIS PAGE. Seriously, if you are under attack - the suggestions there are great!

After a quick read of their suggestions my husband got excited. He quickly ran out and purchased a water gun and hot sauce. He loaded the water gun with hot sauce and soaked the entire wall of the area where the woodpeckers were visiting. (Don't worry, our kids will not be using that gun ever.) The next morning they were back, as usual. The two woodpeckers landed and pecked. My husband ran out ready to scare them away. After two pecks they flew away before he could even scare them. They haven't come back since! Yay HOT SAUCE! My husband rocks! Now to get the hole repaired so we don't have other surprise visitors.

*One of our friends (who owns a Pest Control Business) also recommended Bird-X Scare Eye Balloon from Amazon.com. He says many people he refers to them have success.

No More Track Lights

I've been so excited with all the changes in lighting around here. In our great room we removed the track light that ran on the edge of the room. It was good at lighting the room when the spotlights were pointed towards the roof, but then they were in-your-face lights. You know how that is - like when the sun shines in through a window and blinds you in your seat. It wasn't quite that blinding, but much more annoying because it never went away.

Taken the night before we moved in! That old couch is no longer there.

It took me some time (4.5 months to be exact) to decide what to do with the lights. What I wanted was the same amount of light, division of spaces and versatility. I didn't want the new lighting to prevent me from putting up bookcases, rearranging the room, or changing things around later on down the road.

I finally decided on adding two new recessed lights and putting a light fixture above the table. That fixture could be a chandelier, a special light, or changed to a simple flush mount depending on how the space was being used. You can see in the before and after images I whipped up quickly the differences.

We still have to install the light above the dining room table. Just like with the entry-way chandelier I went through and chose several and then let my husband look at them. Below are our top choices. Which one do you think we got? (That's not our table, just one that I popped in to help me through the thinking process.)

Drum Shade Choices by maggiemuggins on Polyvore

Hopefully next week we will have the light installed and I can show you some after photos!

And Then There Was Light! (Choosing A Chandelier)

Years ago, when I was a teenager, I was over at my friends house when the power went out. We had been making some special potato dish for her dinner. I remember that her grandparents were coming over and her grandpa was a picky eater so we had to make sure all the potatoes were pealed perfectly. Anyhow, as we were preparing this dish the power went out. We continued as much as we could in the dimly lit area and then talked and did some other things while we waited. But that potato dish had to be in the oven by a certain time so it continued in the back of our minds as we did the other things. What seemed like hours later (but was probably not even an hour) my friend commented about how we needed power soon and the loudly proclaimed "And then there was light!" That very second the lights came on! It was so awesome - we were stunned and had a great laugh over it. Every time I hear those words, I still think of that story.

I wish it would have been as easy as proclaiming some words this time around. We had the electricians here doing lots of work over the course of 4 days last week. It was noisy, dusty and dirty - but the results were exactly what we hoped for!

One of the first things they did was replace the entry-way chandelier for us. I asked you for suggestions recently - and showed you our top choices. In the end - we didn't go with any of them.

I looked through all my before photos and don't actually have one of the old chandelier. Oops. This is what it looked like:

How We Chose

SIZE
The first reason is we decided two-tier might be too wide of a chandelier for the space. The chandelier hangs right at the bottom of the stairs so the old light actually made my husband feel like he was going to hit his head on it. We needed to be really careful what we replaced it with so we chose a one-tier version of one of our favorites. It also needed to hold about 5 regular bulbs to provide extra light to the adjacent room - which had no lights at all.

COLLECTION
Another factor that influenced our decision was the entire collection. Many light fixtures come in a coordinating collection with chandeliers, flush mount, semi-flush mount, pendants and wall lights all made to match. We're replacing a lot of the other light fixtures in the house so we wanted to be able to use some from the same collection. Some of our top choices we ONLY liked the chandelier in the collection and nothing else.

STYLE
Lastly we chose based on style. We wanted a modern style but something that was still elegant.

PRICE
If the price hadn't been so much higher than the rest ($400 more) my husband would have picked #7 from our top choices. The prices were so much better on the rest of the styles though. Also - we found the lights on LightingDirect.com but purchased them cheaper on Amazon.com.

I have to confess, even after it arrived, even after choosing it, I was still nervous until I saw it hung and lit up. What a HUGE difference it made. The space is so much brighter and the room next to it didn't need the lamps anymore.

I'll be back soon to show you some of the other lighting/electrical work we had done.

Frosted Vinyl {Christmas Nativity}

I've used the Silhouette Frosted Vinyl a few times now and it has never disappointed me. I showed you how I used it on my "Everything Has Beauty" artwork last year. I also used it on a mirror - and the results were amazing!

Lauren over at The Thinking Closet has a great post about Frosted Vinyl today. (A really cool blog to read.) Her project is really pretty and the round-up of other projects will likely inspire you to buy a roll to try - if you haven't already!

This is a Nativity Silhouette that I made combining several Silhouette shapes. The frosted vinyl was easy to cut. It did require higher settings than regular vinyl. It's a little more thick.

It's hard to get a nice close up of this, so this was my best attempt. You'll notice a few bubbles if you look closely. I wasn't careful enough while applying this vinyl.

I have to warn you - frosted vinyl sticks REALLY well. So it can be a lot of work to remove it! I left this vinyl up for over a year because it was so hard to remove. On the plus side, if you use it on a vase, or other things you might want to rinse, you won't have to worry about it coming off.

Now, head on over to The Thinking Closet for some more ideas for Frosted Vinyl!

Silhouette Shapes:

Nativity Shepards

Nativity Holy Family

Nativity Stable

Nativity Wisemen

(Click on the shapes to link to them in the Silhouette Online Store.)

Daunting Choices

One of the hard things about our new house is the many choices I've been having to make. I love Interior Design and Home Decorating, but I have to confess, that on occasion I feel a little overwhelmed by it all. We're having an electrician come to add some lights to the house as well as add/move switches and outlets. For some reason builders here haven't figured out just how essential lighting is here in the Pacific Northwest. Our 18 year old townhouse had lighting issues (aka: one little 20W spotlight in a large room with a vaulted ceiling . In our new 33 year old house the front (formal living) room has no lights. It has one outlet attached to a switch and that is all. I can't even get both lamps to turn on and off with the switch. Boo. This is a fairly large room with a vaulted ceiling too. It has lots of windows to help during the day and it is open to the entrance which has a dimly-lit chandelier. But at night, there's just not enough light in there.

After much thought, and walking over toys each night to turn off the lamp, I have finally decided what we'll do to make the lighting situation better.

1. We're going to do about 4 recessed lights in the vaulted ceiling. This should create a significant amount of extra light with-out detracting from the chandelier in the entrance.

2. We're going to replace the dimly-lit chandelier with a slightly larger and much brighter one. It will be able to take large bulbs instead of the little 7 watt ones.

I was about to call the electrician and have him over this week when suddenly I realized I still hadn't chosen a new chandelier. After trips to 3 different stores without success, as well as perusing several sites, I finally found some options that my husband and I both liked. We still have to choose our favorite. Which one do you like best?

Chandelier Choices by maggiemuggins on Polyvore
*If you click over to Polyvore you can get links to each chandelier.

We would install this ourselves but seeing as we're having someone come with scaffolding to do add lights to the room, it will actually cost less to pay him to install the chandelier than to rent the scaffolding ourselves and take the time to do the work.

Quilting Again

I am working on a quilt. I bought it as a kit at last year's Sew Expo. I started it right away and was over half-way through the blocks when I realized my seam allowance was 1/8" instead of the standard 1/4". I'm not sure why it took me so long to notice it. It took me a long time pick everything apart. Then for some reason it was left alone for months. (I blame moving.) Anyhow, this is part of the reason I've been offline a LOT more lately. I started finally setting up my craft room and this is the first thing I'm making in it. I'm so excited with how this is coming together. I've finished the top and have to work on the back of it now. I should be beginning the actual quilting one evening very soon.

When I finally get to the quilting I'm going to be testing a new product I have. I'm pretty excited for it. I'll be letting you know how that goes.

Re-purposed Glass into Spring Vase

A long time ago we went to The Rainforest Cafe and for some reason I didn't even look at the price of my drink. It was some sort of raspberry slushie (non-alcoholic as always) and apparently came with the glass. Woops! So for a long time this thing just sat at the back of our shelf. Unused.

A few years later and I suddenly realized this was my go-to vase. It was wider than anything I had and a good height, plus it had a unique look to it. I would just turn the glass around so the logo was hidden. I attempted removing the logo a couple different ways without success. Then one day I decided to cover that logo up. It really wasn't a sentimental item at all, so I didn't feel guilty doing it at all.

I used Cosmo Cricket's 2" Glubers. I got them on sale at Ben Franklin Crafts. I followed it's instructions for making a flower, then I added a little extra triangle cut piece on the bottom to extend the flower just a little more over the logo. (Next time I would cut and adhere that part first, then twist and make the flower.)  This was actually something I did last year, and some of the buttons have fallen off but the flower never has. It's been wet a few times even, despite me being careful.

Glue gun's don't work well on glass - that's why the buttons fell of. I knew it but was too lazy to look for my good glue. I will glue them back on with a better glue (E600) the second time around. I wanted to show you this project now though because this is really great for spring!