Friday Five

So as I'm wasting away, Camille-style, I thought I'd share five web finds that amused me this week. Some are home related. Some are not.

5. My Girl Thursday

Photo From My Girl Thursday

I saw this pic over on Pinterest, and I'm obviously very into art walls at the moment. This gallery wall contains a familiar element. See it? The boy holding the musical instrument on the right? Yep, the same one I own.

Now that I know they are part of the set (Girl Thursday has a different girl) I want them ALL. Muuhahaha.

4. The adorable Melissa featured my Organization For The Chronically Disorganized post over at So You Wanna Be A Blogger. 

3. One Life To Live/All My Children Coming Back?

Photo From Deadline

I think I've mentioned before I'm something of a soap-fan. I might watch General Hospital on my laptop every night. Maybe. (I'm still giggling over Faison's Duke mask melting off his face when Robert threw the fondue on him. Yes, this happened).

Anyway, One Life To Live and All My Children are apparently being resurrected online by Prospect Park. Pretty exciting. Of course, three OLTL characters are now on GH, so that might cause a few problems...(BTW, loving the vampire storyline on GH!).

2. Notre Dame's Manti Te'o Tragic Dead Girlfriend...Not So Dead, Not So Real?

Photo From Sports Illustrated

If you follow me on Twitter you know I got a leetle interested in the Manti T'eo saga. This is mainly because J forces me to watch watches college football so I was subjected to T'eo's tragic story.

The breakdown, if you don't know it, is something like this. Girlfriend in car accident in the spring, girlfriend diagnosed with leukemia, grandmother dies, girlfriend dies but tells T'eo to keep playing football, T'eo sends white roses to her funeral.

The only things that actually happened in, you know, real life? His grandmother died and he plays football for Notre Dame. The rest of it...not so much. T'eo is claiming he was duped. Hmm. I mean he never skyped, facetimed, or google chatted with his girlfriend? I'm not really buying it. 

Anyway...it's a mess. ESPN and Sports Illustrated apparently both thought the story raised red flags but kept quiet because...they like access to Notre Dame's football programs? That's my theory. Anyway, Deadspin actually broke the story, causing me great glee when they were namechecked by NPR this morning. Also, it led me to realize that...

1. Perry Mason Is A Lying Liar Who Lies?

Photo From Radio Of YesterYear

So back in the day Raymond Burr told the story about Annette Sutherland, the beautiful Scottish aspiring actress with whom he fell in love, married, and had a child. Sutherland died tragically in the same plane crash that killed Leslie Howard (best known as Ashley Wilkes in Gone With The Wind). Later their young son died of leukemia (that same disease that took out Manti's fake girlfriend). 

Yeah...Annette Sutherland, apparently, never existed. Neither did the young son. There's no paper trail for them here or in Scotland/the United Kingdom. She wasn't on the list of passengers for BOAC flight 777, where Leslie Howard perished. 

Burr apparently did this again with third wife Laura Morgan in the 1950s. He married her, she died tragically of cancer...and yet no one ever met her and there's no record of their marriage or her birth/death. Whoops.

So why did Burr invent then kill off two wives? Apparently to cover up his sexual orientation. Very sad.

Also, I had no idea there were so many fake dead women in the world.

Don't forget to come back Monday and link up your quick crafy/DIY/organization/whatever project in the DIY Action Squad link party! And on Tuesday I'll post the finished gallery wall.

Makin Like Goldilocks.

Y'all, I wanted to post my brand new shiny gallery wall but I've come down with something I hope is just a cold, and not the flu that's taken out half the country. Hopefully I'll be back tomorrow with gallery wall goings on.

We have a deep, dark secret.

Our bed is broken. I wish there was an awesome story involving how we broke the bed that involved nurses uniforms and handcuffs, but sadly not. Actually Emily was the only one on the bed when it broke.

I don't what we did that caused one leg to snap off. But it's been resting on bricks ever since. This is not a stable arrangement.

It's helped me realize that our bedroom is a sad, sad place. The only decoration is the little gallery wall of Lila pictures. So I'm devoting February (appropriate, yes?) to a bedroom redo. I'm planning on refurbishing the awesome mid-century side tables we trash-picked over the holidays, making some curtains, upgrading our bedding, rehabbing some amazing 1950s lamps I scored at the thrift store, maybe painting the walls, definitely painting the seventies chest of drawers we trash-picked from different neighbors over the summer, venturing into the world of engineer prints...but most importantly we have to do something about the bed situation.

I've decided I'm going to DIY a bed. Yep. Just because the last time I built something I was in high school and it was a set piece for a community theater musical doesn't mean I can't knock out an amazing bed, right? Of course right!

Over on Facebook I talked about building a platform bed from scratch, but I don't think I have the tools (or courage). So I've narrowed on beds I think will be easy to DIY.

1. Pipe Bedframe

Photo From Simplified Building

I'm a little in love with this. Y'all know how I feel about making things from pipe. Maybe not the most comfortable option, though. But it doesn't require crazy tools. A nice, easy build your own bed idea.

2. Upholstered Box Springs With Furniture Legs

Picture From Momma Rake

I LOVE THIS. Your tools? A staple gun, some fabric, furniture legs, and a drill. Yes'm, I have all of these things. Naturally I'd pick legs more closely aligned to my design ideals...

Photo From Lowe's

Like these awesome tapered legs from Lowe's. I checked them out in person, and they are real wood. So I could stain them to match the walnut legs of our mid-century bankers table (it holds our television), and they are the same shape as said bankers table and our new nightstands. Lots of tapered leg action.

3. Ana White Platform Bed

Photo From Ana White

Here's a platform bed from Ana White. The hardest to construct from my three options...but it looks really nice and I'd really like a platform bed.

So, has anyone built a bed? Any tips? Ideas? Thoughts on why I'm crazy?

Making A Gallery Wall: Planning

I'm officially obsessed with salon walls. Way back on this art tour post I mentioned wanting to create a fantastic mix-matched gallery wall in our living room.

Here are some examples I think are particularly drool worthy.

Picture From Pinterest, Someone Please Tell Me Where It's Really From

 Love...everything, really. I think this pic was originally from Domino, maybe?

Picture From The Thompson Family

 Love the mix of vintage art and crewel work.

Photo From Design Sponge

My first step was gathering together all the "art" I wanted to use on the wall. Here were the winners.

These bits and pieces are just hung up on the nails from my original, very sad attempt at making a collage wall. These pieces include some lithographs on the English Lake district, the anchor I made for J, the Paul Deltlefsen prints I bought at two different thrift stores on the same day, and the amazing Vincent Van Gogh I shared on Facebook a couple of weeks ago. It still has the original, 1950s era Macy's price tag. $13.50. Yep. Love the frame.

More pieces destined for our salon wall. The embroidered quote I made way back in the day, a vintage souvenir Pike's Peak tray (somewhere J and I both visited and loved before we ever met each other), a super vintage sailboat tray, a needlework cover of the Saturday Evening Post, a Richard Nixon album, and some other artworks.

I don't think I've ever showed these two on the blog before. We actually bought these on our honeymoon. Love. Them. They have Kresge stamped on the back of them, meaning they are probably from the now defunct dime store. That makes them even more awesome.

Now, the problem with my lovingly thrift scored frames and art work is they often need a little work. None of the pieces here had workable framing hardware.

For example, this vintage piece apparently produced by the Metropolitan Museum of Art. There was a weird twine thing going on, but no real way to hang it.

So I fixed it. A hot glue gun, and some framing hooks. Glue the hook onto the back of any piece of art (this also works great on trays or other less traditional pieces you'd like to hang). Let it dry. And...that's it.

On other pieces, like the framed quote, the original wire used to hang it had stretched and framed with time. The easiest fix is to snip out the original wire and replace it. All hardware stores carry frame wire. Super easy.

So tomorrow I'll be back (maybe with a video!) about laying out and hanging my salon wall. Super exciting! I've only wanted to do this FOREVER.