Sprinklers?

Sprinklers were not on my radar. 

Is it just me or do you ladies also have husbands who decide "now" would be a great time to start XYZ project even though they have 5 others in progress and a list of things their wives wanted them to get done around the house....

Welcome to the Paisley Cottage...story of my life.

Yesterday I came home from work and there was Mr. Paisley...knee deep in a trench beside the driveway. 100% certain said trench wasn't there when I left for work - nor the pile of dirt in the driveway where I normally park my car. *sigh*

WHAT are you doing? Putting in sprinklers. Seriously? And so he did. In one tiny sliver of the yard...between our driveway and the neighbor's driveway. It's not 5' from one driveway to the other. We do not have sprinklers anywhere else in the yard. 

RANDOM.

Please note, we are about to head out of town again. We have a huge party coming up in May and there are indeed a million other things to do around the house...not involving random sprinkler installation. *SIGH*

On the plus side, my husband is SOOOO not into kids. However when I peeked out the door I snapped a few photos while he wasn't looking...

Little Emily from down the street turned up to be a helper...she was picking the rocks out of his dirt pile. 

I just noticed you can see the mostly empty lot across the road...there used to be a house there, now there is just the carport. Back several years ago when Central Florida got hit by 3 hurricanes back to back the back wall of said house literally fell off. Let's just say some folks on our street don't do a lot of home maintenance. The owner of this one - well, he didn't live there. His mom did. I swear the woman had to be 100. At some point the county kicked her out because plastic sheeting isn't an acceptable wall for an extended period of time. So rather than fix the house, her son had it torn down...minus the carport which, years and years later...is still there. We like to think of that lot as our neighborhood dog park ;-)

Giddy giddy giddy!

Once again, I've been away too long. Working full time and keeping up with TWO houses is over rated ;-)

I still have a post about CHRISTMAS in my drafts...stay tuned. It will appear...better late than never...

For now - I have to share my most recent find. A mid century, Danish modern, Lane record cabinet (record...as in vinyl...album...old school). Why would I want that you say? Well dear crafters - an album in it's cardboard jacket is 12"x12"...coincidentally, scrapbook paper is 12"x12". See where this is going?

My Christmas gift from the hubs was his silence and cooperation while I redo my office. Granted it's mid-March and I haven't started on my office yet, but it's because i'm working on a million other things. However, when I happened upon this cabinet, it wasn't going to wait for the redo...it was going right into the back of my truck to wait for that redo!

These are not my photos, nor is this my cabinet (although it is identical to mine - minus the labels for the slots - I guess that makes it mostly identical, but not really identical). These photos are from the website of a fantastic vintage shop over in St. Pete - it's called Paper Street Antiques the owners were recently featured by Apartment Therapy if you're familiar with that awesome website. At any rate, if you're ever in the Tampa area, you should stop by their store! You can look at their inventory online, and DROOL - they have the most fantastic stuff! I will be making a trip to the West Coast (of Florida that is) very soon to see it all for myself! They are selling it in their shop for $129.

So anyway, I bought this same Lane cabinet after it popped up at my not-so-local Habitat for Humanity ReStore. They were selling it as a magazine rack (kids...LOL what's a record?) Even though it's not something I grew up with, I knew exactly what it was - they actually had two (the second was smaller and very plain, and i'll probably kick myself for not picking it up as well at some point). I snagged this beauty for $30 + tax. 

I will be using mine to store my scrapbook paper and smaller photo albums. It could be used for magazines or cookbooks in the kitchen (the smaller one would have been great for the kitchen - it was bench height - put a cushion on top and your cookbooks in it - fab! Too bad my kitchen isn't big enough for it - and it was $25 at ReStore).

Anywho - I was SO excited about this purchase I had to share. I was thinking about painting it, but now I think i'll just clean it up - it's in great shape, so maybe i'll just keep the original finish (which looks just like it does in the above photos).  You'll see mine here once I take photos (it's still in my truck) and get it into my newly decorated office (whenever that happens).