I am not, as a general rule, a how-to type of blogger. That is because I don’t really know how to do much of anything. Oh, I could tell you how to scream like some sort of hillbilly gameshow contestant while you’re watching a televised football game, or I could tell you how to streamline your ordering process at the Popeye’s drive-thru, but by and large these skills aren’t what you would call in demand. Plus, I’m wordy – and it’s probably not a very efficent how-to post if it also includes an anecdote or nine about the time that clown scared me when I was four.

But.

An unexpected bonus to my time in Houston a couple of weeks ago is that I was totally inspired by my friend Merritt’s house. It is such a warm and cozy home. There are personal touches all over the place, and it’s orderly without being fussy. Everything has a place, and everything looks pretty, but more than anything the whole house just feels loved and cared for. Like I said: home.

When I got back to Birmingham, I was encouraged for the first time in LONGER THAN I CARE TO ADMIT, THANK YOU VERY MUCH to get our house back in order. It’s been a wee bit chaotic for the last few months – with a dominant decorative motif of stacks and also piles – and the result of that is that instead of walking in our house and feeling relaxed, I’ve been walking in our house and feeling overwhelmed.

So, as I thought about Merritt’s house and remembered how relaxing it is to be in a peaceful, orderly home (granted, part of that equation has very little to do with decor and everything to do with relationships), I made a little mental list of a few problem areas I wanted to tackle. Since I can be the queen of making a 62 item to-do list that I would prefer to complete within the next 45 minutes, I tried to keep the list to around four or five things so that I could actually accomplish everything.

(Don’t tell anybody, but I think I may have taken a rational and reasonable approach. This is quite a departure from my normal haphazard and scattered approach.)

(WILL WONDERS NEVER CEASE.)

So for what it’s worth, yesterday I did some super-simple things in my house that, for whatever reason, made me feel like I’d accomplished big-time results. I don’t care one iota about having the nicest furniture or the finest accessories – in fact, I sort of prefer it if furniture has lived in two or three other people’s houses before it makes its way to me. But I do like for a house to feel like home. I like personality and order and fun and function – and more than anything I like warm and welcoming.

There. I believe I’ve over-explained enough.

Mini-Makeover #1: The Stove

We have an older stove that has burners on one side and a grill on the other. I almost always have the grill covered, and that’s where I keep my kitchen utensils, my olive oil and my kosher salt. The salt has been in a Christmas coffee cup (KLASSY) for several months, and the olive oil and utensils are forever getting scooted around the grill cover. Drives me crazy.

So I bought a small kitchen tray at TJ Maxx. I bought a bowl for my salt at Pier 1. I put everything in the little tray, and y’all, it makes me so over-the-moon happy that I’m not sure why it took me about three years to come up with this solution.

(Please excuse the subpar picture quality. I was using my phone, and the flash was out of control. I would’ve used my real camera, but the battery was dead – because I am nothing if not woefully unprepared.)

Mini-Makeover #2: The Kitchen Door

For the longest time I had a runner in front of the door that leads to our garage. But then I moved the runner to another part of the house, and I never replaced it. Instead I just walked in and out of the door about fourteen times a day and thought Gosh, I could really use a rug back here. Because I’m productive like that.

So this past weekend I bought a rug at TJ Maxx. It took two minutes of my time and $20.

It’s so nice to walk in and out of the door and smile instead of spending six more months thinking about how I need to buy a rug.

Mini-Makeover #3: The Breakfast Area

Merritt has an adorable embroidered piece outside her laundry room, and I loved that it was sort of retro and kicky and fun. Well, when Sister and I were in one of the three TJ Maxx stores that we visited this past weekend, I saw a stack of embroidered stuff back in the home goods section – and lo and behold, it was all really similar to what Merritt has in her house.

I looked through them and picked the one I liked best. Then I hung it above our breakfast table because it makes me happy, and I’ll see it a whole bunch of times throughout the day if it’s in that part of the house.

Alex looked at it and said, “Wow. Those are some good rules, Mama.”

I am prone to agree.

Mini-Makeover #4: The Chair

In the office next to our kitchen, we have this really sad rocking chair that we bought after Alex was born. It wasn’t necessarily sad when we bought it – it was very practical and serviceable, in fact – but it’s gotten progressively sad over the last seven years. It’s squeaky, it’s missing a spring or two and the cushions have seen better days. But I have this weird sentimental attachment to it, and it’s a strangely comfortable place to read or maybe just think about bacon.

There’s a whole lot of blue and turquoise and green on that end of the house, so I draped a throw that we already had across the back of the chair, and I added this World Market pillow to the mix. The pillow was way on sale when I bought it, and the colors are my favorites.

And suddenly the chair doesn’t look nearly as sad anymore.

Mini-Makeover #5: The Post / Pillar / Column Thing-y

There’s a big ole post / pillar / column thing-y between our kitchen and our office. I think it used to be part of some funky 70s louvered door set-up, but the previous owners removed the door and opened up the space. I’ve never known what to do with the PPCT-y – do I ignore it? Accent it? Ask our guests to sign it with a Sharpie? (I’m still not completely opposed to that last option, by the way.)

When we were in Houston my friend Elise gave all of us a gorgeous carved wooden cross, and I wanted to hang it some place special. It was too big for the areas above my doors, so yesterday I walked all over the house looking for the perfect spot. And finally I thought, I think it might look good on the PPCT-y. So I hung it there.

And I love it. It’s the first thing you see when you walk down the hall to the kitchen, and somehow that seems just about right to me.

Mini-Makeover #6: The Mail and The Papers

We have a problem with mail in our house. I’m not sure how it started, because we used to be the kind of people who went through the mail immediately and never let it pile up. But then D started working in an office that’s not in our house. And then the seven year-old started bringing home forms and whathaveyou from school. And then the corner of my kitchen counter started looking like I was the proud owner of a paper collection. IT DROVE ME CRAZY – but I felt like I was always waiting on D to sort through the stuff with his name on it or I needed to keep an information sheet or whatever.

So I bought a basket that cost five dollars.

All the mail and papers are still there, but they look so much cuter now. There’s no pile of stuff to drive me to distraction. And while I have no idea why I’ve just stood in my kitchen and shot dirty looks at the ever-growing stack of mail without bothering to do anything about it, I’m just as tickled as I can be with that basket. That corner of the kitchen counter no longer makes me think that my head is going to explode. You can imagine my joy.

All righty. I’ve rambled enough. So what about y’all? Do you have any fun hints for mini-makeovers? Have you had any why-didn’t-I-do-that-sooner moments in your house lately? Because now I’m wondering what I can do with all the stuff under my bathroom sink. And how I can better store the 9500 phone chargers and camera cords and battery chargers and iPod accessories that seem to multiply in this house.

The fun never ends.

We left Nashville this afternoon, but not before we’d made one final stop at Sonic. It was Happy Hour, after all. WHAT ELSE WAS I SUPPOSED TO DO?

Going to Sonic required a little bit of a detour, and when I turned in the parking lot I noticed that it seemed a little crowded. I slowed down so that I could turn into the first available space – only there wasn’t one. Every space on the right side of the building was full, but I wasn’t terribly concerned because I don’t really like to park on that side of the Sonic anyway. In my hometown it was IMPERATIVE that you parked on the left side of Sonic, though I could not for the life of me tell you why. All I know is that every town has its own Sonic rules, and at sixteen I was not even a little bit interested in bucking the Sonic system.

So the little man and I drove around the Sonic to check out the other side of the parking lot – and guess what? COMPLETELY FULL. I’ve never seen anything like it. And once I realized that the second side was full, it set up an unprecedented fast food dilemma for me: Do I make a second loop around the Sonic? Is that even allowed? Will the teenagers point and laugh? Do I nonchalantly park in the adjacent lot and then walk over and order from Sonic patio?

Certainly you can appreciate the fact that my life was turned upside down.

However, right when I was about to commit to the second loop, I noticed the reverse lights on a Suburban just a few yards away. I claimed that spot quicker than you can say “STRAWBERRY LIMEADE,” and we were understandably delighted. That second loop could have been devastating to my social status as a completely nerdy mama of one who enjoys reading Mississippi State football message boards, analyzing semi-colon usage and trying new varieties of cheese in her spare time.

It was a close one, y’all.

Anyway, we made one more quick stop to visit with some friends, and we finally got home tonight about 7:30. I’m just as happy as a clam to have all of our little family under the same roof again. We don’t have a single road trip on the immediate horizon, and as a result I’ve been thinking tonight about what I’d like to accomplish over the next few days and weeks (not that the normal day-to-day stuff is going to disappear, mind you, but since I don’t have any big plans over the next few weeks, I’m feeling extra ambitious-y).

Here’s my list:

1. Clean my house. Not just “tidy” my house. CLEAN IT.
2. Go see The Social Network. Preferably on a date with my husband.
3. Hang some window treatments in my dining room. Finally. SINCE WE’VE ONLY LIVED HERE FOUR YEARS.
4. Catch up on my reading for a class I’m taking at church. I’m waaaaaay behind.
5. Catch up on my DVR’d programming. The neglect I’ve shown “Survivor” is shameful, really, and that’s just the tip of the chock-full DVR iceberg.
6. Put some sort of fall-ish decorative something-or-other outside. I saw a bunch of people buying fall decorations in Michael’s this morning, and by the time I left I had a failure-to-decorate-for-fall complex.
7. CLEAN MY HOUSE. I MEAN BUSINESS ABOUT THIS ONE, THUS THE REPETITION.

What about y’all? Any short-term goals? Anybody else with a failure-to-decorate-for-fall complex?

There’s strength in numbers, my friends.

There’s strength in numbers.

All righty. I have to write this post super-fast because my laptop battery is dying and the cord is downstairs and I’m either too tired or too lazy to walk down there and get it. Regardless, we’ve got about 44 minutes left on this charge, so WE’RE IN A RACE AGAINST THE CLOCK, PEOPLE. A RACE AGAINST THE CLOCK.

Alex and I have been in Nashville this weekend so that I can help Sister with round two of getting-her-house-back-in-order-after-post-flood-reconstruction. GHHBIOAPFR for short. I think the acronym is catchy, don’t you? The little man went back and forth about whether he was going to stay at home with his daddy or drive up here with me, but three factors influenced his decision to make the trip to Nashville: 1) he wanted to see Sister and Barry 2) he wanted some time just with me since I was in Houston last weekend and 3) there’s a Sonic close to Sister’s house. We don’t have a Sonic near us at home, and he seriously thinks that eating there is the biggest treat on earth, as evidenced by the fact that we’ve made five trips to Sonic since we got here Friday night. FIVE. Now granted, three of those trips were beverage runs while we were out running errands, but still. I guess it’s a good thing that there’s no Sonic near our house, or we’d all be in the grips of a Sonic-related stronghold.

Making this trip was a little trickier than usual because I wanted to be able to keep a commitment at home and do the house stuff with Sister. Then D came to the rescue and offered to pitch in with the stuff at home so that I could be here. It really was so sweet of him, especially considering that this is the third weekend in a row that I’ve been out of town and our house is sort of a wreck and the thing at home meant that he was going to have to cook a roast, but this is just sort of how we do life. We run at full speed-bordering-on-chaos for a few weeks, and then everything settles down and we’re total homebodies for a four-month stretch. I attribute this tendency to my borderline introvert/extrovert personality, which means that I do many things with many people for an short-but-intense period of time, and then I go home and put on my pajamas and make sure nothing is on our calendar for a sweet forever so that I am completely free to focus on hanging out with my people and decorating for fall and making all sorts of new and exciting soups.

We like to live on the edge.

Anyway, the fact that D had to make a roast led to all sorts of funny phone conversations over the course of the weekend, like when I tried to explain what cut of roast to buy and how much salt to sprinkle on the meat and how much water I put in the crock pot and how I like to cube the potatoes. Everything seemed to go off without a hitch, and I am very grateful because Sister and I have been able to accomplish a whole bunch here. Granted, we’ve burned up the road going from TJ Maxx to Home Goods to Pier 1 to World Market, but parts of her house are starting to look like home again, and that’s a very good thing indeed. We’ve had a great time. Plus, the Bulldogs won their game against Houston last night, and a Bulldog win is always icing on top of the weekend cake.

Or cheese on top of the weekend tater tots from Sonic, as it were.

And now my battery indicator thing is red and about to shut’er down, and that’s probably a welcome relief to anyone who has managed to read this far because SWEET MERCY this is 700 words of bona fide random, and I’d apologize except for the fact that I know beyond a shadow of a doubt that tomorrow will be no different.

Love,
Me