Elementary art goes a long way...

I went to the best elementary school ever. The older I get the more I realize my elementary school was so cool and so special. The teachers, the classes, the curriculum, the fun projects, everything was bigger than life and greater than you can imagine. It was obviously amazing if I am 22 and still talking about elementary school. But, it's true. Every time my brother and I are home and we are sitting around as a family, funny elementary school stories always come up. It really was the best school ever.

Part of my job at work is designing new things for our latest projects. I had to create a background to build off of but I didn't have a theme to work with for this project. I brainstormed a little and thought back to my favorite colors, objects, art, etc. This made me think of elementary school. Every year we got to do these great school-wide art fairs, and they were literally the highlight of the year whether getting to show off what you did or meaning that you were one year closer to being a 2nd grader doing the Impressionist period, 3rd grader doing the Baroque period, 4th grader doing the Renassiance period, 5th grader doing the Medieval period, or just like me who loved being a first grader doing modern geniuses...OH I just loved it: Georgia O'Keefe, Andy Warhol, Piet Mondrian, Pablo Picasso, Matisse, Van Gogh, etc, etc, etc.

My little daydreaming at work paid off and led to me creating a Piet Mondrian inspired background that WOW-ed the bosses and added a fresh new approach to our project.
And in honor of elementary school, I have to add the Matisse classic painting that was on our school t-shirt. Seriously, how cool is it that instead of having a mascot on our elementary school shirt, we had a Henri Matisse painting...and every student knew who it was!

And, let's throw in one more of my favorites...Pablo Picasso. I'm partial to him because I lived in his hometown for a couple of months, read his personal diaries, and saw a huge chunk of his original artwork in person. Viva Malaga!

I know I received my great appreciation for art when I was just a little kid in elementary school, but my art appreciation has gotten me a long way. It helps you become more cultured about things outside of your comfort zone, learn new things, grow a bigger imagination, or just help you come up with a background for a work project making you just as excited as learning your 1st grade art homework is coloring an Andy Warhol Campbell's soup can!

images: artsender.com, wikimedia.com

Remember me, I'm the next Reba...

Not only was Saturday the best day ever because I found a dining room table, but I also got to see my childhood music idol in concert, Reba McEntire. Reba and George Strait were in town, and at the last minute I got an extra ticket with one of my good friends. Our tickets soon got upgraded when we found out some of our friends had extra tickets in the TU suite for the show. It wasn't too shabby getting to watch some country legends on TU's tab...=)

Sorry the picture isn't the greatest, it's from my phone.
Reba was wonderful. She sounded great, she was funny, I knew every word to every song...it was just awesome. The only thing that could have made it more perfect was if Mom was there to sing the Linda Davis/Reba classic duet of "Does He Love You,"our personal favorite.

Oh and let's not forget...cute, studly, little cowboy George Strait was there too...


images from countrymusic.com, nothingfancy/wordpress.com

Best Saturday ever...

This Saturday, two of my best friends and I set out for a flea market adventure to find a potential dining room table for my new place. Our first flea market stop proved to be a gold mine full of all things great and wonderful and amazing flea market worthy items. After walking around the place for awhile we found it. It being the perfect dining room table. We decided it would be best to walk around for a little longer to see if we found anything else. Eventually, we headed back to the table to negotiate a price. When we got back, there were 3 other people hovering over the table wanting to buy it as well. We grabbed the owner and told him I wanted it. We got a price, loaded all of us up in the car, and took off with my new table leaving lots of jealous fellow flea market-goers drooling at the sight of my table driving away!

So here is the before of the table...(iPhone picture)

It's a great sturdy table, and I know I got an awesome deal on it! The table was actually an old butcher's table, so the top is like one big cutting board. I'm so excited about my first big project for the new house! I've already got some ideas in the works...

I'm thinking adding a little of this...


and then maybe a little of this...(who doesn't love a good zebra chair?!)

(image: pier one)

OH boy I can't wait...I just love color!

One big Molly mess...

Molly is my puppy. My sidekick, my booger bear, my snuggler, fetcher, silly kid, and best friend ever. I got her when she was only 7 weeks old and smaller than a 20 oz bottle of diet coke. Now, she's my big kid at 9 pounds and 7 1/2 months old. It's crazy how fast time flies, but it goes by even faster when you are having so much fun chasing around a goofy fur ball!

Certain things you can only find in a small town...

When I first moved into my current apartment, I just had a full size bed in my bedroom. No headboard, but one adorable comforter and pillows. I knew I wanted to get a headboard, but finding just a full size headboard was much more difficult than I could have imagined. But, during a random weekend at home, Mom and I ventured off to a local furniture store and finally struck headboard gold! Hanging up on the wall of the furniture store, yes, literally hanging, we found a black, faux-wooden (I'm sure) full-size headboard! I knew we had to get it even though it was black and my bedding is brown, but I knew I couldn't pass up this hanging headboard.

After getting the headboard box back to Oklahoma, I let the box sit in my garage a couple of days while trying to decide what to do with it. Eventually I decided on a color and got to work. With this being my first furniture painting attempt, I knew this would take some researching. I got my sand paper, primer, and brush and got to work. After an hour of putting the headboard together, multiple sheets of sand paper, 2 coats of primer, and 4 coats of the paint...I finally had my first completed furniture painting project and a complete bed!

So my headboard went from this...(not the actual headboard, but close)

And the finished product!

I love how it turned out, and it totally gave me the bug to keep up with redoing things for my new home!

There's always a first for everything...

I once said I would never start a blog. I had several reasons why I shouldn't, why I wouldn't, and why I just couldn't bring myself to put my life out there. Besides, I figured nobody would even want to read this besides my blogger/best golf friend ever Katie, who is quite the blogger (theschluter.blogspot.com) and my family.

Over the past 7 months, numerous things have changed in my life, changing me for the better. Changing me enough to start this, my very first blog.

I do have some ground rules for my blog that I feel will be best if I put it all out there up front.

1. I will not blog just to say I posted something on my blog today. For 2 reasons, A.) I don't want my blog to be a play-by-play of my day and B.) Blogging just to blog would take away valuable Molly spoiling time.
2. Speaking of Molly, I will be blogging about my wonderful, amazing, hilarious, goofy, nine pound furball quite frequently. Mainly because she makes my life much more entertaining, and she puts the fun in funhaver.
3. Well, I guess that's all the ground rules I have...

Overall, I want my blog to be fun and happy and be a good scrapbook to keep up with the ever-changing, new adventures in my life...whether that be a funny story, silly puppy moment, or a home improvement project!

So, that's it for now...let the blogging begin!