Paybacks are hell

A few weeks ago Gus and I took a little trip to visit my sister Misty and her kiddos in Mansfield. Her husband, Jason, was out of town and she is a big baby and scared to be there by herself has been wanting me to come visit for a long time now.

We had so much fun and Gus did really well sleeping in a strange place. Not that Misty's house is strange...just foreign to an 11-month-old.

Have I ever told  you how gullible Misty was as a little girl?

As kids, Sunday sucked. Not because we had to go to Mass and CCD (that's Sunday School for the Protestants in the room)  but because it was Cleaning Day.

We used to complain to each other as we dusted and vacuumed that "Mama only had us to clean her house."

Which now cracks me up because that's the only reason I had Gus and it's why we are working so hard on having a second child because how do I expect a one-year-old to get the whole house clean in a day? 

Duh.

You know I'm kidding, right? Don't be callin' CPS or anything. I'm pretty sure before long Gus will have them on speed dial.

Okay, so I devised a gee-nee-yus plan when I was about 12 and Misty was 7. I would ask Misty to show me how to clean my bathroom and - bless her heart - she would oblige.

Well, I did this four or five times before she decided I was the dumbest person on earth because I wasn't picking up on how to clean my own bathroom. She eventually started refusing my offer to teach me how to clean do it for me,  stating she was busy playing with Strawberry Shortcake or My Little Pony or whatever.

She told me years later that she thought I was such an idiot for not knowing how to clean my bathroom.

Mm-hmm, who was the real idiot?

Back to the real reason we're all here...Misty has been wanting to create a collage wall in her living room for a while now and my visit was the perfect opportunity for me to help her get it done do it for her.

To the right of her fireplace there is this massive six foot gap on the wall that she sees every time she walks out of her bedroom and it was just begging for something to take up residence there.

Yawn.

 

 

One thing I decided she had to have was a moss covered letter a la Dear Lillie...
 
So we buzzed through Hobby Lobby and once the hooligans were all in bed we broke out the glue gun and took this...

Okay, not this because Misty's last name doesn't start with a T. I forgot to take a before pic of the R so this is what you get.

we turned it face down on a sheet of moss, wrapped it and secured it with hot glue. Easy breezy beautiful Cover Girl...

To give it a little more importance, we "framed" it in this flat basket/tray we picked up at HL and then we used it as the focal point for the collage wall.

"R'nt you glad this post is almost over?"

Then we just played around with I think 38 different arrangements on the floor before going with this one.

Voila! A wall worthy of a PB catalog photo shoot! (the pictures, not so much...we fired the photographer...who shows up to a photo shoot with just their iPhone?)

And if you have kids you are probably familiar with the If You Give a Mouse a Cookie series and that's what happened to us...once the collage wall was done, it made the mantle look boring. So we tackled it next.

An amazing family portrait served as the centerpiece and we flanked it on one side with a peacock platter Mama gave her and with Misty's awesome Wisteria warehouse find...a really cool egg shadowbox thingy...that's the technical name...because it's my blog and I say so.

Don't put all your eggs in one basket...one shadowbox thingy, that's fine...just not one basket

And for the other side she retrieved the bird cage from the attic.

So there you have it...

Gus and I had a great time on our visit and Misty got a living room wall makeover...I taught her well...wait, she did just stand there a lot... 

What an idiot...

she doesn't even know how to hang stuff on the wall...
Oh.

I guess I'm the idiot...

Well played, Misty. Well played.

Lylas,

Brandy

P.S. Gratuitous Gus Shot and a comment: Gus will be one year old in two weeks...sigh...just a year ago I was waddling around in ignorant bliss with absolutely no idea how much my life was about to change...and here we are today and he's already driving...

and what a ride it's been...