Tidy Brown Wren, bringing order to your nest

Several readers have emailed me asking me what I used to make the party favors for my church's women's  event.  Here is my work table ready to assemble the little pots.  I like to set everything out and precut anything ahead of time so I can move quickly - assembly line like. I bought peat pots at Big Lots - 10 pots for $1.00.  I already had a roll of green paper raffia from another project.  I think I bought it at Michaels.  I also picked up a bag of excelsior from Michaels with my 40% off coupon.  For 80 party favors I used 1 1/2 bags.  So that I didn't have to use a lot of the excelsior, I recycled some of the shredding from my paper shredder in the bottom of the pots. I tied a strip of the paper raffia around each pot and filled it half full of shredded paper.  I printed out little paper tags onto card stock.  I just used the column setting in Word, getting 8 tags on each sheet...

I'm still alive, just crazy busy.  Doesn't it seem that life gets really busy as soon as spring arrives?  Last week I prepared for a WOW (Women of the Word) event at my church.  We had a great turnout on Saturday morning and spent a few hours enjoying fellowship and food (of course) and I was able to share some great ideas for keeping balanced in your heart, your health, and your home.  Here is a little party favor I made for each of the ladies to take home.  After we set the table, we put some little speckled egg candy in each cup.  The paper tag can be used as a Bible Book Mark.  It had our theme verse on it.  After I got home from that event, we had a little event of our own at home - our bee hive swarmed.  This time we knew it was really our own.  We were prepared with new hive supers (boxes for the bees to live in).  Now we have two bee hives! Sunday morning was worship and work (I am one of the dir...

I'm preparing a presentation to share this coming Saturday at my church, River Oak Church, in Chesapeake,VA.   The topic? Organizing!  Actually, the title is "Spring Cleaning from the inside out - refreshing and renewing your heart, your health, and your home".  I thought I'd do a little mini presentation this week, here on the blog, to help those of you who can't attend on Saturday.  To start the week off, I'm re-posting some information from last year that I think you'll find helpful.   After several casual discussions about home organization with friends and family over the past few weeks, I've come to the conclusion that most people don't have a clear picture of what they should be doing to organize their homes. Since I'm a recovering unorganized person, I thought I'd share some of the Who, What, When, Where, and Why's of organizing and also what organizing is NOT. Who : Everyone needs some sort of organizing in th...

When I refinished my bedside table, I loved everything about it except the worn out handles.  I knew they would not be easy to replace.  The shape was great but the finish was pathetic. My easy (and free) solution was to use what I had on hand to add a new finish to the handles.  In the photo below, the handle on the far left is the original finish.  It was worn and uneven.  I rubbed on some gold acrylic paint over the finish but I didn't try to get it into every crevice (middle handle).  After that layer dried, I lightly rubbed on some silver acrylic paint (far right).  I didn't worry about the finish being perfect because I wanted it to look vintage.  Lastly, I brushed on a water based sealant.  If I was using it on an often used handle, like in a kitchen or bath, I'd have used a poly product to hold up better.  I tend to jump into projects when I get an idea in my head, so I sometimes don't get around to using pr...

Yup, it's Thursday and I'm just now posting Wrensday (which should have been posted on Wednesday).  Yup, that's how I'm rolling right now.  I always love to hear what people are reading.  You can learn a lot about a person by observing what they read.  You can also get a great lead on what your next read might be.   When I showed you my newly refinished bedside table, I purposely left my books "as is" in the photo because that's usually how it looks.  Sometimes the bigger books are precariously piled on top of the smaller books, but on this day we were living safely.  This is what I'm reading right now:   1.  Jesus Calling by Sarah Young is an amazing devotional book.  It is written, using scripture, in the first person of Christ.  I start every day with it and . . .    2.  My Bible .  I've had this Bible for 21 years now.  It's worn and weary, but I love all of the...

After many trips to the thrift stores looking for just the right sized bedside table, I found one.  It had been in my garage the whole time.  You see, a few years ago I did a staging job for a client.  She had a lot of half-finished pieces of furniture scattered around her house and it was my job to help hide the less desirable pieces.  She was ready to get rid of several of the items because she was tired of looking at unfinished projects and ready to get her house sold and have a fresh new start.  I asked her if I could buy this piece but she insisted that I take it and refinish it.  I have a few pieces of furniture from this era and I knew it would match what I already had.  I brought it home and promptly forgot about it.  It's been sitting with my staging inventory, neglected and forlorn.  The drawers were really stuck and the finish was half off.  After pulling and tugging (and sweating) to remove the drawers, I was ab...

March is National Kidney Month and kidneys are near and dear to me. Yup, I love kidneys - I have three of them.  One that was a gift from a friend last year and two that are sitting helplessly in my body, unable to function.  My kidney disease was inherited.  If a parent has the disease, then each of their children has a 50% chance of getting the disease - pretty high statistics.  Unfortunately, there is no test to see if you have the disease and it doesn't usually show up until you've already had children.  Bummer, I know.  My dad had a kidney transplant in 1971 and remained healthy for 30 years until he died of cancer.  One of my half-sisters (we have the same dad) died in her mid 30's after two transplants.  She left 3 children behind.  I had my transplant last year (April 2011) and I feel like a new person .  Thanks, Cathy, for my new kidney! In honor of National Kidney Month, I'd like to encourage everyone to ...