A Little Bit of Love and Joy

That title is from the Queen song "March of the Black Queen".  By Queen.  My favorite group.  Queen. :)

Anyway, after two weeks of stress and a kind of stinky weekend, it's about darn time I get to something happy.  (Thank God, Lindsey... I mean really.  Your blog was getting to be a total downer.)  Yeah, I know.  But you guys are awesome and your comments always brighten a bad day. :)

So... happy news!  I actually won two bloggy contests while I was unplugged, so a huge THANK YOU to Tynga at  Tynga's Reviews for my brand spanking new copy of NUM8ERS and to Stephanie at Hatshepsut: The Writing of a Novel for NEFERTITI, CLEOPATRA'S DAUGHTER, CHILD OF THE MORNING, and a Roman coin!  Both immensely cool contests by wonderfully interesting ladies whose blogs I love.  Thank you!  Getting boxes in the mail have made my days!  I also have some awards to share, but I will get to those another time.

So after all this craziness, we had to run out after school to buy some sort of stone... something... for marking Cookie's little patch of earth.  The previous owners of our home left a stone cat sleeping in the middle of the front garden patch and a stone horse head (that sounds horrible, lol) on the corner of the driveway.  So we figured why not find a new little stone friend to add to the collection.  Now that I think about it, I hope a cat and a horse head are not buried in our front yard.  Oh my.  I think that one is better left untouched. :)  So as I stopped by Sam's Club for some tasty treats for Curly Jones' preschool class for her birthday tomorrow, Handsome Hubby brought Tootsie Roll to Home Goods.  I met them there and she had already picked out a stone pegasus.

I know you're wondering what all of that other crazy stuff is in the background.  (No we weren't, Lindsey.) That's ok, I'm going to tell you anyway, because it made me smile.  So we're in Home Goods, and we haven't been there in a while, and I decide we need to find some stuff to sit on our half wall between our breakfast nook and our dining room.  Our house is very quirky in (well, in many ways) that it has these huge tall ceilings and lots of really high ledges everywhere that look strange when left empty.  The previous owners had tons of fake plants hanging down from said ledges.  They would drop fake leaves and got really dusty, so we yanked them all down and decided to find ledge fillers of our own. For example...

You can find all manner of random globes, model ships, Jamaican voodoo guys, very old books, odd little trunks, giant magnifying glasses upon these ledges.  We have a lot of fun finding strange things for decorating them and every now and then we go on little "decorate another ledge" binges because there are still many more ledges around the house that need some serious personality.  So here's what we found today for our half wall:

I love that on this crazy globe bottle, it looks like massive Switzerland rules the world.

This thing is like a pendulum!  The owls teeter totter each other and the little ball underneath swings back and forth.  I had to have it.  Hubby thought it was weird but he fell in love with it when we got it home. :)

This poor guy is missing his tail, he has to go back. :(

New owl bookends for my writing desk!

Tootsie Roll and I had a ball picking out weird stuff.  Handsome Hubby asked me at one point what I would call this decorating "style" and I said, "Weird, mismatched, Old World. Birdly."  Hehe. 

HH then parted our company and Tootsie Roll and I had a fabulous trip to Toys 'R Us to shop for CJ's birthday tomorrow... better late than never.  You won't believe what we found:

This is a set of 12 little board books all about the Disney villains.  Leave it to my sweet toddler to be more in love with the villains than the princesses. :)  She calls every one of them "The Mean" and even though she knows all of the princesses by name, she always asks for video clips of The Mean on my computer and HH's.  The girl loves her her villains.  Not that this surprises me... when TR was in pre-K, every little girl in her class dressed up as a Disney Princess.  Every one.  Except her.  She was a "pumpkin witch". 

We had plenty of other birthday success at the 'R Us as well, then went to McDonald's, just the two of us, which was fun.  She needed some one on one time.  After we got home and we wrapped presents and did homework, TR got ready for bed and I read her The Tenth Good Thing About Barney, which is a really nice story for a child who has lost a pet.  Since the torrential rain kept us from burying Cookie today, we will do it tomorrow but first we'll make a list of the ten best things about him and when it's all done, we'll put his little stone pegasus on top.

Not to leave you on a sad note, though... I told you my house was quirky, right?  When we moved in, our kitchen was painted Pepto pink.  We did change that, but one thing that remains is the very... unique... breakfast nook table.  Feast your eyes on my table of beans and glass.  That's right.  

Oh, wait, you can't see the beans?  Zoom in with me...

Yes, under the glass tabletop lay hundreds thousands of black beans.  I know.  Huh?  Kind of interesting in a quirky kind of way... although I have to say that even though this is the table we eat at at least twice a day, I have a nagging fear of children and glass tabletop.  KnowwhatImean?

While we're in fun picture mode, here is the amazing Beauty and the Beast cake my sister in law made for Curly Jones' party:

My sil put tall, sparkler candles in it when it was time to sing to her.  No, you can't have her.  But if you are somewhere near central/northern NJ, you can order a cake from her. ;)  The top tier of this one was yellow cake with banana cream filling and the bottom tier was chocolate with chocolate.  To die for!

Finally, in the spirit of spring and happiness and lightness and change, I chopped my hair.  Love doing that when it gets long.  Will post pics soon. :)  Thank you all for being so kind, for your wonderful, supportive comments over these past two weeks with everything and for your kind words about losing Cookie.  (The hardest thing is seeing your 7 year old sob).  But tomorrow we have a birthday and you know what they say - a terrible dress rehearsal means a great opening night.  Here's to a much happier May!