Book Review: Little Bee

I received Little Bee by Chris Cleave in 2012 as the book I was to give out for World Book Night. I had never read it, but I gave it out anyway. After having my own copy for almost a year, I finally got around to reading it.

The story is told through the eyes of a young Nigerian refugee girl (Little Bee) and the English woman she stays with. Little Bee fled Nigeria after her entire village was mercilessly killed and she manages to get away from "the men" as she calls them. She stows away on a tanker ship, but is found and immediately put into a detention center when she reaches England, where she spends 2 years learning English as the English speak it in hopes that it would be a mark in her favor for gaining citizenship one day. She is "accidentally" released and finds herself with nowhere to go. She calls the only English people she knows and makes her way to their London home. Sara, the Englishwoman, are connected through the trauma they faced when they met in Nigeria. She and her husband meet Little Bee and her sister on a Nigerian beach where they too find themselves face to face with "the men". Unable to save the girls from their unfortunate fate, Sara's husband falls into a deep depression after the incident and eventually commits suicide, leaving Sara and their 4 year old son alone. Once Little Bee arrives (on the day of the husband's funeral), Sara makes it her mission to help her become legal. After a confrontation with the police that is extremely silly when you look back at it, Little Bee gets deported, though Sara and her son still try to get her back to safety.

My consistent thought while reading this book was, "Wow, this is depressing," and honestly it never gets any less so as you read on. It's an incredibly sad story. The book is very well written. Chris Cleave has a way with wording each sentence so that it flows almost poetically. Also, he does a fantastic job at writing through the eyes of Little Bee. Her character is by far the most endearing. Aside from those aspects, I didn't really like much else. I found the other characters unlikable and the more I read about them, the more this sentiment stuck. I understand the issue the author was trying to bring awareness too, and really my heart goes out to those in similar circumstances, but the secondary characters really put me off and then the whole last chapter seems like it was rush when writing it. Cleave gives so much attention to every little detail throughout the course of a few days, and then he suddenly is just hashing out the quick facts of what must have been a week at least in the last chapter - like someone told him he needed to wrap it up to publish or something.

I really wanted to like this book and had heard wonderful things about it, but it just wasn't something I can say I would seek out to read if I had known what I know now. I'm glad I read it, but once was enough.

Book Review: The Great Gatsby

So, about a month ago I posted a link to get The Great Gatsby audiobook for free. That week happened to coincide with a day full of plumbers in my house, so I spent my time knitting this headband and listening to the book. I finished the whole thing! 5 hours of having a book read to me, lol, who knows what the plumbers thought I was doing.

Most people my age are surprised to hear that I hadn't read The Great Gatsby before now as it is required reading here in 11th or 12th grade. Since I took AP English classes, I didn't have the same book requirements and I just never got around to reading it. I always knew the story vaguely, but I had never even watched the Robert Redford movie to know more than just generalities. This was my first ever audiobook as well as my first experience with F. Scott Fitzgerald, and I am happy to say it will not be the last.

The Great Gatsby is a story about the lengths a man will go to for the woman he loves. Gatsby gears his entire life around becoming rich so that Daisy, the girl who just couldn't marry a poor man when she was young, would see what she had missed out on. It's kind of a crazy idea to base your whole life around proving something to another person, but when you think about it this is not that uncommon of an occurrence. Case and point, how many people lose weight or pretend they have some fancy job to impress old friends or rivals from high school? Gatsby just takes this notion to the extreme, and it works out to his favor and detriment in the end. He changes his entire life to get the revenge he wants, and it effects everyone connected with him in the process.

Though it may not be the interpretation 12th grade English books drive home, I got an overwhelming sense of "Be Careful What You Wish For" when the reading was over. The story talks about the opulence of the 1920s, but the heart of the story is what a man will go through to get what he wants and how what you want comes at a serious price. I absolutely loved the writing style and look forward to the next F. Scott Fitzgerald book that I read. Now I am all set to see the new movie and pick it apart :)

Pink Powder Room Progress

I was going for slight alliteration up there, but I'm not thinking I succeeded too well, lol. When we first looked at our house, I HATED the pink tile in the upstairs bathroom. I had looked up all my options for painting it and had a whole scheme in mind ready for the day that we closed and I could make that pink no more. The longer I have lived here and spent time in the pink bathroom, th emor eit has grown on me and I have now done a complete 180 and decided to embrace the pink and use it to its full potential :)

This is what the pink bath looked like when we bought it. There is also a closet (with a makeshift laundry chute in the bottom) that isn't pictured. Last week, thanks to the wonders of Photoshop (and knowing how to use it), I was able to come up with this plan:

Man, don't you just love technology? lol I couldn't decide if it would be too much if I painted the vanity cabinet black or if I should make it white. After this little experiement, I commited fully to the black - I love it! I also toyed with the idea of painting the walls a light gray, but I think I prefer the white. I am definitely going to frame the mirror and paint that awful cream and pink swirled fake marble vanity top white. I don't even care if I have to paint it once a year, I HATE that nasty marble and it doesn't match anything else int he room.

So, this weekend I decided to start working on this project :) The closet was going to be the biggest part of it, so I started there.

The door is a paneled bifold door that is actually too short for the opening - basically it will never stay in the track and it is incredibly annoying. I saw a tutorial on pinterest on how to turn bifods into French doors, and while I would have to do it a different way than they said, I have figured out how to make it work for me and I hope to do that as well :) Also, I will paint th edoors black. The inside of the cabinet was a strange cluster of issues. It has nasty wire shelves (I hate these on principal, but these were obviously old - they were disgustingly sticky and I had to wash my hands multiple times to clean the gunk off me).

The real mystery of the wire shelves came when I noticed that they had little wood supports under them - just like you would put to hold up a decentn wood shelf. Why on earth would you take out wood and replace it with these? These people had some weird thought processes, I tell ya.

The biggest problem with this closet is without a doubt the floor. The previous owners ripped up ALL of the tile to put in this "laundry chute" if you can call it that. It's more like just a square hole in the floor right now and it looks like it was made using air conditioning ducts. Yeah, classy. Not only does it look awful, but my dog is way to curious about it any time we open the closet door, plus can you imagine how annoying it would be if you dropped something and it rolled into the hole? So, I will be filling the area outside the hole with cement, painting it, and then getting a nice looking hamper and cutting the bottom out before mounting it to the floor. It's a simple idea, but it will definitely take the most time and know-how.

Anyway, so on Monday I started gutting the closet and taking all the other stuff off the walls so I could patch the zillion anchor holes in there. ALl of those screws from the shelves had anchors holding them up, so I had to remove them as well.

Some of those holes were huge! I hope spackle is enough to fix them. It didn't stop with the closet though.

I have already purchased a new mirror to go here, so I took the old plain one down. I saw a few old anchors around this mirror before, but it was worse once I removed it.

The mirror was concealing more old anchors! Also, there were anchors for small towel bars (they were up in the room, but they were sitting in the closet - never to be put up again). So, guess how many anchors I pulled out of the walls in here? 42! That is crazy!

After removing the anchors, I noticed a weird depression in the wall by the closet door. It looks like someone punched a hole in it and then didn't bother to level the piece they put in to repair it, so it's a big depression there. Also, the weird sunken in spot was peeling so my husband decided to pull the paint off ... and the paint just kept coming! The closet had never been painted, but the rest of the room has semi-gloss paint all over it... and it turns out the people never primed the plaster before they painted it. Combine that with the fact that this bathroom has no ventilation for the steam and BINGO you have peeling paint.

In light of our paint problems, I we decided to go to Sherwin Williams and find out what we need to do. Guess what? We have to scrape ALL the paint off the entire room. Yeah. Then we have to use some type of special sealing primer - apparently it's more like a glue - to basically create a new surface for the new paint so that the peeling doesn't happen again. So, now my nice bathroom I have planned will take a ton more work and time than it should have. Just like everything else in this house.

So, I have already purchased my shower curtain, bath mats, fancy mirror, and shower head for in here ... and they will just have to hang out while I get this mountain of work done. So sad. I will also be scraping out all of the old caulk and redoing it. They even caulked around the floor in here! Sigh. Sorry if I sound complainy, and sorry for such a long post. I know it will be worth it in the end.

Latest Crafting Acquisitions :)

Over the last few months, I have spent a fair amount of time on Craig's List. It can be annoying at times since most people think WAY to highly of their stuff, but I have been able to find quite a few sweet deals too. It just takes diligence and an app on your phone ha ha! Well, about a month ago I wandered over to the Arts & Crafts category and found a few gems that happened to all be listed by the same person who lives in my same town :)

This was the first draw for me contacting this lady. It's the Baby Lock Hand Knitting System - a household knitting machine! These were designed to be used even if you had never knitted anything before. You just load the yarn in the machine and it does the knitting. The box advertises that it will knit 1" per minute, which is pretty darm quick knitting.

The machine itself looks like the insides of a piano, lol. It lists number ever so often and if you slidei the pins down you can see the needles:

How cool are they? The kit includes an instructional VHS - good thing I still have a VCR! It even included this taped to the inside flap of the box:

The original receipt! It was bought in Melbourne, FL in January of 1989 and they paid over $200 for it. Imagine how much that would be in today's money, right? One of these days I'll get to actually try this baby out. I was able to snag this for only $25! How could I pass it up?!

The same lady also had these. I thought the listing sounded intriguing, so I looked them up and knew I had to have them. These are the BonFit Patterners. This is a "make your own pattern" kit. If you know about sewing, it would basically be a "sewing block", meaning a base pattern. It is designed that it will get you a basic pattern shape for your size and then they show you how to alter the base pattern to spice it up and make pretty much anything you want :)

The box contains lots of plastic pattern pieces. They have sliders that connect certai parts together and allow you to change what the pattern's measurements are, so this works for most sizes - I think it went from a 36" up to a 50" bust.

The pants kit had the same type of adjustable pattern pieces. Both kits include instructions and a VHS. The tapes have never even been opened. I can't wait til I have things set up better to where I can actually give these a try. And since i paid $10 for both kits, I certainly got a great deal :)

As always, anytime I go to a thrift store, I always check the craft section. I got these over a month ago, but I just had to share here because some of them are too funny!

I got some 1980s Needlework & Crafts magazines, some crochet pattern bookelts and a tailoring book. I LOVE the Granny Zoo pattern book on the top - it's all crocheted animals that are made using granny squares! This would be perfect for beginners who have only ever made squares - you just sew them together in a certian way and you have a cute animal. I can't wait to make one.

Just for good measure, I had to show this sexy number. I know you are jealous that I have this pattern and ou don't. If anyone out there needs a crocheted mesh jumpsuit with a curled fringe waist, just let me know and I might be persuaded to share the pattern :)

So, that's just a bit of what I've found lately. Have you found anything interesting?

Recent Adventures in Spray Paint

So, I am now a spray paint addict in case you didn't know yet :) I have a pile of things to paint and a rack full of cans with which to paint them. So, this weekend when I found myself without a project, I got to spraying.

I finally sprayed the air vent for my sewing room. This has been off the ceiling since I painted it back in February - you can't rush these things. I decided it would be good to get it back in its place, so I just sprayed it with Rustoleum Clean Metal Primer in White. I did 1 coat from each angle so I could be sure to get inside the curved vent pieces. It is now back in its place and looking so much better than it did!

The next two piece were yard sale finds. I forgot to take pictures before I painted them, but both of them were made of Rubber Wood, which looks like this:

It's very smooth and slightly porous, so the paint doesn't soak completely in. It leaves a lined texture on it, which actually came out pretty neat.

I grabbed both the napkin holder and the mug tree for $1, and I sprayed them both with Rustoleum High Gloss Enamel in White.

They will help organize things in my sewing room quite nicely. The napkin holder has already become a fixture on my desk - it holds papers for me :) The mug tree will either hold scissors or ribbon or something else entirely. I'll let you know once it's found its calling. If you enlarge the pic you can kind of see the lined texture!

I bought this letter M with a parrot at the Salvation Army at least a year or two ago. It's the heavy duty metal kind with holes on the back to hang it and everything. It even had the original tag from whoever bought it - it was from a place called Costwork and it's price was $32.99. I grabbed it for $2 and originally planned to give it to my sister Marisa. Now that I have my own place to put it, I'm reclaiming for myself and putting it in my sewing room :)

Since it's a metal letter, I wanted to do it justice and I first gave it a coat of Rustoleum Clean Metal Primer in White. Sadly I made the first coat a little too thick, so it took forever to dry. Also, it decided to rain, so I had to pack up my painting forays for another day. At the moment it is just white and boring, but it will soon become more exciting :)

Weekly Pinspirations

So, remember at the beginning of the year when I started this post series and only did it for, like, 2 weeks? Yeah, I suck, I know. That doesn't mean I haven't been trying out more things I pin on Pinterest though! I've used a bunch of ideas inspired by pins over the last few months around my house. Have I taken pictures of them to show you? Not so much. The last few weeks though, I have made a few food items thanks to Pinterest that I thought I would share :)

This one my husband actually saw on someone's Facebook wall and decided we needed to try it. Coincidentally, I had pinned it way back when, so we had the recipe on hand and cave it a go. You take a sourdough loaf and cut the top in cubes (it's still connected at the base). Then you sprinkle it with cheese, bacon bits, and melted butter with ranch dressing mix in it. It was just as terribly fattening as it sounds, but oh man was it good!

Last night, we decided to eat the lobster tails I got on sale last weekend for dinner. I've never made lobster myself before, so I consulted Pinterest. This is the link for the recipe we chose to use.

The photo doesn't look like much, but the recipe was fantastic! You remove the lobster from the shell, set it on top, brush it with olive oil, sprinkle with lemon pepper, and broil it for about 5 - 8 minutes. So easy! And it was seriously good. Here is ours:

It looks a little weird here (it slipped off the shell and didn't want to sit back on it for the photo), but trust me - delicious!

And this was our carnage afterward :) These guys sure were tasty!

Have you tried out any pins lately? Do share!

Check My New Étagère

This is a project that has been a while in the making. I started working on this before we moved in, but it quickly got put aside (and completely blocked in by other furniture) when we moved in as I had to make our moving mess livable. After things got a bit more settled, I pulled this out and started up again. I am so thrilled with the results! You'll see why...

I got this étagère on Craig's List months ago for $35. It's solid wood and the shelves are removable. I liked it for its spindly legs and knew it would be perfect in my sewing room ... with the right makeover. Nice as it was, it was just big and dark and opressive - certainly not the vibe I have going in my "zen room" (which is what my husband calls it). So, I decided to make it white.

Look how dinged up it was!

The first step was filling in all the holes and crevaces. It looked great when I bought it, but that was just because the stain was so dark you couldn't see all the imperfections. On a stained piece, the natural nicks and weird spots added to the texture and looked nice, but I knew as soon as I painted it white they would all show up and I didn't want that. If I'm going through all this trouble, I at least want it to look smooth like it was supposed to be that way. So, I brought out the wood putty and started filling.

I seriously spent hours filling, sanding, filling again. Once I thought I had them all filled, I primed it with Kilz Original spray paint. I knew I needed something that would block the stain, especially since it was going to be white and I didn't want it to yellow over time. So, I sprayed. And sprayed, and sprayed. I went through 4 cans of Kilz just on the body of the piece! After the Kilz, I could see a few more imperfections that needed filling, so I just used DryDex spackle and it worked great. I primed over all the spackle spots again when they dried. Kilz spray paint leaves a gritty texture, so I lightly sanded it as best I could - it was really difficult to get around all those spindle pieces.

Next I repeated the filling and priming steps on the shelves. This shelf was the worst - those scratches you see were really deep and much more noticable in person. But they filled in pretty well.

After everything was filled and primed and sanded, I started to spray the actual paint. On my desk I recently did for the same room, I just left it the Kilz white color. I've kind of regretted that choice now that I've used the desk since it tends to look gray-ish sometimes, so with this piece I wanted to use actual paint. I used Rustoleum Ultra Cover 2X spray paint in Flat White on the whole thing. No joke, it took about 6 cans to do the body and the shelves of this piece. I was starting to worry about the cost, but I was so far into it at that point that I had no choice but to keep buying more cans and go with it.

After the paint, I did another light sanding to get it more smooth feeling (again - those rounded pieces are really hard to do that to), and then I coated the whole thing in 2 coats of Minwax Poly-Acrylic spray in Satin finish. I used a whole can of the Minwax, which wasn't cheap, but it's so worth it to have a piece that will hold up to daily use. I would rather spend a little more now than have it get all chipped up and look awful after a few months, you know? Also, the poly-acrylic is water based, so it won't yellow over time.

So, after waiting the full 24 hours so the poly coating could fully adhere, we moved it upstairs (no easy feat!) and put it in its new spot.

I absolutely LOVE how it came out! Sure, there are a few places I wish I had filled better, but you don't notice them unless you are really looking it over and I am ok with that. I do realize that there are no doors on the bottom - I had a hardware removal issue with them so I haven't gotten them painted yet. Those are next on my to-paint list. In the meantime, I didn't wait to fill it up and help house some of my stuff.

Those purple bins aren't staying - they are just what I've used until I find something better. Just for the record. It holds the tv perfectly (it just barely fits and only on that particular shelf) and I love to watch movies while I make things, so I was pleased it worked out so well.

So, how much did this beast cost?

• Étagère - $35
• Wood Putty - I'm calling it free (I bought a tub and have used it on many things around the house)
• DryDex - Again, I'm calling it free
• 6 cans Kilz Original Spray Paint - $34.68
• 6 cans Rustoleum Ultra Cover 2X - $22.62
• 1 can Minwax Poly-Acrylic - $11.97

 Total: $ 104.27

So, it certainly wasn't as cheap as my desk I just did, but it certainly is cheaper than if I went to a furniture store to buy a solid wood étagère (google search if you don't believe me), so I'm happy with the price. I now can't wait to finish not only the doors, but also the rest of the furniture for the room. It's really starting to come together now and I can't wait!

Crochet Update: Meet Petey and The Purple Stitch Project!

So, I know I haven't been th ebest when it comes to blogging of late. This doesn't mean I haven't been doing anything, in fact that's the reason I haven't been able to post :) So, here is a little something I made a few weeks ago (and for a very important cause). Meet Petey!

Petey was made with a very specific purpose - he is going to be my donation to the Purple Stitch Project. For the past 2 years, Vicky Howell (of crochet world fame) has helped organized Camp Brainstorm which is a summer camp for children with epilepsy. Last year, she held a drive to collect purple ninjas to give to all the kids. Sadly, I wasn't crocheting back then so I couldn't participate. This year, she held another drive (witht he help of Craftsy) and called for Purple Plushies. Any knitted, crocheted or sewn animal that has at least some purple in it was eligible (since purple is the epilepsy awareness color). As soon as I saw the call for animals, I knew I needed to participate :) Thus, Petey was born.

To make Petey, I used a combination of 3 patterns: Amigurumi Penguin from Lion Brand (a free pattern), Jay the Bird from Fresh Stitches, and Nelson the Owl from Fresh Stitches. I started off just using the Lion Brand pattern (by the way you can access it on their free app! That made it very convenient), but once I got going I realized how small their pattern come out. Since he was just a ball style animal, I used the Jay the Bird pattern to make him a larger size. Also, I didn't like how the lion brand pattern didn't give it a body verses belly color (like a real penguin). The Lion Brand pattern just had you use the body color for the head and then the entire bottom part was white for the belly. So, I used the Nelson the Owl pattern for the color changes in the belly. The beak, eyes and feet were from the Lion Brand pattern, but they just had you make circles and attach them to the sides for the wings. I like a more "wing" looking wing, so I smade them in the style of the Jay the Bird pattern, but I just eyeballed the size.

Doing all these alterations definitely took more time (and more brain power) to make, but I really love how Petey came out :) It makes me want to make one for myself.

 So, Petey is officially packed up and left with the mailman today :)

He is on his way to Texas today to be given to a kid with epilepsy. I hope it can bring them a little more comfort and let them know that people really do care about them. Epilepsy is such an unfortunate disease and it's such a shame that so many kids seem to have it. Even though it was such a small thing, I'm glad I could contribute to this great cause!

If you want to make an animal, there is still time if you are speedy! All of the info is on this website and they would be extremely happy to receive your donation as well!