Throwing Away All the Things!

I get into moods where I just want to throw everything away. Since Steve is a serial keeper, and I am a serial throw away-er, I try (try!) to stay away from his stuff. One place that I'm always trying to keep streamlined is my closet. I have 40 of those fancy hangers in my closet, and I try to keep my entire wardrobe fitting on those. (other than sweaters, which are folded on a shelf, and pjs/workout clothes/socks which are in drawers) Which means when I buy something new, something else has got to go! I'm ruthless. If something isn't working for me, or I haven't worn it for a while, it goes into the donate bag. (I should state here that I don't really have Winter/Summer clothes. I live in Texas... I have one long sleeved shirt... Obviously this would be harder if I had two separate wardrobes to deal with.)

Buuuut...

I am a scarf junkie. I love scarves, even if I don't really get a chance to wear them a lot in the Texas heat! When I find a vintage scarf I love for a good price, you better believe I am getting it. I tried to declutter my scarves, but I couldn't do it. I even have a few that I have only worn once, but I just can't get rid of them.

I used to think I was just being silly. After all, ALL the articles on decluttering say to get rid of things you don't use! And I love throwing things away! And think how much cleaner my scarf hangers would look!

But then I decided, forget the experts! I like scarves. They don't take up much room, and looking at them makes me happy.

So I made a new #1 rule of decluttering. If you aren't using something, but you like it, and don't want to throw it away, keep it!

So Cloche!

I haven't done a lot of yard sale-ing since I moved to Texas. Maybe it's the heat? But I saw a sale being advertised in our neighborhood this weekend, so Jules and I walked over to check it out.

I found a few pairs of shoes for Jules, and also a cloche! I've been wanting one for a while, but I'm cheap, and paying $15 or more for one just wasn't going to happen! But $3 seemed right! The lady selling it was so excited that I wanted it, she said she loved the bird pattern. I didn't have the heart to tell her I was going to paint it... 

I looked up some tips for painting over ceramic, but there was way too much information, so I ended up just jumping in. I had some white and grey acrylic paint in my craft stash, so I started out with that. I figured if it didn't work I could go spend some money on the right stuff. First I sanded it a bit to rough up the finish. The first coat of white looked bad. Really bad...

But I let it dry for a few minutes and added another coat. And another one. And another one. It finally started to look good!

After it was pretty well covered, I started with the grey. It looks green in this picture, but it's grey, I promise.

After three coats of grey:

I roughed it up with some sandpaper to let some of the white show through. The sandpaper I had wasn't fine enough to get it just like I wanted it, but I didn't want to go buy some (I'm cheap, remember??) so I left it.

 Nothing like a good before and after! I'm so excited with how it turned out! Not to bad for $3 and some elbow grease!