In this day and age, “Fancy” has lost its place. More and more aspects of life are becoming casual. There is nothing wrong with casual in and of itself, but I miss fancy! So Fridays I am going to put up a post with some fun and interesting facts about all things Fancy. I hope you can join me and I hope you enjoy our little taste of Fancy Fridays!

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 ”What would you do if you were stuck in one place and every day was exactly the same, and nothing that you did mattered?”

One of the guys read my mind and said,

“That about sums it up for me.”

I am not stuck on February 2 in Punxsutawney, Pennsylvania. Sometimes, however, I am almost positive I do the same thing every single day and it doesn’t seem to make much of a difference. I feel like I at a standstill. I clean the house but it looks the same exact way every morning when I wake up. I do the dishes but they are always in the sink. But then the movie took a turn. Phil told Rita(the girl he loves) about his problem. After much convincing she spent the day with him. He was telling her the bad side to having the same day over and over again and she said,

“Sometimes I wish I had a thousand lifetimes. I don’t know, Phil. Maybe it’s not a curse.”

Phil woke up the next day at the same time to the same song and went about the same February 2, but he did things a little differently. He actually enjoyed his day. He bought coffee for his coworkers. He read a good book. He started piano lessons. Each new same day became an opportunity to improve something about himself. Until one day, he had it all figured out. He left right from work to save a boy falling out of a tree, made it back to main street in time to help some old ladies with a blown tire. Played the piano at the Groundhog’s Day party that night, saved a man from choking.He took the everyday stuff and mastered it. As a result, he had become everything the girl of his dreams wanted, and everything he wished he could be. The next morning was February 3, tomorrow had come.

That’s when it hit me. Today, no matter how much like yesterday it may seem, is not a curse. If tomorrow is just like today, it’s another chance to correct the mistake of today. Tomorrow will come in life. There will be a time when I am not in the same exact stage of life, but for right now I am here for a reason. I can learn to clean this house to perfection. I can become the best dishwasher this side of the Mississippi. When it seems like everything is the same, the only way to change things is to do them differently.

That’s when God decided to repeat my lesson. We were driving on a mountain road in really bad fog. I am not a fan of not being able to see when the edge of a mountain is beside you. Just saying. All we could see were the reflectors in the middle of the road. Every now and then, the reflectors would disappear, just for a little while but I admit it made me nervous. My husband is a great driver and I wasn’t actually afraid, but very nervous. When there were no reflectors all we could do was keep going in the same direction. If we turned to the right or to the left we could be going off the edge. We had to trust that they will show back up.

Life is the same way. Every now and again we are left with no reflectors. No idea where to go or what to do. We know God has a plan and we know He will eventually show us that plan, but for now we are stuck simply going in the same direction. I think when we come up on a dry spell we tend to rush around in all directions trying to find someway to fix it, but really God has a reason for not having the reflectors there. Sometimes we need to “be still and know that He is God.”

If you are in a place of a thousand lifetimes, what are you doing with it? Maybe it’s not a curse.

They were super easy and affordable. I went to Michael’s and found a two pack of wrap around canvases and some craft paint. I smeared the craft paint onto the canvases with a paper towel. I picked orange because the accents in my house are orange. I let that dry, then drew a pattern on the canvas with a permanent marker, and voila!  Easy, inexpensive splash of color!

Come on over to Tip Junkie by clicking the button below! We are sharing all sorts of new ideas!

Above my couch, I have a canvas painting of an ocean, a black and white photo of my families property in Virginia, and a wooden T I found at a yard sale. I am working on getting a color picture of a place in Cambodia, where my husband lived for a time, and a small picture of somewhere local. The shape of the overall arrangement is the tricky part. For my couch wall, I will be making a rectangle. The canvas is huge and will make up one half. The other will be made up of the rest of the pictures hung closely beside the canvas. It make an illusion of a rectangle.

Better Homes & Gardens

A tip for finding a good arrangement is to cut out pieces of paper that are the same sizes of the photographs you are hanging. Then tape them to the wall and see how they fit and look.

Mixing objects in with your photographs helps to make the arrangement a tad more fun Check out this picture from over at The Crafting Chicks.

This one is in my living room. I got the sticker from the Dollar Tree. Artwork, like most Interior Design, is really a personal taste. My art teacher used to say there are no mistakes and, though I don’t totally agree with that, there aren’t very many definite rules. So play around with it. Have a little fun and let me know how it turns out!  

Armed with Christmas money and a desperation for order, I slipped on over to Wal-Mart:

Plastic bins. Try to find a fun color. I got two one for “baking” and one for “cooking.”

 Shelf Liner. I picked a fun green liner. It adds a fun pop of color! I suggest emptying out the whole pantry, but you can do it shelf by shelf. As I was putting items back in, I sorted them into groups and sizes, tossed stuff that needing tossing.

Dry Erase Stickers. I found these at Wal-Mart and loved them! They came in a pack of three, and they just stick on the wall. It adds a nice pop of color and I keep an inventory of my Pantry that way grocery lists are just a tad bit easier to make.

For a finishing touch I hung up a colorful apron in there and voila! A colorful, neat pantry!