THE WEDNESDAY VIEW FROM THE HAPPY CHAIR, SOMEWHERE IN THE MIDWEST

Shame on you.

Yeah...I'm talking to you.

All of you fabulous stitchers out there in Stitchy Blogville who lovingly take care of your home and decorate it for the seasons and make things that look splendid, should get in your car right this very minute and drive to Hoosierville to knock some freakin' sense into me.

It all started innocently enough. Aunt Chrissy did her Fall thing a few weeks ago and decorated her home with all of the things she's stiched and collected for this here autumnal season. During one of my visits with my little puppy tot Bosco (we have a date every Wednesday), I looked around and thought "Geeze, Louise, my house looks like a cell in a minimum security corrections facility compared to this", so I set about trying to festive-up Chez Spinster to within an inch of it's life.

Failure.

Huge, huge failure.

Let's take a look around, shall we?

First up is the view from the Happy Chair looking south. Here you will see a little dog on his perch, looking very disgusted. He's bemoaning the fact that, once again, his idiot mo-ther has completely failed in her attempts to do one simple thing that any second grader with a limited background in Art, Art History, and Design could accomplish. It will be days before he'll speak to me again:
So then we turn slightly to the right to take a quick glance at last night's stitchy progress on Quaker Diamonds. As you can see, I got very little done, but did manage to junk up the table that holds all of my collective crapola:
Then there's the dining room. One the wall are two needlepoint pictures that Mom made, her Jasper cabinet (with enough dust in it to qualify as an EPA clean-up site), and the tea cart that I tried to hide behind once when the babysitter wanted to spank me for sassing her. (Nope...wasn't the brightest child ever....and considering my substantial girth, it's no wonder that a stupid little dainty tea cart had NO intention of protecting me from a heiney whoopin' that I still remember to this day.) You'll notice my completely pitiful attempt at autumnal decoration here...a stack of Jane Austen books and a couple of resin acorn thingies from last year's Hobby Lobby clearance bin:
You've seen it before....the big white wall of nothingness! Only this time I've artfully added a few pieces of stitching on the console table and a ceramic pumpkin that a boyfriend's mom made me over 20 years ago. How hard would it be for me to pick up a gallon of paint, I ask you:
Stewey, in addition to being thoroughly peeved at my lame-ass homekeeping skills, is also upset over my bright idea to cull his toy box and only allow him to play with those that have an "autumnal theme". I carefully selected all of the toys that were fall or Halloween related, washed and dried them, and then moved all of the other non-themed toys into the guest room. He is definitely NOT amused, and I would imagine that if you look hard enough, you'll see that he watered the toy basket a full three minutes after I carefully arranged things into a cornucopia of fun:

I just don't understand it at all. It's not that I am completely ANTI-homemaking. Quite the opposite, as a matter of fact. I try and try and try to achieve a certain "look", but all I seem to come up with is Early Swamp Meet circa 1982. (And yes, I meant to say "swamp" there instead of "swap".) (Because, after all..who the heck would want to "swap" me for any of this crap?)

So thanks alot, friends. You and your gorgeous stitching and gorgeous houses and gorgeous families have made me want to pull the covers over my head today. Either that, or I'm going to find out where each and every one of you live, and I'm going to show up on your doorstep with a notepad in hand...ready to learn how to do what it is that you do.

Have a Happy Wednesday....you out there in your wonderfully decorated houses that probably smell like gingerbread and freshly laundered clothes. Try not to feel to bad that a poor little unsuspecting spinster in the Midwest is sitting in her underpants today, delicately sniffling into a Kleenex over her complete lack of domestic capability. Don't worry about me...I'll get over it. Really. I will. No need to feel bad or anything. Sometimes these things happen....

Tee heeeeeeeeeee!!!