They finally came and way in advance of the worst case scenario end of November estimate. They do that to make you feel fantastic when they ship four weeks early don’t they? So I like! And I’m glad we went with orange. Do you see why I didn’t want to bother with matching wood now? What a pain. I’m not great at staging pictures. I took a bunch and this was one of the only shots without a dog butt in it. I trip on them and step on them and they persist with being constantly underfoot. Our kitchen is also crazy hard to shoot. It’s a small square room with a narrow hallway in one corner with the opening partly eclipsed by pantry shelves. If you stand in the dog bed and lean just so you can kind of get your shot. Read the rest of this entry »
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Posts Tagged ‘Decorating’
Fear of Commitment
What about black? This is following a close second on the heels of buying shoes for toddlers. Thoughts? And don’t tell me that you’d go with something completely different unless it’s absolutely fabulous AND within my price range because I just don’t need anymore options in the mix.
Don’t forget, this is your last chance to enter to win in the great crown giveaway. Good luck!
Organizing
I came home from errands this morning with a car full of boxes and crates. Ben rolled his eyes but unloaded it anyway. Did I mention that I also had 200 lbs of sand in there? Mmm, sandbox. But that’s another story. It feels good to have gotten this shelf straightened out. It was a horrible mess and an eyesore for a long time. I’m hoping that just keeping the stuff contained will help to keep it organized over the long haul. I find that once the bags start to get shuffled around on the shelf it’s the beginning of the end. Things only get worse from there.
I don’t know if using the fabric boxes is a smart idea but we’ll see. They’re mostly filled with dry goods so hopefully they stay as pretty as they are now. I was going to go to IKEA Read the rest of this entry »
My Crate & Barrel Home, Apparently
Remember when I wrote about this like two weeks ago? What is this all about? On one hand, if you order from the catalog you’re going to get stuff that looks like the stuff in the catalog. On the other hand, there are a lot of paint colors at the hardware store, I’m putting tape over the motion sensors. This catalog came in the mail yesterday… what’s up with that? They’d better get on top of how they organize their books. Somebody didn’t get the memo about haphazardly shoving them onto the shelves.
Retail Therapy
On Saturday we took that family trip to IKEA. Since then I’ve been trying to put all the jazz I bought to use so I don’t have to spend the next 6 weeks feeling guilty about buying a lot of stuff for projects I’ll never get to. So far so good.
Ok, so these didn’t come from IKEA. We dropped our car off at Sears for an oil change while we shopped and on the way up and out of the store I saw these. My new slippers! They’re the best.. the best! Not to mention that all their Land’s End stuff was on sale PLUS an additional 30% off. They were virtually free. That makes them extra cozy.
How cute are these? I stuffed them full of all of the miscellaneous items that float around on Chase’s dresser.
I bought plant stand to add a little height and interest to my not-dead plants in the living room. I think planty likes it.
I hid a bunch of DVD’s inside the storage boxes and the baskets are full of bits of stuff that used to lie on the shelves collecting dust. It’s hard to get a good shot but the new scheme appears to be working.
Today we had to get out of the house for a while so I dropped some stuff off at the thrift store… and then poked around inside to replace my junk with someone else’s. I found a cool guitar for Chase that’s just the right size for 3 bucks.
I found this cute little wooden frog toy that Ben is trying to teach her to give massages with.
I also picked up the slate and the counting bears but they didn’t come from the thrift store. They’re not counting beard, they’re farm animals but the concept is the same. I’m have some ideas for fun activities to do with them.
We got these new toys for the bath too. Up until today, our bath toys consisted of nesting cups and rubber ducks so I thought these would be a nice addition. They’re just foam and they stick to the side of the tub with water. Finally, is this picture I took tonight of Ben. I’ve been struggling with this new lens I got because it’s not autofocus compatible with the particular camera body that I have. For some reason though I haven’t been using my external flash and have been trying to shoot with whatever lighting is available. Well, I put some batteries in my flash and it turns out that um, I should have been using it all along. I don’t know what I was thinking about.
CB2 in My Room Too
I’m not sure how I should feel. Flipping through the catalog for Crate & Barrel’s CB2 line I happened upon this:
Which is kind of crazy because well, our bedroom looks like:
I think I’m satisfied with feeling smug in the fact that I was ahead of the curve. On the other hand part of me is still paranoid that there are tiny cameras inside the motion detectors. Speaking of bedrooms, Chase got her very own big girl bed today. Big time! Here she is checking it out with dad and getting all settled in:
The sheets are a problem. I have to deal with it. And I have to get crackalacking on that new blanket.
Overheard
I’m reluctant to write work-related posts but I just have to share some of the stuff I overhear out there. In the few short weeks that I’ve been working I’ve been to court in more counties than I can count on one hand. This is an amazing state. You don’t have to travel far to find yourself in a completely different universe. And because I’m a people person I have found, thus far, each of them to be equally charming in their own unique way. I’ve overheard conversations about everything from this year’s haying to ones initiated with “mushi mushi,” it’s been just all over the place. This is all to say that three weeks in I’m still really enjoying the new gig. I like it so much that I always want to look sharp. I still don’t think that I have an adequate supply of clothes to really get by but on the other hand am reasonably certain that I couldn’t identify an adequate supply either. I probably need an expert to come and give me an opinion : ) I just know that I definitely don’t have enough shoes. Plus, if you look like a lawyer you can bypass the metal detector line.
I can’t believe I’m just getting to write about last weekend and it’s almost the weekend again already. How was yours? I actually worked! I crossed a lot of projects off of my mental list. I cleaned up a little in the basement and got it somewhat organized with the new workbench that we bough more than a month ago. Of course it’s all in shambles again because my next order of business was to paint the dining room and that meant getting out all of the painting supplies but I did make the effort. I’m really happy with the dining room. I barely changed the color but i replaced the flat and dull contractor paint with an ever so slightly warmer color called “oatmeal” that ties in with the “peanut” that runs into the kitchen. I painted the trim the same porcelain from Sherwin Williams that we used in the foyer and I feel really good about how it turned out. Now I just have to get that curtain up on the back door. Hopefully I’ll have enough energy to do it tomorrow night now that the whole neighborhood has had a chance to peep our fridge. I replaced the blinds in the dining room with a rod I found on clearance over the weekend and a curtain that I pulled out of some drawer, unopened nonetheless. Sometimes just poking around in the house is like being at a rummage sale. You just never know what you’re going to find. It already feels so much better. Now, I just need to order the rug and pick up the shelves. I really wanted an armoire but have neither the time nor the inclination to really invest in finding the right piece so shelves it is. The whole first floor is painted now and mostly furnished and I feel pretty good about that. Of course Ben had to go and remind me that there is still an entire room upstairs that could have completely blown off the house for all we know because no one EVER opens the door. That room’s on the list now too. In the picture, the top portion of the molding shows the original wall and molding color. I think the new scheme is much better don’t you? I had a whole fistful of paint chips and carpet samples to help make the decision but in the end it all came down to looking at the pile as a whole and just picking the set of colors that made me say that’s a room I want to sit in. It was a little bit of a moment for me. :)
That’s about it. Did you have fun too?
Scratchy Throat
That’s what I’ve got. I fought it off two weeks ago but it’s back. At least it’s kind of gray and dreary so nobody really thinks it’s weird that I’m wearing a scarf. A scarf is the first thing I want when my throat starts up. A scarf or a turtleneck but I don’t have any of those.
So I was in Babies R Us yesterday and I picked up a set of three t-shirts on clearance for six bucks. Not a bad deal. I also looked at shorts, picked them up and put them back because, as always, I convinced myself that I am prepared to make shorts for chase to wear this summer. Truth be told, supply-wise, I am well equipped but as for time. Well, I never have enough of that. So we’ll see how far I can get before I have to break down and shop. I know I already have two pairs of overall-shorts and one pair of irreparably damaged sweatpants that I can turn into shorts to wear with her big white sneakers, heee. She also has a handful of dresses which are presumably easier to wear in the summer without going through all the trouble of tights. Back in my bib making phase i bought a presser foot to apply bias tape so maybe I’ll start plain and add a little flair that way. In any event I figure that the daydreaming about what to do alone might just be satisfying enough a diversion from everything else going on.
I’ve been diligently crossing stuff off my list, life insurance, a 529 plan for Chase, I even took care of our taxes and found a CPA to prepare them. I sent out the packet last week and he called today with some questions one of which was it looks like you did a decent job preparing your taxes on your own last year so why did you come to me? At the time the only reason I could think of was just not wanting it on my plate anymore. That’s true but until he said that we had NO idea that we did a decent job and that’s the reason I went to him. I think I’ll mention that to him tomorrow, it’s too late now but maybe had I known I just would of hired him to do a review. Around this time of year I always find myself wondering when tax time started coming around every 6 months… because that’s absolutely what it feels like. I still have a couple of big projects coming up and of course exams but I’m trying to stay on top of it all. So far so good. Of course, any time you cross something off the list something else gets added and there’s always that list that’s been following you around, haunting your dreams for months with projects that should have been tackled a year ago. Hopefully I won’t really get sick. I’m more than happy to have a cold anytime after let’s say May 15.
A couple of weeks ago I picked up a bunch of frames on clearance at JoAnns. The stairwell here is tall and narrow.. and plaster. It’s been painted but after 100 years is less than straight or smooth for that matter. That’s what the frames are for. They were a steal I got about 6 8×10’s and one big 16×20 or something along those lines. They stayed in my trunk for a while before they migrated into the house and are now stuffed inside the bench in the entryway waiting for me to make a decision on a picture for the 16×20. I was thinking of something kind of funky although a family portrait was tossed around too. I was thinking about this because it really does kind of capture her baby spirit.
Stand to the Right!
You know what I’m talking about. It’s 8:45am and you’re at L’Enfant Plaza trying to make it to work on time. You hear the train pull into the station on the upper platform but you’re standing behind a gaggle of tourists who are, inevitably, lost. You’ll make your train though, cause the woman, in her pantyhose and sneakers… oh, she’s on top of the situation. She’s standing at the bottom of the escalator yelling ’stand on the right’ to make the morning just a little easier on all of us. She’s wearing sneakers because, as Chase has learned in the last week or so, they make you faster, smarter and stronger. It’s so simple really, even a baby gets it. Read the rest of this entry »
Hand Sewing
These guys are a part of a set that I probably could/should have mailed out today. I reached a little bit of an impasse with their house but think I have managed to work around it. The problem with making things like this for other people is that when you’re done and they look good you really don’t want to part with them. I really don’t want to give these little buddies up and it’s not even like Chase wants them I just want to keep them for myself.
