Archive - November, 2011

Look What I Got!

November 10, 2011 in Kitchen with 7 Comments

This is what I stopped to pick up from my sister’s on the way home from Atlanta last weekend:

A new (to me) dishwasher! I was hoping to have it installed by now, but with the shorter days Nick and I just haven’t been able to muster the energy to tackle an appliance install after work this week. Maybe this weekend it’ll make the grand transition from the front room to the kitchen.

Why, might you ask, did I get a dishwasher from my sister’s house? Well, she just bought her first place this summer, and even though all the appliances were less than two years old she wanted a fancier dishwasher. I, on the other hand, married the kind of man who would never dream of replacing an appliance that still worked. Even though my dishwasher is on its last leg Nick insisted we keep using it. This made me a little nervous that one day it would just go kaput on a day when I urgently needed it, or that maybe it would go out in a blaze of glory, spewing soapy water all over the floor, or, even worse, it might literally set itself ablaze (if predisposition to house fires were a genetic condition I would say that they run in my family). So when Shannon called and asked if I wanted to take her not-quite-brand-new dishwasher off her hands for a mere fifty bucks, I went for it. Can you believe that my husband still grumbled? “We don’t need a new dishwasher…” says the man who will ignore a plethora of problems if it saves him a buck.

So as soon as I can empty the old dishwasher of its’ last ever not-up-to-my-standards load of clean dishes and talk Nick into hauling it from the front room to the kitchen, we’ll be trying our hand at connecting wiring and water supplies. Shannon’s über-handy boyfriend explained it all to me when I picked it up, but I’m still a little bit nervous. YouTube instructional videos, here I come.

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A Sneak Peek of my Etsy Shop

November 9, 2011 in my shop with 9 Comments

You may remember that I’m planning to open an Etsy Shop later this month. I’ve been hard at work collecting and photographing items to be ready for the big day. Would you like to see what I’ve got so far? It’s mostly a lot of brass, since that’s kind of my favorite thing right now.

A cool solid brass pegasus.

A set of brass candlesticks. What every girl needs.

A brass lotus flower candle holder.

A brass basket. Is there no limit to things made out of brass?

And then I got these cool wooden letters. I lucked out and was able to snag a few of each.

That last one I feel like could be either a 3 or a curvy E. What do you think?

I’ve got some other items that still need to be photographed, including a polaroid camera (still need to check and make sure it works). If everything goes as planned, I’ll be all ready to open my shop on the Monday after Thanksgiving. I’ve never done anything like this before, and I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t a teensy bit nervous. What if nobody likes my stuff? What if I suck at getting items shipped quickly? What if I get overwhelmed trying to balance work, blog, shop, and life? I’ll probably start emotionally eating and before I know it the shop will be merely a means of supporting my Nutella habit. Can any of you offer wisdom, advice, or words of experience? Tell me I’m not crazy to take this on.

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I Got Nothin’

November 8, 2011 in On a Personal Note... with 4 Comments

I didn’t get anything done this weekend. Not a single project, tweak, or purchase. Not because I was lazy (although that’s not completely outside the realm of possibility). Because I took a road trip all by my lonesome to visit my long time BFF Lauren in Atlanta for her birthday. I left straight from work on Friday. On Saturday, we went to breakfast, laid around the house (well I laid around while she cleaned), and had a bunch of people over to eat fried turkey and watch the LSU game. After the game amazing life-changing victory I went straight to bed and got up bright and early to drive back to Louisiana, stopping to visit my mom and sister in their respective towns on the way home. By the time I made it back to Baton Rouge it was Sunday night and I was pooped.

I think maybe this will be the last time I ever drive to Atlanta. I really hate to drive. It’s so boring and tedious. Sitting in the passenger seat while someone else drives is only a moderate improvement. What I’d really like is to be able to fly. I’ve flown to Atlanta and back a few times, and compared to driving it’s the bee’s knees. Especially when I fly out of Baton Rouge. The airport is only a few minutes away and I show up, oh, thirty minutes or so before my flight. I breeze through security and often go straight to boarding my plane. An hour and a half later I’ve traveled the distance that takes me eight hours by car. And I didn’t even have to pee at a gas station.

Speaking of gas stations, a man nearly twice my age at an Alabama gas station asked me how tall I am, then commented that I’m his “kind of woman.” I guess he is into the short ladies and not afraid to let the world know it. I wanted to tell him that I could have lived my life without hearing that particular compliment from a stranger, but I was so shocked I didn’t say a word. Uncharacteristically speechless, that’s what I was.

So that’s what I did this weekend, and my excuse for not having anything more interesting to share today. I did pick up something for the house on my way home Sunday and hope to be able to share it with you sometime this week, so stay tuned. I’ll give you a hint: it requires installation.

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I Picked Out a Couch!

November 7, 2011 in Projects with 8 Comments

If you’ve been with me for a while, you may remember that when I first started talking about redoing my front room to be a multipurpose family room/office, I had my heart set on this lovely slipcovered sleeper sectional (say that three times fast).

Well, I must not have been paying all that much attention when I checked it out online, because I completely misinterpreted the cost. I was under the impression that all three pieces would add up to about $800. Not cheap, but not outrageous, either. Imagine my surprise when, a few months later, I went back to virtually visit my dream couch and realized that it would actually cost almost four times that much! $3200 is wayyyyy out of my budget.

Back to the drawing board. I’m a firm believer that everything happens for a reason, and it turns out it’s a good thing that the sectional was out of my price range because when I marked out the dimensions of a similarly sized (although much less expensive) sofa on the floor I realized it would never have fit. This forced me to rethink the layout of the room completely. I ended up turning to floorplanner.com to help me come up with an even better plan. (see that post here)

I’m so much more excited about the new plan than I was about the original. And I’ve found the perfect sofa to make it a reality.

Ikea.com

Ikea’s classic Ektorp sofa. I’m so not normally a white sofa kind of gal. I’d prefer something a little more forgiving (like the beige sofa in my living room), but this one sports a machine washable slipcover and a super reasonable $400 price tag. I’ve been saving a little bit of my home decor budget every month, and combined with the profits from our two garage sales this summer I finally have enough squirreled away to order this lovely lady! I’m so nervous. I’ve been dreaming of redecorating this room since June and now that I’m actually so close to ordering a sofa it’s like meeting a celebrity or something. I hope it turns out as great as it looks in my mind!

Before I bring it in, though, I need to paint. Have I ever mentioned how much I despise painting walls? I hate it. You’d think that, as much as I enjoy painting furniture, painting walls wouldn’t be so bad. Well let me just tell you, I am not an attention-to-detail kind of person, and getting straight edges requires quite a bit of attention to detail. I hate taping, I hate cutting in, I hate all of it. And I’m not joking when I say that I’m seriously considering hiring someone to do it. Do you think a professional painter would be willing to paint only the edges for me (and charge me accordingly)? It’s so bad that the trim in my laundry room is still waiting to be repainted four months later. Maybe I’ll hire my cutter-inner to finish the job in there, as well.

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