Rolling Tool Cart, Here We Come...?

News on the file cart/tool cart:  I emailed the used furniture company where my workplace got the file cart;  if I bring it by over the weekend they may have a key that fits the lock.  If not, there's a locksmith down the street that can make a key for it (the hardware store down the street from my house can do the same thing, and probably cheaper).

Here's hoping.

WAIT!!!!

Omg, it was IN MY PURSE the whole time!

>:O

I suddenly remembered that there was a hole in one of the pockets, and thought that maybe the key slipped through and was actually *inside* my purse - so I took everything out of it, and there it was, tangled up in the little blanket-thingie I use to clean my glasses (though apparently not very often).


I put it *on my key ring* so I wouldn't lose track of it again.  D'oh!

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Weekend Plans: Garage/Workshop Cleanup!

I'm hoping to spend some of the weekend cleaning up my garage, which is a task that's been looming for several weeks now.  Every time I go out there to get something or put something away, I want to run back into the house without looking at anything.  Ugh.

This is my garage.  If you only look at the "furniture"  (shelving, work tables, etc.), it looks pretty spacious and organized; but, all the black fluffy stuff I drew on the picture represents JUNK all over the floor.  Yeah.  It's that dirty in there.   And most of it is old furniture, discarded projects, bits and pieces that I could throw out or sell on Craigslist that I never get around to doing. 

Like this thing, which started life as the skeleton of an aquarium cabinet I started to build four years ago but I never got around to finishing - I just piled stuff on top of it and inside of it.  Oops. 

And the kitchen rack thing I scavenged from work the other week, which is still disassembled and piled on the floor, instead of put together and being useful.  (But at least I did something with the top).


This is what I want the garage to look like:

See the awesomness?

It could look like this, if it wore Old Spice if I'd clean up, throw things out, sell some other things, prime and paint that little rolling cart and make a tool chest out of it (if I ever find the key or a way to pry the top drawer open), and re-organized some stuff in the garage into a more logical and useful arrangement.


I have some shopping to get done tomorrow afternoon, and then a Halloween party to go to, and a wedding to go to on Sunday.   So I may not get anything done over the weekend besides that.  But I'm hoping I have the get-up-and-go to clean up the garage tomorrow morning.  As messy as it is, it's only about two hours' work if I get started early.

Wish me luck.   And stay tuned for the inevitable "I didn't do anything this weekend but take a nap" post, LOL.  :B

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Hallo-week 4: Spooky Glow & Dead Things

"Bleeding" candles, made by dripping red wax down the sides of white candles. 

Low lighting (achieved by removing bulbs - a bit ghetto, I know, but it's what I had) + nifty "mummy" gauze bits strung all over light fixtures.  

Red/range glow in hallways, done by draping red and orange sheer fabrics over the light fixtures (I was very careful not to touch the fabric to the glass of the light fixtures.  No sense risking fire).   + More "mummy" gauze draped across doorways.

 Cute little Halloween bottle labels from the party store.  Most of these are bottles of mead that my boyfriend brews at home.  (Look - more "blood" on the countertops that I had to clean up later). 

Every available surface had dead rose petals and leaves scattered across it, vases full of dead roses and bunches of dried herbs from the garden, and as many drippy candles as I could pack in.

The end. 

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Furniture Refinish FAIL!

Remember this?

One-third of the solution for this?

Mmm...maybe not.  Too short!  I'd thought it was the right height, but I guess I measured wrong.  I have no idea what happened there.

Not that it's a huge deal.  My backup plan was to paint it red and use it in my workshop as a little rolling tool-cart, like a slightly-less-cool-but-just-as-cute version of these things:

And I got all set up to prime it last night, too, until I realized that the top drawer of the thing is locked...and that I've lost the key for it.  AUGH!!!!  I remember, when I was moving it out of my office, that I locked it and then put the key "in a safe place" so that I wouldn't lose it.  Now I just have to remember where that might be.  

*facepalm*


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Hallo-week 3: Watch Your Step

Visitors and guests walked through my front door, about which I posted yesterday, to this:

 Bloody footprints tracked all over the house from front to back, and all through the living room and kitchen.  Don't worry, it's just acrylic craft paint in water - it should clean right up.  I hope.

Creepy?  Hell yes.  But, as it turns out, a little too creepy for some people.  In my enthusiasm for the holiday, I forgot that some people are genuinely *freaked out* by the sight of blood, especially lots of it, and this little Halloween trick ended up looking a bit too real for some of my friends.  (To whom I sincerely apologize.  :(

The scene in the refrigerator went over a little better than the floors did - most people thought it was cute and inventive.  The packages of "meat" (plastic food storage containers wrapped in painted paper) and hospital bags of candy "blood"...although the "blood" dripped on the shelves in the fridge? Not so much.

Not that you'd know it from some of the pictures of my sewing room that I've posted in the past, but I am a bit of a neat-freak (to those of you who just guffawed at that, I say :P   ).   The "blood" on the floors even creeped ME out all night long, not because it was "blood" (I'm okay with blood, even the real stuff), but because it wasn't CLEAN!  HORROR!   And apparently I wasn't the only one.

On the plus side, the stuff did clean up nearly as easily as I thought it would:  it wasn't easy enough to just mop, I did end up on my hands and knees sponging off the floors, but it wasn't a huge undertaking.  Although, on the tile in the kitchen and entryway I discovered that I hadn't been as careful with the footprints as I thought, and some of my grout is stained and now will have to be bleached and re-sealed.  ARGH.

So, nifty, spooky, creepy Halloween idea?  Yes.  Doing this ever again?  Hell no.  


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Oops.

I didn't even notice when I hit 100 posts last week. 

Fail.


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Hallo-week 2: Come On In!

Front entry:  bats, webs, and SKELETON FLAMINGOS.  I heart my skeleton flingos. Hee!  <3

The bats are just cut from light construction paper and stapled to the wall and post.  The planters, by the way, are filled with a mix of Sanseviera, Dracaena marginata, and red Caladiums...not that you can see them all that well in this picture.  The decorative piece above the doorway? Is a $10 plastic doormat.

Purple/red glow on the front porch after dark.  Yay!

And a blue tint on the back porch - the lights are purple like the ones on the front porch.  I've already replaced the blue bulb in the overhead light with a white one again - for security reasons - but I'm actually contemplating leaving the purple lights.  They're so cute! And it's much nicer to have them on at night when I'm relaxing outside than a bright glare from above.  We'll see.

Here's the little "lantern" I made with the Ikea JÄTTEBRA plant cachepot - all it needed was a candle.  I love the way it looks kinda starry.  :) 

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Hallo-week Episode 1: The Food

Decided to do Halloween-week here in The Land of Laura.  #1, because it's my favorite holiday.  2, it's also my birthday-week, and I can make five Halloween posts in a row if I want to, so there.  :P   3.  Because I had my annual Halloween-Birthday* party this past weekend, and I have *lots* of pictures.

Enjoy!

Yup. That's one of the cutting boards I made last week.

Thing the first:  the dining room table!     Complete with cheeses and meat cleavers (MWAHAHAAA!!!), "bleeding" candles, dead flowers, black doilies on old tarnished silver, red-and-black table linens (and curtains, in the background), and...

THE MOST AWESOME CUPCAKES IN THE WORLD, instead of a single birthday cake, made by my best friend, who is a *fantabulous* baker.  These are  Tiramisu cupcakes with cream-cheese icing, a wonderully squishy center full of a mixture of Kahlua and espresso, and topped with cinnamon and chocolate-covered espresso beans.  Pardon me while I have a cake-gasm.  Mmmm.  Plus? Cute little "Poison" and "Toxic" cupcake paper cups.  :)

(Know what else is cool?  The cuppies 100% vegan.  Even the cream cheese icing, which I think is better than the "real" thing!)



More tomorrow!




* which shall hereafter be known as "Birth-O-Ween", after one of my guests wished me a happy one of those as he left Saturday night, and it totally cracked me UP. 

For My Closet...FML

Ugh.  My closet.

Remember this, from September?   Yeah, me either.

Actually, I did get rid of the step-shelf.  And I moved the heavy wood shelf in, on the main wall (under the mirror, which only exists in the sketch).  I stuffed it with baskets; but the baskets I had were WAY wrong for the shelf - wrong size, wrong style, wrong color, just...WRONG.  And a pain in the butt to use, too. 

However, since my last aquarium went belly-up and I no longer needed the little mini-dresser I had refinished to go under it, the mini-dresser got moved into the closet instead:

It works great - in the space, and as...wait for it...a dresser.  Imagine that.   It's a bit short, but I've got an idea for a little hutch-type thing to place on top of it (if I can find it in the garage).

My clothes are actually pretty well contained within the arrangement of shelves and rods I have now (especially since earlier this month I got rid of like half of them, finally).  The sketch above called for a small bar to the left of the dresser/mirror area for long coats and dresses, and a secondary dresser-type storage unit on the left below the shelves made of these modular cubes I have sitting around. But since linen-closet items are actually the biggest problem at the moment, I'm thinking of stacking the cubes vertically in the same space for more of a linen-cabinet type of thing for towels, sheets, rugs, etc. 

a similar tower o' cubes in my living room

If that ends up working, then the only thing missing will be the shelf running around the top of the room, and the mirror over the dresser.  Here's hoping!





(And I may or may not get around to this.  I've spent all week getting ready for a party tomorrow night, so that'll take up my entire day tomorrow; but usually Sunday after a party I like to unwind by doing something like this that just for me.  So we'll see). 

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October Blog Carnival: The Cook's Nook

It's kitchen time!  The Key Bunch exhorts us, this October, to share our kitchens.
Here are a few of my favorite things about my own kitchen:

(pls. excuse the lighting here; the overhead was broken when I took this)

1.   All! This! Space!  Perfect for team-cooking, serving spaces at parties, and piling up lots of junk that I bring home from work/the store, drop on the counter and then forget to put away for a week.  D'oh!

2.   The dark wood cabinets (which I paint with a faux-bois finish over the existing combination laminate + wood surfaces).

3.   The soft, muted blue inside the cabinets which show off my blue and white dishes (more on that at a later date, as I replace some of the pieces that aren't working for me and update my glassware).

 

4.   My silly little canister labels:  Meth (flour), rat poison (wheat flour), arsenic (sugar), and...rice.  Okay, so I ran out of ideas.  ;) 

5.   The silver trivet (above) with the swirly tree on it, which I got at Target a million years ago. 

6.  The chalkboard on my pantry door, made with a scrap sheet of hardboard (masonite)  + chalkboard paint.  Here it is decorated in a Sweeney Todd theme for my upcoming Halloween party.  

7.  The pot rack shelf thing I built to go next to my refrigerator earlier this year. 

8.  The cutting boards that I posted about yesterday, which I made from a salvaged butcher-block counter top slab.

Yay, kitchen!  

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Wildebeests: "New" Cutting Boards!

Time out for a little kitchen 'beest in the middle of a busy week (preparing for a Halloween/birthday party this weekend).

Remember this?

yeah, that's my blue coffee mug.

This is the kitchen rack thing I salvaged from my office before we moved.  The metal part of it will eventually end up in my garage;  but it's the wood butcher-block top we're concerned with at the moment:

ewwww

Gross, huh?   Time for:

• a table saw
• a sander
• sanitizer
• mineral oil

yay!

Thaaat's better.  Two beautiful, new, large cutting boards for absolutely free.  Bye-bye, old scratched stained plastic boards!


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More Teal Curtains + Outdoor Spaces

About a week ago, during the aforementioned Thriftstravaganza, I found a *gorgeous* teal silk paisley scarf with a cream/gold/black border print for $3!  On a whim, I draped it over the curtain rod over the back door glass in the living room, and I love it!

See:

(apologies for the weird light - had to brighten up a rly dark photo)

Here it is tied up to let the daylight in.  I let it down at night for privacy, and when the lights are on in the house, it casts a lovely blue glow over the patio that I intend to amplify with:

Ikea's JÄTTEBRA

This glass bowl/vase/thing with a candle inside, plus:

via Oliveaux

Something along the lines of this - Christmas lights in white and blue.  Maybe.  I'm planning to try it this weekend for a party with just white lights, to see how I like it.


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B&A: Guest Bath Yay!

So, the office is moved, I spent my entire Saturday at the office busting my butt and then sleeping all day Sunday recuperating from really, really, REALLY over-doing it...but then I got back to work at home. SO...

Hey, look, it's a room I haven't posted about before!  That's because I haven't been happy with it.  I loved pretty much everything about the room except the shower curtain.  But yesterday I fixed that. :)

First, though, let me show you where the room has been:

 <-- once upon a time, I thought the only way to make my tiny guest bath feel bigger was to paint the entire thing white and add a tiny bit of color here and there.


It was okay, for a while...

and I did really love the results when I painted the cabinetry white (a decision I angsted about mightily).

But the aqua and white was...


...well, it was boring the CRAP out of me

So I decided, to hell with it, it's not like anyone's going to be fooled into thinking this bathroom was enormous, so why not just have FUN with it?  It's a little out-of-the-way room that people see for maybe 5 minutes when they come over, so why not go the opposite direction and go WAY over the top with it, to make it a WOW room and give folks something to look at while they're in there? (Even if it's a "wow" of "wow, what is this woman smoking?!"  LOL)

So I sponged over the entire room in an "olive-drab" sort of green I had sitting around from an old project;  then went over the lower half of the room a second time to darken the bottom half.

 I stenciled over the line between the top and bottom halves of the room in a soft gold...


(which I freaking LOVE, by the way)

(and the art in this shot is from Matt Manley's 2008 Rumi-quotes calendar)  -->


(I also did behind the big mirror, so that one day, when I get a smaller, framed mirror, I won't have to go back and make the paint job and the stenciling match - it's already there).

Oh, I also left about 10" down from the ceiling completely unpainted, on the theory that it might lend a dropped-ceiling look and maybe add a bit of visual height to the room since I couldn't magically create more square footage with color schemes...and it mostly works.  I really like the effect, anyway.


This red glass thing is probably my favorite item in the entire room - it was a Christmas ornament that I got on clearance last year at the hobby store in January for like a dollar.  I hung it on a length of jewelry chain from a pin in the ceiling.  :)

<-- but then there was this crazy magenta-and-orange *!~*CONTRAST OMG~*~  that...really didn't work.  It was neat, but a little too over the top.

These are the same magenta sheers that are in my bedroom, by the way (Ikea's SARITA). :)












I really wanted a sari-looking curtain in there, but hadn't been able to find any (or any suitable material) that was remotely affordable - until yesterday morning, when Kress and I hit the fabric store early to get the rest of his Halloween costume together.  There I found:

This GORGEOUS teal taffeta, on sale for $4 a yard!




Which I promptly hemmed...

...put a rod pocket at one end with some fabric leftover from another project (because I didn't want to waste any of the taffeta on a pocket, I wanted the extra couple of inches for curtain length).

...and then painted a border print with the same stencil I used on the bathroom walls.  I dried the paint with my hair dryer as I went along so that I wouldn't have to wait for the paint to dry, so that the process would go faster.







And WALLA! 

(there's supposed to be a brown glass knob on that cabinet door, oops)

whoa, camera, slow down on the flash there!  *is blind*

Ta-da!  :)


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