Desk Out of Nowhere!

Big, old, clunky, broken desk:

those encyclopedias should have had a V-8

Replaced with a new desk, built in April for a computer in another room that broke about a month later:

Ta-da!  Whoa, holy Cord Spaghetti, Batman!  Don't worry, I'll deal with hiding that - but first I have to sort a giant box of office supplies culled from all over the house while moving desks last night, and fix the aforementioned broken computer.

This, by the way, is the first stage of re-vamping Kress' "drum room" into an all-out Music Room capable of doubling as an honest-to-goodness Guest Room as the need arises.  Onward!

My Other Hobby

Exactly HOW does one work an aquarium into a decor scheme, aside from spending a ka-frillion dollars on a professional service and a room-sized setup that costs more to maintain than the house itself?

Yeah.  I have no idea.

But I love them. :)  I've always considered aquariums to be a sort of combination between pets, houseplants, and TV, lol.  (You've never sat and watched "Fish TV"? Hee).  I've always tried to put them on nice furniture, and create pretty little landscapes inside them to look at, but aside from that, I don't "decorate" with or around tanks - I wouldn't dress my dogs to match my furniture, either, you know what I mean?

Until this year, I'd kept aquariums full of fish, "eels" (sirens), newts, and salamanders for over fifteen years.  I've kept tanks full of live food that I cultured to feed to my swimming pets, and even put together a couple of plant terrariums with no mobile inhabitants.  Until, that is, a couple of months ago when my last aging newt finally kicked the bucket.  After a "burial at sea"  (all drains lead to the ocean, Nemo), I finally tore down my last aquarium.  There's just something about that little box of light and life and energy - I really felt it when it wasn't there anymore.

But then, the day before Thanksgiving a coworker brought me a pair of Bettas (pronounced "bet-uh", not "bay-tah").  She'd bought them for her son, who ended up abandoning them to her care, and she didn't want them - but she was happy to have found them a new home, and I was happy to BE their new home!

 Luckily, after 15+ years of an aquarium habit hobby, I had PLENTY of supplies - including empty tanks - sitting in my garage.  All I had to do was gather a giant armload of stuff and wash it off and put it together. (The putting-together actually took a couple of days, and a trip to the pet store for some water conditioner).

10g with screen lid and light hood

It ain't much, but it'll do for now.  Considering that these little gals (they're both females) lived in plastic cups for a few days, these tanks, though bare, are quite the step up.  It's like living in your car, I guess, and then finally getting HUGE apartment...with no furniture in it.  Yet.

she looks pinkish - because she's actually clear!

My coworker'd kept the girls in a tank together, which is a HUGE Betta no-no:  they're incredibly territorial, and when kept in too close a proximity, will fight incessantly - yes, even the females.  Evidence?  Just look at her fins! The other one had been chasing and biting at this one.  Unfortunately, my coworker thought they were "just playing."  Sigh.

5.5 gallon with homemade cat-proof screen, lol

 The smaller tank, a five-and-a-half gallon (the other is a ten gallon) is about as small as I'd go for a Betta.  They DO live in shallow waters in their native habitat (seasonal ponds and rice paddies in Thailand and thereabouts), but not in small amounts of water (think shallow, but wide ponds) - these people who say you can keep them in tiny jars and cubes have NO clue what they're talking about, just so you know.  Not to get on a soapbox, but, 90% of the information you get from pet stores is written and developed by people who want to sell fish, NOT by people who (a) know much about them or (b) care about their well-being...after all, they're "only" fish, right?  Grrrrr.

navy blue with clear-gold fins;  I'm calling her "Louise"

While these tanks obviously need a substrate of some kind and maybe some decorations (including little dark places for the Bettas to hide - they love hiding in caves and peeking out), foremost on my mind is planting the tanks with live plants.  It's prettier, better for the miniature ecosystem in a tank, and Bettas, IME, love playing and hiding amongst densely planted mini-forests.  (And no, Bettas do NOT eat plants or roots, in case you've heard that crock of sh* from the people trying to sell you "betta vases").

For the time being - for the fishes' sense of privacy and need to hide sometimes, the tanks each have a snippet of plastic vine-y thing in them - but also a large cutting each of Pothos Ivy.  Yup - the houseplant.  It does GREAT floating in an aquarium, and will help establish the beginnings of a healthy, natural bacterial colony in these fresh tanks. 

"WHAT?"

So...yay, fish! You might not be able to tell from the pictures, but both tanks are sitting on the bar between my kitchen and the "office" end of my football field of a living room.  Safest place in the house, cat-wise. Both fish are doing really, really well;  the clear one's fins are growing back really quickly already - she got herself stuck behind her filter yesterday, but didn't hurt herself.

More on the tank-decor as the situation develops!  :)



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By the way...

 There! Happy now? JEEZ.    Just kidding.  :)  This is the whole couch-cover that I made from Ikea curtains.  Ta-da!  Down-filled cushions = floppy cushions no matter how much I try to straighten them out.

View of the "whole" living room - the main seating area, anyway.  The cat is Evie - I guess she thought this particular photo shoot was a bit lacking in the feline element.

And here's the Majesty Palm I picked up the other day for ten dollars.  :)

Happy Belated Birthday To Me!

A friend I hadn't seen in a while surprised me the other day with a birthday gift - a gift card to Williams Sonoma! The day before Thanksgiving, another friend and I trekked out to the maul to spend it - she had one, too - and here's what I came home with:

This Goldtouch pizza crisper pan, with which I'm already in love.  I'd wanted something like this for a while, but I'd never seen this gold-colored non-stick finish (according to the package, it's the best thing to hit restaurant cooking, like, ever).  Haven't put a pizza on it yet, but practically the second I got it home I used it to make some awesome crispy pitas.  :)

This Basil-scented hand lotion...which doesn't really smell like basil (the plant or the spice), but it smells divine, and it's doing amazing things to my skin.  They gave me a pump to go on the bottle, but it was broken - I'll have to put it into a glass pump bottle if I still have an empty one lying around.  

A jar of WS's signature spices - a blend called Tandoori Spice that just makes my TOES CURL it smells so good.  I can't wait to try it out!

And a pack of kitchen towels -  these are similar; but the ones I bought (which aren't on the website for whatever reason) are actually a nubbly, fluffy microfiber - they feel amazing, and they dry SO well.  I have a set of larger microfiber towels for my hair that I got from Bloodbath & Beyond a million years ago that I adore, so I knew these would be awesome.  (Hm, I really do need new microfiber hair towels, mine are so old!)






I have to add, that I was kind of shocked at the entire experience.  I *hate* going to the mall, so, SO much.  It's noisy, it's crowded, and people are just so..grrr...I dunno, maybe I'm jaded by my experience working there when I was younger, but the whole thing just gives me hives. 

Except this time?  It was totally pleasant.  The place was beautiful, relaxed, and not very crowded.  WS' store was *gorgeous*, and the staff was so nice.  After shopping my friend and I had dinner at California Pizza Kitchen, which was fantastic - the atmosphere, the food...and our server was hilarious.  :)


P.S. - I walked into WS thinking I'd get a set of  these, but once I saw them in person, I decided not to.  The short ones were freaking adorable, but the larger sizes were just...boring.  My quest for new glasses continues!  In the meantime, I may go get a couple of the small ones to use as dessert glasses, though.

 
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It's a Jungle In Here

You may or may not have noticed, but, I have kind of a lot of houseplants.  Thirty-eight of them, to be exact, and that's not counting small jars and vases full of clippings that I've always got rooting to either turn into new plants or use to fill out arrangements that are looking a bit bare.

Allow me to introduce a few:

This basket in my master bathroom contains Pothos Ivy (1), Heart-Leaf Philodendron (2) and a variety of fuzzy green-and-purple Tradescantia (3) which I believe to be T. pallida.

A Ficus (4) (one of three) and a Dracaena Warneckii (5) on my fireplace hearth (and a few little jars of cuttings on the mantel).

 

A variety of Wax Plant (6) in my living room - and a coffee plant (7) behind it. This picture's pretty old - that Coffee plant is practically dead these days.  It's been knocked over, dried out, over-watered, eaten by cats, left outside in the cold - tough little thing, but I think it's had enough. I've been debating trying to save it one last time or just tossing it on the compost pile. 

Two large pots of Pothos and Heart-Leaf Philodendron over the desk in my "office".   I have to take the Pothos down to water it;  but the Philo has a nifty little drip-tray that hangs off the basket which keeps the computer from getting rained on.  I really need to get more of those for the rest of my hanging plants.

The Bird of Paradise (8) on the left is officially the biggest houseplant I've ever owned, mostly because every time this thing puts out a new leaf, it gains a foot of height!  The leaves come out rolled tightly, and I love it when I'm around when one decides to unfurl - they just *OPEN!* all at once.  FWOOSH!   It's actually already two leaves taller than it was in this picture just a couple of months ago - and only one leaf away from coming down off its stand onto the floor.

On the right is another Ficus. It and the one on the fireplace were originally in the same pot; I separated them this year so I could have two. Hee!

This wee Panama Hat (9) now lives on top of the dvd shelves behind the couch, because one of my cats is an avid plant-muncher, and when he found this plant on the table? He nearly destroyed it in a single night.  Now it's up out of reach, and coming back beautifully.

The third, and largest of my Ficus trees (10), which really needs a fantabulous new pot and MORE SUNLIGHT.   I actually just moved this to my bedroom window, and replaced it last night with a 5' Majesty Palm from Ho Depot that was marked down to $10 because it was kinda sad-looking...but all it needed was a trim and a new pot.  It's *gorgeous*. 

The twin arrangements on my front porch, composed of green and red Caladiums (11), Sansivieria (12), and purple Sweet Potato Vine (13).  This is what they look like in Spring when the Caladiums and SPV are up and running.  In the fall it's just the Sans;  this Summer I stuck one of my surviving Dracaena marginata (14) cuttings into the pot on the right, and it's doing really, really well.

tiny spiderweb, hee!

The marginata was 13 years old, and 7' high.  Last October while I was in the hospital, Daisy *shredded* it in typical destructo-puppy fashion.  I managed to salvage eight cuttings of the plant, but only two ended up surviving - and one was later chewed to bits by a Very Bad Cat.  I called the plant "Marge" - it was my very first houseplant.   :(


...and that's only a little less than half of my collection.  :)

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I dunno about you, but every time I read a post about someone's plants, I want at least one of them and can't find it by the common name - so here's some nomenclature info, just in case you want/need it:

1. Pothos, or Devil's Ivy - Epipremnum aureum
2. Heart-Leaf Philodendron - Philodendron scandens
3. Tradescantia is varied and popular - you've probably seen purple "Wandering Jew", striped "Zebrina", or fluffy and white-flowered "Tahitian Bridal Veil." 
4. Ficus benjamina, also called Weeping Fig, Benjamin's Fig, or just "Ficus Tree" (which is what I call it).  
5. Dracena warneckii - aka Striped Dracaena...which I think is kind of dumb, since most of the varieties of D. that you see for sale are striped in some way.
6. Wax Plant - this variety is Hoya carnosa
7. Coffea arabica
8.  Bird of Paradise - Strelitzia nicolai - mine is the white-flowered variety, but even though it gets enough light indoors to grow and thrive, it doesn't get enough light to produce flowers.
9. Panama Hat palm - Carludovica palmata - this is the palm from which actual Panama hats are woven. 
10. This Ficus is a variegated one - same botanical name, unknown variety. (Nan?)
11. Caladium bicolor - I'm not entirely sure of the variety, I believe they're "Red Flash"
12. Sansivieria trifasciata - aka "Mother in Law Tongue" or "Snake Plant."  I've always just called them Sansivieria. 
13. Sweet Potato Vine - Ipomoeia batatas, "Blackie" (deep purple-black with some red highlights)
14. Dracaena marginata, also called Dragon Tree or Striped Dracaena (a lot of Dracaenas are just called "striped", which is one reason I prefer to use botanical names).  
15. "Janet Craig" is just one of many varities of D. deremensis 
16. Zamioculcas zamiifolia is one of my favorite tropical plants - I think it looks kind of dinosaur-y, hehe, though it's a relatively new plant,

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Bedroom Art Wall!

In the meantime (while I await that elusive moment when I'm home during daylight hours (stupid Daylight Savings Time) and happen to catch that ONE MINUTE during the day when the living room is actually fully lit by the windows so that I can get a decent picture of the couch cover that is *finished*),  I have fixed the art wall and the Ung Drill frame in the bedroom!

before - meh.

After:  yay!

The "painting" (a printout made with Blockposter.com) is a section of Bougereau's Evening Mood, which is one of my favorite paintings in the entire world.   Also shown: a couple of pairs of Divine Lovers (Radha/Krishna and Shiva/Parvati) and a print of a Thai tapestry depicting similar themes, one of my favorite Orientalist Odalisques (which one, though...Fortuny? I think?), and a purple sitar painting from...somewhere?  Love, God, beauty, and music.  :)

taller nightstand; still-unplayed guitar

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In Which Our Heroine Is SICK OF SEWING OMG

Once upon a time, there was an old wicker chair that had been scratched to death and un-strung by cats, faded with age and sunlight, and covered in an aging, faded, and stained fabric that had once been...well, okay, it was probably always ugly. 

It was Kress' chair, actually, and though he wanted to trash it when he moved in this past Spring, I convinced him to let me try fixing it up.  I cleaned it and repaired the frayed and un-woven pieces, and set about doing a really nifty antique'd/shabby teal finish on it...which did NOT come out right at all, so I stopped halfway through, after which the cushions sat stacked in a closet and the frame sat in the garage for six months holding up a couple of fish tanks that I kept meaning to throw away but hadn't yet. .

Once again I didn't take a "before" picture yesterday before I started re-painting it, because I thought I had one, but I didn't.  Here, though, is a picture of half of a new paint job and the old cushion covers (look closely - the print on the back cushion is actually upside-down):

Wow, that's...tropical.

 The frame got a smooth coat of a sort of tree-bark-brown color, and then dry-brushed with an off-black to give the color some depth so that it wouldn't look just painted. 

I re-covered the cushions using the old covers as a pattern; the fabric is from an old papasan-chair cushion cover that I had stashed away in a box of upholstery fabrics.  The pattern doesn't really work with the style of my living room, although the color's nice;  I just needed something so that I could use the chair in the room.  This'll do fine until I find the perfect fabric:

I also decided to take the opportunity to try top-stitching a soft, wide, false roll- edge, since I love the look but had never done it myself.   I didn't measure or mark the fabric, I just eyeballed it, to get a feel for it - it's not perfect, but I kind of love the way it turned out.  Definitely going to be doing this again.

After my hands heal, because MY GOD this was hard on my arthritis and carpal tunnel!  There's probably some sort of nifty clamp-thing you can use to pinch the cushion edge while you sew with the other hand; but since I don't have one, I just did it all with my fingers.  You would not BELIEVE how much my knuckles hurt by the time I was finished (two hours later, if you want to know).  UGH. 

P.S. - the wicker chair happened yesterday (Saturday).  Today, I finished the couch cushion covers - the couch cover job is actually complete!  Pics later this week when I can get some sunlight up in here.  (So, um, yeah:  I'm pretty sick of sewing right now). 

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Running Around With My Hair On Fire

The pre-Thanksgiving to-do list:


The Small Stuff (none of these things will take me more than 30 minutes): 

• Take the Goodwill stuff to Goodwill (it's already in my truck; so I can do it on the way home any day...just not today)
• Dust the blinds in the living room
• clean up the dogs' water bowl area
• go through the blanket cabinet and bring out the winter throw blankets for the couch and bed
• test out Thanksgiving centerpiece design ideas with various clippings from my gardens
• sew the strap on the new bag I got at the renaissance festival so I can use it as a purse (it's too long, but easily altered)
• re-arrange the curtains on the bed
• quit screwing around and *fix* the bedroom art wall situation
• re-pot two large houseplants
• move a couple of houseplants to different locations
• "wash" the cats (I don't bathe them, but with three dogs + hard floors, the cats get really dusty, so about once a week I kind of buff them down with a damp towel, both to keep my allergies down and so the cats don't have to work as hard to keep themselves clean.  I don't need anyone developing an obsessive-licking thing).

The Big Stuff:

• finish making the cushion covers for the couch;  also remove the base unit cover, wash it, put it back on, and stapled it underneath to make it "finished"
• scrub, degloss, and repair scratches on the coffee table, then  give it a fresh clear-coat (which wouldn't take me that long, except I'll have to take it out to the garage in order to keep the cats off of it while the poly dries)
• paint the frame of this rattan chair in the living room (that I've never shown you, sorry);  and, if I have fabric I like for it, make new cushion covers - if not, cover it with an awesome throw blanket.
• wash the dogs
• clean up the cats' litterbox area (under the guest bathroom sink;  I scoop every day and vacuum up over-spray, but once a week I pull the pans out and scrub under the cabinets and wash the pans themselves)
• wash the plants (I dust them regularly, but every 3-4 months I take them all out into the yard and hose them off and leave them in the sun to dry - they LOVE it). 

Have a good weekend, everyone!


*edited to add:  strikethroughs Sunday Nov. 21st - done over the weekend!


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iBoard: A Picture Essay

Remember the mini-ironing board?  Last night I did the big one: 

not hideous; but old and worn

uh-oh...the Ikea PRESSA cover is too short!

and too wide!

trimmed front end; used trimmings to layer back

ewwwww. 

short Ikea pad extended, joint patched 

This awesome little dude came from the old board.

And THIS awesome little dude came with the PRESSA.

New ironing boards FTW!

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Wall Hangings

Home "sick" today with a migraine.  I'm vertical at the moment, though this morning I couldn't stand, and could barely see...so, no driving to work, obviously.  Been asleep most of the day, letting the pain pills do their stuff.  But I'm up for lunch for a bit.  Figured while I was conscious I'd share some pics.

This is the  Kali/Shiva tapestry that Kress bought for us at the renaissance festival last weekend, hemmed and mounted in the bedroom where the sari quilt used to be:

 
The quilt + bookshelf combination was just a bit too much for this wall, but the Kali tapestry is *awesome* here.

A couple of weeks ago I moved the sari quilt out to the living room, where it lives happily ever after:

Three drums, a basket of blankets, a ficus tree, and a violin walk into a bar...

Going back to bed now.  Bye.


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Kitchen B&A: New Dishums

After lots of web-combing, and trips to Target and Ikea, finally Kress and I trekked down to San Marcos to the outlet mall to go to the Pyrex/Corningware/Corelle outlet this week and found the new dishes I'd been hoping to score.

[Interestingly enough, it's 23.9 miles from my house to San Marcos, which is an entirely different city; and 30.2 miles from my house to Ikea...which is actually in Round Rock, also a different city, but going to Ikea doesn't really feel like traveling to a different city, since I have to cross all of Austin to get there and there's no open space in between.  This largely irrelevant digression brought to you by Google Maps.]

Anyway, I didn't take a "before" picture because I was just SURE I had one somewhere online, except, I totally didn't.  Which makes sense, given how crammed full of STUFF my kitchen cabinets were - I didn't exactly want to show them off, you know?  And since I don't have the doors on my cabinets...yeah.  You see where I'm going with that.  So in addition to getting new dishes, I also spent a couple of nights this week culling through the old, storing some stuff away and donating the rest to Goodwill.

Plus I broke a wine glass the other night, so that's even less clutter.  *facepalm*

So that now...

Thaaaaat's better.  :)  I'm not entirely crazy about the end result, but I'm still playing with the balance of things in there. 


The dishes are Corelle "Dazzling White" and "White Flower", at $3-4 apiece at the outlet store  - clean, smooth, simple, and inexpensive.  (The "White Flower" plates have a...wait for it....flower on them, but the soup/cereal bowls are solid white, and a smoother shape than the bowls that went with "Dazzling").  Also practically Laura-proof (shatter/chip resistant).  I bought about half as many as I actually want to keep on hand;  I'll get the rest after Thanksgiving after all the holiday weirdness is over.



Also pictured above:

• the cutting boards I made
• Ikea's VARSAM serving trays in white
• Kitchen cabinet interiors that are actually a pale, muted chicken-egg blue and looked exactly that way against the old sand-colored wall color, but which now appear to be almost exactly the same gray as the walls when viewed against them. Thankfully, I like the effect.  I am SO not painting all that over again.   

action shot!

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Couchness

Remember the couch cover?  I'd almost forgotten about it myself - or would have, if not for the fact that after all the work I did in July, my couch is pretty much STILL covered by spare blankets.  Ugh.

But look!

Seat cushion covers!

This is where a zipper would go, if I had any upholstery zippers.  As it is, I'm stitching them closed for the time being, just to get them in place;  I'll go back and put zippers in at some later date.  At the moment, I just want the couch *done*.

plain ol' whipstitch

Oh, I'll still keep a [matching!] drop-cover over it to keep dust and cat hair off of the couch; but I'll be able to remove it for guests so they can sit on an actual, normal couch-looking couch.

Procrastination much?   Heh.  I know, I know.

Plus I still need to make covers for the back cushions.   Almost there...


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Coming Attractions

Things I've Done In the Past Few Days About Which I Have Not Yet Blogged: 

• moved the sari quilt from the wall in the bedroom to a wall in the living room (much, much better there!)
• hung something up on the bedroom wall in its place that I don't like there, which will be coming back down any day now
• [Kress] purchased a *beaufitul*  hand-painted Kali+Shiva fabric wall hanging at the little Indian shop at the renaissance festival on Saturday (called Kala Gurjari, but alas, they don't have a website)  
• (Also purchased:  shoulder bag made from wool hand-woven tapestry from here, pair of green wrap-pants and a deep blue embroidered kurta from here, and some new incense from my favorite incense maker, here (it's pure incense - no stick, so, no burning-stick smell when you get to the end!)  ...None of which has anything to do with decor, but...squee!! :) 
• got off my butt finally and sewed covers for the seat cushions of the couch!  Now all I have left is to make the back cushions! 

More, and pictures, to come, later this week.  Today I'm dealing with MONDAY.  Boooo!  ;)

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Lust: The Ikea Post

Having recently acquired my beloved Ung Drill frame, after which I'd been lusting for over a year, it ocurred to me to share more of my Ikea-wants...in lieu of a "real" post, since I haven't done anything this week except play video games and work on my costume for the renaissance festival this weekend.  :)

I have no specific purpose in mind for any of these items, or any place to put them, really.  These are just things I love, because of their look, their feel, their design, or just for no reason at all. 

Vika "Fintorp" leg,  $10/each.   I'll never buy them, because they're just sheet metal (I will cut myself on these, I just know it), but I love the curvy lines. 

The "Trollsta" sideboard.  I love the look of this thing. I love the magnetic-catch drawers.  I love the versatility.  I love the details at the bottom, and the way they contrast with the smooth quietness of the rest of the piece.  It's also WAY too big for my house.

"Trones" shoe storage system, $40 for a set of three.  They seem like such a great idea...but they look really plastic in person, and I just can't see putting these out anywhere they'd be visible...but they might make great storage for something else, like in my craft room or garage.

"Tanja Brodyr" duvet cover & shams set.   I don't need a purple bedset, and I have no plans to make my bedroom purple.  But I loooooove this color in and of itself, the fabric is gorgeous, and the little star-shaped tucks in the fabric just thrill me.

Alas, I'm not gonna pay that much for a duvet set only to rip it apart and use the fabric for something else. 

"Gravyr" cabinet pulls (which I can't stop calling Gravy-arrr! in my head).  I don't want them, I just like to feel them every time I go into the store.  They're just about the only knob/pull/handle that Ikea carries that isn't uber-modern looking and overly shiny.

"Spraka" spice mill.  Which I would never, ever use (I know this because I don't use any of the ones I already have).  It's just neat. 

"Alseda" ..."stool."  I'm sorry, Ikea, but this is a floor cushion.  A stool is much taller, and usually has legs.  (This is also not a stool, it's an upside-down trash can).   But I love this little thing.  It's pretty.  It's simple.  And it's made of banana fibers, and I looooooove the way those smell.  I actually would buy this - as many of them as I could get away with owning, except that my dogs would probably eat them and my cats would either scratch them to pieces or pee on them.

I therefore admire Alseda from afar.  Sigh.

Aw, they don't have the Ludde throw rug in blue on the website!  Every time I see one in the store, my friends and I are like, "COOKIE MONSTER!  NOOOOO!!!"   Heh.

But, um...no.  Animal skins in my house: not so much.  Ew.








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