A Wee Fix For A Huge Problem

Problem: 

Of all of my little cosmetic pouches (I collect them, for travelling and camping purposes), not ONE was the *perfect* size for the makeup I actually carry around with me day-to-day.

Solution: 
1.  A $1.50 quilting "fat quarter" (an 18x22" quarter of a yard of 44" quilt cotton, called that because it's just a teense over an actual quarter. See here).

2.  A $2, 7" zipper.

3.  About ten minutes.

The round compact fits, but if I had this to do over again I'd have made the thing about 1/4" taller so it wouldn't bulge when the compact is in it.

Otherwise, this is perfect!

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One More Fireplace Tweak + A New Toy

I know I'm like, the LAST person on the planet to find Olioboard (okay, actually, I found it like a year ago, signed up, and then never used it), but I am obsessed with it the last two weeks!  Rather than designing boards from scratch, I've started by uploading pics of my own furniture, and creating boards based around my existing rooms, so that I can tweak them in the design board to see what's working together, what's not, how the colors are functioning, etc.  It's so much fun!




Pared down to basic elements, that's my living room.  Aside from the blue chair, which I COVET.  But anyway.   It seems so simple, but it took me like three days to get this to where I wanted it, and it's full of soooo many ideas - ideas for additions, subtractions, and little fixes...

• I'd been thinking about changing the wooden DVD shelves, but I wasn't sure whether to go with black, or larger shelves, or some other color scheme.  Black and gold has been on my mind a lot lately, but I hadn't even considered it.  Now I know exactly what to do with those shelves.  (And no, I'm not telling. Read the blog. :D )
• Part of my decor is now and always has been about the houseplants.  Every so often, between new acquisitions and deaths, things planticular get out of whack.  At the moment, I have almost no small plants to tuck into places.  I have several large ones, but none are HUGE and fluffy like I want, they're very vertical and stick-like (mostly by nature of the habit of the particular plant, though a couple of them are pretty near dead).  
• I haven't changed my mind about the fabric for the Day Sofa, but I DID decide to do something really cool to it that I hadn't considered before.  
• I'd taken the rug out of the living room to clean it, and then didn't put it back in, because it'd been raining, and the dogs, and the mud, etc.  I've decided to stop obsessing about a rug altogther.  I like how things work together without one.  I'm just a bare floor person.  
• While I didn't change the art over the fireplace, I did change the art over the fireplace. Wait...

Before:

Note the painting in the lower right corner, leaning behind the Buddha .  ("The Soul of a Rose" or "My Sweet Rose" by JW Waterhouse, which is one of my very favorite paintings ever).  

Other issues:  too much BS on the mantel (that wasn't intentional, I just stashed it all there when I painted that gold frame around the sheet mirror a few weeks ago).  

Also the mirror itself.  While I do like a darker, aged-bronze-i-er gold against these gray walls, this soft, champagne-gold is nooooot the right gold at ALL.  And while I love a mirror up here, this one is just too big. 

After: 

Muuuuch better.  Even for a night-time pic, which I keep swearing I'll stop doing.  (Not a photographer, you guys).  

"Rose" is now not only up off the floor and hanging on the wall, but twice the size it was, thanks to one of my other favorite websites, BlockPosters.com.   

I'm a big fan of leaning large art on top of things, but I opted to hang this one, to keep the fireplace separate from the wall above it.  It makes the fireplace look a bit squatty (it IS squatty), but I feel like now it's a more balanced wall, and less of a giant rectangle of stuff.  

(Again, the accessories on the mantel are just kinda shoved there until I have time to work on it; ditto the stuff on the floor, of which there is far too much in this shot).  

(Nope. Still haven't painted the living room ceilings. Or done anything about that random cord on the floor. Dont' look at those. WIP). 

All hail the internet:

    This post brought to you by: 

Olioboard, my newest favorite toy

Pinterest, my source for inspiration, beauty, and LULZ

                                     and

BlockPosters.com, without which there would be no art in my house.  

Well-Begun Is Half Done?

Got those pics I promised yesterday.  First...

A Before Tour

My master bathroom.  Which, I should probably say, I actually like.  You can tell because it's been the same for like seven years.  I just want to tweak some things here and there.

OHAI, I have a light bulb out. Whoops.  (Ugly builder light fixture, party of 1...). 

Dark brown wood cabinetry (which I refinished myself, back in aught-five).  

←  My hand poking the camera into the room through the double doors. 

Plant.  I love my plant.  It's a mixed basket of Pothos, Heart-Leaf Philodendron, and some variety of small and fuzzy Tradescantia. 

That door, by the way, is my closet door. 

Two shower rods (both alike in dignity): one with the plastic liner, and one with the white sheers hung really high.  I love that. Keeping it. 

Also keeping the towel hook, which I put there.  Love it.  The towel bar the house came with was right next to the toilet.  The hell??

Boring beige ceramic tile.  Yawn.  (Two of them are cracked, which happened recently). 

Boring brown rug.  It's really soft, though. And it's cotton, so I can throw it in the wash once a week.

Blue towels to match the walls.  (Blue, faded, blotchy, crunchy towels.  Eeyugh). 

The Toilet Cave.    

You can't really tell from this picture, but this cabinet, like the one in the guest bathroom, used to be twice as deep - a full 16", IIRC.  Once upon a time, I took them both down, sliced them in half with my jigsaw, and put them back up.  They were looming before. 

The picture frame visible in the upper left - see the nail underneath it?  There were two hung vertically there, which I actually quite like, placement-wise.  The bottom one was the one that fell off and went boom the other day. 

The window in the shower.  Light: good.  Sun all up in your face while trying to shower: not so much.  

Witness the epic collection of glass bottles I don't want.  And a random plant. (Parthenocissus randomii).  

The one glass item I will never, ever part with.  I love my little apothecary jar.  What's that?  "What apothecary jar?"  I know, right?  What is that mad clusterf* of stuff all over the vanity?  Organized much? 

The bane of my existence in this room.  WHO PUT THAT OUTLET THERE?!   It's not centered, it's the only outlet in the room, and it's too close to the bottom of the mirror to be safe from the water in the sink. Oh, I'm sorry, did you want to blow your hair dry while I was washing my face?  *ZOTT*  I'm not even kidding - thank god it's a GFI outlet; it trips ALL THE TIME.  

WHAT THE CRAP. 

But then...

Just because I couldn't sit still the other night, I rounded up this gold mirror from my closet, and some little Ikea nesting baskets from wherever the hell they normally live, and started playing.

It's no work of art, and it's not going to stay like this, but the change has definitely got me thinking.

I got new towels last night, too!  Plain, crisp, bleach-able white. I can't wait to use them for the first time. New towels! :)

I need to figure out the accessories, and get painting.  (Eventually.  I'm doing better every day, thank goodness).  

Maybe the Bathroom Fairies will leave me a new light fixture if I'm extra good. 

*  LMAO - I *just* said that the mirrored outlet was the only one in the room, and here's a PICTURE of another one.  Whoops!  I tend to forget about this one, because we don't use it.  LOL. Sorry.  The mirrored one still sucks, though. 

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Dog Collar Safety Strap Success!

One more post about the guitar rack, and then I swear I'll stop. 

When last we met, it needed a retention strap in case of random acts of CAT:

And a hanging file doodad on the back for books and sheet music:

*drumroll* 

The dog collars work great!  They're stapled to the back of the stand so that you don't have to mess with getting them into position every time you put something into the stand. 

The file box on the back is okay for now - it's meant to hang on a wall, so it's open in the back, which means I can't keep anything but books in it (no smaller items that might fall through), so I'll keep an eye out for something better.  For now, though, it works.  Plus it was free, because I got it from work!  (Yes, I asked if I could have one of the extras that nobody wanted, I didn't steal it, lol). 

Notice anything different about the guitars in the picture?  That's right:  that gorgeous blonde on the end there is new - I got it last night!  My holiday gift to myself, hehe.  :D

And now that the stand is up and running, I put the case to my classical back in the bedroom. :)

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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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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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Peek-A-Boo

Here I am!  Your turn to hide.

I dunno, I'm just slacking this week.  People do that sometimes. :)  Mostly I'm checking out two new computer games that I got, working in the backyard (sprucing up the patio some more, instead of demolishing the whole thing in frustration like I was talking about the other week, and it's going really well), hanging out with friends, and catching up on some stuff in my Netflix queue.  :)

I did, however, have a mini-thriftstravaganza last week where I got some clothes and a purse for like $12, total (I know! Crazy!)  While I was there I grabbed a beautiful and LARGE turquoise scarf covered in paisleys, little tiny mirrors embroidered on, with a beige-black-gold border print all the way around the edges.  It looks like a little sari - and it was three dollars.  Score!

I hung it up on my back door last night as a curtain, just to see.  I think I like it.  It's a BIG patch of turquoise - which is what I've been wanting more of in the room/house;  I can't decide if it's too much, or if it's too much only because I'm not used to going that bold (something I'm trying to learn to do this year).

Anyway...no pictures.  I know, I'm a big tease.  Maybe tomorrow. :)



::Edited to add:: 

1.  One of my new games is The Sims.  Is it weird that I'm having SO much fun building and decorating the little houses?  :)

2.  I'm getting a work table for my garage/workshop and a rolling filing cabinet from work for free, since we're getting rid of some things this week;  the cabinet, I believe, is exactly the right height for my sewing table, to replace one of the wire racks and organize my sewing stuff better.  Woohoo!  I hope it works.  If not, it'll go into my shop, too, and be turned into a tool chest. 


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Straight from Nature to You

Aw, man!  I took ALL these pictures of the awesome lounge area we made around our campsite this weekend, and most of them didn't come out.  Most of the close-up shots worked okay, though they don't give you any idea of how *badass* our campsite area was.

We pitched our tents in a circle around a group of three trees and four large, flat boulders next to the creek.  Between them we laid out piles and piles of rugs, cushions, blankets, and pretty sarongs and tapestries spread all over the ground to sit and lay down on.  Naps were taken, songs were sung, and food was eaten here.  This candle lantern, from my living room, hung directly over the center of the lounge area.

We burned incense nearly constantly throughout the weekend.  I was surprised how well the scent of Nag Champa & Amber went with the scents of hot dogs and marshmallows, LOL. 

Everyone contributed to the altar/shrine design.  There were symbols and tools and Goddesses from at least three different spiritual traditions on our group altar.  We figured they'd all get along with each other.  I really can't imagine any god not having a sense of humor about their silly little humans.  ;) 

I *love* the bright colors we ended up with.  LOTS of blue and gold and purple everywhere you looked, completely by chance.  :)

The remains of the community bonfire from Friday night (this is like 15' across!), with smoldering stumps looking for all the world like feet sticking up out of the sand on a beach.  :)

Looking down the creek from my campsite.

Ripening persimmons  in the trees hanging over my campsite.  I brought several home that I picked from the tree and from the ground below it, in various stages of ripeness and/or decay, to see if I can start a tree of my own at home.  :)

A painted tree stump I found in the woods. 

And, finally...

Proof that I really was there, lol.  I almost never get pics of myself when I go places.  But I started my own little tradition when I was 15:  everywhere I go on any sort of vacation, I take a picture of my feet in that place.  One day, when I sort them all into some sort of album, the feet pictures will be my cover/title page for each vacation.  :) 


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Hee.

Hee.

Heehee. 

various places on the internet

 

Earthbound Trading Co.

:)

Derailment + Hat

Instead of working on the craft room, or the gardens, or anything, really, this weekend I was...asleep.  Due to the weather change (I think?) I had a migraine headache that lasted for two days, and only broke last night once the cold front finished coming in and the air pressure settled out a bit.

BLEH.

The good news - aside from the fact that I'm functional now, which is pretty freakin' awesome - it's 65º outside! Holy cow! Fall is here, yay!  *dances*

Also, I may be going camping this weekend.  I don't know for sure yet; but I'll likely be spending most of the week (after work) putting my camping gear in order and figuring out what to bring.  That and working in the yard, since the weather tells me that if I don't put down some grass seed RIGHT NOW I won't be able to fill in the spots in the front that I removed last week.

So.

In lieu of a project update, today I bring you:

HAT.

Which I guess sort of counts, since I made it, when I learned to crochet two years ago.  

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"New" Living Room: Windows

The "Wood Smoke" grey is blowing me completely away.  I'm just in love with the color - warm, soft, kind of rainy-day.  Sets all my stuff off *perfectly*.   The living room is done, and I'm in the process of doing the kitchen and dining room area right now.

But: photos!  I has them!  Well, some.  Room photos will have to wait until my house is no longer a construction zone, and until I can get that ONE perfect photo that isn't screwed up by the light in the room being all weird (or until I find a really awesome new camera abandoned on my front doorstep or something). 

For Now...

I am completely in love with the way the windows in the back of the room are coming out.  I love my wall o' windows: lots of natural light, plus a great thing to play with for someone with a curtain addiction.  0:)  

This is the window corner before, with the "Matagorda" sand colored paint (yes, it's beige, shut up) and the old window treatments (cream-colored crinkle-voile, which I'd hoped might go with the grey, because I DO love these, but not so much: they just looked dirty against the new wall color.  So I took them down, and one of the cats promptly peed on them while my back was turned. Mmm, catburgers for dinner tonight...).

You can see why light is an issue - when I took this picture, this room was so brightly lit by the windows that you might as well be outside.  But the camera sees big bright squares of light with darkness surrounding, so that's mostly what I get when I try to photograph this room;  the flash washes everything out, and turning lights on in the room only makes everything look yellow-y. 

And here's an "after" shot - again, in full daylight, not that the camera can tell.  Maybe it needs glasses. Poor thing.    

The accessories have stayed the same;  but I've raised the curtain rod up to 8" above the window frame (about 5" above where they were before); the white sheers are a placeholder.  They'll soon be replaced with some in a different fabric, and a couple more layers of color and texture.

Another thing I'm digging here is the way I separated the single large window on the south wall into two tall, narrow windows.  Demo & remo not included:  I wedged a 1x6" board into the window frame between the top and sill, caulked it in place (so it can be removed easily later, should I change my mind), and painted it to match.   This is a bad photo, but a decent shot of the nearly invisible line between the board and the wall above the window. 

The metal mini-blinds (grrr) ride up and down behind the board.  I'm working on making some brown linen curtain panels into roller shades to use instead, which will be hung in a pair to enhance the two-window look.  (One day they'll grow up to be bamboo chick blinds).

I do love me a good illusion!  From the opposite end of the room (not that I have a decent picture), three tall, narrow windows and the glass door makes a MUCH more cohesive architectural statement than two windows of completely random shape/size + door.  <--- I really just said that, didn't I?   Well, it does.

 

Anyway.

This candle lantern arrangement is one of my favorite things in the room. I love them, and I love the way they look hung in a group like this.

The accessories in this window corner hardly changed at all - the lanterns were here before, as were the giant Bird of Paradise plant and the sheer fabric screen. 


(And no, the paint color's not this dark or cement-ish.  That's the light thing again. Sigh). 

One of the changes that did end up happening back here was that I placed three of my mid-sized deity statues in the windows, one statue centered in each window.  I saw the idea online somewhere recently and decided to try it out.  I love the result - and that the statues are heavy enough that the cats can't knock them over and break them, hehe: 

Hidden behind the sheers

The Buddha and Ganesh were raffle prizes that I won at the women's festival I 

go to every year; the Kali & Shiva statue on the right was a gift from a friend. 

But wait! There's more!  For tomorrow.  MWAHAA.  :)


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