The End of the Great Living Room Extravaganza

The last piece of the living room arrived last week - this gorgeous rug from Target.  It looks like someone took a bland but attractive damask-print rug and dumped brightly-colored paint all over it just to see what would happen. It's GORGEOUS, and I adore it.  The colors are all my favorite greens and blues and teals, which coordinate with the new peacock fabric and the painted table top, and liven up the plain grey and brown furniture.

A short pano of the whole room, with fireplace and bad lighting.  Every photo makes this rug look tiny; but it's a little over 5x7 (it comes in strange sizes, for whatever reason). In such a small space - the entire duplex is 900-some square feet - I hesitated covering up any floor space; but the rug grounds the furniture and actually makes the living room area feel bigger, because it kind of accentuates the open space around the seating area, which I wasn't expecting.  

Mr. Rory Williams approves. 

More Blue Things

I'd been sort of half-assedly keeping an eye out for an affordable, blue rug for my room for years, but never found one that really caught my eye (that wasn't also ridiculously expensive). 

I finally found the right one last weekend at Target, when I wasn't even looking for rugs (isn't that the way it always happens?)  Hooray!  It's this one, if you're curious.

At 5x7', it doesn't cover much of the floor under the bed, but that's fine by me - it covers exactly the areas that I walk on, which is all I needed. 

A worn-looking pattern on a brand-new, fluffy, soft rug is a bit silly, I think, but I love it anyway.  And I adore the colors. 

I don't know how much Daisy understands about cameras and photography, but she sure gets RIGHT in front of me every time I whip it out.  Today, she would like you to know that she has an itch.  Dork dog.

So This Happened.

I had every intention springing a freshly-painted guest bathroom on you today, but alas, instead of painting last night (after weather and traffic and the thing I'm about to share with you kept me from going to do a craft night thing with some buddies last night, argh), I came home to find this:



...Wait, wait, lemme back up.  Remember this pic from the other day?

I'm dyeing the Surya rug that I won a couple of years ago.  Same process as I used for the black wing chair, which came out really well.  That job was fast, easy, and the color has never once rubbed off.

This time, however, instead of Rit dye, I'm using a brand called Jacquard (because a friend gave it to me, so I've been playing with all the colors).  It's meant for protein fibers like wool and silk, and is also supposed to do a great job on nylon and polyester - and this rug is wool and poly.

I'm not sure why the dye is coming out;  I suspect because I just WAY oversaturated it in an effort to make sure it soaked all the way through the fibers.  But anyhow, though I placed a bunch of random furniture on it yesterday while I was at work to keep the animals off of it, just in case, I came home to this:

Daisy was really confused as to what I thought was so funny.  And then she got a bit annoyed with me for taking so many pictures of her (these were the only two that weren't just a total blur).

One no wait, two, THREE dog baths later - because after I washed Daisy, I discovered that Shelly's face was blue, so I washed her, too; and then I washed Raven because even though he's black and I couldn't see any dye, I figured he must be covered, too - and he was - I threw a tarp over the rug and then filled it with furniture and plastic tubs to keep it in place, so that I won't find blue animals in my house again this evening.

I'm going to borrow that carpet cleaner from that friend again this evening, and use it to wash the excess dye out of the rug.

Hopefully this story will have a happy ending.  In the meantime, please laugh at my blue dog.  I bust out laughing every time I look at the pictures, hehe.


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NEXT!

Okay, so, the costumery-blitz leading up to last weekend is FINALLY OVER, and it's time to PUT YOUR FOOT ON IT AND STAND!!!

Oh, no, wait - that's 13th Warrior.  Which is like my favorite movie ever.  But I digress. 

It is seriously time to get crackin' on the housey stuff again.  BFF Sylvan is moving in in just 39 DAYS.   I have a loooooot to get done in that time.  

In the last couple of months I've been cleaning and clearing space almost nonstop, in between working on like a bajillion sewing commissions for the SCA and prepping (and cleaning up after) the Halloween party.  (I swear, the people at the Goodwill donation site must know me by name by now).  The next step is to start actually preparing rooms.  To wit: 

• paint the guest bath
• move all the stuff from my sewing room into my bedroom
• demo the sewing closet, and turn it back into a "regular" closet
• paint the sewing new bedroom and closet, and then bring all of my bedroom things into it'
• organize and arrange the master bedroom new giant craft room (hereafter known as The Room of Requirement)
• build my master closet into a new awesome craft supply storage room

And and and and and.  I mean, SO much to do.   I was going to start last night, except that at the SCA event over the weekend, I managed to pull a partial dislocation on BOTH of my shoulders, so I've kinda been sitting around with noodle arms for a few days.  

But last night, I did manage to do this: 

Yes, it's a terrible, terrible phone pic. Because it's not done.  

But you'll get to see the finished result, and a whole bunch more, very soon.  I promise. :) 

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Speaking of Rugs...

So, I totally missed Bulk Item pickup last week.  Totally forgot about it.  I managed to throw my old kitchen sink out to the curb before the trucks started passing through, but that's about it.

But then, on the way home from work that day, I passed a pile that hadn't been there before, and on top of it was this:

DON'T JUDGE ME.  I know this whole picture looks like grandma's house.  The chair and the chaise are soon to be reupholstered in fabric FAR less grannyrific.  Just hang in there.

Look at the RUG.  That's a free, 9x11" area rug.  It's a cheap rug.  It's a thin rug.  But overall it's in great shape.  I don't know why someone chucked it to the curb, except that maybe they just got a new one, but it's perfect for my big living room, and looks fantastic.  (The Surya rug that I won last year is now in my guest room; and I'll be talking about that more later this week).  It needed some serious vacuuming, and I used the shampoo-er/steamer on this rug, too, and now it's fantastic-looking.

It's also a bit more wine-colored than it looks in the picture, which is kinda BRIGHT RED.

But anyway - yay!

So, more on the guest room, and about some more free furniture later this week!


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The Magic Sucking Machine

I borrowed a Hoover SteamVac from a friend this week.  It was heavy. And slow.  And it worked AWESOME.  Holy crap, my rugs are clean.  Look:

This is  my Surya rug before cleaning.  It's a year old and I have three dogs.






Please to be ignoring the furniture in the background.

And this is after.  The colors are sharper, and so is the definition in the pattern.  Not all, but most of the lighter stains even came out.




I didn't have any carpet solution, so I made my own, which I've used successfully in a Bissel hand-held steamer before, which is basically just a squirt of laundry detergent and about 1/2c peroxide in the hot water tank.

The $10 Goodwill rug in the master bedroom before cleaning...

And after.  Again, colors and definition sharper.




I know, I know - all I did was clean my rugs.  But I'm impressed with the Hoover.  I'm thinking about getting one of my own.

Rory supervised this activity.


















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It's Here! It's Here!

The gift package that I won from Surya arrived today!  I'm THRILLED with all of it - so beautiful!  It all went into the living room:

The rug is sooo soft and cushy, and I LOVE the colors, even more than I thought I would.

My favorite, of course, is the blue in the center...that you can't really see in this shot.  But I have plans for a new coffee table soon, and I'm thinking it'll all look smashing together.

The GORGEOUS artwork - a framed textile - that now hangs over my fireplace.

The pouf also went into the fireplace, although I'm sure that's not where it'll stay.  I'm not sure exactly where to put it, but you know me - even if I was sure, I'll end up moving it all over the place anyway.

I keep waiting for a cat to sleep on it.

I guess I'll settle for Daisy smelling the heck out of it.

It's all hand-embroidered, and covered with all kinds of little seashells.

Rabi is very confused by the rug.



















YAY! Thank you, Surya!

You can follow Surya by on Pinterest,   Facebook,   Twitter - and everywhere else as @suryasocial.

For Butts and Feet

So, this happened:

Rabi approves. 

That would be a $24.99 dark olive green chenille big-butt wing chair from the thrift store!  I went for jeans, and I came out with a wing chair (and a ceiling fan, but we'll talk about that another day).  

Getting this chair into the room (thank goodness it's very lightweight) finally got me off my butt and got me moving rugs.  I have an old, faded green, cotton "chindi" style rug that I've actually been using for camping (lol) that I went ahead and put back in this room.  Because of the chair, yes, and also because I wanted the red rug in my bedroom: 

I also put the "day sofa" thing in the bedroom, to make room for the wing chair in the living room:

And so now my bedroom actually looks more or less the way I want it to, at least floorplan wise:

It should be staying this way until moving day;  except that I do have some decisions to make regarding art in the room (especially since I broke the glass on one of my favorite big frames yesterday), and a new dog crate to set up.  

But for now...

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RUG!

Hey, you guys wanna see a really crappy photograph?   I thought you did.

ooh, ahh. 

That would be a nine-dollar area rug.  Yup, that's what I said:  this baby cost me a whopping $9.99 at the Goodwill outlet the other weekend.  Are you freaking shocked?  I couldn't believe it.  I couldn't not buy it.  It's practically brand-new, too. There's a bit of wear on one of the short edges, which I tucked up under the mini-couch when I put it in my living room, and that's *it*.  It's gorgeous. 

*see below

Tada.

Believe it or not, I DID actually dust off the ol' real camera for this one, and took some fabulous photos.  And then I couldn't find the cord that connects it to my computer. #&!!#%@*!!!

It took about three minutes after I got the furniture in place and stopped moving things around before two dogs went to lay down on the new rug, and a cat walked over and started sharpening his claws on it.  The dogs I'm okay with, but I'm pretty sure I scared the cat so badly that he'll never go near that rug again.

For at least an hour.

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* Yes, those are the same papers I taped to the wall three months ago in order to test-drive placement for some canvases I'd planned to paint and hang up there.  I still haven't done anything more on them...not even put the ones that fell down back up, which is why there are only three in the picture.  Because I'm (1) lazy and have (2) been doing other things.  
...And I still haven't covered the mini-couch aside from throwing blankets over it, because I suck. 
JUST LOOK AT THE RUG OKAY. 




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Cold Feet

The weather around here has been amazing the last few weeks - so nice and cool and breezy!  It's finally cool enough that the floor's getting cold in the mornings when I wake up [way too early] for work during the week.

With three dogs, five cats, and a boatload of allergies, though, I don't have any rugs in my house, except for the ones by the cats' litterboxes that catch overspray from the digging.  I love rugs, and I'd have them scattered all over the place if I could; but they catch too much dust and pollen that the dogs bring in, and play hell with my sinuses.  Plus, they're too hard to clean. 

So bare feet + cold floors is an issue in the Winters.  I don't have slippers, also because of the dogs, lol - one of them can't distinguish my slippers from her fuzzy chew toys.  Socks are a pain in the butt to wrangle with in the mornings;  forget sleeping in them, I hate having my feet wrapped up like that while I'm trying to sleep.

But I am constantly on the lookout for cheap, cotton rugs in smaller sizes - no longer than 5' - that I can layer on the floors and throw into the washing machine once a week.  You hear that Ikea?  I'm coming. Get the small cotton rugs out!  

I've also been thinking about getting some short lengths of the hairy/furry material from the fabric store (I call it Monster Fur) to toss on the floor in imitation of those fuzzy Flokati rugs...but I'd be worried about them going bald in the dryer.  Hm. 


What about you? Rugs, no rugs? Cold feet in the morning:  yes, or no?  Some people like that, I hear.  ;)


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