My (Our) bedroom

Whoa! Two posts in one day! I just took some photos of my freshly painted and mostly-clean bedroom and am excited to post them. I've never posted any photos of my bedroom before, not on here and not on flickr. It's finally coming together, although it is still lacking art for the walls and possible wall shelving, but that stuff is hard, because my walls are plaster and 80 years old. Hanging stuff up is quite difficult. But I did buy a pretty piece of wrapping paper from Borders the other day, that I can't wait to figure out how to frame and hang somehow. So without further ado, our tiny master bedroom. The queen bed and night stands barely fit, and this is the only arrangement that works. And yes, I used the dreaded flash in some photos because we don't get the best light in there (the lot is heavily treed) and I wanted you all to be able to see the paint color which is a mostly yellow green color.







I got this dresser free off the street and painted it up.


I'm making a quilt, even though I barely know how to use a sewing machine!

The light above the bed hasn't worked since my brother first replaced our ceiling fan with it in Jan. :-(






I realize a lot of these pictures are the same, I just had trouble choosing which ones to post!

Wildlife in the City

I was so proud of my two tomato plants yesterday. The first one, that I got at Lowes, had like 8 tomatoes on it, 4 of which were red. I even took a photo yesterday and sent it to my mom in Texas, where I guess tomatoes don't grow as well.

Anyways, last night we had a little scare. Around 2 AM (yes, I'm a night owl) I turned the porch light out to get ready for bed and I heard rustling right outside the front door. Our trash can was on the porch because I was cleaning the house earlier and throwing lots of things away (food included). I stopped in my tracks and listened then went running through the house to my boyfriend and told him it sounded like someone was going through our trash right on the porch. I thought maybe some late night scavenger, with bad taste, really wanted my mini-blinds that I had thrown away earlier.

We flipped the lights on again, he grabbed a knife and opened the door and quickly shut it. "Well I know what was making all that noise...a possum." Eww. Actually I've seen quite a few giant possums around here and in all parts of KC I have lived in:Hyde Park, Westport and now the Plaza area. I've also seen a raccoon on my street. Eventually the possum got tired and couldn't find anything worthwhile in the trash so he decided to have a feast of my tomatoes.

Long story short, he bit into two of them. I knew he was going for them last night when he made a right off the porch. But I was powerless to stop him for fear he would bite me and give me rabies. We once had a possum come out in the daytime and climb up the stairs to our porch at my parents' house in Galveston, TX. I poked him with a broom stick through a window. He hissed at me and made a terrible face. I've hated possums ever since.

Hippest gym ever.

Okay, first post in forever, i know. I've just been discourage by a lack of readership I guess. As far as the backyard progress, things are for sure looking better back there. In fact, we even hosted a bbq with some friends a few weekends ago. We strung up lights and everything. I put up a makeshift fence to keep the dogs off the patio, but they've figured out a way around that. Things are at a standstill, until I figure out what to do about the dogs next. They quickly destroyed my new string lights by chewing through two cords and busting up the bulbs. Grrrrrrrr!

And now, for your viewing pleasure, and to appease your retro-loving appetites, I present Scott Fitness, Westside location! This is no 24 Hour or Gold's. It's an independently owned gym, not a chain. This 2nd location is like 4 miles away, while the one we've been going to, is like 1/4 mile from our house. We went to the other location bc it's bigger, the machines are newer and there are a lot more of them. Plus it's totally rad. Or weird, depending on your stance. There's like huge poster sized portraits of found pics from the 1970's. There's wood paneling, record players, several tvs (some of which work), from the 1950's. Basically it's all very retro. I took pics with my cell phone when we went last night. We were the only ones in there working out, which added to the creepy kitsch factor.

It's almost patio season!

I'm embarrassed to show the following photos of my patio in it's current state:




On the left is the garage, that I just use for storage and the steps lead to the back door. The dogs love to hang out on the patio, or more so, on the steps. Bacon, the puppy, also loves to do his business on the patio. Thanks Bacon! It is impossible to keep this place clean and tidy in the winter. A lot of falling leaves, mud, and snow. Fortunately, I have a plan.

I started raking up the leaves and mud yesterday. There's a lot more to go. I'm going to try to put a garden in that area of dirt just on the other side of the patio. I've started planting some things that Bacon has started digging up. Thus I want to put up a fence that will encase the garden and the patio. It'll keep the dogs from getting everything dirty, ruining my plants and chewing up patio furniture. I want to put up globe string lights. 4 strands, so that it looks like this. K-mart has the lights for $7.99, but the strand is just 6 feet .
I also need to figure out where to put the trashcans. I do like being able to just open the door and drop the bag of trash into the can. It's very conveinent. I want to put up a flower box on the garage window.

Oh and I have all this to put back there, along with a host of potted plants that are currently seeking refuge from the cold, in one of our bathroom's.

My beautiful, pristine Blueprint has arrived! All 8 of them. I love it! Now I'm auctioning off my other wrinkly, not so nice 7, on ebay. I'm totally satisfied with the ordering process and the result. They arrived on Thursday in a flimsy envelope. Shipping said $15.50 on the envelope! But I got everything for just $20. Yay!


On another note, check out this beauty:
I bought it for a reaaaalllly good price at a vintage sale last week. It's lovely, but seeing as how I am unemployed and have a house full of stuff and my sister might be moving in as well, it's probably a sound idea to sell it. Check it out on my etsy. I'll probably be putting it on ebay soon. It's priced the way it is, because of the research I've done. Check out three potato four. They're selling them for $550! Buy this one, shell out $100 to have it restored and save yourself $100. And come on, it's pink for god's sake!

Domino back issues

Holy crap! Domino back issues are $9 each! Still cheaper than what some of them go for on ebay though. And fyi- their customer service is not outsourced, so it's easier to get through.
(877) 356-9904

Blueprint is incredibly cheap compared to this...I hope I'm actually getting what I think I'm getting from them...I was a bit suspicious too, because it seemed too cheap. Guess I'll know by next Saturday or so.

I just ordered all 8 issues of Blueprint magazine for $20, including shipping. Click here
to do the same. It was a bit confusing. Customer service is obviously being outsourced so the first lady I talked to didn't really know what I was talking about. She transferred me to a creepy sounding guy, that I imagined had a unibrow and doesn't button the top four buttons of his shirt in order to show off his sweet gold chain necklaces. Anyways, he said single issues were I think, 2.50 or 3.50 and cost $2 to ship...or the package deal for all 8 was $20. So of course I went with that, even though I have all but one issue. I'll ebay the rest or trade out my not so pristine issues for these new ones.

Hmm...maybe I should look into Domino back issues now? I missed probably 8-10 of those.

Lakeside cottages

I am in love with this place.
I am also obsessed with the idea of owning a lakeside cottage of my own. I looked at them online for a while last night. Not that I have any money to spend on one. Although I did find a pretty cute one in Iowa for $16,000. That's less than my car. But it's still like 7 hours from here.

Then I settled on a backyard retreat, which is accomplishable at about $5000-6000.
It's actually a garden shed but could make a really cool studio. But maybe I should just turn my current garage into a studio. It already has two windows and I don't even park my car in it because I don't trust the garage door. It's an outbuilding too.

Kitchen renovations on hold

We've (I've) had some setbacks here, so all renovations costing more than $50 are currently on hold. I hope to have some good news soon so that I can update the blog and get back to work on the house.

In the meantime, shoot me a message if you need copy writing, editing, resume writing, article writing, web design, logo design or photography! Hah!

Kitchen before

And in case you were wondering...here is the only before kitchen shot.....


At least I think that is the only one, and unfortunately it does not include the ugly track lighting, or the over the sink lighting. Also, we got rid of the 80's under the cabinet lighting. They were flourscent lights and when I bought the house I thought they were paper towel holders.

New light fixtures and more kitchen progress!

My mom, brother and sister came to visit me this weekend and my brother was able to do a lot of work to the house. He took down the old, ugly, track lighting in the kitchen and put up my ikea light. And I bought a pendant light and kit from Lowes for $30 to replace the light over the sink. He also took down the ceiling fans in the dining room and bedroom but something funky is going on with the electrical in there so now I have to call an electrician to put up the two other ikea lights in those rooms.

He also put up a coat rack in the den, fixed the leg on the couch in the den, fixed my broken door (by putting a new lock and handle on it- it probably took him 3 hours to do!), fixed the cabinet doors that were hanging crooked and probably some other things I can't think of right now. All in all it was a very productive weekend.

Here are some pictures. Also, I've decided that I'm going to lay glass mosaic tile down on my laminate counter tops. All different shades of pretty blues. I got a 1x1 sample from ebay. It's $1.60 a square foot, so I should probably be able to knock the whole thing out for $75. Awesome! And it's so me- more so than granite or the plain, white laminate that is there currently. You can see the glass tile laying on the countertop in some of the pics.










Oh and A. and I are getting a puppy on Feb 4th! Half German Wirehaired Pointer (like my parents had) and half Lab. Yay!

Kitchen cabinet unveiling

Well today is the day I finish painting the cabinets I started painting around Thanksgiving. It wouldn't have taken this long had I not put it off because I thought I'd have to paint the whole thing with a paint brush. I originally started using a roller but it seemed to leave a spongy texture on the cabinets, even after sanding and priming. So I moved to the paintbrush and pretty much did all the upper frames and two of the doors with the brush. Then I put it off for more than a month and started again in the New Year. I picked up the roller again and did a second coat on some of the doors I already had one coat on and lo and behold when it dried they looked great! I had never given the rollered doors time to dry before. So now all it is taking is about two coats with the roller so things are speeding along. I'll finish in less than an hour and then I just have to put all the hardware back on (I haven't bought any new hardware yet, but I have spray painted the old hardware a metallic silver so it looks good for now). Of course there are about 4 more cabinets that haven't been sanded, primed or painted that surround the fridge. The wall over there hasn't been painted yet either.... I'm going to wait to start those til after my family leaves. They come on Jan 23rd and will leave early Monday morning.

Pics of the kitchen cabinets still to come!