My house is for sale!

Eeeeeek! What does a young, single woman need with 1100 square feet and 2 full bathrooms? I've had to neutralize the house major, and have gotten rid of a lot of stuff. I'm a lot neater now, I can clean the whole place in an hour. I love it. The bad part is that it's not as reflective of my personality and tastes.

I'm not sure what I'm going to do exactly, but the future excites me. My first stop will be Texas and then I'm thinking I might head out to China to teach English. I even have a friend who wants to sign up as well.

However, with the market being what it is, I might try to rent it out for a year...but then I'll owe the government $7000 in April 2012. Yikes!

Long time no see!

I'm still alive! Barely! But alive!
If anyone still reads this I'll be back tomorrow for a post on spring bed linens! I bought mine at the beginning of January and threw those bad boys on my bed right then and there. My spirits have instantly been lifted by bright, fun, spring colors in this drab gray Kansas City winter!

See you tomorrow!

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!