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.