Green Room

 

My friend Jenny is moving into my spare room.  It will be good, because I need more money.  She decided she wanted to paint it, which I was fine with seeing as it was actually the only room in the house I hadn't painted since moving in.  We painted it green.  You can see the color in the picture above. 

  

Here it is with the curtains and the trim all done.  It looks dark in this picture but it's really not.  It turned out quite well - I am pleased.  :)

Dressmaking 101

 

I look like a doofus, but whatever.  I MADE THAT DRESS BITCHES!!!!  And, it wasn't even that hard.  Although Jenny did struggle.... 

(To find the tutorial, go to Talk2theTrees - thanks to her for this great idea!!!)

Let the Light Shine In

 

I got these supersweet curtains off of eBay.  It was hard to get a good picture of them with the light behind it.  Anyway, they match my kitchen wonderfully (it's a dark orange color), and they also match my sweet mushroom canisters.  I love them.  And they were less than $15, which makes me love them even more.

P.S.  You can see my trashy asshole neighbors' car/lawn ornament in this picture - bonus!

Day & Night

I took several pictures today and couldn't decide which to use. I narrowed it down to 2 but I can't choose out of them, so I'll tell you about both.

Tonight we hosted a board game night at the house, and so I spent the day getting a lot of cleaning done. Sunday is always my cleaning day anyway. Having been feeling pretty crummy this past week and trying not to get sick, I wasn't feeling like cleaning, so to get myself in the mood I started off by hanging the wall decals Mom got me for Christmas:

I like them. This is in the spare bedroom/computer room, and we've been spending a lot of time in there lately so I wanted to put some more of 'us' in that room. When I first bought my house my cousin moved into this room, and it's the only room we haven't repainted or done really anything with so I figured hanging pictures and cheerful things was a good route to go. I also hung a tie dye 'curtain', which does nothing to block the sun but it looks cute!

So then we had people over for board games. There ended up being 8 of us, which was probably the perfect size for something like that. We played Apples to Apples, Taboo, and Quelf. All are great games in a group setting, and good 'icebreaker' type games if not everyone knows each other. So I'll leave you with a picture from our game of Quelf. Andy drew a card that dictated he do ballet until the timer ran out:

Pampered Chef, and a Bitchin’ Chair.

Yesterday was the Pampered Chef party, and Sherrissa showed up with this chair that her daughter didn't like/want. It just so happens Andy & I had been using a dining room chair at the computer desk, so hooray! Now we've moved up in the world! Plus I love it! Although I may have to reupholster it one of these days...but I totally dig the form of the chair itself.

Now here's hoping that the party makes lots of money, and therefore I get lots of free/discounted shit!

Gift Giving for Po' Folk

This year I am more broke than I have ever been before. I fully intend to obsess over online sales, as well as scour eBay & craigslist for bargain gifts. I have ideas for everyone on my list and all of my ideas are out of my price range, so I'm just waiting patiently for good sales to come.

I have bought 2 gifts so far, both for Andy. In case he reads this (which he won't), I will not tell you about one of them. The other was inspired by this. I believe I was looking online for a good photo of Alex & Jade when I was pondering my couples-I-want-to-be entry when I stumbled across it. When I was MUCH younger I really enjoyed counted cross-stitch, and since Edward Sharpe & the Magnetic Zeros have become a "thing" for Andy & I, I decided I'd try my hand at it.

I printed off some 14 graph paper, and several hours later I had a pattern:

We popped in to the Hobby Lobby after my massage (fuuuuuck yes.) last night, and here's what I got:

$10: 50% reclaimed wood picture frame (8" x 10")

$2.76: 4 skeins of variant color embroidery floss (yellow-brown)

$2.99: navy blue aida, 14 ct, 12" x 16"

$1.49: #22 needles

Andy's delight upon opening the gift -- Priceless???

... Perhaps not, but I think for $15 it will be a pretty cool gift! I hope he likes it. My mom said it was lame, my sister says adorable. We'll see what Andy thinks! I'll keep you guys posted on my progress :)

The Chicken Noodle Diaries

Monday, Andy was sans 1 tooth, 1 freshly filled, and 1 root canal-ed. I decided I wanted to make him chicken soup the previous Friday when he first found out what all he was going to have done. After all, when I was sickly he made me some. Always the one-upper, I decided to make the noodles from scratch (Also, we didn't have any frozen ones.).

I actually made the noodles on Sunday whilst the clam chowder (CHOW-DA!) simmered.

Do the noodle dance!

I had low expectations for them, and luckily they exceeded them. And the leftover soup the next day was way better - like the noodles sponged up some of everything else by then.

Take that, soft food diet!

Anyway, it was pretty damn good. I'm getting much better at making things up. I've always been a decent cook, but have always relied heavily on recipes. I'm finally taking off the training wheels! Hopefully I don't fall on my face!

Adventures in Soupmaking, pt. I

As I think I mentioned before, Andy has been having some dental issues the past couple weeks. In light of this, I decided to make some soups for us for dinner Sunday & Monday. Sunday I was going to make a corn chowder, and he insisted on adding clams so we had clam chowder.

[caption id="attachment_110" align="aligncenter" width="300" caption="Brothy goodness"][/caption]

I also was jonesing for grilled cheese, and he hadn't gotten his teeth pulled yet so he agreed to eating one too. When you haven't had it in a while, grilled cheese tends to be pretty much the best thing EVER.

I'd give it a solid 7 for presentation.

It was good, but a bit runny. I got hungry and gave up on letting it thicken any longer. Tune in tomorrow for chicken noodle!

27 Days ‘Til Halloween

Halloween decor: round 1 (only this picture sucks)

Also on Sunday, to add to my list of domestic accomplishments, we had Andy's nieces over and started decorating for Halloween. It was really pretty fun, and the house looks awesome so far. We need some more outdoor stuff, but it'll happen :) We still have a few things to hang here & there, but so far so good! That sort of confirmation that fall is here & Halloween is coming up made me feel happier than I've felt in a while.

Lucky #13

I more or less spent all of Sunday during the day cleaning my house. I'm not sure if I hate or love those kinds of days more. I mean, it's wonderful and rewarding to have clean laundry and floors (but not windows, since the damn Windex went AWOL), etc...but it's also a bummer putting in essentially a full day's work on one of your two days off! Ya know?

To make it more okay, 1 of the 3 times I sat down all day was to take a bath. It was nice - I hadn't taken a bath in at least 5 or 6 months probably.... With the cold starting to set in, and a day all to myself, it was a nice way to relax.

It took 3 tries to get the nasty grout out of the picture

On a related note, how DO you get the grout white & clean? Mine was gross when I inherited it, and I can scrub all day & the rag never stops picking stuff up, but it never goes away either. It's like black magic.

Oh, and also - I made a pot roast. I seriously channeled my inner 50's housewife.