c'est la vie.

1) I'm still so in love with this new table. Forget about watching TV, I'll just stare at the pretty blue legs.

2) Our month of free cable starts tomorrow!

3) Window treatments for the kitchen might be the end of me.

4) I found a dresser. It's perfect. And it's only $25. I'm waiting for a response from the seller.

5) I rearranged the living room on Saturday. I think I like it.

6) My sisters think my house is spotless. While I'm flattered, it would take much more than 5.3 seconds to clean this place right now.

7) Fitz and I made pasta primavera for supper. I butchered the recipe, but it was still fantastic.

8) My birthday is in 18 days. Mark your calendars.

9) Fitz hung up a second clothes line for me. Now I don't have to chase his underwear across the yard when the wind blows it off our camp chairs beautiful, expensive deck furniture.

10) The dresser is located on the west side. That means it's close to me. It needs to be mine.

it pays to stalk the thrift stores

The Salvation Army thrift store has become a regular stop as I've been decorating over the last few weeks, and by "regular" I mean at least every three days. Sometimes every two (or one).  They have a high turnover of items and I never leave without a treasure or two (or five).

About a week into my thrift store treasure hunting and cutest blue table showed up. It was too big to be an end table, too small to be a coffee table and too short to be a console table. I couldn't define it, but I was smitten. The $30 price tag held me off, but I looked at it every time I was in the store and almost brought it home when they marked it down to $20. I promised myself (and Fitz) that I wouldn't lug home more furniture unless I had a specific vision and reluctantly left the table behind. 

I've hated our TV area since we started unpacking 8 weeks ago. We (stupidly) gave away our old entertainment center when we moved so we bought a bookshelf and declared it the new media center. While I liked the bookshelf, it was just awful in the TV corner. 

See? 

I hated the chords and just general mess of the area, but MDF entertainment centers don't interest me and I didn't have $500 to spend on a solid wood table so I was stuck with the bookshelf.

This afternoon as I was lamenting the media corner to Fitz (poor Fitz), a little blue table came to mind. Would it's awkward size work in that corner? Was it still at the store? Surely someone else had seen the value in that little blue treasure and scarfed it up since I was there on Thursday. I didn't dare believe because I knew I would be disappointed, but I had to find out.

I walked in the door and there was my table! Beautiful and blue, what a perfect little awkward size it was. I reached in my wallet for a twenty, but what?! It was marked down to $10! 

Love. 

To make it oh so much better, when I picked it up I realize that it is solid wood. That table is heavy. The paint job is atrocious and it's a little chippy, but that's what drew me to it. I love the worn look, the loved look. In the imperfections, it is perfect. 

101 uses for old canning jars

Okay, so I only have three.

candle holder

utensil holder

office organizer

I'm sure I'll come up with a few more ideas before this obsession is over. 

For Momma

Look familiar?

organize jewelry...

... check. 

 I love my pearls and wanted to find a nice way to organize and display them. After hours of scouring the internet for ideas, I finally came across this and was sold. There were two oak picture frames in the storage room so I took them apart, tossed the back and glass and painted over the boring wood. The white was leftover from the night stands and the grey was a bottle of craft paint from another project. The dollar store (of all places) had small c-hooks so I marked the back of the frame and screwed in the hooks. Mounting them to the wall was a little trickier since I had to screw through a stud, but Fitz came to the rescue, once again, with the power drill. Someday I'll learn how to use that thing. Simple and inexpensive, but pretty!

a list of sorts

1) We spent yesterday at the lake with 20 teenagers. I spent the day bundled up in a blanket watching the crazy kids jump on a water trampoline and play football in the waves.

2) What happened to the sun?! It's been hot, hot, HOT all summer and suddenly the chill of autumn is moving in. The locals have promised me an indian summer so hopefully this weekend was a fluke.

3) We're getting cable (yay!), but only for 30 days (boo). Our landlord decided to take the cable company up on their offer of a free month; I'm so excited we're getting it and already sad that it will be gone in October.

4) I found old canning jars at the thrift store for .25 each. I bought two to go with the half dozen I found in my cupboard for free. I also picked my first piece of what will be a small collection of cut glass dishes. My mother would be so proud.

5) This is my next project, I think. I just need to find the perfect old frames. 

6) I learned of a new thrift store in the next town over. Fitz and I are going tomorrow. I'm giddy with excitement.

7) The local produce stand has a shelf with used books. Fitz found old comic books, circa 1985, the other day. Since this place is a ten minute walk from his office I have a feeling they will be seeing his face a lot.

8) I'm slowly purging my closet. I love the feeling of shedding old, unwanted items. Hopefully my PayPal account will be growing in the next few weeks as these items are sold on Ebay.

9) Once upon a time I was apprehensive about living in a one bedroom apartment, but now the idea of staying here indefinitely is becoming an exciting prospect. I love organizing the space and, in theory, it's a lot easier to keep clean. Plus, we'll never find this view for this price again.

10) One of Fitz's sisters is visiting us for long weekend. To say I'm excited would be a gross understatement. The next two weeks better fly by!

laundry day

I love when the desert winds blow and my towels are dry in 10 minutes flat. 

cookie dough

I, quite possibly, love cookie dough more than the actual cookies. My usual solution to this craving is to whip up a batch of cookies and eat about half the dough while the other half burns bakes in the oven. This results in one awful stomach ache. As I'm writhing in agony on the floor I vow not to be so foolish in the future, but after an appropriate numbers of days have passed (usually three) I decide the stomach ache was worth it and off I go to make more cookies. Truly, it is not worth the pain so this is my new solution... freezing cookie dough balls so I can have a bite whenever I want.

The Recipe:
2/3 cup margarine or butter, softened

1/2 cup white sugar

1/2 cup brown sugar

1/8 cup milk

1 1/2 cups flour

1/2 teaspoon baking soda

1/2 teaspoon salt

chocolate chips

Combine the butter, sugars, and milk

then add flour, baking soda, salt, 

and chocolate chips.

(If you want to actually cook this dough,
replace the 1/8 cup milk with one egg.
 I  cut out the egg to avoid salmonella
in the raw dough, but it's necessary for
 the cookies to rise if you bake them.
Bake on 375* F for 7-9 minutes.) 

Roll out little dough balls, put them on a tray and stick them in the freezer for 30-45 minutes, until they're frozen. Toss the frozen dough balls in a dish or baggy and put them back in the freezer. Eat one or two at a time... savor the cookie dough and spare yourself the stomach ache of eating it all at once.

around the house

I discovered these pretty little side tables listed in our local classifieds yesterday. Fitz doesn't  get overly excited anymore when I squeal and tell him there is something he must see (he's too jaded from all the times I showed him pictures of cute puppies that we can't have), but even he was pleasantly surprised that someone was giving away solid wood night stands. I called the lady to see if they were still available and then dragged Fitz to the car, eager to pick them up.

We discussed paint colors on the way to Home Depot - I've been on an aqua and yellow kick lately, but practicality doesn't allow for such bold color choices in our house. I pleaded my case for grey and then a bright white, but again, they don't match anything in our house even if they are more muted tones. In the end "heirloom white" won - light and fresh, but still in the earth tone family with it's creamy hue. 

I spent the better part of the afternoon scrubbing off years of cobwebs and dust, sanding, and finally painting my beauties. I had a minor fit when the new drawer pulls wouldn't work (okay, a huge fit that involved some foot stomping and pouting), but Fitz came to the recuse and had them attached in no time. I respectfully bow to his superior skills with the electric drill.

I briefly thought about rearranging the living room and using them as end tables by the couch because I love them so much and want to stare at them all day, but we locked ourselves into a more modern style in the living room so the French provincial curves looked really out of place. (Newlywed advice no. 428 - don't spend a lot of money on furniture and decorations in the first year. Wait until you really develop a style and understand the function and flow of your house. Then you won't be kicking yourself for buying that uber modern, burnt orange, leather reading chair when all you want are some antique pieces that need a little love.) Since we actually needed night stands in the bedroom and the style was much more appropriate or rather, the bedroom didn't have a style so this was the perfect opportunity to define it, they found their way next to our bed. It was the right choice. 

Speaking of the bed - we (stupidly) left our bed frame at my Mom and Dad's house when we moved to the east last year. We could have made it fit in our 5'x8' trailer, but decided it wasn't worth the hassle... or something like that. I was probably having a temper tantrum when that decision was made. I didn't mind leaving the box spring and mattress on the floor in our old house since we had hard wood floors, but with the carpeting in our bedroom now I was more concerned about dampness and potential mildew so a bed frame was a must. I quickly discovered that simple metal frame is upwards of $100 new and seemed to sell for $35-40 used.

I noticed a full size frame in the Salvation Army store last week, but didn't have the time or desire to wrestle it into our compact car so this morning Fitz called to see it if was still available. It was so we made a quick trip to town (at least I convinced Fitz to come under the guise of a "quick" trip) and picked up the frame for $25. Score! Last night after setting up our room with the new tables, I decided some sea grass baskets would look lovely on the bottom shelves and wouldn't you know that London Drugs has sea grass baskets on clearance. I scammed Fitz into a "quick" stop there and since none of the baskets were the right size, well, we just had to make one more "quick" stop at Walmart.

(I think he realizes that "quick" is a code word for "lets run all over the west side chasing whatever whim has hit Mrs. today," but he good naturedly goes along with it. Don't pity him too much though, he gets rewarded for pacifying my antics - today it was a double cheese burger from McDonalds.) 

I couldn't find any baskets that suited my taste (or my budget) so I bought a lamp for the living room. It was kind of on my list of things to look for, but definitely not a priority. I was willing to wait until I found the perfect lamp that spoke to me. This one spoke to me. It said, "I'm funky and modern and will match your awesome living room decor. I'm rectangular like the design on your area rug and best of all, I am two shades of brown! Buy me! Buy me! Buy me!" While I'd much prefer something whimsical and eclectic, I had to agree with the lamp - it would look fantastic in our living room. Besides it has a bit of whimsy... how made rectangular lamps have you seen?

Desperate for something light to break up all that dark wood, I rummaged through our storage and found an old oak picture frame. It wasn't anything that I would have display as is, so I grabbed the paint used on the side tables and gave it a quick makeover. I love how the white pops against a room full of brown. I couldn't find any 5"x7" pictures so the scrapbook paper will have to serve as a place holder for now.

Side note - that little figurine is from Haiti. One of my dearest friends served as a missionary on La Gonave for six months and she bought me a sculpture of two people hugging since she came home just before Fitz and I got married. I absolutely adore it. And her. I cannot wait until she is in one place long enough that I can visit. She has spent the last year traveling the west coast with the African Children's Choir. She is somewhere in Alaska tonight. Tomorrow she might be in the Yukon, or back in British Columbia, or for all I know I'll get an email from Arizona.

Moving on to the bathroom (heh, you knew this post was going downhill, didn't you?), I only knew about the clearance sale for seagrass baskets because I already bought three this week. Our bathroom comes with a fantastic (please note the sarcasm), tall, skinny shelving unit wedged between the sink and toilet. I would much rather do without and find other ways to store our bathroom stuff, but since it's there and I can't rip it out, I may as well use it. I measured the cubbies the day we moved in and have been trying in vain to find baskets that are  8"x11" and relatively attractive. London Drugs had the perfect baskets, but they were $14.99 each - umm, no thanks - but I stopped in the other day looking for picture frames, and lo and behold, the baskets were $3.99. I bought the last three!

One for Fitz, one for me, and one for random odds'n'ends. I love that everything is contained and is reasonably attractive. I like the seagrass because our house has a beach-y, cottage-y feel with the light colors and tile floors so the baskets blend well. And when we move again and I can use the baskets elsewhere... they'll fit right in with the rest of the brown!




I have a few more projects on the go, but they are all missing an element or two right now. I'm hoping to make a trip to the Salvation Army on the east side this week and find a few more treasures. Old canning jars are on the top of my list! 

treasures, beautiful treasures

For the perfect price of FREE, these gorgeous little side tables came to live with me today. Holla! When the sun goes down a bit I'll head outside and give them a light sanding and fresh coat of paint. Now to decide where they go - in the living room on either side of the couch? or in our bedroom as bedside stands?