Big things coming

This weekend the husband and I are undertaking a little project I like to call operation "make my office not so ugly".  It will begin with us moving all the furniture out of our office, and ripping up the carpet to bring light to the hardwood floors, which we will then paint white.  The space will be bright, modern, airy and rustic, all at the same time.  I will post some photos of the process, but these below really show how I am feeling right now ) and of course loving the gray, browns and white floors!

Visitors Welcome

This weekend my lovely parents are coming to visit.  And by this weekend, I mean they are showing up on our doorstep by 11am Friday morning.  Apparently SOME people dont work on Fridays (I kid, I kid).  Because they were showing up so early and because I typically role out of bed and start functioning around 830am, today I had to wake up super early (8am) and get to work, so that I was done when they got here.  So I do some work, shower, and run downstairs to eat some Special K cereal.  Its a new box, so I try and open up the plastic bag inside the cardboard.  Thing is not only child proof, apparently its idiot proof because I cannot open it.  I pull as hard as I can, and the whole bag rips in two, cereal spills all over the floor and all inside the cereal box.  FML.  Why arent those damn bags ziplocked?  It would really make life so much easier.  So, in honor of my parents coming, I decided to make a little list of other things from the past week that have really gotten on my nerves:

1.) Traffic in the Lincoln tunnel at 930pm on a Thursday night DUE TO CONSTRUCTION.  Why cant NY figure out that people are still leaving work then?  It took me an hour to get home (I live 12 miles away)

2.)My vacuum cleaner.  I hate it.  It sucks, well no, problem is it doesnt suck at all.  It sucks in and then proceeds to spit out every piece of dirt, dog fur or grass that we track into our house. 

3.) Jet Blue Planes- Although their service is top notch, I hate their seats.  Most uncomfortable seats ever

4.) The idiot house cleaning lady in SF who decided to bang down my door at 6am last Friday morning, which was exactly 4 hours after I got in from a night full of 7 bars and many more cocktails with my friend Melissa.  When i opened the door, shaking from the alcohol withdrawal and visible shocked that someone was banging on my door so early, she blinked fast and said "sorry, wrong room".  I wanted to punch her teeth out.

5.)Stabbing myself in the eye with my mascara.  I do this weekly.

HAVE A GREAT WEEKEND CHICKENS!

Chair Found

So I found a chair, on craigslist of course (you all know how I have been shopping on the cheap since day one of moving into the new home) and i think its really cute- well, it will be really cute once i get the badboy reupholstered.  Its an old chair, with lots of memories Im sure.  The husband has already tested it out, decided he likes it, and told me that he will be moving it in front of the tv so he can have a man chair, so long as we change the fabric (this is the same man who told me 2 weeks ago that "no, we did not need more furniture").

So here she is, in all her floral glory. 

The floral really isnt our style, I am thinking more along the lines of the below patterns:

Greetings from Broad St

A few quick peaks into some of the decor in our home. As noted many times before, it's coming along, but very slowly.  Enjoy!

The Living Room- aside from some missing curtains, its the one room in the house that is done!

 

Above- shots from our living room- complete with our 1723 map of Boston and my ORK! poster of NYC.  Just need one more piece of art for the wall to the left of the ORK!.  Etsy here I come.  You can also see my new chevron rug- I LOVE this and I am so happy I purchased it (complete with 20% off coupon)- oh and my white resin deer head from Z Gallerie! And of course, John's 50" flat screen that hangs above the fireplace- his pride and joy!

Also- few shots of my closet from when we first moved in.  Its still a work in progress but at least now I have my shoes all lined up! Apologies for the mismatched hangers, they are the least of my concerns.

Countdown has begun

In less than 2 months we leave for the Europe Vacation.  Yes, the vacation that we have been planning with our friends for over a year- the one we have been talking about for 2 years and the one we thought we would never get to go on.  I could not be more excited even if the thought of living out of a backpack for 18 days scares me!  The countdown is on people!

Reconfirm

These photos are helping along my obsession with flared denim.  And I just happened to like the orange pants.  I could never pull them off, but I like them.

Arm Chair Delight

I have been on the search for a new armchair for our living room for quite some time now and of course, all the ones I found were well over $1,000- which is about $800 over the budget I had in mind.  But- I didnt want to just go and purchase a cheap one from IKEA.  Here are some chairs that I am loving...the search continues!

Can you tell that I just LOVE color?  If I could live in a white black and gray world, I would.  I know people say that bright colors cheer them up but really they hurt my eyes and confuse me.  Ill update you with my chair finds soon!

I cant stop

Thinking about ripping out my kitchen cabinets and putting up open shelving.  I just feel like it would make the space seem so much bigger and this way I would be able to display all my plates/bowls/pitchers/platters from our wedding that are currently down in boxes in the basement. 

Anyways- I am in California all week for work and also visiting with my good old girlfriend Melissa while I am in San Francisco.  SF is quickly becoming one of my favorite cities- small and quaint with a big city feel and so clean! Be back next week!

4th [of July]

Well I am off this afternoon, heading down to LBI on the Jersey Shore for a long weekend full of friends, boating, the beach and of course BBQ'ing.

Hope you all have a happy and safe holiday weekend!!!

Kitchen Makeover Part 2- The After

Below are the after shots of our kitchen.  Its not a high fashion makeover and obviously we will gut renovate this room once we have the 30 or 40K it takes to do so.  I do love the white cabinets though- I am not a wood cabinet kind of girl at all and I tend to dream of a kitchen where I have open shelving for all my white and ivory colored dishware.  My style is definitely simple yet elegant with clean lines and not a lot of stuff lying around.  So, here is our attempt to make the kitchen a little more livable:

And so there you have it- our "new" kitchen, and it was all done for under $500.  We are pretty proud of ourselves I might add.  Yes, the hideous light fixture is still there- it will be replaced soon. The original appliances are still there, although we have thought about painting the dishwasher and fridge with chalkboard paint (my newest obsession)- but honestly we aren't flashy people and we could care less that the appliances are old and not so pretty- as long as they bake our cakes and keep our beer cold we are happy.


I dont have any "during" photos because this was done over a few weeks time and involved a minor issue that I like to call the "hair in epoxy incident".  Let me set it up for you:  the kitchen counters were pink Formica.  We happened upon "countertop epoxy" while in Home Depot and decided we would try it out.  So, a week goes by, the husband leaves for a bachelor party and I am home alone on a Saturday afternoon.  I had just gotten back from getting my hair highlighted and trimmed, so of course I was wearing it down, wanting to show off my new "do".  Well, I start painting the OIL based epoxy onto the counters and I am working very fast because this stuff has the consistency of nail polish, as in the second it starts to dry it leaves serious streak marks if you paint over it. So I am painting, getting slightly high off the fumes this stuff is putting out when it happens. I reached into the deepest corner on the countertop to get a small area I missed, thus sticking my head uder the upper cabinets, when approximately 1/4 of my hair (that is still down and all beautiful) decides its going to fall right into the cover of the epoxy.  I see this, stop short and try to move away slowly, thinking that a sudden movement could make this worse.  Well, I was wrong.  The slower I moved, the more epoxy from the cover got stuck to my hair.  Finally, I free myself from the area and I have the entire cover stuck to my hair.  Now- I realize that any normal person would not have left the cover right on the counter where they were working AND they wouldve tied their hair back- but like I said, the fumes got me high.  I rip the cover off my head and run upstairs to the bathroom to see how much epoxy actually adhered itself to my hair.  A lot.  So, I do what every college educated person would do, I run water through my hair, all over the OIL based epoxy.  The water does not rinse the epoxy out as I had hoped, no no, it basically made the stuff turn to cement in my hair, because as we all know, water and oil DON'T MIX. At this point I am in tears, completely distraught and thinking that I am going to have to chop all my hair off and wear a hat for a year.  I am also hating myself.  Finally, I was able to brush through a bit of it and pull some of the rock hard cement out.  Then, out came the scissors, and off went 1/8 chunk of hair from my head.  I kid you not, I had to cut almost 3 inches off.  I cant make this stuff up. I looked like a 4 yr old who cut her own bangs. 


A lot of my sweat and hard work (and some of my hair) went into the kitchen, so I love it even more.  And I learned some valuable lessons too.