it's beginning to look alot like....

.....CHRISTMAS!

This is my front room, parlor, "other" living room...depends on who you are what you call it. Anyway, notice the fab purple throughout! The christmas lights at night with the purple look AMAZING...does not translate in pictures...you will all just have to stop by to get the full effect!

Before:



And After:




Most of my ornaments are this colorful tin that I got from Mexico when I lived in Texas...

This little guy...I think he's older than me!


This one is from my childhood, a trumpet made of plywood and green glitter...what's better than that?

ugh.

Lots has been going on in my world but nothing that seems appropriate to be posted here (too personal...now you are intrigued,right?). Nothing involved with the house...been a boycott of painting for the past month or so. This weekend I will be decorating for Christmas so will post those pics for your entertainment...

how-we-met stories

I have always had a facination with how-we-met stories. Maybe it's my inner, deeply suppressed girly-girl rearing her ugly head. Hate her. Maybe it's because I don't have any really romantic story of my own to tell. Anyway, whenever I meet a new couple, who are seemingly happy, I always ask (usually the female, since I want the real story, not the Readers Digest version) them how they met. My point? In my online wanderings I have come across a blog that has a story of a meeting to end all stories. I am totally wrapped up in this series, totally hooked on the love story of perfect strangers, weird, right? So pop up some corn and click on over to www.thepioneerwoman.com Look in the archives for the "How I met the Marlboro Man" posts and the continuing story posts entitled "From Black Heels to Tractor Wheels" for the continuing saga...yum!

consider yourself swept!

living room before/after

My house has an interesting (read:quirky) living room slash dining room slash parlor combo. It's like 2 little living rooms seperated by pocket doors. Now I love,love, love these pocket doors (one of the reasons why I bought the house) but they present somewhat of a decorating challenge. Do I treat the rooms as individuals? Different decor, furniture, uses? Or as one continuous room that just happens to have a door in the middle? Here is a before...notice the lovely border...it was actually fuzzy, I think they call this "flocked", right? Also, the color of the trim...is it brown? Tan? Peach? Crap?
During....

And After....
In the end, I love this color, it is exactly what I imagined, and I decided to paint the "front room" the same color so that there is continuity between them.

the story of the oasis

For those of you who don't know the story of how I got a purple living room, here it is....Before I bought this house in May '06 I had been looking for 2-family houses. Thought the idea of somebody else paying my mortgage sounded like a good one. Anyway, one day I went to an open house of a 2-family that was PERFECT for me. It had been re-done with a small apartment on part of the 2nd floor. So this house was my first case of "house crush" and I promptly put in a bid to purchase it. After what seemed like an eternity (which, in reality was really only a couple days) alas it was sold to another.

After the wailing and cursing subsided I came to the realization that it wasn't so much the house that I loved but the purple livingroom wall color with the bright white base/molding/trim. Oh, you silly, silly girl. Who buys a house for the living room paint color? So the quest for the perfect color began. It is Behr Enchanted Evening...

aaahhh, sweet victory

the boys of summer...my beloved Red Sox...World Series bound!!

where have i been? where have you been?

This is where I've been. Although you can't see it, I've got the East Coast covered! Use the link to make your own...more ways to waste time:)




create your own visited states map
or check out these Google Hacks.

Nashville

Just returned from a business trip to Nashville, Tennessee. The conference was held at the Gaylord Opryland Resort. This place was ridiculously huge, over 9 acres. On one of the days that I was there I was wandering around and found a whole other part of the hotel that I didn't know existed! Crazy...check it out at www.gaylordhotels.com/gaylordopryland.

If you are a music fan, even if its not country, you have to go to Nashville. It really is the Music City. On Saturday afternoon, I went downtown to Broadway and 2nd Avenue where there are loads of bars and restaurants. Every one of them had doors/windows wide open and great bands in each one of them. These kids (seriously, early 20s at best) are amazing musicians and singers. People would just yell out songs and they would just play them, and play them well. Very cool city.

the defition of a butt log

What the heck is a Butt Log?, that's always the question. As defined by Webster, it is "the part of the tree between the roots and first limb", generally considered to be the most valuable section of a tree. When I bought this house it had a Butt Log "issue", which was supposed to be taken care of by the time I moved in (yeah, right).

There was a GI-NORMOUS half a tree blocking the spot where, in theory, there was to be a driveway (not to mention the roots choking the life out of my sewer pipes). Seen here, on moving day....
After many, many months and many, many calls to various city officials, they finally came one early morning to take it down. Of course, I got out the camera, took my coffee out onto the porch and supervised the whole production.

And with a big THUD, it was gone, making way for the still-to-be-added driveway (which in itself is an ongoing saga). Isn't homeownership so good at teaching you about things that you never knew nor ever wished to know?

Happy Talk Like a Pirate Day!!

My pirate name is:

Captain Charity Kidd

Even though there's no legal rank on a pirate ship, everyone recognizes you're the one in charge. Even though you're not always the traditional swaggering gallant, your steadiness and planning make you a fine, reliable pirate. Arr!

Get your own pirate name from piratequiz.com.
part of the fidius.org network

kitchen cabinets...don't try this at home

So, as a new homeowner, too poor (read: cheap) to buy new ones, especially since they are bran' spankin' new...got the bright idea to paint my kitchen cabinets. Now if you've done this yourself, you know the pain of which I speak. If you have not, heed my warning and DO NOT do it.

I count this as my 2nd least favorite paint project, 2nd only to painting wood panelling...and not the nice, pine, good kind but the evil, thin, fake stuff. If you are contemplating the purchase of a home that will require you to paint BOTH the kitchen cabinets AND a room of wood panelling, just check yourself in now and save the hand cramp. I digress.

Back to the cabinets....before....

.....prime times 2, paint times 3 (thanks, mom)....

.....and add hardware (thanks, dad)....
.....countless (wo)man hours later, voila!
I gotta say, as painful (literally) as the process was; this is the number one thing that people who have been here before I painted them comment upon. They always think that I replaced the cabinets until I open them, cause hell no, I didn't paint the insides!

End of The Debate

The final word on the entryway paint debate is that I am entirely too lazy to repaint it. I like it well enough and really can't think of a different color that I would like better. Besides, it really is a nice color with a yummy name.

paint debate, part 2

Well, I can't figure out how to get a cute, little color swatch copied onto here so I just took a picture (duh!)... here it is. Any opinions are welcome.

Curse that paint debate...

I am in the process of painting the entryway (or entry way) to my house and just can't decide whether I like the paint I bought or not. It is Behr Toffee Crunch, which looked fab in some deco-porn magazine (which I cannot for the life of me remember), maybe Country Home...anyway I was looking for a taupe-y color and this seems more gold-y in my house. If I can figure out how to post the color I will do it tomorrow. In the meantime, here is a before..note the lovely light fixture.

In the beginning...

Welcome to my random ramblings, inner neurosis, and general home improvement obsessions. I have recently been stalking blogs about other people's homes and thought that one of my own may be fun. We'll see...

I was discussing over the weekend with some friends that I am someone who has over the years of general "singledome" lost the ability to care about other people's opinions of my actions. That's not to say I don't possess the ability to self regulate my actions but that I just somewhere along the way I just stopped giving a s**t what people think....my point being, this is how I ended up with a purple living room...and I wouldn't have it any other way.