Trapped In North Jersey

a day late

2012-02-15T16:27:00.000-05:00

My computer crashed and burned yesterday, so I am a day late with my sappy Valentine post.

At this stage of my life, I don't care much about grand gestures. I look for the little things, the every day things that show what a person really thinks. I lucked out with the Mister. The Mister is a fabulous life partner.

Things I appreciate about the Mister:

The Mister is patient, loving and kind, witty and intelligent.
The Mister carries my purse, regardless of how it clashes with his outfit.
The Mister buys tampons and other horrifying feminine hygiene items without complaint.
The Mister reaches for my hand first, to hold my hand in public.
The Mister works hard to provide a good life for his family.
The Mister is an honest person.
The Mister does not have an agenda. What you see is what you get.
The Mister does the grocery shopping with the kids.
The Mister's first choice of something to do when he has free time is to spend it with me.
The Mister goes shopping with me.
The Mister is nice to his mother.
The Mister gets up early with the kids so I can sleep in. Like, every single day, ever.
The Mister values my opinion, asks for it often, and frequently heeds it.
The Mister listens to me.
The Mister pays attention, even when I'm not talking.
The Mister thinks I'm pretty.
The Mister doesn't care if I'm not pretty.
The Mister likes to have dance parties with the kids.
The Mister has a number of handsome physical attributes.
The Mister is not afraid to laugh at himself.
The Mister takes care of me when I'm sick.
The Mister thinks I'm funny.
The Mister can intelligently discuss just about anything, as he has a wide variety of interests.
The Mister is a good tipper. (Former waitresses such as myself notice these things.)
The Mister believes in frugality but is generous with his money.
The Mister has been incredibly supportive of my career, be it staying home or working outside the home.
The Mister does manly things like remove rat carcasses from my kitchen.

The Mister sounds like a paragon of virtue, does he not?
He is.
And he's all mine :-)

little things, friends

2012-02-13T14:42:00.000-05:00

Recent conversation:

Me: Brr, its cold! Its supposed to snow tomorrow!
Greg: Do they have snow in California?
Me: No, not too much...maybe in the mountains, but where we are going to live it is very sunny and warm all year round.
Greg: (gasp of horror) No snow?!?! Do they have Christmas?????

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We have a landline. Do you have a landline? If yes, you are over 35, right? The only people who ever call us on the landline are our parents. Literally. I can scroll back through 21 days of calls on the house phone, and every single one of them is one of our parents.

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We have moved five times in the last nine years. On average, we move about every two years. We also tend to move about an hour north or south from the previous location, usually because of a new job.

For a delightful four year period we lived in south Jersey, where nearly all of my family lives and most of our friends live. I grew up in south Jersey, and the Mister and I went to law school there. When we lived there (we moved twice, but those were down the street moves) I had a group of four friends from high school that I saw once a month for dinner, and the Mister and I had some couple friends that we would hang out with once or twice a month. We are not party animals, and we also spend a lot of our time with our extended families, but we had a nice social life.

I do not make friends quickly or easily. I tend to hang back and assess for a while. I also tend to have a few close friends rather than a large crowd. I've noticed that every time we move, it takes me six months to a year to make new friends. This means that for the past few years, we move, I have a lonely year, then I find some friends for a few months, then we move far away again, and any friendships I may have struck up are generally relegated to email/texting and the occasional playdate every few months, and the cycle starts again. Case in point, in the past few weeks I have found some people I like here, and now we are leaving. Again.

I'm really hoping that when we get to California we can settle down for a while. I am somewhat hermit-like by nature, but this is too hermit-y even for me. Unfortunately, I know that we are renting for the first year in California, and then we will buy a house. I'm afraid that we won't find a house in the same area as our next apartment, and any friends I might make will be left behind yet again. I'm afraid that I won't make any friends at all the first year and then I'm looking at two years of hanging out with only my children. (I foresee a lot of locking myself in the bathroom if that's the case.)

I am not all that excited at the prospect of "putting myself out there." Yes, with that attitude I am doomed to fail, I know, I know. Its just seems harder to make friends as an adult.

Blarg.

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We have scheduled our apartment-hunting trip for the end of February (only two days to find something, ack), so hopefully we will find an apartment in a forty-eight hour time span, and then we can get down to the nitty gritty business of decorating it. Nope, there ain't much decorating going on in this house. In fact, I need to start purging post-haste. I guess I could start with our winter clothes.

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If you are local to NYC and you want a free campaign desk with a hutch (looks like this, although its blonde and white, you can paint it the color of your choice), drop me a line.

Awards

2012-02-12T19:01:00.000-05:00

Recently Tiffany at Worthwhile Domicile nominated me for a Leibster Blog award, given to blogs with readership under 200 followers. Wayyyyyy back in the day, Suzy at Saved By Suzy nominated me for a Versatile Blogger award, too.....and months later I am getting around to passing it on.

I'm supposed to tell you a bunch of facts about me.

1. I had a five year stretch in law school and working as an attorney where every single night I dreamed that I was drowning. Yes, every night for five years. Sometimes multiple times a night. Thankfully that stopped when I stopped practicing law. I rarely dream of drowning now, but my anxiety dreams always center around water--I'm on the beach and the tide is washing away my stuff, I'm bodysurfing in the waves but keep getting knocked down, I'm in a rowboat and the water is very choppy, I'm driving over the Driscoll bridge but the sides of the bridge are gone and I'm speeding and the middle of the bridge is washed out....my anxiety dreams are pretty obvious.

2. I like to say the word MOIST. There are at least three people in my life who have banned the use of the word MOIST in their presence, and I like to say it as often as possible in their hearing. MOIST MOIST MOIST.

3. Speaking of having less than 200 followers, I have done next to nothing to grow this blog, besides participating in the occasional linky party. I keep thinking I should do something. Yet, laziness prevails.

4. I am math-challenged. If it is a home decor project involving math (or anything else involving math), you can be sure I will screw it up. I make my sisters do the math for me, they have mad skillz. How come I'm the only one who did not get any math skills? (I can tell you why, actually--in the fourth grade we moved to Jamaica, and I was put in sixth grade, which was fine in all the English and history subjects, but going from long division to trigonometry without any of the two years of math foundation in between confused me, and left me with a "I don't understand any of this" mental phobia for the rest of my life.)

5. I don't like animals. I am extremely allergic to them, and I was terrified of dogs from the age of two onwards. I used to have nightmares about big black dogs eating my toes. I can now be around dogs without screaming in fright and scrambling up onto the shoulders of the nearest bystander, but I still don't like them. Yes, I'm sure your dog is fabulous, and yes, I can see puppies and think aw, cute, but puppies grow up to be the kind of dogs that eat your toes and I'm never going to be an animal lover, okay?

I am supposed to nominate some blogs myself. In looking through my blog reader, I see that most of the blogs I follow have over 200 readers. (Apparently everyone has time to grow their blog but me.) I can, however, share a really witty, fabulous blog I started reading last year:

Hilarity In Shoes. This post is one of my recent favorites. Fantastic, witty musings on life, a painful breakup, and starting a new job. Check it out.

The vacation where I paid $332 to find out I was dehydrated.

2012-02-09T06:00:00.010-05:00

We had a lovely time in Costa Rica. Although the Mister couldn't get the time off from work, I decided to take the kids and visit my inlaws at their house in Costa Rica. Its a great place to take the kids, since the beach is 2 blocks in one direction and the pool is 2 blocks in the other direction. We generally go in January, and its a lovely escape from the cold gray winter blahs in New Jersey.

Excitingly, we had a trip bookended by medical problems. Two days before we were supposed to leave, Peter had an allergic reaction to an avocado roll, and then a rebound reaction again the next day to a cream cheese sandwich. We discussed whether or not we should stay home with the pediatrician, who said we could go, but take a preventive course of steroids and eat a very restrictive diet. Peter ate macaroni and cheese for nearly every meal there. The day after we came home I took Peter to the allergist again, where we discovered he is also (add it to the growing list) allergic to avocado.

The middle of the trip was go to the beach in the morning, eat lunch, go to the pool in the afternoon, eat dinner, go to bed. Lather, rinse, repeat five days in a row. We also went to the Zoo Ave, which if you are vacationing in the San Jose area, is really lovely and well worth the trip, even without kids.

At the end of the trip, I woke up three mornings in a row with pain in my calf and in the back of my knee. I am taking medication that has a risk of blood clots, I have a family history of blood clots, I have a genetic marker for a clotting problem, and I had just gotten off a long flight a few days earlier, which ups your risk of blood clots as well. It wasn't until the last day that a lightbulb went off in my head, thinking "oh hey, maybe that's a deep vein thrombosis and I should get that checked out before I get back on a plane." I called my doctor's office in the States, explained the situation, and the nurse said "you WILL DIE if you get on a plane. Go get an ultrasound of your leg right now."

Uh....is there any wiggle room there? Like, I'd prefer to die in the States, could I leave the foreign country where my health insurance is not accepted for expensive medical procedures and get checked out when I get home? No? Okay. Crap.

Instead of the leisurely pace we had planned, we threw everything in the car and raced an hour and a half to San Jose to go to a hospital ER near the airport. This is where I was weeping at the thought that I might be stuck in Costa Rica and would have to drive three kids 3800 miles through Nicaragua and Mexico and 17 states to get back home. Apparently there are such things as heparin shots and I wouldn't have to drive through Nicaragua, but I didn't know that yet. I was seen fairly quickly, and nearly all of the ~~very handsome~~ medical professionals spoke English, which was handy, since I don't speak Spanish.

The ER doctor did not think it was a DVT (lack of redness and swelling), but given my impressive list of risk factors, I quickly received an ultrasound of my leg. (Btw, having an ultrasound on your groin is more invasive than you might be expecting, and you will fly home oiled up from your bellybutton to your ankle.) Luckily, everything was normal, my leg cramps were probably from dehydration, and I paid $332 for the entire experience. Yay for the Costa Rican medical system; a self-pay trip to the ER and an ultrasound in the States would have been closer to $3000.

Expensive lesson learned: drink more water when vacationing in tropical countries.

That medical detour left us with just under an hour and a half to make our international flight home. We didn't know how to get to the airport. We had no cell phone reception or internet to let the Mister know that I was ok and that yes, we would hopefully be on the flight home. With some extremely vague instructions on how to get to the airport ("go that way and then go left"), we raced through San Jose, skidded into the car rental to return the van, and finally made it into the airport, where we had to get through the exit tax station (they charge you money to leave the country!), check in, get through security, and arrived at our gate as the plane started boarding. As we boarded, my mother in law ran back down the concourse, bought a calling card and called the Mister to let him know I was still alive and would be on the plane home. It was a very adrenaline filled hour and a half.

The rest of this post is all pictures and anyone not related to me is free to skip it. Although there is an anatomically incorrect sand mermaid pictured if you're into that sort of thing.

The view from the balcony is just gorgeous.

One Room Challenge: the one where I bow out.

2012-02-08T12:34:00.000-05:00

So! We are back from Costa Rica. Sadly, since I was leaving for Costa Rica the day before last week's challenge, I did nothing for my dining room. Since I got back the day before this week's challenge and spent all of Tuesday sitting in a doctor's office, I have also done nothing. I realize this is not exactly what I signed up for or what you have come here to read about.

Thus, since we found out a few days ago we are moving to California, I am going to bow out of this blog challenge. I was honored to be invited to participate, and I'm sorry I haven't gotten more done. But we are moving in about six weeks and I don't want to put any more time or money into my current dining room. (Check back in six weeks, I'll have an entire house to decorate.)

Check out the rest of the participants in the One Room Challenge, I know they have some awesome projects to share with you.

Saved by Suzy
Dutch.British.Love
Trapped in North Jersey
Nicole Scott Designs
Kim Macumber Interiors
Rue de Emily
The Pink Pagoda
refresheddesigns
Nana Moon Shop
Taylor Morgan Design
Insideways
My Crafty Home Life
House Four
Living Savvy
(A Lifestyle Thing)

details: new name?

2012-02-05T07:38:00.000-05:00

Thanks for all the warm wishes on our announcement that we are moving to California. Its nice to know so many people will miss us. Heaven knows I will miss everyone on the east coast.

We are moving because the Mister got a new job. (In California, obv.) We don't know where we will be living yet (ACK), but the Mister will be starting soon, and the kids and I will follow soon thereafter. Most likely we will be in Orange County, so if you have knowledge to share, shout it out, because I know zip about the O.C. other than I love me some Seth Cohen. We have a house-hunting trip scheduled for the end of this month.

We are working with a relocation company that will be moving all our stuff, including our cars. How to move the cars was really giving me agita. Me and the Mister cramming our children and all our worldy possessions into our two cars and caravanning our way over the Rockies in late winter rings a little too close to the Donner Party for my comfort.

Unfortunately it takes seven to ten days for the relocation company to deliver our belongings to our destination. This means that I have seven to ten days of having a house in NJ with no furniture in it, and seven to ten days of having a house in California with no furniture in it. Also, no cars in either location.

I am moving from stage one "omg, California will be awesome!" to stage two, "omg, WHAT HAVE WE DONE?" Even though we've moved around quite a bit in the last few years, we've never been more than two hours from our friends and family, and we see them quite a bit. Now we are moving 3000 miles away from everyone we know and love and I'm guessing that means we won't be seeing them much. Also, the logistics of uprooting our entire lives--and packing up the basement---is giving me the heebiejeebies.

I think I really need to step up the pace on the decluttering project in the basement.

Lastly, as some dear commenters have noted--my blog name is no longer accurate. What to do about this? Change it to something completely new, preferably not geography related, so in the event I move again I don't have to change it again? Do the lawyerly thing, which would be to keep the name, add a colon with an explanatory phrase? (Check out any law review article to see what I mean.)

I am leaning towards keeping the Trapped in North Jersey. Changing the whole thing seems like a lot of work. Unless someone gives me an awesome blog name. I am terrible at coming up with original ideas like that, hence the Trapped name in the first place. I wouldn't mind a new blog name, I just haven't come up with one.

Trapped In North Jersey: the California Diaspora? (is a family of five big enough for a diaspora?)
Trapped In North Jersey: We Don't Live There Anymore?
Trapped In North Jersey: Escape to ~~Witch Mountain~~ California?

Your input on the blog name is highly desired.

California

2012-02-03T19:18:00.000-05:00

In the last week of August of 1998, I was driving to class at law school, and was stopped at a light. As I sat there waiting for the light to turn green, I was swamped with an overwhelming wave of misery.

I was a week into law school and had an inkling that law school was full of people much smarter than I. I was in my seventh year of an unhappy dating relationship. I had moved home and back into my childhood bedroom, just as every independent woman dreams of doing. I had applied to three dream law schools in California, been wait-listed at two of them, and outright rejected from my please-oh-please-please-please-accept-me school, and was instead attending a much cheaper in-state law school less than ten minutes from my parents' house.

As I sat at that light, grumpily contemplating my life, the song "Ready to Run" by the Dixie Chicks came on. At that moment my heart rebelled. DRIVE, YOU IDIOT, it said, just drive the hell on up out of here. Get out of Dodge. Just go, go, go--GO ANYWHERE BUT HERE. LEAVE NOW. Keep driving till you hit California and figure it out when you get there.

I still think of that moment every time I hear that song, even now, nearly fourteen years later.

My follow-the-rules body ignored my rebellious heart and kept on driving to Torts class. I made my way to the private parking lot on the edge of campus where I had bought a parking spot for the school year, and parked at the very end in my assigned spot. As I got out of my car, a giant blue Buick roared through the gate and swung into the spot two cars down from mine. A cute boy got out, swung his bookbag onto his back, adjusted his earphones into his Walkman (dude, it was 1998), and he headed off across campus, without once ever looking my way.

Five years later I married that cute guy who ignored me.

But at that moment, that hot summer day in 1998, I had no idea that a piece of my future had just shifted into place. Not an inkling that that day's unhappiness would one day be replaced by love and laughter that was walking in front of me in size 11 shoes.

Now we live in northern New Jersey, and I no longer want to keep driving to California. My fondest wish is to move back to south Jersey, the very shackles I so desperately wanted to flee fourteen years ago.

Of course, since the universe has a perverse sense of humor, we are moving to California. Maybe the universe heard me fourteen years ago and set this whole plot in motion as a way of delivering me to California when I was finally ready. I trust it will work out just as awesome as the last time I wanted one thing but got something else.

One Room Challenge: the Costa Rica version

2012-01-31T15:58:00.003-05:00

Supposedly I am working on my dining room, putting up a project a week to show you all my progress. Except this week I unexpectedly find myself with three kids in Costa Rica, where my internet connection is spotty at best, and I'm writing this post on a computer that does not have a right-click mousepad (why do they make this?) and so I can't even figure out how to put up a picture of the paradise I'm in.

And I didn't do a darn thing in my dining room.

Lest ye crazy robbers want to attack my house, rest assured that the Mister had to work and is still at home. As are the rats.

That's right, I took three children under six on a five hour plane ride by myself.

That's a mistake I won't be making again.

Actually, it wasn't that bad. Except for the landing, which was of the variety where you ask the pilot "were we shot down?" as you get off the plane. Princess and Peter were screaming "LET ME OUT LET ME OUT LET ME OUUUUUUTTTTT!!!!" at the top of their lungs, in between dry heaves. One child had a death grip on my arm, while my other arm was busy holding a barf bag under the other child's chin. Normally I would feel all "omg, people must hate us", but this time I think the majority of the other passengers were looking at me with pity and thanking their lucky stars they weren't me.

In any event, we are here for a week, and get back the day before the next One Room Challenge post....so don't have high expectations for that one either.

There is no right click on this computer (seriously, wth), so my ability to make links and pictures is severly compromised.and thus I don't have the giant blog list. Peruse one of my old blog posts for the list of other participants, or see the button on the side bar. (I know, I am totally getting voted off the island this time.)

The decision to be a SAHM

2012-01-28T10:46:00.000-05:00

Inspired by this post and link up party over at I Pick Pretty, where Mrs. Pretty discussed her decision to quit her job as an attorney and stay home with her son, I will tell you how I made (or didn't make) the decision to stay home with my kids.

After law school, I worked in a personal injury law firm for about 8 months. I knew about halfway through law school I was going to hate being an attorney. And I was right. Working at that firm was not the worst work experience of my life (close, but not the actual worst), but I knew that I was never going to be happy doing that sort of work. I dreamed of getting pregnant so I could quit and stay home with my kid.

Then one day, a gift from the gods fell into my lap. My mentor from law school called me and said "there's a one-semester opening for a legal writing professor at a school in Georgia. You should apply."

I applied, never thinking that I would get the job. Unbelievably, I did. And I LOVED it. I loved teaching. Grading, not so much. But teaching? Teaching is the awesomest job in the world. All of a sudden, I KNEW what I wanted to do with my life.

And then at the end of that first semester of teaching, I got pregnant. (On purpose. Dude, I was thirty, the world was ending if I didn't get pregnant rightthissecond.)

My old firm had extended an offer for me to come back in the spring when I was finished teaching. When I came home, however, they decided that no, they didn't have room for me after all. So, there I was, pregnant and unemployed. And then my alma mater law school called, asking if I would be be interested in teaching one class as an adjunct. Why, yes, indeed I would! It was a pittance of paycheck, but it was experience on my resume, finished before the baby was due, and that was fine.

After that I finagled my way into a 2 year contract at my alma mater. I got pregnant again in the first year of my contract and had Peter. As the second year of my contract was starting, the Mister was offered a job in NYC. We were living in South Jersey at the time, outside of any reasonable commuting distance, and thus we would have to move to northern NJ.

At that time, every single penny of my take-home pay went to pay for childcare. If you took into account gas getting back and forth to work and dry cleaning my suits, it was actually costing me money to go to work. However, it was a job with really flexible hours for the most part, which allowed me to spend more time with the kids, and although I was making no money at the end of the day, it had excellent, cheap health insurance. The Mister's law firm had the world's most expensive, crappiest insurance, so by insuring myself and the kids on my insurance, that put an extra thousand dollars in the Mister's paycheck every month. (Yes, the Mister's super-crappy insurance cost us over $1000 a month. The NYC job had much better and much cheaper health insurance, thank goodness.)

Also, I will admit that I was very much feeling pulled in two directions. I loved my job, but I loved my kids more. I wanted to spend more time with them. I also sometimes felt like I was working so that someone else could take care of my kids, since my entire salary went to a nanny. I would have really liked to work part time, but it wasn't financially feasible: either I taught full time for a reasonable salary, or I took a half load as an adjunct for less than 10% of my regular salary.

Since law school hiring generally takes place a year in advance, I needed to let my school know whether or not I wanted to participate in the permanent position search (I had been hired as a temporary visitor). Had we been staying in the south Jersey area, I probably would have stayed with teaching, because I loved it. However, since we planned on leaving the area, my decision was essentially made for me. I told my school that I would not be returning when the school year was up. I was not unhappy about it. I looked forward to spending some time with the kids.

To be honest, in my head, I wasn't quitting to be a SAHM permamently. My plan was to sell our house, move to the NYC area, and find a job in NYC for the following school year. So I looked at it as more of a yearlong sabbatical, rather than a conscious decision to stay home for years.

And then it took us two years to sell our house (hello, financial crash of 2008 and our house being worth much less than what we had just paid for it!), so the Mister commuted 5+ hours a day for two years, and then I found out I was pregnant with our third child...and so my grand plans to keep working didn't quite work out as planned. We finally sold our house and moved to northern NJ in the summer of 2009. I could have entered the fall hiring season for the NYC law schools but...Princess was one month old, and since I had 3 kids under the age 4, I was feeling a little overwhelmed.

I will admit that when I first stayed home with the kids, it was challenging. After years of working on mental puzzles every day at work, my day was now defined by other people's bowel movements. I also discovered that while I love babies (nom, nom, looooove babies).....babies turn into one year olds. And I find the 1 yr + crowd to be much more work than babies. Interact with me! LOOK AT ME!! Play with me! Attend to my every whim! With babies (my babies, anyways) I could just say here, have a boob and a snuggle while I read the internets.

I guess the upshot here is not that I decided to be a SAHM, but that it just sort of happened.

Since my original decision to stay home was supposed to be a short, temporary one, precipitated by the easily explained "my husband's job took us to a new city", I didn't worry that much about finding a new job. But now, after years at home during a recession, I have thought quite a bit about how and when I will re-enter the job market.

Here is where this post breaks down--my thoughts about me going back to work are a post in themselves. I don't think that there is a clear winner in the stay-at-home or go-to-work arena. What works for me may not work for you, and what works for me today may not work for me tomorrow. Neither is better than the other. I could end with a rant about our patriarchal society that talks about how being a mom is the greatest job in the world, but acts as if a job without a paycheck is worthless....but that's also a post in itself.

At the end of the day, what I am at the moment is a SAHM. And for now, I love it.

Bandaids, chickpea desserts, pictures

2012-01-26T21:55:00.000-05:00

A few days ago I woke up at four am to find someone rifling through my nightstand. Totally freaked out for a moment, I realized it was Princess. Skipping the fact that she was wandering around the house in the middle of the night, I told her it was bedtime and put her back to bed.

In the morning I discovered that she had taken the bandaids out of the nightstand and adorned herself with them. This was terrible because I had put these extra-strength, cement-like, impossible-to-remove bandaids in the drawer so that they wouldn't get used (why didn't I just throw them out, you ask? Hmph.). Lets just say Princess was mighty peeved when we finally took them off. "Mah skin hurts! You stop that!"

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Today I meandered on over to the Weight Watchers site for the first time in quite a while, and was met with the unpleasant news that due to some newfangled way of doing things, the miniscule amount of points I am allowed to eat has shrunk even further. Boo, hiss.

Perusing the dessert menu on the WW site (oh what, like I'm the only one, take your irony elsewere), I came across a recipe for chocolate chickpea...stuff, for lack of a better term. I think they called it "dip". This is at least the fourth recipe I've seen in the last few weeks using chickpeas in a dessert.

Is it just me, or does this sound disgusting? I agree that copious amounts of chocolate and sugar will make just about anything taste better, but it doesn't mean that you SHOULD.

My curiosity piqued, I decided that I would make one of these recipes. The WW recipe called for condensed milk, so that was out. (I can't eat most milk products.) I recalled having seen a chocolate chip cookie dough dip recipe recently, so I googled around and found a bunch of recipes.

A few of the recipes called for straining a can of chickpeas and then de-skinning the chickpeas individually by hand, which sounded time-consuming and beyond the amount of effort I am willing to put in, so I went with a recipe that skipped that step. Most recipes called for peanut butter or nut butter, and since Peter is allergic to peanuts, we stick with sunflower butter, so that's what I used. I also added vanilla, salt, a hell of a lot of brown sugar, oatmeal, and chocolate chips.

The result: about as delicious as it looks.

Eh. I will be honest, it was not terrible. It was not very good, either. Pros: somewhat sweet, lactose and nut free, lower calories than eating forty-seven cookies. Cons: tasted strongly of sunflower butter yet had a bland, funky undertone to it. It might be better with peanut butter but I will never know. It also had the consistency of thick, dense paste. Yet for some reason I stood at the counter and continued to taste it. Just checking for the fortieth time that it was still gross? I don't know, I couldn't stop eating it, even though I didn't like it.

I fed it to the Mister without telling him what it was. He said "yuck, what is this? Its gross."

Verdict: chickpeas should not be in a dessert.

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I haven't posted pics of the kids lately. Sorry, Grandma.

Princess cracks me up.

She's wearing the leg of a Buzz Lightyear costume on her head.

Apparently I've neglected the middle child, I have no pictures of him to share today.

One Room Challenge: pelmet fail

2012-01-25T06:00:00.004-05:00

In last week's moodboard, I had plans for putting up a pelmet with a greek key detail. I love the greek key detailing on these window treatments below, and figured I could easily do something similar.

Source: marcusdesigninc.blogspot.com via Lisa on Pinterest

via Little Green Notebook

I thought that a simple white pelmet with some colorful ribbon would be the right idea, especially since I felt that the prior window treatments were too busy and competed with the gallery of picture ledges. I used this tutorial to make the pelmet, which is fairly easy and cheap, seeing as it is foam board duct-taped together with fabric stapled to the back.

It appears I was wrong. I am not happy with the way the pelmet came out. It is too much white, and the ribbon trim is distracting. Please forgive the dark pictures, I cannot figure out aperture and I find this room really hard to photograph in the afternoon.

The squares appear to be different sizes, but I assure you, I spent much time measuring them and they are the same size. I will admit that one square is further in than the other.

My first mistake was using a ribbon that was too wide. I originally planned to do a square in all four corners, but in laying out the ribbon I could tell that a twelve-inch pelmet was too small for the medium size grosgrain ribbon I had on hand.

My second mistake was using a plain white fabric. The walls and trim are white, and the white pelmet is barely visible as a window treatment.

Are you getting the sense that I am already falling behind on the One Room Challenge of completing an entire room in six weeks? I think I am about to be voted off the island.

See everyone else's progress:

Saved by Suzy
Dutch.British.Love
Trapped in North Jersey
Nicole Scott Designs
Kim Macumber Interiors
Rue de Emily
The Pink Pagoda
refresheddesigns
Nana Moon Shop
Taylor Morgan Design
Insideways
My Crafty Home Life
House Four
Living Savvy
(A Lifestyle Thing)

red and blue

2012-01-23T16:08:00.000-05:00

This weekend the Mister and I went to Barnes and Noble by ourselves. I read the February issue of House Beautiful cover to cover, and it was full of good stuff. One house I loved was decorated by Lindsay Coral Harper, and two of the rooms centered around blue and red.

This bedroom looks so crisp and bold. How fantastic are those inlaid night tables?

via House Beautiful

This living room is lovely. I think the chairs are a bit on the boring side, but the rest of the room really hits it out of the park. I need a bamboo etagere and a blue velvet bench.

via House Beautiful

But what really looks lovely are the curtains. Look behind the chair and see the trim on the curtains--the blue banding with the red piping is just excellent. According to the article the curtains are made from a Kathy Ireland fabric.

via House Beautiful

Also according to the article, the painting over the fireplace is made of wax, which seems like a poor choice of medium over a fireplace, but I suppose if you are rich you can afford to replace melted art.

mentally redecorating the downstairs bathroom

2012-01-21T12:21:00.000-05:00

I'd love to redo (more accurately, "do" for the first time) my downstairs bathroom. Visually, this bathroom is nothing to write home about. It has dark hunter green floor tiles, white square-tiled walls, and a matching green accent tile about halfway up the wall. Everything in this bathroom is builder-grade and clearly meant for taking abuse in a rental house.

When we moved in I put up the aqua trellis shower curtain from our old apartment and called it a day, thinking I would figure out how to deal with that green later. I had thoughts about putting this shower curtain up, but that curtain was out of stock for a long time. Its back now, but I think we will move out of this house when our lease is up in a few months, so spending money on this bathroom doesn't make sense.

But that doesn't stop me from daydreaming, does it?

I think this Urban Outfitter rug, this Furbish ikat shower curtain (not available on the website, I took the picture from here), and this Etsy print would be fabulous. This combination would complement the green without having to actually find items that contain hunter green.

What room are you daydreaming of redoing?

I can't shower ever again.

2012-01-20T09:28:00.000-05:00

I have reached the point where I cannot shower, even for a short amount of time, because something will happen in that 30 seconds. Like the intense need for a piece of Laughing Cow cheese, and a child sitting inside the fridge.

Decluttering: the basement workbench

2012-01-19T05:30:00.008-05:00

As you've seen many times before, here is my basement workbench (in the far back, behind all the junk in the front). Note the chandelier, the windshield wiper fluid, Ikea Ribba picture ledges, a suitcase and 400 other pounds of detritus.

I have zero desire to spend any money on redoing this area, as we are moving in six months (hello, rats!), and this type of organizational stuff won't move with us. My goal was to clear off the top of the bench, and get all the tools sorted and in one place.

Slowly but surely I worked my way down the bench. I made a scrap wood/Ikea Ribba picture ledge pile in the corner. I put the chandelier out on the front porch for donation; it gives a nice Tobacco Road feel to our curb appeal. I put the suitcase back with the other suitcases.

Then I went piece by piece, sorting all the tools, screws, nails, and odds and ends into different categories. I used cardboard boxes and plastic bins we had on hand. This took about 3 hours.

There is shelving right behind that pole to the right, which is why there aren't any pictures of the bench head on. Please forgive the flash photography, as my basement doesn't get much light, especially when I am taking pictures at 10:30 pm.

There are eleven bins, separated into a box of hammers, leftover Ikea screws, furniture casters, brackets, curtain paraphernalia, a million boxes of screws in packs that you buy from Home Depot, a separate bin of loose screws (SO MANY SCREWS), various other junk, and two plastic thingamajigs that have little drawers, which contain tools separated by category.

Below the workbench are a rubbermaid bin of cleaning supplies, a rubbermaid bin of tools like drills and saws, and a rubbermaid bin of home decor items not currently being used. Surprisingly, I threw out or donated very little; it was just a matter of organizing what was there. It would be helpful if I could find my label maker so I could label all the bins. For now I will probably buy a pack of sticky-notes.

Behold, my NINE hammers.

I'm pretty sure there are two more hammers in the junk drawer in the kitchen.

I am making headway. I have cleaned at least 11 percent of the basement so far. I will assert dominion over the other 89 percent eventually.

One Room Challenge

2012-01-18T05:30:00.001-05:00

When Linda of My Crafty Home Life invited me to join in a blog challenge of redoing a room in my home, I thought, hmm, I have just the room! My dining room has never really felt right. Yes, I know I just finished it like three months ago. I did it wrong. Now I'm redoing it.

It currently looks like this:

There's two problems with this room. First, this room is always cluttered. The overall sense in this room is one of "stuff". The curtains feel crowded. The picture ledges, although one of my favorite things in the room, also contribute to the sense of "stuff". I took the curtains down this weekend, and already the room feels more open.

The other major problem in the room is the color scheme. I tried to make it "coordinate" with the rest of the downstairs. And it does. But I think I'd rather it coordinated differently. Although I love the pale Gossamer blue on the back door, on the china cabinet it just seems....meh. It has no punch, no verve, no get-up-and-go. Bo-ring. I stepped out of my comfort zone of jewel tones...and I got something I don't particularly like. I don't hate it, but I don't look at it and think ooh! either.

Last problem: we are moving when our lease is up in June, so I am reluctant to do anything in this room that is not free or can't come with us. My budget is miniscule, except for the hardware I splurged on from Anthropologie for the china cabinet.

Here's my moodboard. If you remember my old moodboard for this space when we first moved in, you might think this is a bit redundant, and I probably should have followed it the first time around.

The Richloom Lucy Eden fabric will be covering up the glass in the china cabinet. The china cabinet will be painted a deep, cobalt blue. The mother of pearl and gold knobs from Anthropologie will replace the long skinny hardware, although the drawer pulls will be staying.

For the windows, I took down the curtains, and will be putting up pelmets with a greek key trim. I have some white fabric left over from another project, and red ribbon, so this project should be inexpensive.

I have a brown chair that will be getting a makeover, probably in yellow.

I plan to make some silhouettes, and an as-yet-undetermined piece of art for over the sideboard, perhaps something like this colorful woodblock piece.

Follow along for the next six weeks as I and fourteen other bloggers complete a one room makeover. Check out all the other rooms:
Saved by Suzy
Dutch.British.Love
Trapped in North Jersey
Nicole Scott Designs
Kim Macumber Interiors
Rue de Emily
The Pink Pagoda
refresheddesigns
Nana Moon Shop
Taylor Morgan Design
Insideways
My Crafty Home Life
House Four
Living Savvy
(A Lifestyle Thing)

Decluttering: more of the basement

2012-01-17T08:16:00.001-05:00

I am slowly but surely chipping away at the basement.

The area at the bottom of the stairs--like everywhere else in the basement--is a place that we walk down and drop stuff.

There were bins of swimsuits, bins of curtains, art, toys, more curtains that should have been in the bin of curtains, side tables, a box of expired medicines....all in a three foot space along the back wall.

I packed up all the curtains and put them back in their appropriate bins in the garage. The art also went back to the garage with the rest of the homeless art. The toys were also packed in a bin of extra toys in the garage that I keep for a rainy day. (Notice a shifting of mess from one area to another?) The medicines were disposed of.

I cleared out all the way to the workbench. The little wooden box on the bottom right is meant for donation, and the box above it is still full of medical apparatus like nebulizers and dispensers and thermometers that I can't find room for in the linen closet. That medical box is also stuffed with a bag full of food meant for donation to a food pantry. And on top of that bag is a pair of yellow lamps that I am waiting for warm weather to continue spraypainting.

On the left, we have a plastic bin full of last year's filing, and a diaper box full of this year's bills waiting to be filed in a new bin that I have not yet procured. I would like to get some filing cabinets for this spot. My filing system needs an overhaul, but since one two-drawer filing cabinet costs about $150, I am scouring craigslist to find some cheap ones. Until I find two cabinets, the bills will sit in that cardboard box.

You watch, slowly but surely everything in the basement will end up in the garage.

Next up is the workbench area. This is the area most in need of organizing--I know that we own at least five hammers, and a large selection of nails and screws, but who can find anything in that layer of chandeliers, furnace filters and windshield wiper fluid? I know that we are moving when our lease is up in June, and I am reluctant to invest any money in an organizing system that I cannot take with us, so this is the area that stumps me.

Edited to add: I'm linking up to Pancakes and French Fries William Morris Project.

public service announcements, resolutions so far

2012-01-12T13:03:00.000-05:00

PSA #1: Lactose free mozzarella exists!!
Last week, while grocery shopping in the dairy aisle, I picked up a package of shredded Cabot mozzarella cheese. I love Cabot because their cheddar cheese is lactose free, and is one of two lactose-free cheeses I am aware of. (The other is Bel Gioso gorgonzola; weirdly, their small packages in grocery stores do not say lactose free, but their large bulk packages at Costco do.) I flipped over the back and read the label, because no food enters my house without us reading the label for Peter's food allergies.

Unbelievably, the mozzarella cheese was LACTOSE FREE. This is incredible. I have never found a lactose free mozzarella, and I have searched for years. I have not had a lasagna or a pizza in the past ten years, as I avoid foods that give me spectacularly adverse gastrointestinal effects. (As an aside, every Friday night I order a large plain pie for the kids, and a small white pizza with spinach and tomato with cheese only on half for myself and the Mister (the Mister gets the half with cheese), and despite the fact that I have ordered this pizza every single Friday night for the past SIX MONTHS from the same pizzeria, I still get questioned on it--"I don't understand, you want cheese only on half? Why would you do such a thing? That's really weird? Why order a pizza at all?" Every. Single. Time.)

It is not listed as lactose free on Cabot's website, but the packaging says "0 grams of lactose per serving." This probably means that a few servings might have a small amount of lactose, but a serving size is 1/4 cup.

Anyhoo, this opens up a wide world of homemade pizza and lasagna and general cheesy goodness. A world that has been closed to me for the past decade.

So, I decide to give up pasta and bread and the next day the universe shows me that I can have pizza and lasagna again. I'm guessing this is a test. But I freely admit I have no internal fortitude; we had baked ziti last night for dinner.

It was delicious.

PSA# 2: You need a Zoku pop-maker!
We recently bought a Zoku pop-maker and it is awesome. We avoid a lot of ice cream and frozen dessert products because they are generally produced in factories that also process nut products. This sort of sucks for Peter, because he has a big sweet tooth. The Zoku pop-maker allows us to make our own popsicles at home, including milk-based ones. Its also just a cool product. You keep the base in the freezer, and when you want a pop, you pull it out, pour liquid (like fruit juice, or milk) into the base, and five minutes, voila, you have a frozen popsicle of your chosen flavor.

Its also simple enough to use that a first grader could use it on their own.

(Neither Cabot nor Zoku has paid me in any way for these endorsements, I just really like them.)

PSA #3: Google Friend Connect going away!
Are you aware that Google is getting rid of Google Friend Connect March 1st, 2012, for non-Blogger sites? It will be continued a few months longer for Blogger sites, but by the end of this year it too will be folded into Google+. Thus, that little sidebar that shows how many followers you have is going away. Presumably all those blogs you follow as a follower will also disappear out of your reader. I find this...annoying. I guess I will have to figure out how add an RSS feed and subscribe by email to my blog. Ugh, technology.

PSA #4: Let me email you when you leave a comment!
Is your email address tied to your Blogger ID, so when you leave a comment on my blog I can hit reply and email you back? You can easily set your ID to be tied your email address, and if you are afraid of tying it to your everyday email address, you can set it to a different one. Just go here for the instructions with big pictures if you use Blogger.

**************

How I am doing on New Years's non-resolutions:

1) I set up a playdate for Greg. Greg told me who he wanted to have over, and at school I walked up to the child's grandmother (who doesn't speak English), handed her a note with an invitation to come over and our phone number, and that night spoke with the child's parents. Playdate will commence this Friday afternoon.

2) I installed the computer-holding shelf on my treadmill and have been using the Rosetta Stone while exercising every morning. It makes my half hour of exercising go quickly. The shelf is unfortunately a bit high--the straps tie around the center bar, and our center bar is low, thus dragging the shelf higher--but since I don't need to type, just see the screen while walking, the shelf works fine for me.

3) Cookies, I cannot quit you. As I'm typing this Peter is hanging over my shoulder, asking "when you finished that we make cookies PLEEEEEEEASE??????"

small changes in the living room

2012-01-11T09:41:00.000-05:00

When I traveled to Japan, I stayed with a family whose living room had no furniture. Against one wall stood a very low table that was turned up on its side, and at dinner time they would pull the table out into the room, sit on the floor, and eat. When they were done, the table went back up on the wall.

Imagine how much time the mom spent cleaning that living room. Pretty much none is my guess.

Every so often, I get a yearning for that living room. Not that I want to sit on the floor, but I tell you, the spaciousness of that not-so-big room, and the lack of time spent cleaning up crap is quite tempting. Lately I have been on a kick to simplify and declutter. I've decided I'm also taking out large furniture if I can. More room, less furniture, less junk, less crap! To that end, I've made some changes in the living room.

Last we saw the living room, it looked like this:

I relegated the antique secretary between the chairs to the basement. Although the storage was nice, it felt like too much furniture in that spot. It also didn't allow for a table between the chairs, so you could put a drink or your book down.

We moved the curtain rods up from the middle of the molding, and lengthened the too-short curtains. It looks so much better.

I also pompommed the lampshade, and brought up the bamboo table from the basement. Funny enough, this was the original arrangement when we moved in.

On the other side of the room, I took down the ceramic pieces, cleared off the top of the console (talk about a crap repository--normally it is piled high with mail and tons of toys and junk), and moved the brown chair to the dining room. (What brown chair, you are asking. Look again at the first picture, there is a brown chair that just fades into the brown bannister. If I owned this house I would paint that bannister immediately but alas, it is not to be.)

The small ceramic pieces on the wall just felt too much. The picture ledges in the dining room, although awesome, have a "lots of small things together" vibe, and the ceramics added to that. It was just feeling junky on the main floor. I packed all the pieces away and put up a mirror. I kept out three of the ceramic pieces and moved them to over the keys.

I also picked up a few new tchotchkes. Target has some really great stuff right now--I picked up a pair of foo dogs for $20. I cleared off the second shelf of the bookshelf to make way for the new items.

I also found a flying pig at a thrift shop for $4, so I brought it home and spraypainted it gold. I am taken with the notion of spraypainting everything in this house gold. Dare me, I'll do it.

My sister Sarah picked up the cutest snakeskin covered c-table at Homegoods, so when I visited her I insisted that we go get one for me.

Previously, the far end of the sofa, away from the door, was the best place to sit because that end had a side table that one could put down a drink, etc. As you can see there is no room for a side table on the other end, because the door is right there. Thankfully, this little c-table curves over the couch and allows you to sit at that end AND have a drink. Problem solved! And its snakeskin! I want to spraypaint the legs gold.

Last but not least, I put away the brown chevron pillows on the couch and pulled out a little pillow that's been in storage for a bit:

The sofa was recently a victim of a vicious drive-by yogurting, so I feel like a deep cleaning of the upholstery and the rug would also not be amiss.

pompom lampshade

2012-01-10T09:53:00.000-05:00

I have a lovely yellow lamp that I bought years ago in Macon, Georgia. When we lived in the apartment I really wanted this lampshade, but instead DIYed the lampshade with a yellow bamboo fabric, and it looked nice:

Unfortunately, it was involved in a minor mishap prior to moving and I took the fabric off the lampshade to wash it. I washed it, and then.....I have no idea where that fabric is. Not a clue. I put it in a safe place, I'm sure. I have looked everywhere, but it hasn't shown up.

Since I can't find the the fabric to recover it, I took some pompoms--I love pompoms!--and glued them to the bottom of the shade.

Sophisticated? Not so much. But cute, sure! The bamboo fabric was my favorite, and if I ever find it again I will use it WITH the pompoms. Double the goodness!

You know you are kind of obsessed with pompoms when your husband stands in Target, picks up a lampshade and says "how about this one? You could pompom the hell out of it."

Lengthening curtains

2012-01-09T16:15:00.001-05:00

I finally got around to fixing the living room curtains.

When I bought our living room curtains last year, I bought a pair off Craigslist and a pair off ebay. One pair was 84 inches long, and the other pair was 96 inches long. Since our windows in the apartment were fairly low set, the 84 inch curtains fit just fine. I hemmed the 96 inch pair by tucking up the excess fabric and pinning it with safety pins, and I put that pair behind the chair in the living room so it wouldn't be seen.

The windows here are much higher, and the 96 inch pair fit much better. Except....I only have one 96 inch pair. So I hung the curtain rods at the middle of the molding so the curtains didn't look like floodwater pants. I hated it from the moment I did it; it looked dumb. And then we left it like that for six months.

Last week we moved the curtain rods up. That looked soooo much better. Except for the pair that were 12 inches too short.

I had some teal fabric left over from the lengthening of the shower curtains in the dining room, so I pulled some of that out. I had one piece that was 11.5 inches wide and about 98 inches long. This was a weeeeee bit short, but its what I had, so I used it.

I ironed the blue fabric and then cut it to the width of the curtain. This is the lazy man's decorating; as you can see in the picture I didn't even take the curtains down to do this.

Then I took iron-on hemming tape and ironed that onto the back side of the curtain. There are different types of hemming tape; some kinds are like a sticky tape that you sandwich between two pieces of fabric and iron. This kind is like a roll of tape with backing; you iron the backing onto the first fabric, peel it off, then iron the second piece of fabric onto the sticky piece that's on the first piece of fabric. I prefer the sticky tape kind but I bought a large amount of the wrong kind a while ago so I'm using what I have.

Sadly, it appears I did not take a picture of the next step--put the second piece of fabric on top of the sticky tape, then iron it down.

And voila, a lengthened curtain!

Astute readers and people good at math will notice that I did not have quite enough fabric. People who sew are thinking, were the edges left raw? Did you hem the sides and bottom??

No, that's why it's lazy man's decorating. I left the sides and bottom raw and unhemmed, because I didn't have enough fabric. For the second curtain, not only were the sides left raw and unhemmed, but I was also nearly a foot short of material, so I took another small scrap, trimmed it to the amount I needed, and ironed that on too. Then I draped the curtains so that the vertical line scrap was at the back of the fold.

Note that if you planned on having a curtain with finished edges, you would want to cut the fabric at least an inch longer than the curtain on both sides and the bottom, so that you have enough fabric for hemming.

Considering that these curtains are in a corner, partly behind a sofa and chair, and aren't really seen that much, I'm fine with the unfinished edges that aren't visible unless you are inspecting them close up. If this were my forever home, I'd probably invest in making both curtains the same length with matching fabric, and I'd probably pay someone to do it. As it appears we will probably move when our lease is up (have I told you about our rat problem?), I am disinclined to spend much money on decorating this house.

Not that I will stop decorating, because, hi, that's what I like to do. But I'm trying to do most of it with stuff I have on hand, or inexpensive fixes. I'm also looking for temporary solutions, so those solutions aren't always the same as what I would do if I were looking at the long term. Case in point--I now have two pairs of slightly mismatched curtains, since the 96 inch pair has the same material all the way to the bottom, and the 84 inch pair has blue material at the bottom. It's easily undone, however--just rip the blue material off and they are back to their original lengths.

Edited to add: linking up to Pancakes and French Fries William Morris Project.

I was in the shower for TWO MINUTES

2012-01-09T12:55:00.000-05:00

I personally feel that markers, even the washable kind, are the devil's own handiwork, and I never buy them. I also throw them out if someone brings them into my home. I have no idea where these two found a marker in the extremely short span of time I was in the shower. Or why they felt the need to deface themselves and the sofa.

starting on the basement

2012-01-05T23:01:00.002-05:00

In my decluttering project, one of the items was "deal with the basement." Unfortunately, I'd say that the basement is probably five or six zones of clutter and is well beyond what I can deal with in the hour or two between the kids' bedtime and mine.

This weekend I had the Mister start by clearing out the old fridge that was downstairs.

We bought this fridge from the previous tenants when they moved out. They offered it to us for a reasonable price, and we thought it would be nice to have an extra fridge in the basement for drinks and extra storage. Of course, it died three weeks after we moved in. Six months later, we are finally getting around to putting it out on the curb.

Its amazing how much bigger the space feels without that fridge. (Don't look at my laundry area. I said don't look! Why are you looking?!)

The second thing I tackled was the area between the stairs and the laundry. It had become a drop zone for crap. Although the entire basement could be considered a drop zone for crap. Here is the starting point, although there was EVEN MORE stuff there a few days ago that I sold on Craigslist.

Now, it looks like this.

Nearly everything sitting on the floor in that area was related to painting. I started by moving all the cardboard boxes to the recycle area. Then I took all the painting supplies and sorted them into bins. I also sorted the paint--spray paint up top, gallons in the middle, and supplies and samples (the cardboard box on the right) on the bottom. Most of the gallons in the middle were left by the previous tenant, and I will be leaving them there when I move out. My landlord is particular about not throwing things away.

Somebody has a problem with hoarding Benjamin Moore sample pots.

Actually I had wayyyy more than this but I pared down when we moved six months ago.

I started with the easy area. I knew this wouldn't take that long if I just sat down and did it, plus, I used cardboard boxes and plastic bins I already owned to sort stuff, so the whole thing was free to me. The workbench area (the area across from the fridge in the first picture above), on the other hand, is going to be an all day job.

The workbench area, honestly, will require some kind of sorting apparatus, like small bins and plastic hooks on a pegboard and I just don't want to spend any money on this rental. I know that we suffer from the "fourteen hammers" syndrome, where you can't find one when you need so you go buy one, but if you just cleaned your basement and a few junk drawers you'd find that you already own fourteen hammers. And a bunch of screwdrivers. And fourteen levels. And fourteen boxes of drill bits. And fourteen measuring tapes. And so on and so forth.

Then there is the "I don't have room for this stuff in this kitchen" area across from the workbench. Plus the "where am I supposed to store decor stuff I'm not using but don't want to get rid of" area. And the "87 boxes of crap from my old office that I won't throw out" area. And the "oh, I might use that someday" area.

Its a slow process, folks. But its a start

Edited to add: I am linking this post up to Pancakes and French Fries William Morris Project.

yellow bookshelves, Atlantic article

2012-01-04T22:36:00.000-05:00

I love this bookshelf from the September issue of Better Homes and Gardens designed by Elaine Griffin. Love it. Love the happy yellow, the colorful selection of books, the tchochtkes, the art. It is such a cheerful little vignette, isn't it?

via Lili & Mae

I feel the need to have something similar in my house. Hmm, what can I paint bright yellow....

****************

I came across a funny piece in The Atlantic that you may have already seen, seeing as it was written in 1997. I didn't have children in 1997 so I may have skipped it at the time (and if you don't have children now you might not find it funny either), but I for one am constantly cleaning cereal and Ritz crackers off my carpet (and yelling "we eat at the table NOT IN THE LIVING ROOM" even though no one listens to my mighty pronouncements), so the opening lines had me at hello. Here are a few snippets:

"Of the beasts of the field, and of the fishes of the sea, and of all foods that are acceptable in my sight you may eat, but not in the living room. Of the hoofed animals, broiled or ground into burgers, you may eat, but not in the living room. Of the cloven-hoofed animal, plain or with cheese, you may eat, but not in the living room. Of the cereal grains, of the corn and of the wheat and of the oats, and of all the cereals that are of bright color and unknown provenance you may eat, but not in the living room. Of the quiescently frozen dessert and of all frozen after-meal treats you may eat, but absolutely not in the living room.

...

Leave the cat alone, for what has the cat done, that you should so afflict it with tape?

...

Sit just as I have told you, and do not lean to one side or the other, nor slide down until you are nearly slid away. Heed me; for if you sit like that, your hair will go into the syrup. And now behold, even as I have said, it has come to pass."

resolutions for 2012, or lack thereof

2012-01-03T21:48:00.000-05:00

I took a look at my resolutions for 2011, and I...well, lets just skip right along to 2012, shall we.

Be warned, this post is a long bout of indulgent navel-gazing. I will get back to decor stuff eventually....and OMG while I am proofreading this I think something just SCREAMED IN PAIN in my kitchen. Oh hell no I am not getting up to look. Take a hint, rats, get the HELL OUT OF MY KITCHEN and in return I will stop trying TO KILL YOU. 2012 is not living up to its promise to bring Teh Awesome so far.

(Five minutes later: the Mister investigates and there are no rats in the traps. No idea of what the screaming was. A battle cry? A call to arms?)

I do not really feel up to making resolutions this year. I've read around the blogosphere many good resolutions, and many people picking beautiful words to inspire their year. This is great. But I feel that resolutions and inspirations have the best chance of actually being fulfilled in an atmosphere of emotional growth. And I am so not in a place of emotional growth right now. No, I am swimming against the tide of life right now, bobbing and swirling and clinging to my old habits like Kate Winslet holding onto that wooden door while the Titanic went down.

(But don't worry, I haven't lost my flair for a dramatic turn of phrase.) (I should take the time to reassure everyone that the Mister and I are not having marital problems, no one is dying of a dread disease, etc. We are just dealing with some situations out of our control that I spend much time worrying over.)

Instead of resolutions, I have a small list of things that would be nice. Some of them I started awhile ago, and want to continue with. I am not starting afresh, out with the old, blah blah blah. I am continuing with things that need to be done.

If I were to tie all this together, I think my overarching hope for this year is to take care of myself.

1. I'd like to take more care of my physical appearance. I don't mean just lose weight, although that is a part of the plan. No, I mean that I dress like a slob. I am the perfect candidate for What Not To Wear--"but its comfortable!"

I was never a fashionista, but in the past few years I've really let things slide, for two reasons. One, I--this is embarrassing--have sensory issues. I hate wearing jeans, or fitted pants, or wool, or dress shoes, or....well, I have WAY too many clothing rules to go into here. I have a selection of jeans and slacks that I CAN wear if the occasion calls for it, but rest assured that I will spend the ENTIRE TIME they are on my body wishing I could take them off, or discreetly scratching my waist, or adjusting the seams. Or I might just avoid the event entirely, in order to avoid having to wear the dreaded appropriate outfit. I live in sweatpants.

(You know you have married the right person who really understands you when he looks at you all dressed up in fancy clothes and says "Wow, you look beautiful! Why don't you pack some sweatpants in the car for later, just in case.")

Secondly, I have been pregnant or nursing or both for the past six years. The past six years has been a nonstop cycle of get pregnant, put on 50 lbs, give birth, try to take off 50 lbs, nurse nurse nurse, achieve pre-baby weight, hey look we are pregnant again! Lather, rinse, repeat. My clothing choices for the last six years have driven by someone having access to my chest at all times, and refusing to invest in clothing while knowing I was in a cycle of gaining and losing weight. This is how I wore a winter coat with holes in it for five years.

This past October I started renovating my winter wardrobe. I donated everything that was too short, too small, too big, worn out, ugly, or I just don't wear that sort of thing even though I wish I did (ie. button down shirts). This left me with one pair of sweatpants and two shirts. I bought all new undergarments and donated all of my nursing bras (yes, six months later I was still wearing them because replacing all your undergarments at the same time is expensive). I am now maternity clothing free, woohoo. I bought 5 pairs of black cotton sweatpants. (I went to Catholic school and am unable to dress myself in a wide and varied wardrobe; I prefer to have limited, uniform-like options.) I bought 9 good quality long sleeve crewneck tshirts. I bought 4 new sweaters. I bought 9 pairs of socks. I bought new sneakers. I either donated or trashed nearly everything else.

I recognize that a uniform of black cotton sweatpants and long sleeve crew neck shirts under a sweater is not a huge step up from stained sweatpants and nursing shirts. However, the new clothes are clean, are at the appropriate length for my legs instead of the shrunken highwaters I have been wearing for the past three years, do not yet have holes in them, and are currently relatively unstained. I am never going to be someone who wears cute, fashionable clothing every day. I can, however, wear clean clothes that fit, so I think I am living up to my goals here.

What remains to be replaced--shoes. I have extremely wide feet and a complete inability to put up with uncomfortable shoes. Uncomfortable shoes = 99% of the offerings out there. I have a pair of black flats and a pair of brown flats that I bought the week after Greg was born that I have worn nearly nonstop since. They reached the end of their useful life a few years ago, but I haven't found anything that doesn't hurt to replace them with, so I continue to wear them, battered though they are.

I am, for the first time in a while, happy with the way my hair looks. Although Peter told me I should cut it because it gets in his mouth when he crawls into bed with me in the morning. I threw out all of my (five-years-past-expired) makeup, bought new makeup, and I am trying to wear it on Sunday date nights with the Mister. I will never be a "must go put my face on" kind of girl, but I am trying.

We bought a treadmill a few months ago, and I walk on it six days a week for a half hour in the mornings. I don't realistically think I can do much more than that at the moment.

2. I want to give up flour and sugar. I've been thinking about this for a while, and have made several false starts. I'm not trying to go strictly gluten free, but I would like to give up bread, pasta, and cookies. I have made great strides in giving up bread already, I'd say that I eat it less than once a week. I eat pasta about once a week, when we get together with my inlaws. (This could change on our trip to Italy.) My major stumbling block is cookies.

Cookies, oh, cookies. I am the kind of person who Eats Her Feelings, and my favorite form of eating my feelings comes in cookies. The Mister can tell how stressed I am by how often I bake cookies and how many I eat in a particular night. He dubbed the chocolate chip cookies as "the agita cookie." Life has been stressful the past few months, and the agita cookies have been a near constant presence.

Gretchen Rubin of the Happiness Project has a great discussion of the difference between abstainers and moderators. Moderators are the kind of people who say "oh, just have one instead of seventeen!" and then get all surprised that you don't. Abstainers go cold turkey. Moderators also get all pissed that you'd rather just go cold turkey than show some willpower, as if its a personal affront. I am an abstainer, I'd rather just quit the cookies, because I know I won't eat just one.

Anyways. I need to lay off the cookies. This was one of last year's resolution fails, so clearly I am not a moderator. I gave up cookies for about thirty-six hours last week. In that time I did not eat any cookies, but I did inhale an entire bag of Tostitos as a substitute.

3. I need to make more of an effort to be more outgoing. My personality is hermit-like. I like being at home. I hate parties. I hate meeting new people. I get all tongue-tied and "uh....uh..." and usually say something dumb. But, I need to get better at setting up playdates for Greg.

When Greg was in kindergarten last year, I could identify almost all of the parents of kindergarteners who came to pick up their kids at school. Here, despite there being at least 100 kids lining up in our spot every day, there's maybe twelve parents that come every day? I can't tell if the first graders are simply getting themselves to and from school, or perhaps going to the wrap-around program, but the upshot is there are not many parents that I've seen picking their kids up.

This has made it difficult to arrange playdates for Greg. Its bad enough I have to walk up to a stranger at school and be like "hey, my kid likes yours, can we have a playdate", but without the parent being at school to approach, now I actually have to pick up the phone and call a complete stranger. UGH UGH UGH. I am ashamed to admit I have completely avoided this, with the result that Greg has not had a playdate with anyone from school this year.

I am generally okay with my hermit-ness, but it's not doing my kid any favors, and thus I need to overcome it. I would rather give up cookies voluntarily than attempt to make a new friend, but guess what, this year I'll be doing both.

I don't know if I feel like being more outgoing on a global basis. I think I just want to set up more playdates for Greg. Big girl panties are on! Grabbing the phone! Calling strangers! I can do this!

4. I want to learn to speak Italian. We are planning a trip to Italy this summer and I'd like to be able to at least have a rudimentary conversation with my husband's family. I've bought the Italian Rosetta Stone and installed it in my computer. I ordered a shelf-like contraption that will allow me to use my computer on the treadmill every morning, because that would get me a consistent half hour of practicing speaking Italian every day.

5. Last but not least, I am trying to get to the bottom of my neck and back issues. I have had a doctor appointment with a specialist, and have to get an MRI. Hopefully I will figure out why I keep spraining my neck and can do something about it.

So, there you have it. Take care of myself. Items three and four don't seem very "take care of me-ish" but I assure you that having unhappy kids will make you unhappy, and not being able to talk to anyone for a month in a foreign country is also not conducive to happiness, so I am folding those under my "take care of myself" umbrella.

There are plenty of other things I want to do, like going back to work eventually, and hopefully I can turn my attention to those items once life settles down. I can always make April or May resolutions, right?

my sister Sarah's living room

2012-01-02T19:56:00.000-05:00

I finally got down to my sister Sarah's house last week to take pictures. This fall she moved into a small townhome after living in a corporate hotel for a long time, and had very little furniture, so we were decorating the apartment from almost entirely from scratch. Craigslist, Ikea and family donations were what we based the design on. You can see the original moodboard here.

Here is her living room. I wish I had better pictures (don't you hate when you take pictures and go to put them on the blog and then notice a dog and babygate and blown-out sunglare in the picture but since its two and a half hours away you aren't exactly going to go drive down and back for a reshoot), but these will have to do.

We hung the gallery wall of song quotes with command strips. The frames are the Ribba frame from Ikea, filled with song quotes that Sarah printed off on plain white paper in a large font.

The walls were already painted this medium beige color, which happened to work really well with the rusty red sofa she already owned. I love love love how the gallery wall around the tv came out. (Ignore the giant speakers hardwired into the ceiling.) The one thing that is missing is I bought Sarah a five arm arc lamp off craigslist, that is currently living in my garage. Hopefully she can come get it soon, since it doesn't fit in my minivan with all my kids for me to drive it there.

Her bedroom is also nearly finished. I just picked up the world's ugliest lamps today at Goodwill that I plan on transforming, and so hopefully the room will be done very soon. Here is a sneak peak of her favorite accessory (that would be the dog):

2011 Meme

2012-01-01T23:43:00.002-05:00

The same meme as last year, as taken from Jive Turkey. I cannot figure out why the spacing and formatting on this is so wacky, so enjoy the huge spaces/no spaces format. If you did this meme as well, tell us in the comments so we can read yours.

1. What did you do in 2011 that you’d never done before?
Take a design class at Parsons. Live with rats.

2. Did you keep your New Year’s resolutions, and will you make more for next year?
Um, no I did not. And yes, I probably will make new ones.

3. Did anyone close to you give birth?
No, no babies this year.

4. Did anyone close to you die?
No, thank goodness.

5. What places did you visit?
We vacationed in Costa Rica.

6. What would you like to have in 2012 that you lacked in 2011?
I'd like to move back to south Jersey.

7. What dates from 2011 will remain etched upon your memory, and why?

February 14, the Mister bought me a sofa
July 1, we moved
November 22nd, a really sucky day

8. What was your biggest achievement of the year?
uh....I don't think I had any big achievements this year. I started a design course that I was really interested in taking but ended up quitting it 3/4 of the way through, so its not exactly an achievement. I've lived in a house with rats for the last two months without being admitted to a mental institution, so I guess that's an achievement.
9. What was your biggest failure?
Sigh. I did not go back to work. I did not kill all these damn rats. I cannot quit the cookies.

10. Did you suffer illness or injury?
Yep, sprained my neck for the four thousandth time.

11. What was the best thing you bought?
A sofa and some chiang mai dragon pillows.

12. Whose behavior merited celebration?
The Mister, my biggest source of support.
13. Whose behavior made you appalled and depressed?
Eh, not going there.
14. Where did most of your money go?
moving, the kids, eating out
15. What did you get really, really, really excited about?
My sofa! My chiang mai dragon pillows! Yes, I am a shallow, materialistic person. Noted. Moving on.
16. What song will always remind you of 2011?
Anything by Adele. Dynamite by Taio Cruz, as my kids request it 40,000 times an hour whenever we get in the car. Countdown, by Beyonce, because ooh I think I love that boy, do anything for that boy.
17. Compared to this time last year, are you:
a) happier or sadder? Sadder
b) thinner or fatter? hahahaha, fatter, without a doubt. I was shopping for elastic waist pull-on pants earlier this evening.
c) richer or poorer? richer

18. What do you wish you’d done more of?
Sleeping, playing with the kids
19. What do you wish you’d done less of?
Spent less time worry about stuff I have zero control over. Eating less cookies.
20. How did you spend Christmas last year?
Last year? In 2011 or 2010? The answer is the same, regardless--Christmas Eve was the Feast of the Seven Fishes with the Mister's family, and Christmas Day is spent with my family.
21. Did you fall in love in 2010?
No.

22. What was your favorite TV program?
Downton Abbey, Fringe, Justified. Love me some Timothy Olyphant.
23. What did you do for your birthday in 2011?
Had some cake with the kids and my mother in law.
24. What was the best book you read?
Well, I reread the Harry Potter series eight times this year.
25. What did you want and get?
A sofa, and chiang mai pillows. I notice a pattern here.
26. What did you want and not get?
Escape to South Jersey.
27. What was your favorite film of this year?
The only movie I saw this year was Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part II, so I guess that makes it my favorite.

28. Did you make some new friends this year?

Nope.
29.What one thing would have made your year immeasurably more satisfying?
Moving back to South Jersey. Going back to work. Making some friends.

30. How would you describe your personal fashion concept in 2011?
Same as 2010--Dowdy. Frumpy. Sweatpantsy. However, I am in the midst of overhauling my wardrobe, and while I would never describe myself as fashionable, I am attempting to weed out the raggedy, dumpy, paint-covered outfits and replace them with items that are at least clean and don't have holes in them.

31. What kept you sane?
This blog. Decorating. Reading all of your blogs.

32. Which celebrity/public figure did you fancy the most?
That Ryan Gosling tumblr is awesome. (Although the tumblr itself is safe for work, the name of the tumblr starts with the F word, so maybe not safe for work?)

33. What political issue stirred you the most?
The ridiculous property taxes paid by New Jerseyans (do any of you readers in the rest of America pay $12,000 in property taxes for a three bedroom, 1 bath crackhouse on an eighth of an acre?) and the dearth of good school systems paid for by those taxes.
34. Who did you miss?
Again, all of Burlington and Camden County.

35. Tell us a valuable life lesson you learned in 2011.
Worrying over stuff you can't control just makes you crazy and sad.

Eleven Favorite projects of 2011

2011-12-30T21:38:00.000-05:00

This is not an exhaustive list of everything I did this year, just the stuff I liked the best.

In no particular order:

1. Turquoise Rast/Espana dressers:

2. Painted striped curtains:

3. Curtains from duvets:

4. Curtains from shower curtains (no, I never did get around to posting that tutorial), and picture ledges in dining room:

5. Chiang mai dragon painting:

6. Shoe memento box:

7. Ribbon trimmed roller shades:

8. Dvd cover art:

9. Pink ombre Malm dresser:

10. Black sideboard with gold lionhead pulls and nailhead mirror (see here and here):

11. Book ledges in the kids' room at the old apartment:

blog traffic, Downton Abbey, woodsmoke, my milkshake

2011-12-30T16:30:00.000-05:00

Recently my Blogger stats started showing freakishly high page view stats. At first it was double my normal traffic, then triple, then five times, and I'm afraid tomorrow my blog will explode. Google Analytics shows the same amount of traffic I usually get. This problem far exceeds my tech knowledge.

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I started watching Downton Abbey last week, and became so engrossed in the series that I stayed up last night till midnight (!) to watch the last episode. I was SORELY DISAPPOINTED. There was no conclusion, no resolution, no denouement, no climax, not a single damn story line was resolved. This led to much consternation and asking of why did you let me stay up so late if you knew it was going to end that way because hello, its midnight, I could have saved all this non-resolution for tomorrow night and gotten a few more hours of sleep.

The next season starts January 8th. I am giddy like a schoolgirl at the thought. You should watch too if you haven't already.

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Last year I blogged here about how the smell of woodsmoke freaks me out, since we have lived near three houses that have burned down and our house nearly caught fire last year and oh yeah our furnace caught fire while we were sleeping. I am terrified of our house burning down, and the merest whiff of smoke is enough to send me into a "what is on fire????" frenzy.

The town we currently live in is not located in the wilds of Maine or the hinterlands where one might need a constant roaring fire. However, it seems that everyone here has a wood-burning fireplace, and they are all having wood-burning fire parties every damn day, because my house REEKS of woodsmoke. REEKS, I tell you. All day and night I am constantly jumping up to perform an investigation of what is on fire. Is it my furnace? The dishwasher? The oven? The toaster? Why does this smell seem strongest in my (poorly weather-sealed) basement? I have smashed my nose against the furnace grate on more than one occasion, sniffing deeply, like a cokehead on a bender without any of the gratification.

I can smell woodsmoke when we approach our town on the Garden State Parkway, for pete's sake. For the love, people, stop with the damn woodsmoke. I am entering nervous breakdown territory.

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Today I was driving on 95 on the way to my sister's house. I was wearing my granny sunglasses and driving my minivan. Two moderately attractive truckers kept honking and waving and blowing kisses at me.

Let me repeat--I am a nearly-middle-aged woman wearing grandma sunglasses and driving a minivan.

Oh yeah. My milkshake brings all the boys to the yard.

2011: year end recap (life)

2011-12-29T15:07:00.000-05:00

Here's a summing up of what happened in my life in 2011. This is more of a "life events" wrap-up, rather than a decor list. As I'm re-reading this recap, it seems that I blogged mainly about decor this year, since there are not many "life" posts. Which is kind of weird, since I think of this blog as sort of my personal diary.

I will do a separate decor wrap-up post as well.

January through March: we vacationed in Costa Rica, our furnace caught on fire, Peter was potty-trained, I took a course on blogging, I got a new sofa. I feel that getting a new sofa was the crowning glory of the first half of 2011. And the last half too, actually. That says something about me as a person, probably.

In January, I was still in the grip of baby fever. We need a fourth child! I've always dreamed of having four children! Every psychic I've ever been to (not that many) has said I will have four children! We have a table that seats six, but there are currently five of us--SOMEONE IS MISSING! The Mister was smart, he kept saying, "of course we can have another child! Lets just wait a few months, we have this and that going on, etc etc." And now I've changed my mind (see July below). He is smart, that one.

April through June: The last week of June the Mister got a new job. That job is a "good" job in many respects, but the hours are not great. The Mister leaves the house at 7:30 am and returns home around 10 pm. Meh. We all miss the Mister.

Also in the months of April through June, we decided to move out of my in-laws' house and rent a house of our own. I spent a few weeks dreaming up new designs for the new house. This is the first house I ever sat down and thought about how I wanted each room to look as a cohesive design, rather than a piecemeal "I like this, and I already have this, what can I do with that". (I'll include the mood boards in the decor wrap-up.)

July and August: we moved into our new house and I spent a lot of time decorating it. (Too many posts to mention, see the decor wrap up that I haven't written yet.) That was lovely and pleasant and I really enjoyed it. We also survived Hurricane Irene with little damage.

I stopped nursing the Princess the day we moved into the new house. This worked really well. This also cured me of my baby fever. For the past six years I have been in baby mode--I have been pregnant or nursing or both for the past six years. I've also been either gaining 50 lbs while pregnant or trying to lose 50 lbs while nursing. All of a sudden, I am no longer blinded by all things baby. There is a light at the end of the tunnel. I could take a long weekend vacation without my kids, or wear clothing that does not allow instant access to my chest, and huh, whaddya know, freedom from being tethered to my kids 24-7 is hovering nearly in my grasp.

I think I am done with having babies. (Putting this in writing is pretty much asking the universe to surprise me, is it not?)

September through December: You might have noticed (or not) that I went from daily blogging to much more sporadic and slightly cranky posts. That's because Stuff I Won't Be Blogging About happened.

I started but didn't finish a design course at Parsons. (Refer to the above paragraph.)

Peter started preschool, which despite their lip service to being nut-free, were not very vigilant about what they fed Peter, and thus I pulled him out of school in November. We also discovered that Peter is environmentally allergic to pretty much everything in the world, which we think is the cause of his three-year-long sinus infection. We hope.

Aaaaaaaaaand now we are finishing up the year with a rat infestation.

So! That's (mostly) what happened in my life in 2011.

2012 had better bring the awesome.

Merry Christmas! Check out my awesome present.

2011-12-25T21:29:00.000-05:00

I hope you all had a merry Christmas. We certainly did. I received a number of lovely gifts, but one present really made my day. We spend a fair amount of time driving up and down the NJ Turnpike, since our parents live on opposite ends, and I swear, the sun is ALWAYS in my eyes, regardless of time of day or direction headed. (The laws of physics do not apply to me.) I would love a pair of prescription sunglasses, but those are a couple hundred dollars and I've just never prioritized them as a must-have item.

Of course, the Mister saved the day--he gives such good presents. (Remember the time I got him a belt and he got me a sofa?) I told him how much the sun bothered me, so the Mister got me these sunglasses that go over your regular glasses, like 90 year old women wear:

My ride down the turnpike was much more comfortable without the sun glare. I look stylish, yes?

Now I just have to buy a Buick.

new header

2011-12-23T11:50:00.000-05:00

If you stop by the blog, you might have noticed that I have a new header and a new layout. If you're in a Reader, click on through and check it out.

Thais Helena from House09 developed my header, and she was awesome. I nitpicked it quite a bit (this blue, no wait, try this blue, eh, how about green, and what about that font....) and she was incredibly patient and creative. Reasonably priced, too! Check out her stuff here.

Tenement living

2011-12-22T22:43:00.000-05:00

I am as tired of writing about rats as you are of reading about it, probably. If only these rats would leave so we could move on to nicer topics, like redecorating my dining room.

Last night, I timidly opened the cabinet under the sink, to see if any more rats had been caught in the traps. I noticed a trap lying on its side, and then, horror of horrors, I noticed a rat. A live rat. I screamed. The rat screamed. I slammed the door shut. The rat began to make a thrashing and banging sound that continued for about an hour. I surmised, although I did not peer back in to check, that the rat had caught one of its wee limbs in the trap and was attempting to shake it loose. Or gnaw off its own arm. Regardless, I was not giving the rat the chance to spring at me and eat my face if I was wrong.

Eventually, my landlord came over and removed it. However, this afternoon as I was folding laundry, a rat materialized on the second floor of the house, and OH HOLY HELL NO. Just...NO. We will have a very Merry Christmas in our vermin-riddled house. Maybe Jacob Riis can come take some pictures.

Gah.

rats, plural; sugary vegetables; sick kids

2011-12-20T20:21:00.001-05:00

I am writing this perched on my sofa, listening to the veritable army of jackhammering rats in my kitchen walls. Apparently Rat the First had friends and family.

I am deeply distressed about this.

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I am searching for recipes for stuff to bring to various holiday get-togethers. The von Trapped family has a number of food allergies (we are a bundle of fun to host for dinner! Invite us over so I can give you the long list of stuff you may not cook with!) and so I try to bring a dish that ensures that there is at least one thing we can eat wherever we are.

I am undecided on Christmas Eve desserts; I would like to attempt a flourless chocolate cake because I love to eat them, but anything involving a water bath sounds finicky and prone to easy ruination, and I am doubtful that skim Lactaid milk will be an appropriate substitute for heavy whipping cream. Still working on that one.

I have seen various "substitute a can of pumpkin for eggs and oil in a box cake mix" recipes floating around blogland, and I made one today. It was.....ok, I guess. It was moist (yes, to all the people in my life who have rules about the word "moist", I just used the word "moist" and might do so again, because truly, this cake was MOIST). It was also dense and....I dunno, just thicker and wetter than a regular cake, although not with the delightful texture and taste of a brownie. It was just moist. It was not horrible but I do not feel the need to make it again.

One thing I will probably be bringing to my grandmother's on Christmas Day is an apple/butternut squash/sweet potato....thing. Casserole? It is super delicious, easy to make, and also moist, but in a deliciously good way.

I like to buy bags of cubed butternut squash and cubed sweet potatoes from Trader Joe's, because I am all about lazy cooking. I toss half a bag of each into a 9x13 baking pan, and freeze the rest (and usually make a second batch later in the week). I chop up two or three apples (this recipe is going to annoy the hell out of my sister--"why can't you use precise measurements, for pete's sake, what the hell is a pinch and is it two apples or is it three apples, how do you know which is right, TWO OR THREE???")

Right, so you have a pan full of chopped up butternut squash, sweet potatoes and apples. Toss in half a stick of butter, and some cinnamon, ginger, allspice, and whatever other spice you might toss in a pumpkin pie. I would use nutmeg if we had any. I sprinkle about two heaping spoonfuls of brown sugar over top. Bake at 375 degrees for an hour. At the half hour, take it out and stir it around a bit, then pop it back in.

The finished product looks, I will admit....brown. But its a delicious brown! A gluten free, nearly lactose free, nut free brown!

I am not a food photographer, but I promise, if you like sweet potatoes and butternut squash and apples, this is delicious. Truly. Although my kids won't eat it.

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My kiddos have been sick for the past week. Perhaps we could just skip the November to May sickfest we have every year.

Princess has a tougher constitution, and while just as sick as the other two, plus she has molars coming in (sigh), she is steadfastly refusing to nap or sleep, ever. This is a joyous occasion. I should probably set her loose on the rats; she'd kill them in no time.

Girlfriend does like her band-aids. Don't worry, they are merely decorative, placed by Princess herself, no boo-boos underneath.

Girlfriend is also suddenly obsessed with Strawberry Shortcake (note the band-aids), to the detriment of all the Minnie Mouse stuff I bought for Christmas.

500th post, Christmas Challenge concluded, Kenny Rogers mondegreens

2011-12-19T18:51:00.000-05:00

Yesterday's dead rat post was my 500th post. Here at Chez Trapped we bring you plenty of quality programming.

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Thanks to all who participated in my Christmas Challenge. There were 40 comments, the most ever on any post I've ever had. I sent $100 each to Feeding America and the Center For Family Services. It seemed like a nice round number. I don't have a screen shot of the receipts, you'll just have to take my word for it. When I made the donation to Feeding America, the receipt noted that since each dollar feeds 8 people (how do they do that??), that $100 donation just fed 800 people. Woot woot!

Thanks again, everyone. If you are still in the giving spirit, you can go over to Pseudostoops, who has a similar charity drive, where each day this week she will give 50 cents per comment to a designated charity. (You don't have to do anything more than leave a comment--you can even say "comment". Super easy.) So go! Say "comment"!

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Its December 19th! I note that I am running out of time to send a holiday card. I should probably try and take a picture or two of my kids.

I'll get right on that.

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I am nearly done my Christmas shopping. I have gifts for everyone except for my mother, who isn't getting anything because she won't tell me what she wants. Usually my sisters and I chip in together for a gift for her, but this year my sisters took her to see Kenny Rogers, and I wanted to go but couldn't, so now I have to figure out a gift to get her by myself.

Did you listen to Kenny Rogers when you were growing up? His greatest hits album was on repeat in my mother's car; we listened to that incessantly. For years I thought that Lucille had four hundred children and a crop in the fields. Apparently she actually had four hungry children and a crop in the fields.

I was also terrified that, like the Gambler, the best thing I could hope for was to die in my sleep. My grandmother taught me the "now I lay me down to sleep" prayer with the last two lines of "guard me all through the night and wake me with the morning light." But my eight-year-old self always added the "if I should die before I wake I pray the Lord my soul to take." Just in case.

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Cookie Monster playing Jingle Bells has been very popular in this house.

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And how is your month of December going?

We live in the 1970s NYC sewers.

2011-12-18T17:35:00.000-05:00

Well, the bad news is the rabid squirrel in my kitchen walls is not, in fact, a squirrel, rabid or otherwise.

It is a RAT.

There may have been some hysteria on my part when the exterminator announced that there was a rat in my walls.

The good news is that the bear trap did its job a few minutes ago. THE RAT IS NO MORE. I was sitting on the sofa with a sick Greg, watching Bey Blade Metal Masters while the Mister had taken the other two grocery shopping, when there was a THUMP from the kitchen sink area. I froze, debating whether to keep my terrified self planted firmly on the sofa (you all KNOW what happens to the hot chick who investigates a loud thump in a horror movie), or if I should go shove the ottoman in front of the sink so that the rat could not accidentally writhe its way onto my kitchen floor in its death throes. The terror of possibly seeing the rat won out and I dropped the ottoman in front of the sink. Then I promptly texted the Mister and told him to come home and investigate what had just happened under the sink.

Happily, the Mister came home after about ten minutes, and our time alone with the intruder was limited.

Thank heavens, because I will tell you all that I was losing my everloving mind at the thought of rats in my house. Please please please do not let said rat have friends and neighbors intent on vengeance and retribution.

HALP--send guns and ammo

2011-12-16T09:14:00.000-05:00

Last night the rabid squirrel was jackhammering away in the kitchen for over TWO HOURS. I think it is eating the house from the inside out. Of course, I was home alone with only sleeping children for company the entire time. I awoke this morning to this:

and this:

That would be a half-eaten sponge and three bear traps with the bait stealthily eaten, in a flagrant middle finger gesture to the human inhabitants of the house.

I believe this means that the rabid squirrel has effected entry into the interior of the house.

This is COMPLETELY UNACCEPTABLE.

Here is where some people would be all "bring it on like Donkey Kong, oh its already been BA-RAW-TEN". But I am a person who prefers to enjoy wildlife from behind a thick pane of glass, and I really just want this DAMN SQUIRREL THE HELL OUT OF MY HOUSE, never to darken our door again.

HALP.

large art of a nun's head?

2011-12-15T23:13:00.000-05:00

Today Christine from Bijou and Boheme was featured on Amber Interior Designs, and she wrote about her favorite five living room designs. One of the designs really caught my interest:

Picture via Elle Decor

That giant picture of the nun's face over the sofa.

How do you feel about this? Could you live with the steely eye of Sister Mary-Sylvia gazing upon you while you watched tv or made out with your boyfriend on the sofa below? (Although from the angle of the picture Sister Mary-Sylvia appears to be looking at herself in the mirror, or out the window.)

On one hand, I am fascinated by the art and wish I had a better picture of it--I like the enormous scale, the moody colors and the composition. The painting is by Tony Scherman; you can see more of his artwork here. Unfortunately this painting is not on his website, but all of his painting seem to have this dark yet slightly irreverent feel to them.

On the other hand, I tend to shy away from buying art of faces or people; I don't want them looking at me. The first house that the Mister and I lived in together was a nine-month winter share on the Jersey Shore that came fully furnished. There were a number of (ahem) paintings by the owner hanging on the walls.

One of the paintings was in the dining room. Over the dining table there was a 48 x 60 portrait of a woman, without clothing, sitting at that same dining table, eating oysters. (!!) After a few nights of eating under that view, Miss Naked Lady went to live under the bed in one of the many guest bedrooms for the remainder of our time there. (I have rewritten this paragraph about a hundred times now; I want to keep it safe for work and not offend anyone, but after so many years of reading romance novels I'm having a really hard time not using more colorful descriptors to describe that painting. )

So what do you think? Could you live with the giant nun? Share what pieces of art you've been liking (or hating) lately.

to use or not to use expensive fabric

2011-12-14T20:21:00.001-05:00

One more day to comment on my Christmas Challenge if you haven't already! If you have, thank you so much.
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I just linked up my to the Nester's Christmas Tour of Homes and Thrifty Decor Chick's Christmas Tree Party. There are plenty of people who have put way more effort into decorating than I with my Christmas Bush, so check it out.
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I have been contemplating taking down my dining room curtains, and putting up pelmets instead (that's a post for another day, but the gist of it is it is SO CLUTTERED in there). Since I don't want spend any money on this project, I planned on using fabric I already have. I have about 2 yards of this leftover fabric that I used on my mother-in-law's dining room chairs.

I had no particular love for that fabric--its pretty, I liked it fine, it had exactly the right colors I needed in my mother-in-law's dining room, and it was $4.99 on Fabric.com, so it fit the budget perfectly. I only ordered 2 yards of it, but I think Fabric.com must have made a mistake, because they sent me wayyyy more than 2 yards of it. Probably closer to four yards. So there is a bunch left over.

The fabric would be a good match for my dining room as well. It has the teal and deep reds that are in the living room (and the kitchen), so it would flow nicely without being matchy-matchy. However, I just read this post on Matters of Style Marketplace, and discovered that it is a to-the-trade fabric that retails for about $99 a yard. I thought perhaps since it was on Fabric.com perhaps it was a knock-off, but I looked at the selvage and it is a Pierre Deux for Kravet fabric.

Its not exactly like I found myself in possession of $600/yard Fortuny fabric, but still, its an expensive fabric, and its unlikely that we'll be staying in this house past another year. Pelmets are designed to a particular window's measurements and thus aren't the most portable window treatment. I can't decide if I should use this fabric for the window treatments--after all, I paid $10 for it, and its free to me now, and I want to repaint the china cabinet red, which will go nicely with the fabric (but not the current curtains).....or if I should save it for something else.

Thoughts?

the Christmas blooper reel continues

2011-12-13T22:13:00.000-05:00

Two more days to comment on my Christmas Challenge! Help me help others, pretty please.

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In years past, we have taken the kids to see Santa at the Mister's office on Christmas Eve (see last year here). It was nice--the line was usually short, you could take your own pictures, it was free, Santa's elf was a pirate in another life, and there was a party in the cafeteria in the morning. Sadly, the Mister no longer works at that office, so we had to find a new Santa to visit.

Today we went to see Santa at the mall. It was not a "get dressed up fancy and have your picture taken" visit; we merely wanted to tell Santa our wish list, and eat at the Cheesecake Factory afterwards. I did not have any plans to pay a zillion dollars to have my dirty children's pictures taken, and I had no desire to fight over wrestling them into nice outfits. So, my children looked like filthy ragamuffins; I didn't even wipe the chocolate off Peter's face before we left.

We got there and waited on line with dozens of children smartly dressed in their holiday finery. We were not even remotely dressed in holiday finery. We couldn't even be described as clean.

After waiting on line about forty-five minutes, we were finally let into the Winter Wonderland area, where it was fake-snowing. The kids had a ball picking up fistfuls of fake snow and throwing it up in the air. When it was finally our turn with Santa, the kids looked as though they had a long battle with psoriasis, and the psoriasis won.

My dandruff-covered children sat on Santa's lap for pictures. Greg happily sat next to Santa, talking his ear off. Princess grudgingly sat on his lap, but looked at Santa suspiciously and was ready to bolt at a moment's notice. Notice Peter trying to get the hell out of Dodge.

At least I removed my painting sweater before going to the mall. Dinner at the Cheesecake Factory was pretty tasty, too.

Chiang mai master bedroom finished

2011-12-12T20:11:00.000-05:00

I think its finally finished. My chiang mai dragon pillows are here, which is the final finishing touch. (For now, anyways. When is a room ever totally finished?)

I think I've talked just about every item in this room to death. The only things not discussed so far are the new indigo blue duvet and the rug. The blue duvet came from The Company Store. We have a humongous brown flannel pinstripe blanket that is super-warm, but brown flannel pinstripe did not lend itself to this design, so I tried a duvet. I am normally a duvet-hater, but I am happy with this one so far. The ties in the corners that keep the blanket from sliding around make a huge difference.

Our old apartment had carpeting in the bedroom, so we did not have a rug for this room. A new 8x10 rug that would be almost entirely covered up by the king bed was not in the budget. Instead, I bought two 5x7-ish white flatweave rugs from Ikea ($80 total!) and taped them together with carpet tape. I am less than impressed with how they have stuck together--my side is fine, but the Mister's side always moves around, so it is on my list to get a large needle and some fishing thread-type-stuff and sew them together. Since that would involve moving a king bed in a 10x10 room, I have been putting that task off for a while now.

You can read more about pulling the room together here: the original moodboard, the evolution of the moodboard, the summer bedding version, headboard, Espana night tables, art over night tables, striped curtains, West Elm euro shams, lampshades, dressers, chiang mai dragon art.

Sources:
1. Headboard: Craigslist
2. West Elm bedframe
2. West Elm euro shams
4. striped curtains made from West Elm duvet
5. Company Store indigo blue duvet (The lightweight coral summer bedding is from West Elm.)
6. chiang mai pillows
7. Espana/Rast night tables
8. dressers: already owned, from a defunct furniture store
9. hardware on dressers and Rast night tables
10. jewelry box: garage sale
11. mirror: thrift store
12. Erslev rug, 2 laid together
13. Bamboo frames: thrift store
14. Chinese lion: Homegoods
15. Green vase: Crate and Barrel
16. lamps: Homegoods and Pottery Barn Kids years ago, spraypainted Krylon Navy Blue
17. lampshades: plain Target shades with blue grosgrain ribbon added

decluttering the attic playroom

2011-12-11T22:46:00.001-05:00

Edited to add: I have linked up to Pancakes and French Fries William Morris Project.

I know, I have fallen down on the decluttering job. I have barely touched the list; I keep looking at my kitchen drawers and console drawers and thinking, oy, I really should DO SOMETHING so I have something to blog about. And yet, I do nothing.

Since the donation pickup is tomorrow, I finally decided to do something this morning. I picked the attic playroom, since that had the largest number of items I wanted to get rid of. Remember how messy it was?

And now, here's all the stuff I got rid of. Two bags of trash, one dollhouse, two cardboard boxes of toys, one small table, and three pillows. At the very end is another cardbox box and trash bag filled with stuff that is going to cousin Denise and some of her friends.

I personally am fond of organizing toys by common themes, so not all of the cubbies and bins you see are full. Each bin has its own type of toy--like blocks, superheroes, big legos, medium legos, little legos, dinosaurs, Bey Blades, wooden trucks, etc.

When decluttering I pruned all the broken toys, the toys that were missing pieces, the noisy ones I can't stand to hear one more second, and the superheroes with amputated limbs. Sadly, Peter discovered the Handy Manny toolbox that plays mariachi music and rescued it from the donate pile. Then, as I was cleaning, I came across an entire box of toys I never even unpacked--ack.

So now its a bit cleaner. If only my children would actually play up there, instead of dragging the toys down one by one to my living room.

I also have a problem getting rid of books. I might think a book is dumb, or terribly written, or the cover is missing and the pages are ripped----but books are SACRED and I cannot get rid of a book. (This bookshelf is in addition to the cram-packed bookshelves in both the boys' room and Princess's room. We have many books, this family.)

You might notice a second dollhouse up in the corner of the above picture. My mother gave me not only my old dollhouse, but my sister's as well. Although I had high hopes of participating in the I'm A Giant challenge, I....am not. Because I have not touched that dollhouse except to put it on that table. Next year, maybe.

I have a month before the donation truck comes back to my neighborhood, so the basement might get some love before then. Its unlikely, but possible.

beribboned lamp shades

2011-12-10T21:45:00.000-05:00

Thanks to everyone who commented so far on my Christmas Challenge so far--if you haven't yet, you can still help me raise money for charity here.

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I've finally finished decorating the master bedroom; the last thing I had wanted to do was change the lampshades on the bedside table lamps. Although the mismatched lamps are about the same height, the lampshades were different sizes and shapes, and one was really stained from living in the garage for a while. (I did not take a closeup of that.)

I had these two matching lampshades in my basement heap o' crap--they were previously on the lucite ball lamps on my desk, when we lived in the apartment.

Here they had not found a home, partially because they were trimmed with a greeny-turquoise ribbon that just wasn't the right color. (They weren't the right color in the apartment, either, but I never got around to returning them before we moved, so into the basement they went.)

They were the right size shade for the lamps, and they were free, so I figured I would make them work somehow. My first thought was to simply paint the turquoise ribbon navy. I got a $2 sample of paint from Home Depot and got to work.

This sucked. I did not tape it off, and I did not have the steadiest hand, and I messed it up. It also looked dull and matte. So, I ripped the painted ribbon off.

I rummaged around in my stash of ribbon and came up with a medium size navy blue grosgrain ribbon. A hot glue gun and twenty minutes later I had two navy beribboned lampshades.

I would not say that I had the steadiest hand on this endeavor either, but I did not care enough to rip it off and painstakingly try to make it even. There was an episode of The League and a chocolate cake calling my name, and I had expended all my crafting effort for the day.

Next up, my chiang mai pillows finally arrived! I'll be doing a post on the finished master bedroom soon.

Christmas Challenge: help me help others

2011-12-07T22:52:00.000-05:00

My sister pointed out that I have not posted at all this week. I guess that's true, if you don't count Sunday as a part of this week. I'm having a hard time getting motivated to do much of anything lately. I haven't even tried to get the kids into a picture for Christmas cards. If you are expecting a Christmas card this year you might be sorely disappointed.

Since I can't seem to get going, I've decided to make you do the work. Its Christmas, damnit. So here's a challenge for you, invisible internet friends. For each comment on this post, I will donate $1 to Feeding America AND to The Center For Family Services.

Food and families are the two areas I tend to focus my charitable donations on. Feeding America produces 8 meals with every $1 you donate. As of 2010, more than 1 million people in New Jersey live in food-insecure households. Forty-two percent of that number are children 18 and under. I should make an eloquent plea here, but like I said, I'm all out of ammo lately, so--hungry kids is just not right, and you can help me do something about it.

The Center for Family Services is a great charity in the southern NJ area that helps families get back on their feet, be it through job training, rehab services or foster care. I like the family focus that they have; it doesn't matter how much money you throw at children's services, if the family they live in is unstable and unable to support them, the kids will be at risk. There are a number of children at their shelters every year at Christmas who do not have family available to buy them gifts, or buy them basic necessities. The kids who are at the shelter write down their Christmas requests, and their lists are sometimes heartbreaking--last year the overwhelming requests were for underwear and toiletries. If you are an 11 year old kid and someone is going to buy you a gift, you should be asking for the latest ridiculously overpriced toy, not clean underwear.

There's 49 of you following this blog, if everyone leaves a comment that's nearly $50 to each charity. Tell your friends, tell your neighbors, link back if you want to. There's no "tweet this, be a follower, yadda yadda"...just leave a comment (just one per person). Say hi. Tell me your favorite kind of cheese, or what state you live in, or how you found my blog, or just say Happy Holidays.

I'll keep comments on this post open for one week, till December 15. If I hit 100 comments, I'll add another $100 to each charity.

Help!

A whole bunch of days of decluttering.

2011-12-04T22:01:00.001-05:00

In October, Jules over at Pancakes and French Fries did a series called 31 Days of William Morris, where she purged and organized and decluttered areas of her house for the entire month. If you are unfamiliar with William Morris, he is the source of the quote "Have nothing in your house that you do not know to be useful or believe to be beautiful," and the series was designed around bringing her home into line with that concept. It was a really great series. She is a fabulous writer and I enjoy everything she writes; she even makes organizing and decluttering sound interesting.

I doubt I will sound nearly as interesting, but I am planning on doing something similar. The sheer amount of junk in this house is giving me hives. I need to start afresh, to purge, to just get rid of some of this crap that is weighing me down.

For a few years now I have been tried to be frugal, to look first to what I have on hand for decorating projects. The downside of this mindset is that I never throw anything away, because I might need that someday. Wood scraps, oddly cut foam board, already painted canvases, art I no longer like, kitchen wares I have never used, clothes I no longer fit into....I have enough furniture in the garage to furnish a small apartment. I don't HAVE another small apartment that needs furnishing. This stuff needs to go.

While I am not yet approaching an episode of Hoarders (as long as you don't look in the garage), I feel that we just have too much crap. I have scheduled a charity pick-up for next Tuesday, and probably again next month (they only come to our area once a month) and my plan is to get as much stuff as I can out for donation. I would have a garage sale, but 30 degree weather is not that conducive for a garage sale, plus I don't have a spare weekend day to sit around on my front lawn this month. Ergo, donation.

The areas I plan to tackle:
1. The attic playroom
2. The Mister's attic office
3. The junk drawer in my bedroom dresser
4. Outgrown clothing for the kids
5. The linen closet
6. The kitchen junk drawer
7. The blue antique secretary
8. The living room console
9. The basement. Dear heavens, the basement.
10. The garage. Hahaha. Hope springs eternal!
This list may not sound like much, but I assure you that while I run a fairly tight ship in our first and second floor, the attic and the basement and the garage are a bit overflowing.

I leave you with a picture of the horrorshows I need to tame. The attic is going to be PURGED of toys. Purged, I tell you. Any ideas of where to donate used toys? It seems a shame to give them to Goodwill if I could give them to someone who might actually use them.

And the basement....I don't know if I have the willpower to do this space. Actually, I think I can pretty much guarantee that I will not be able to do the entire space in under a week. I'm hoping for at least a clear walkway to the laundry area.

Its 10 pm and I'm not running out to take a picture of the garage in the dark. I also don't want you all to think my family needs to sign me up for Hoarders.

Wish me luck.

Edited to add: I linked up to Pancakes and Frenchfries William Morris Project.

Behold, the Christmas bush

2011-12-02T13:44:00.000-05:00

As I mentally composed this post this morning, I was thinking I would start with yay, its December, thank heavens November is over because November really sucked for the von Trapped family, hopefully December will be much better, and this morning I ran over a railroad spike and got a flat tire and had to walk home from the repair shop so I'm thinking that perhaps the universe is telling me not to get my hopes up about December.

Last Sunday afternoon we went out to get a Christmas tree. At the first nursery, we were greeted in the parking lot by a numchuk-wielding teenager. Numchuk Boy followed us around nursery, inches from my elbow the entire time. The trees looked nice but they were $70 for a 5-foot Douglas fir. I thought that was insanely expensive, but could not shake Numchuk Boy long enough to whisper to my husband that we should go somewhere else. Luckily, the Mister said "This is expensive, we should go somewhere else."

At nursery number 2, no one was wielding weapons, but the trees started at $80. We need a small, skinny tree, and these were enormous. We left empty-handed out of that one too.

Third try--massive retailer Home Depot. Not supporting an independent nursery, but Home Depot has a 5 foot Douglas fir for $26. Huzzah, Christmas is saved!

In our living room this tree appears to be closer to a Christmas Bush--its about as tall as I am--but it seems more sturdy than last year's tree.

I had a pretty skirt around the Christmas tree but packed it back up after the children used it as a tent.

Naomi Stein's amazing house tour

2011-11-29T21:17:00.000-05:00

Design Sponge featured Naomi Stein's house today, and oh my heavens, it is delightful. There are two nooks that are just ahmaaaaazing.

I love how saturated the colors are in this blue office nook. The cobalt blue wall, paired with the hot pink parsons desk, is just fabulous. I foresee living in rentals for the next few years, so this beautiful collection of color won't be mine for a while, but when I buy a house I am going to go CRAZY with color and this will be at the top of my inspiration file. THE TOP, because I love it.

I don't know if I would be so bold as to pair the red stools with the cobalt blue and the hot pink--I don't know if I'd even be brave enough to pair the cobalt blue with the hot pink--but looking at this I am inspired to try.

The other fabulosity is this wall nook in the living room:

Both images via Design Sponge

That wall-paper is so colorful and glamorous, and the mirror just POPS. Oh, to live in a place where I can put up wallpaper without having to take it down at the end of our lease.

The entire home is gorgeous. You can see more of it on Design Sponge, or on Naomi's blog Design Manifest.

Ugly Sofa 5: The Opposable Thumb sofa

2011-11-28T22:06:00.000-05:00

The opposable thumb sofa is a lovely shade of band-aid, fleshy peach, and bends in both directions like opposable thumbs. It also helpfully contains a side table in the middle of the sofa, that's one less thing to buy.

As usual, $1000 total budget; $500 or less must purchase a 5x7 rug, one set of curtains and two pillows.

Rug, curtains and pillows: $489

1. Diva Ikat curtain: $70
2. maze rug: $399 (I REALLY wanted to use this rug, but at $499 it gave me $1 for a pair of curtains and pillows, stupid budget.) I gotta tell you, using a rug that is more than $300 really strains the $1000 budget. As you will see by the pillows.
3. pair of turquoise pillows: $20. Finding two pillows for under $30 is tough. If I had more money in the budget I would have gotten these Kelly Wearstler ones or these Celery Kemble ones.

Accessories: $526
4. leather armchair: $125 on craigslist
5. Jersey shore photo: $145. At 28x12, this picture is on the small side for a focal point, but hey, its Jersey shore, gotta REPRESENT. Plus its by an independent artist, I like to support them when possible. (This artist has some great pictures that are reminiscent of that Christian Chaize Praia Piquinia picture that's all over blogland, but way less expensive.) If you were of a mind to have a massive ocean photo by a mass retailer, this one from Ikea would also look nice in the room and is nearly the same price.
6. lamp: $25
7. Cocoa & Hearts painting: $95
8. set of light blue crocodile boxes: $46
9. snow leopard throw: $90. Everyone needs a leopard throw. Everyone.

Total: $1015

Glass/gold coffee table: $350. This is not even remotely in the budget, but lets pretend that a generous relative bought it for me.

I am grateful

2011-11-24T20:59:00.000-05:00

for these little stinkers. They are the biggest source of joy in my life.

They like to DANCE DANCE DANCE to Dynamite by Taio Cruz.

How about you put your hands up, all you single ladies?

Man, that smile gets me every time. So stinking cute.

And how cute is Princess's new haircut? (Not the easiest picture to take, she don't hold still for long.)

Happy Thanksgiving to you and yours.

a Thanksgiving meme

2011-11-23T18:53:00.000-05:00

Lawyerish put up a Thanksgiving meme, so I will play along. You should too!

1. Are you celebrating Thanksgiving at home or elsewhere this year? With whom will you spend Thanksgiving Day?
This year, we are off to the inlaws (about an hour away). In years past we did both sets of parents in one day (my parents are about two hours away), but that is just an insane amount of driving and eating, so after we had two kids we set a holiday schedule. For the past few years we have spent Easter at my grandmother's, Thanksgiving and Christmas Eve with my inlaws, and Christmas Day with my family. Still a fair amount of driving at Christmas, but its the best plan we've come up with.

2. What do you have for breakfast on Thanksgiving?

Nothing special. As a kid, we used to have pumpkin pancakes. However, we eat pumpkin chocolate chip pancakes in my house every weekend, so they are not exactly a special treat. I made the mistake of adding chocolate chips to the pancakes, and now my children turn up their nose at any other pancake, which is annoying. Breakfast here tomorrow morning will probably be cheese sticks and waffles and yogurt, just like every other morning.

3. Do you go to a Thanksgiving parade or watch one on TV?

No.

4. Do you serve appetizers, lunch, or snacks during the day (i.e., for the men to eat while they lounge around and watch football)?

Not really. The first course at my inlaws' is an antipasti, so there's not much served while we are waiting.

5. What do you wear on Thanksgiving?

Mah Eatin' Pants. Just kidding. I save those for the Feast of the Seven Fishes on Christmas Eve (now THAT is a ridiculously huge meal). I usually just wear jeans and a nice sweater.

6. What's your Thanksgiving table like -- do you use special plates/silver/glasses, etc? Do you have a centerpiece? A color scheme? Candles?

I just show up and set the table with whatever plates happen to be available. There are usually 11 of us attending, so we tend to go through all of the holiday plates plus the regular plates plus the dessert plates and all the silverware, since there are so many courses.

7. Do you serve buffet-style or family-style? What do you have to drink?

At my grandmother's house the meal is served buffet style, although everyone sits at multiple long tables. My father is the oldest of 11; there are 40+ people in the immediate family. There is a turkey, and everyone brings a side.

I grew up eating a Thanksgiving meal of turkey, mashed potatoes with mushroom gravy (omg my grandmother's mashed potatoes and my uncle's gravy YUM YUM YUM--I can't eat most dairy anymore, so that cuts off both items for me, waaaah), ham, lots of bread and butter, and green beans with eggs and breadcrumbs. Year after year.

My inlaws have a more traditionally Italian meal which happens to have a turkey in it; the meal is pretty big (not as much food as Christmas Eve, but still substantial) and is served in courses at the table. There may be the occasional crudite while waiting, but since the first course is an antipasti course, we usually don't have have snacks while waiting. We start with four or five small vegetable sides plus the finest cured meats and cheeses in the land, then a meat course (turkey and stuffing in this instance), frequently a pasta course (everyone eats lasagna for Thanksgiving, don't they?), a salad course, then dessert. Yes, the salad is served last. I love salad, so I have learned to pace myself so that I have room at the end.

I cannot discuss Thanksgiving at my inlaws' without noting that my mother in law makes a stuffing that is UNBELIEVABLE and constitutes the majority of my meal. Yes, I just eat plate after plate of the stuff because it is DELICIOUS. Thank goodness its only made once a year because its probably a thousand calories a spoonful. It is fresh sausage, mushrooms, onions, rice, a gallon of olive oil and 47 tubs of fresh parmesan. To die for, I tell you.

There is wine aplenty at both families. I don't drink anymore (yet another food group denied to me by my stomach issues), so I usually have water or Pellegrino if I'm feeling fancy.

8.  Once you're at the table, do you say grace or a toast or does everyone go around and say what they're thankful for?
Not at my inlaws, but I think its a tradition we should start now that the kids are old enough to participate. At my grandmother's we said grace and would go around the table and say what we were grateful for.

9. Do you have dessert right after the main meal or later on?
Holiday meals at my inlaws tend to be a few hours long, with a small break between courses. So we have dessert right after dinner, but dinner has been slowly creeping along for about three hours. I am bringing a lemon cake and a French apple pie this year.

10. What do you do with your leftovers?
Since I rarely host, I don't usually have the problem of what to do with the leftovers. We get sent home with a large tupperware container; with any luck it is 90% stuffing, which is generally gone by the time I go to bed.

11. I'm adding a question here--what's your favorite food item at Thanksgiving?
Mine is clearly the stuffing, followed closely by leftover turkey sandwiches.

inexpensive chiang mai dragon pillows, other tidbits

2011-11-22T16:30:00.000-05:00

Today I was reading Aesthetic Oiseau, which is a fabulous design blog (you are already reading it, right?), and she is partnering with the Etsy shop Aurelia for 20% off items in her shop. This is massively awesome because Aurelia has a number of designer pillows, including a PAIR of chiang mai dragon pillows for $80 after the discount.

Eighty dollars, peeps! That is an insane deal for TWO chiang mai pillows---look elsewhere on etsy, I have been pricing these pillows for my bedroom and I have yet to find them for under $200. I feel obligated to share this awesomeness with you all.

Check out Aesthetic Oiseau's blog and Aurelia's shop for details.

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I did not send out change of address announcements when we moved to this house a few months ago. It occurs to me that this is probably going to significantly impact the amount of Christmas cards we get this year.

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The rabid squirrel remains at large, despite the all-points APB put out on him.

decorative cell phone skins

2011-11-20T09:16:00.001-05:00

I have wanted an iPhone forever. Not because I actually want an iPhone--I just want a pretty case cover for my phone, and the covers are only available for iPhones and Blackberries. I have even contacted the sellers, and they say they are "looking into" making cases for other brands, but they just aren't available.

But!! Super exciting news! I have found an alternative for us non-iPhone/Blackberry-using consumers!

Instead of a hard case, these rubbery plastic skins are available for Android users, give the same look (and cost less too):

Or these chevron cases:

Peeps, there is so much design goodness here, I can't even decide what to get. Maybe I should order ~~five~~ two and switch them depending on my mood, like having lots of pretty purses to match your outfits. I carry the same purse, day in and day out, usually for about four or five years, but I feel that I could be persuaded to be the kind of girl who switches the skin cover on her cell phone two or three times a day.

Which ~~five~~ one should I get?

Art over night tables

2011-11-19T19:10:00.000-05:00

You might have noticed that above the new Rast night tables I hung some pictures.

Sorry for the glare, I found it really hard to get good photos without a reflection in the frame.

Ever since I saw the below picture, I have loved the way the pictures were matted, especially how the smaller horizontal ones were placed higher in the frame. I've wanted to do this in my own home but hadn't figured out the right spot.

Source: chictip.com via Dora on Pinterest

Enter these two gold bamboo frames I picked up at a thrift store. I thought they would work well with all the gold hardware and asian influence in my bedroom decor, but didn't know what to put inside the frames. I had a really hard time thinking of art that would play well but not compete against the chiang mai dragon art.

One day I thought, hmm, why not put some pictures of my wedding up in our bedroom? The Mister and I have nearly zero pictures of the two of us together, and I have about 500 proofs left over from our wedding pictures. The wedding proofs are 5x5 inches, so they would actually work pretty well matted like my inspiration picture.

And then I let the frames and pictures sit for weeks. I got an estimate at Michaels for about $35 for both mats with a coupon. And then every time I walked out the door, I thought hmm, I should take those to Michaels and get them matted.....

When I was at Walmart in the art supply section I looked at the flat canvases and thought (dude, I know, there's a lot of thinking involved in decorating my bedroom), what if I just mount them on top of the canvas, instead of getting them matted? The flat canvas was thin enough to put in the frame, had a nice texture to it, was plain white, and cost $8 for a 3-pack. And that's literally all I did--I put a piece of double sided tape on the back of the picture and placed on the canvas in the center near the top, then put it back in the frame.

And voila, nice art, some lovey-dovey pics of me and the Mister, and the total cost was under $25.

turquoise Rast-Espana dressers

2011-11-17T10:41:00.001-05:00

Ta-DA! The Rast dressers are now residing in my bedroom.

Update: linked this post to Primitive and Proper's Piece of Work Wednesday.

Nada: still no squirrel, no art, no stupid Rast dressers.

2011-11-15T21:35:00.000-05:00

The landlord brought over an exterminator on Monday while we were out. He placed three large traps under my sink and baited them with something that kind of smells skunky. They look like bear traps. I do not like to think that a) something that needs a trap that large is living my walls, and b) that the cabinet under the sink, the one that is easily accessible to my children, is the ONLY place you can put poison and giant snapping bear traps to catch this thing??? I had some words with the landlord and the exterminator when I got home, but apparently there they will stay.

So, to ensure that none of my children lose a hand or eat poison, and also to make sure that whatever giant animal does not choose to enter into the interior of my house while spasming in pain when the bear trap gets it, I've got this going on in my kitchen.

My Rast night table, covered by a towel to protect the top from water damage, since its in front of the sink. Yes, its ever so convenient to have a dresser in front of the sink. I'm also enjoying the basket of dishsoaps being out for consumption.

*********
I decided to let the boys make art for their room. I bought a two pack of 16x20 canvases at Walmart for $9, which is really cheap. However, be warned that the reason they are so cheap is that the canvases are stapled on the side, not the back, which makes them look really cheap.

Anyways, I came home, spread out a shower curtain on the table, put out some craft paints and let the kids go to town.

Princess, caught in the act of dumping water all over her painting. Perhaps I should have been paying attention instead of taking pictures.

I have no idea why anyone likes to do art stuff with their kids; I would prefer to poke myself in the eye with a sharp stick. Our art endeavors lasted twelve minutes, at the end of which Princess had dumped all the water bowls on the tables, canvases and floor, and the boys painted their entire upper bodies while I was cleaning up paint water.

The boys made some really cool paintings, at first. Unfortunately, they then smeared all of the colors given into one muddy greenish color and covered up their paintings with that.

Peter said "my painting was attacked by a whirlpool."

**********

I am working on these dumbass Dorothy Draper Espana knockoffs, but they kind of suck. The Rasts are built and painted a lovely greeny-blue Balmy Seas. Its the stencil that's killing me. So far, I painstakingly made a stencil from the front of a coloring book (only available cardstock in the house), used it for one drawer, decided it looked stupid, and threw out the stencil. Then I threw some expired raw chicken on top of it in the garbage.

After a few hours I came back to the drawer and decided it didn't look that stupid, in fact, I kind of liked it. Except that stencil that took me an hour to make now had salmonella all over it.

These night tables might be done by the New Year.

art for the boys' room

2011-11-12T22:29:00.000-05:00

The boys' room is nearly done. There is only one undecorated spot left, and it is this blank wall over Greg's bed. In fact, just this evening Greg said "why haven't you decorated over MY bed??" Guess I better get a move on.

I originally wanted to do a navy striped wall here, but changed my mind to navy striped curtains. That leaves me with a big blank spot in need of art.

I have two art inspiration pictures I've been thinking about while decorating this room. I feel like the boys' room has the same kind of vibe as this first inspiration picture (clearly not as much rough-hewn paneling, but the same general vibe). I love this room, and I think that this type of art would work well in the space. Its actually a Josef Frank fabric, presumably just stretched over a frame. However, most Josef Frank fabrics are about $270+ per yard, so I need something a little less expensive.

Source: shabbynest.blogspot.com via Lisa on Pinterest

The other inspiration picture I've had on my mind is the artwork in this Liz Caan-designed room. I haven't been able to find who the artist is--does anyone know?

Source: bazaarofserendipity.blogspot.com via Lisa on Pinterest

I'm sure that piece is out of my range, but it reminds me of otomi crewelwork fabrics made by the Mexican Otomi tribes. You can find these reasonably priced on ebay, like these:

They also come in single colors:

I could also just buy a large canvas at Michael's and let the kids go to town with some paint.

vermin, Fugees, the fiasco of fleece blankets

2011-11-10T22:30:00.000-05:00

People, I am a giant coward. I am also not a lover of animals. These two facts are pertinent when you consider the fact there appears to be a squirrel or some large heavy animal (raccoon???) living inside our kitchen walls.

This animal keeps making loud noises that sound like it is dismantling the interior of the wall, strip by strip. This only ever happens when I am at home, alone, at night. Like RIGHT THIS MINUTE. (Psycho killers I have a large rabid raccoon in my kitchen, do not make me unleash it on you.) Do I go to bed? Pretend its not happening? I have called the exterminator company that is literally steps from my back door and it has not returned my (frantic, increasingly desperate) calls.

If I wake up tonight with a raccoon in my bedroom I am going to be mighty pissed.

**********
Recently I was speaking with a young man who had been at the Victoria's Secret Fashion Show. On his phone he showed me a poor quality video of a man singing; when I asked who it was he said "its Wycleff Jean--he was a in a group called the Fugees, they were a big rap group--he's a big singer, he's on the radio."

Uh, yes, I have heard of this newfangled thing called the radio. Also, The Score was released in 1996, when you were in diapers, young man, and I had a copy on cassette tape, you might not know what that is, they were these little plastic boxes with a reel of plastic tape inside, you could record music on them? So, actually, I do know who Wycleff is THANK YOU VERY MUCH. Where is my cane, so I can beat you with it?

If he had said it was some guy from Kings of Leon, I probably wouldn't have been so insulted.

*********
Last week we started swim lessons for the first time. It was...oy, a post in itself. Lets just say that I have not been frazzled enough to cry in public because of my children's behavior in a very long time, but I came very very close that day.

Anywhoo, today was the second day of swim lessons, which went better, partly because I got a sitter for the afternoon so I could leave the youngest one at home. However, upon arriving at the pool, I discovered that I did not grab the appropriate bag full of towels and fresh underwear. No, I grabbed a bag of fleece baby blankets.

Fleece blankets, if you are wondering, are not very absorbent.

Peter stole someone else's towel for the second week in a row.

*********
That animal is STILL JACKHAMMERING IN MY KITCHEN. I am waiting for it to bust out of my dishwasher any second now. Someone please send an exterminator.

navy striped curtains

2011-11-10T07:32:00.000-05:00

Awesome, yes?

Originally I wanted to do a striped wall over Greg's bed, like this. However, this being a rental we plan on leaving in the next year or so, I didn't want to paint navy blue stripes on the wall and have to paint them back to white a few months later. I looked for a removable option, like these wall decals, but everything I found was at least $100+ worth of materials, and seemed like a lot of work (remember the Jets decal?) for something I would have to remove in a few months.

Instead, I decided to try striped curtains. West Elm now carries a navy striped duvet, so I could have made curtains like the ones in my bedroom. But it was still more than I wanted to spend.

I had white Merete curtains from Ikea that I was using in the boys' room. I bought a quart of Behr's Midnight Dream, and painted the curtains using this tutorial. I used regular paint, not fabric paint, and didn't add any fabric textile medium. My curtains were 72 inches long and I went with 8 inch stripes.

There are some cons to the project. It used an awful lot of paint. For four curtains I used a sample pot of paint, plus a quart, and I was scraping the bottom of the quart to finish the last curtain. I only got one coat on each curtain, and they definitely could have used a second coat. I'd probably go with a gallon if I were doing this again.

Even though I would classify myself as a careful painter, there are a ton of mistakes on these curtains.

Fabric is not a forgiving medium for painting; you can't wipe paint off if you get it in the wrong spot. There are a lot of splatters from the roller and a number of spots where I accidentally brushed the white stripe. Paint also makes the fabric fairly stiff. But the mistakes are not that noticeable from a few feet away, so we'll live with them.

All in all, though, I'm happy with how they came out. Since I already owned the curtains, this project cost me about $20 in paint, so it a pretty inexpensive way to get the look of wide-striped curtains.

zombie teachers, Rast night tables, no armoires

2011-11-08T10:57:00.000-05:00

I asked Greg what his substitute teacher was like.
"Well, she's young, and she's not a zombie."
.....uh....Right, then. Not a zombie is always a plus. Why do you think she's not a zombie?
"Her hair."

********
This weekend I picked up some Rast dressers at Ikea. I plan on using them as our bedside tables. As soon as I get around to building and painting them. I am torn between the ubiquitous mid-century modern stained-with-white-fronts that half of blogland has, like this one,

or a Dorothy Draper Espana knock-off that the other half of blogland has, like this one,

For the foreseeable future, they will probably look like this.

I picked up some paint chips at Home Depot. I put the paint chips on my current night side table, against the chiang mai dragon painting and the bedding it will be sitting next to. (I'm still looking for a navy duvet, but the summer bedding is coral.) Choices are turquoise:

or pink.

I think I am leaning toward the second blue chip from the right (Balmy Blue). Or the first pink on the left (Ballet Slippers).

Feel free to weigh in on paint colors (or vote for the white and wood combo), I am still undecided. Or I could do a citron color. Decisions, decisions.

********
While at Ikea, shopping for a coat armoire, the Mister put his foot down. There will be no ugly armoire in my living room. I will just have to suffer with 47 winter coats in a pile on my living room floor.

Jenny Lind spindle beds, or, Mama gets a new big boy bed

2011-11-07T09:25:00.000-05:00

Every night, there are at least four people in my king size bed. One of the reasons I keep spraining my neck is that I wake up every night with children laying on my head, across my neck, and kicking my spleen. Although my king bed is 76 inches wide, these kids allot me about six inches on it.

Peter has slept in a toddler bed for the past year. Around 3 am every night he comes into my bed for a snuggle. While I like a nice snuggle as much as the next person, I also like sleeping at 3 am. I would just get up and let Princess, Peter and the Mister just have the bed, but I find sleeping in a toddler bed just as neck-stiffening as being squished in my own bed.

This week I bought Peter a big boy bed. Now when he comes into my bed at 3 am, I give him a snuggle till he falls back asleep, and then I go sleep in his bed. I got mad problem-solving skillz, yo.

Greg also managed to break his Ikea bed frame recently, so we were in the market for two bed frames. A bed frame from Pottery Barn Kids or Land of Nod runs around $500 t0 $700, and I need two beds, so I have been looking around for cheaper options. Craigslist to the rescue! I found a pair of matching Jenny Lind spindle beds.

The boys give their new beds two thumbs up.

Ugly Sofa 4: Mustardy brown-yellow leather

2011-11-04T22:49:00.001-04:00

It seems the Ugly Sofa Series is becoming a Friday series. This week we have an overstuffed, giant poofy mustardy brown-yellow leather sofa. As usual, $1000 total budget, $500 or less must purchase a 5x7 rug, one set of curtains and two pillows.

Remember when I wanted to put curtains made from Richloom's Lucy Eden fabric in my dining room? I came across these Lucy Eden curtains on Etsy and am longing to take down my Target shower curtains and replace them with the pretty Lucy Edens. Oh well. I will have to give the to the Ugly Sofa series instead.

Rug, curtains, pillows: $506
1. Elite Blue wool rug: $156
2. Richloom Lucy Eden curtains: $250
3. Caitlin Wilson Hong Kong pillow: $55
4. red ikat pillow: $45

Other Accessories: $492
5. Posters (24x36): Monaco: $20, Annecy: $7, Soleil Toute Lannee: $20. I absolutely love vintage art, especially vintage travel posters. I would love to do a grid wall with twelve 8x10 frames and vintage travel posters in my own home. (This would take up my remaining $494 to do that here, but it would look really cool.)
6. lamp: $80
7. knitted pouf: $108
8. tray side table: $50
9. coffee table: $159
10. ceramic balls: $28
11. wood bowl: $20

Total: $998

Birthdays, belated.

2011-11-03T09:43:00.000-04:00

2011 will go down as the year I did not memorialize anyone's birthday on the blog. I have been so busy the last few months that while I have meant to put up posts about the kids....I haven't gotten around to it.

Princess's birthday was the day before we moved. Since our house was all packed up, the kids and I had a cake and presents at Grandma's that evening.

I, ~~being an idiot,~~ thinking I was Superwoman, said, oh, of COURSE we will have a party for her the following week! So seven days after we moved, we had a party at our new house.

There was a frenzied week of unpacking and cleaning and curtain hanging. The day of the party rolled around, I was STILL unpacking. But I finished in time for the party.

But.

I was so busy I forgot a few things.

Like food. And drinks. And plates and utensils. And cups.

There were about 20 people at this party. There were two pizzas, and no plates. Everyone was allotted one slice of plain cheese pizza on a paper towel. No drinks.

If you are part of an Italian family, you know that food and hospitality are inextricably linked together, and not providing enough food (let alone food of inferior quality) is an unforgivable sin. Bad Lisa. Oh, the shame.

Princess also did not like being the center of attention, and of the 40 pics I have of her party, they all look like this:

This picture pretty much sums up that party.

Five weeks later was Greg's party. I emailed my family to let everyone know there would actually be food this time. I am still exploring the catering options in this town, and while I would not say that the food was fabulous, there was enough and nobody went hungry. Sadly, I did not have enough coffee mugs and was roundly chastised. (My family takes their coffee drinking seriously.)

Peter's birthday was two weeks ago. I skipped the in-town catering options here and went straight to the Wegman's Catering department. Who doesn't love Wegmans? And I bought coffee cups.

I asked the kids to put the soda cans in the cooler, so they built a wall instead.

No party would be complete without something going wrong, so I helpfully made a cake but didn't buy enough icing. Here's the cake with two cans of buttercream frosting, and frosted around the edges with vanilla.

Better luck memorializing next year. I would like to do an individual post on each kid before the end of the year, but won't hold my breath.

If only I had a mudroom.

2011-11-01T21:00:00.000-04:00

One thing I loved about our old apartment was the foyer. There was a large, deep coat closet, and around the corner was a cube where each family member had a bin of gloves, hats and scarves. We also kept a shoe cubby there; it was out of sight but very useful. All of our stuff was corralled in the closet and cubbies, but close at hand.

Here, we do not have a foyer. Or a coat closet. Or a bin for each family member and their various wintry accoutrements. Cue the sad trombones. Here we have hooks. Hooks on the stairwell going up to the second floor. More hooks in the stairwell that leads to the basement. While I am not intrinsically opposed to hooks, I think they are useless for attractively storing large amounts of functional stuff in a main living space.

The hooks that line the basement stairwell mean that all our puffy winter coats are taking up alot of space in a narrow stairwell. If just one coat was hanging in the stairwell, it would probably not be an issue, but there are five of us, each of us having a heavy winter coat and lighter fall coat currently out, plus the occasional raincoat and umbrellas and five pairs of snowboots. I walk up and down that narrow stairwell at least once a day with a full laundry basket, and every single time I knock at least one coat off, or lose laundry out of the basket.

The hooks on the back of the door for the kids' coats and backpacks mean that its really difficult to close the basement door.

If I owned this house, I would enclose the front porch as a mudroom. That would solve all my coat storage problems. But, I don't own this house, and I do not plan to stay in this house for more than two years, so....an inexpensive, temporary solution is needed.

I do not have a solution to this mess. I have talked before about trying to implement some sort of DIY foyer with armoires, but honestly, there is not enough space in this room to do that. That sliver of space between the sofa and the door is where the armoire would have to go:

Our living room is small enough without cutting it in half with an armoire perpendicular to the door. There is nowhere in the main part of the living room to put a coat closet or armoire.

The only possiblity is to remove the brand new console table (!!! Lisa YOU JUST BOUGHT THAT FOR THAT SPACE!) and put in an armoire.

That would look terrible. No, really, that would be visually awful. It can't go in the corner because there the air return vent is there. (Anywhere in this house you might want to put furniture has an inconvenient air vent on the floor in that spot.) The tall antique secretary looked terrible in that spot, with the diagonal line of the banister cutting the piece up top (I don't have a picture of that, just one of the secretary in the corner.) Plus that would be your view two feet in front of you as your walk in the door--squat, thick, armoire shoved up against a stairwell. U-G-L-Y you ain't got no alibi, you ugly, you ugly, yo mamma said you ugly.

And yet I'm still considering it. It would corral all the coats and shoes behind a closed door. Sometimes sacrifices must be made. I could put it back in the garage when warm weather returns, and bring the console back.....my version of seasonal decorating!

If only I had a mudroom.

Halloween 2011

2011-10-31T21:53:00.000-04:00

Happy Halloween!

It was a bit chilly here today, everyone is wearing sweats under their costume, so we are all a bit bulky. There was also a mass revolt about wearing the masks for the costumes and a general attitude of "take the damn pictures already so we can go get candy."

Despite weeks of changing his mind, Peter finally settled on Optimus Prime. Actually, as of this morning, Peter wanted to be Thor, then Superman, and then after seeing a General Grievous costume at school, demanded to be taken to Target right now for a General Grievous costume. I stood firm, however, and said no, you can be Optimus Prime, or Black Spiderman, or Darth Vader--in short, you may be one of the costumes we have bought every time you have changed your mind in the three weeks. Optimus Prime won. Not without tears.

I love the fist pump Greg is doing for the awesome chocolate candy they got from this house, unlike the nut-free crap we hand out at home.

All three of my kids stopped in their tracks at this house, and said "ooooh, scary."

At this house, a woman was leaving as we were walking up the drive, and turned around to call in the door to her husband. She told us her husband was coming to the door with candy, and then got in her car. Greg said, apropos of nothing, "Well, at least she has a husband." Raising future feminists, right here.

When we got home, I confiscated everyone's baskets. With Peter's basket, I removed pretty much everything. (Literally, there were 3 items he could eat.) Not just the Snickers and the Reese's peanut butter cups and the Butterfingers that were actually made with nuts, but pretty much every chocolate item, because almost all chocolate candies are made on the same machinery as the chocolate with nuts. With Greg and Princess, I just removed the actual nut candies. Each child then turned in their "nut" candies for an equal amount of nut-free candy. (Great idea, Marisa!)

Since Peter loves Dum-Dum lollipops, I had bought a whole bag, plus fruit snacks, so he was fine with it. I usually dole out two pieces of candy every night after dinner, and then after a few days, the candy "disappears." This method may not work as they get older, but it works for now.

Its really frustrating that so many holidays revolve around food. Peter had a party at preschool today, but we participated in the parade and went home. The method of dealing with Peter's nut allergy is to give him a separate table during the party, and he can sit there alone eating candy I provide while everyone else has a party. So...we skipped that this year. I know once he is much older he will able to deal with this himself and will know that nuts make him sick (or dead), but at this age he really really really likes chocolate and candy and baked goods. I foresee at least another five years of having to be the jerk who never lets him have any peanut-filled fun.

We went trick or treating fairly early in the afternoon, and only went for a few blocks. I was expecting there to be a TON of trick-or-treaters, as there are a million kids in our neighborhoods. We got FIVE trick-or-treaters. Five. Wth?

Our previous apartment was located on a street of old people, and I think in the two years we lived there we may have gotten two trick-or-treaters the entire time. Our neighborhood in south Jersey, however, got HUNDREDS of trick-or-treaters; in the three years we lived there I bought $$$ worth of candy every year, and every year we ran out before the night was through. I figured since there are lots of kids in our neighborhood this would be similar, but I guess I will be returning the six bags of unopened, boringly nut-free candy I bought.

Hope you had a spook-tacular Halloween!

weekend edition: snow, my new AARP card

2011-10-29T16:00:00.000-04:00

I hate snow. We are starting this party a little early this year, yes? Its only October, we usually don't get snow till well into December. Today we are forecasted to get 6 inches.

I have lived in New Jersey since I was seven years old, and I consider myself a (south) Jersey girl. As much as I love New Jersey, though, I can't say that I am all that fond of the weather. In fact, as I get older, I find that I like the weather less and less. We have a few months of hot, muggy summer bookended by about two weeks of pleasant fall/spring weather, and then months of raw, windy, cold, snowy, unpleasant winter. But I never wish to move to a more pleasant clime. I always wish that New Jersey had better weather.

Exciting fact: we own four adult snow shovels and three children's snow shovels. It appears that we left every last one of them in my mother in law's garage when we moved.

***********
My AARP card just showed up in the mail. I certainly would like to enjoy all the benefits that the AARP card will get me in my golden years, so I'll just tuck that away in a safe spot, shall I, since I don't turn fifty for ANOTHER THIRTEEN YEARS.

I remember when my mother got her AARP card. She was thrilled. She whips that bad boy out on every possible occasion, demanding her senior discount. My father, on the other hand, stood at the kitchen counter and ripped his up into tiny pieces, aggrieved pride winning out over 10% off the early bird dinner special.

I think I side with my father on this one.

Ugly Sofa 3 : Hunter plaid

2011-10-28T23:18:00.000-04:00

In the third installment of the Ugly Sofa Series, we have a fabulous hunter-ish green and navy plaid sofa. There might be some lilac in there too, but I chose to ignore it.

Right, so, as usual, $1000 total budget, less than $500 of which must be spent on a 5x7 rug, one set of curtains and two pillows.

Hunter plaid calls for horses, doesn't it?

Rug, curtains and pillows: $489

Blue curtains: $40
Rug: $399
Dwell studio trellis pillow: $35
horse pillow: $15

Other accessories: $518
This horse picture is named "Bad Girls", which makes me giggle. $30
Convex federal mirror: $20 bid at the time I was making this moodboard
CL green leather chair: $50
Wall mount duck hook: $30 I should just buy this duck for myself, I've wanted it for months.
Floor lamp: $119
Coffee table: $269

Total: $1007 (I ran a wee bit over. Good thing its my blog.)

Gluing fabric to inside of a glass china cabinet

2011-10-26T22:47:00.000-04:00

This is probably the easiest project ever. I wanted to cover up the glass panes in my china cabinet so no one could see the giant mess inside. Two yards of fabric later I was done.

You will need a pretty fabric, spray adhesive, and a pair of scissors. That's about it. I've also heard that you can use starch, but I apparently did something wrong, because I tried starch and it didn't stick all that well. I just moved on to spray glue, which worked just fine, and will come off the glass with a little windex and elbow grease.

1. Iron your fabric to get all the wrinkles out.

2. I made a paper template by putting a piece of paper inside the pane and tracing the edges.

3. I used the template to cut out each piece of fabric. If using a geometric pattern, you have to make sure that the pattern on each piece is going the same direction. If you use a floral pattern, like Elizabeth did, this would not be an issue. If I had used a floral I probably could have gotten away with using only a yard, but in order to keep the pattern going the same direction I needed two yards.

4. Take one fabric piece outside, spray the front (patterned) side with adhesive, bring it back inside. Note that you are spraying the front side of the fabric because that's the side that is going up against the inside of the glass in the china cabinet.

You'll want to spray the glue outside, as it stinks. Do one piece at a time, because the glue will start to dry if you do a bunch of pieces and then bring them in. Its also really sticky (duh) and its hard enough to carry one piece so that it doesn't curl over on itself. For me this meant a lot of running in and out of the back door.

5. Line up the front gluey edge of the fabric with the pane of glass and adhere to the glass. Its sort of like putting down contact paper; once you line up the edges, smooth the edges outward from the center until it lays flat.

6. Repeat until all the glass is covered.

7. Enjoy the fact that no one can see the mess in you china cabinet now.

Rearranging

2011-10-25T20:58:00.000-04:00

I began writing this enormous epistle on organizing and the lack thereof at my house, but it has gotten unwieldy and tangential (irony: my blog post about organizing is unorganized). Instead I will boil it down to the most important concept at the moment: the attic playroom here goes unused.

There are many many other organizational problems at this house, which I hope to address eventually in turn, but my biggest problem for now is that my kids don't want to play in the attic. They want to play in the living room, where I am. (Also where the tv is.) This means that eight frajillion toys are also in my living room on a daily basis. I like my kids in my living room. I do not like eight frajillion toys in my living room.

In previous houses, this was never really a problem. In our South Jersey house, we had a small room off the kitchen that housed all our toys. In our last apartment, all our rooms were on one floor, and we used the third bedroom as a playroom. In each case, the playroom was on the main floor, closely connected to the living spaces.

Here, the playroom is in the attic, up lots and lots of stairs. Its a spacious attic, with plenty of room to spread out and build forts and train tracks and battle your favorite 80s Japanese anime character. But its not where Mommy is. Peter will go upstairs with a basket or a bookbag, load up, and bring whatever he wants to play with downstairs. I'm sure in a few years my children will much prefer to be the attic where Mommy is NOT, but at the moment, they are my little shadows. Truth be told, I like having them around. I just hate impaling my feet with their toys.

I've noticed that in whatever house we live in, it takes a few months, or years even, to figure out what the best use of our space is. Here, if I were moving in tomorrow, now I know I'd put the master bedroom in the attic, green carpet be damned, and put the playroom in the second floor master. But we are pretty sure we are not staying that long in this house, and there is a lot of furniture and a lot of narrow bending stairwells involved in switching the two rooms, so that's not going to happen.

I am thinking of taking out the 400 lb campaign dresser under the tv (the Mister will be thrilled!),

and replacing it with an Expedit from the attic. That gets me 8 bins of toys corralled. Don't tell the children, but I am also planning a HUGE toy purge. Its heresy for a design blogger to get rid of a campaign dresser, but I'm starting a trend. I'll take mass-produced Ikea over vintage pieces with character any day!

Le sigh.

There are seasons to life, and this season is filled with cheap plastic toys that need to be dealt with. (The Legos, omg, the Legos....do any of you have Lego-obsessed children, and what storage methods have you adopted to deal with the shards of plastic I keep stepping on?) Now I know that our next house needs a playroom/family room on the first floor and will plan accordingly.

Caitlin Wilson fabrics

2011-10-25T13:02:00.001-04:00

Ok, I know, everyone is talking about these Caitlin Wilson fabrics today, but seriously, they are gorgeous, and at a reasonable price point for fancy fabrics. I am currently pricing out my chiang mai dragon pillows, which are, ahem, NOT reasonably priced anywhere. So I am appreciate of a beautiful pillow at a reasonable price. I think that these pillows will find their way onto an Ugly Sofa moodboard soon.

The pink and navy makes me want to design a little girl's room, and the coral ones belong in my bedroom.

Ugly Sofa 2: Pink, Peach and Purple Cabbage Roses

2011-10-20T20:24:00.000-04:00

In the second installment of the Ugly Sofa Series, I picked a super-awesome pink, peach and purple cabbage rose sofa off Craigslist. The budget is $1000, with the restriction that 1 pair of curtains, a 5x7 rug and 2 pillows be purchased for under $500, and the remainder used for anything else I feel like putting in the room.

This dated floral was tough. I started and discarded a bunch of options before settling on this one. I also made some expensive choices, so I had to turn to Craigslist to get reasonably priced furnishings for the rest of the room. But--I chose items that are frequently on my local Craigslist all the time, so you would probably be able to find similar items for similar prices in your area too.

One of the difficult things about working with sofas off Craigslist is that they are rarely photographed head-on in a crisp, clear fashion by professional photographers. Here's a close-up of the floral material, since the main photo is a little blurry. I am not ashamed to admit that in 1992 I had a romantic puffy pirate-type shirt in that exact pattern.

And here is the board:

Curtains, rug and pillows ($291)
1) Merete 1 pair purple curtains $30
2) Argonne trellis rug: $199 This rug worries me slightly in that it is in the "red" section of Home Decorator rugs, but I think it looks like a nice deep pink rose. Lets all believe its pink.
3) pair pink fretwork lattic pillows: $30
4) pair meadow green fretwork pillows: $32

Other accessories: ($688.50)
5) Craigslist Green velvet bergere chair: $225
6) Songe mirror: $99 Spray paint this gold and you have a credible Louis Phillipe knockoff.
7) Bamboo coffee table, side table and etagere: $65. Spray paint the coffee table and side table gold or emerald green, and the etagere a nice deep plum. (I blew a large chunk of the budget on that lovely bergere chair, so Craigslist to the rescue for 3 pieces of furniture under $75.)
8) Gold LOVE print $35
9) Ikea Ribba frame: $15
10) gold sunburst mirror: $59
11) green glass horses: $40.50
12) pair Italian tole lamps with crystal prisms: $120, buy two cheap shades and harps at Target, $30

total: $979.50 I have $20 left over, but I don't think I could fit another item on that board.

If you've come across an ugly sofa (or have one yourself), send it my way.