The Smallest of Victories

This is so silly I can't believe I'm even telling you about it. It's like one of those awful Real Simple magazine artices telling you how to brush your teeth or pour a beer. Hello White Whine (which are really Class Whines, but that's for another day)!

Meh.Cute!

Sometimes, on terrible no-good days when everything seems to go wrong, I need to remind myself that a tiny victory is still a victory, and this is one of them. While I'm not a huge supplement fan and in general I believe Michael Pollan when he says if you eat a good diet you don't need them, I take some just in case.  In case of what? Not sure. Just going to keep taking them because I can.

When they were in their own little individual bottles I rarely took them (too much opening, too much closing), now I take them everyday. $1 at the Dollar Store and victory is mine! And (this is the real victory), they are so cute. They add to my kitchen rather than clutter it with differing graphic designs and colored bottles. I just refill them every ten days and voila, I will probably live forever.

I also keep little packets of tissues by the door, have stamps on me at all times, have a collection of thank you and birthday cards on hand, have set up a google calendar of all my friends birthdays, keep a tape measure in my purse, and have a list of all my favorite restaurant's phone numbers.

How do you set yourself up to be victorious?

Oh! Why You Don't Paint Floors Blue in White A-Frames

Etsy Ethics: I Stole This, Is That Okay?

I'm wicked into shiny things lately. And chevron stripes. And trays - everything should be on a tray. So when I saw this tray making the rounds on Pinterest I totally flipped out.

The cream and gold is just so lovely together. There's a homemade elegance to it and kind of a sophisticated disco feel, or something. I don't know, I just really love the thing. Unfortunately, it's a one of a kind from Etsy and it was sold this summer. Now I want to have an Etsy shop solely dedicated to my rip-off painted trays. That would be wrong, right?

Made in Sweden, $2.50. Awesome.

Viola!

Already gold!

Living Room Redux

NEW COLORLAST WEEK

Listen.  I like HGTV, okay? In fact, I kind of love it. Also, if I could, I would watch it all day every day. Not that I love every show on HGTV, I don't.  I don't even like 75% of the shows on HGTV. But there are a couple that make me insane with inspired jealousy, and to them I owe a ton of the energy I found this summer for all things home-improvement. So there. Now you know my little television secret. Or at least one of them.

I was sick recently. Not enough to make me want to die but enough to make me horizontal for two days. Guess what I did? That's right! I watched the entire fifth season of Design Star and every episode of Emily Henderson's excellent Secrets from a Stylist. Besides making me sad that another person has stolen the life I was born to live, I was completely invigorated and made slightly psychotic with visions of new spaces and fancy furniture.

The illness wore off but my inspiration remained, so I decided on a whim to paint the walls and ceiling of my living room and install quarter round where the last inhabitants removed it to install shitty carpeting. I know a lot about painting but I know nothing about carpentry.  Luckily, my can-do attitude was bolstered even further by the nice men at Home Depot who made me feel entirely capable of doing the job myself. Thanks men!

SHITTY GAPSFIGURING OUT THE MITER BOX

I always think to myself after the first wall of paint, "What did you do Sarah? When will this be over? Ugh!" and then I dig deep, put on George Michael, and stay the course. This time around I chose a gray that I thought would be perfect.  Turns out it's lavender in some light and I don't want to talk about it.  You're only allowed to come over on cloudy days or in the evenings.

NEW COLOR (and check out that basebaord!)PLEASE TELL ME IT DOESN'T LOOK LAVENDER

Of course, when I paint a room it's unlikely that I'll want to stop there. A fresh coat of paint is one of my favorite decorating tools, but it highlights where I could do better. So now I want to redo most everything in the living room. Because we have no money to do that, I drew my ideas and space planning on graph paper. It gives me odd comfort to see my vision on paper, like by drawing it I have made it half-exist, and then I can file it away until the time is right.

THE PLANIKEA Lack Shelf

Over on Pinterest, the best thing to happen to me since GoBerry, I have a board called Things I Would Tolerate From Ikea where I collect all the things that looked decently well built when I saw them in person as well as decorative things like rugs and fruit bowls that I never let myself actually buy when I'm there. In a way, Pinterest allows me to be an Ikea virtual hoarder. 

So Ikea has these shelves and I genuinely like them. I like their chunkiness, their lines, their modernity, and their price ($50). I also have been wanting floor to ceiling bookshelves flanking our couch for forever. I am quite sure that we could never hire a carpenter to custom build, and I am also quite sure that while I am awesome at installing quarter round now, I will never be able to hack a solution that looks built in and not, well, hacked. So, the Lack shelves.

You can see in my drawing that I have two ideas. On the left I've hung two of them off center and on the right they are level with each other. I think I like the off center slightly more. In between the window and shelving I'd hang two plug in wall sconces like this one:

I'M WICKED INTO CHROME LATELY

I like how the circles contrast with the straight chunkiness of the shelves, and I like white with chrome.  But who knows, there are a million decent wall sconces and by the time we can do any of this I might think these are horrible.

I am entirely sure that I want these curtains, one for each window, sinched as I have drawn:

ANTHROPOLOGIE, YOU TORTURE ME SO

They reference the chevron stripe I painted on the dining room wall (across from the living room - another post I have to write), the peachiness balances out the masculine grays we have, and the texture contrasts with the straight lines of most of our furniture. They are however, a million dollars EACH, so I will never have them. Le sigh.

Bungalow Bedroom

THENNOW

When we first saw the bungalow we were super psyched with the layout of the first floor.  For a house with 1100 square feet, it is really well planned. And then we went upstairs. 

We did what we could.

The headboard is an antique quilt rack and the tapestry is a piece that my friends Neil and Faf gave me for my birthday.  Both items had kicked around the house aimlessly for a year or so until I realized that they belonged together (and that we were never going to spring for a headboard).

The painting was done by Zane's friend in 8th grade.  He brought it by after school one day and at first I fell in love with the color palette but then I quickly become enamored with the subject matter; soldiers fighting large robots? Sold! Matthew thought I was a little crazy for buying an 8th graders art, but honestly, it's one of my favorite things we own. 

I have taken advantage of the opportunities the headboard gives us much more than Matthew, who is decoratively apathetic. I've hung a few of my most meaningful doo-dads, including an old flashcard my friend Marti sent me all the way from the fancy city of San Francisco. The lamps I got for $20 in an antique store in Northampton and I adore them every day. The stools are road side finds.

You'll remember the doll head that Léa gave me. I think she looks so sweet on my lamp. And the little piece of paper is something that Matthew made for me on Mother's Day, our first together, way back in 1873.