signs of life

Because it was warm enough to walk around outside in a sweatshirt today, I did!  I put on my red mucky boots (because it's still kind of muddy after the snow melted.)  

And I walked all around the yard - front and back!  I touched all the trees, stood under the pines, and counted the black walnut trees again (20!)  This is the view from the front of the house - I'm not sure I've ever shown this.  It's corn fields across the street and it better always be.  I suppose there's a possibility that someday the farmer will sell the land and then I don't know what horrors could happen - I don't want to think about it!

Along the driveway is a little bed with an annoyingly rust colored light post.  Handy, but not very pretty.  it can be painted one of these days.  In the bed, however, I found a few signs of life!  I kind of have my heart set on planting red geraniums here, but after I pulled out some grass and leaves, I see that it's already home to some daffodils, ajuga, and maybe some daisies (not sure on those, but that's the fun of seeing what comes up!)  There are some other mystery woody things that might be little bushes, or might be miserable woody weeds - have to wait and see on those too!

Here you can see the daffodils and ajuga (the purple ground cover stuff)

Then in the back of the house I found some irises coming up!

And here!  There are also a couple straggly looking roses next to these.

I know I'm not supposed to be creating unmanageable amount of landscaping because it'll just become the same pain in my keester that the beds were at the old house, but spring, and seeing little stuff coming up, certainly gets me wanting to!  I do have an oak leaf hydrangea back at the old house that's my favorite bush ever - I actually brought it from my first house!  i noticed that there are some little shoots coming up and I'm definitely digging them up to bring here - planting bushes isn't like making elaborate beds that have to be weeded!  it's ok!

How do you know when you've killed it?

I started making this Ishbel before we moved - when I was waiting around to heard about the closing.  I used some mystery cone of something - there was an unattached label inside the cone that said it (assuming "it" is the cone this label corresponded with) was nylon and acrylic.  it's sparkly and blue.  that's all I know for sure.  I finished it last week, but dropped a stitch or two during the bind off and kind of made a mess of it.  I fixed it enough and blocked it today.  Assuming it was acrylic, I figured I'd kill it with steam so I pinned it out on the bed, put a damp sheet over it and turned the iron to steam and ironed the heck out of it.  So my question is, how do you know when you've actually killed it?  I  know it's supposed to get shiny and drapey.  I'm not sure this is shiny-er than it already was, or drapey-er than it was.  it's flatter, but that's because I ironed it.  I suppose I'll know if I wash it and it holds this shape.  Considering that I don't actually know what the yarn really is, I'm quite sure I won't be throwing it in the wash.  I suppose at the very least, whatever it is, has been steam blocked!  And it's pretty!  

Ignore the stupid look on my face here.  Believe it or not, this is the least stupid of the 50, or so, pictures I took!  geez.

sights

From my back yard I can see horses!  i think the neighbors about 3 houses down have them.  I think it's cool.  I'm aware that it's not exactly "wildlife".  This pictures makes it seem like they're much closer than they are because I zoomed in. 

 This is more natural, but I can still see them when I look out the sliding glass doors to the porch!

An then another sight that we've been trying to wrap our arms around is the bathroom color.  We got sample sizes of the two reds we liked, but we're not sure we're crazy about either one.  It's hard to take pictures of colors, but the one on the left is certainly more of an orange-red - kind of like a maple, and the one on the right is more red-red, and strangely, they both look similar to the red in the little detail tile, but i'm just not sure they're right with the main tile color.  We may be back to the drawing board and not even stick with red.  who knows?  I just did the swatches this morning so we'll need to live with it a bit.

grandma wallpaper no more!

When we move in, it was a toss up as to whether the butterscotch plaid wallpaper in the kitchen, or the grandma pink flowered wallpaper in the bathroom, was worse.  Billy "accidentally" pulled off a chunk of the bathroom wallpaper the other day, so we decided that was the one to tackle first.  This picture really doesn't do its full ugliness justice.  it was bad!  the tiles are a peachy-pink and there's a little trim with a red color in the diamonds.  

Here's a better shot of the wallpaper in its full glory!

He spent two days scraping and peeling - he got it all amazingly clean!!  there are a couple places to spackle (there must have been a different medicine cabinet there at one point) but overall, it's great looking.

I brought home about 1000 paint chips from Lowe's and I'm going to get sample cans of the two reds on the right.  We decided the bathroom could handle a bright color and we wanted to pull in that trim color.  I think it'll look great!

&#$* I learned on Pinterest

I haven't been on Pinterest very long, but like everyone else, I've fallen into its black hole pretty hard.  It's like having a whole staff of people trolling the web for sweet stuff for you, and you just have to be like "yep, nope, yep - remind me of that later.  how 'bout saving it on an electronic bulletin board or something?"  I love it!  Anyway, aside from recipes and whatnot that I've tried, I have a few household things that I've started doing because I saw it on Pinterest:

Put your sheet sets together inside one of the pillow cases.  brilliant.  so neat and easy to pull out of the linen closet.  I was always putting stuff in stacks of pillow cases, flat sheets, fitted sheets, etc.  why?  duh. 

Use a binder clip to hold your cords next to the computer.  so handy!

Store your aluminum foil, cling wrap, etc. in a magazine holder.  Well, as I was unpacking, I knew I wanted to do this, but hadn't unboxed any magazine holders yet - and this box was a perfect size (bigger!) so I just cut it with a pocket knife into a handy magazine holder-ish shape.  It's so easy to pull out and it keeps everything from just being in a pile that forces you to yank from the bottom.  Not very pretty, i'll admit that.  If I were really cool, I guess I'd cover it in craft paper or something.  maybe someday.  that falls a little bit into my oh-gimme-a-break category - I just don't think everything must be color coordinated.  or i'm jealous of people who manage to do that.  

Also, speaking of space saving, this isn't Pinterest related at all, but my microwave amazingly fits exactly in this cupboard!!  I was really freaking out about the size of my new kitchen - specifically the counter space.  I didn't know how I was going to put everything in it.  This was a HUGE help - we just had to drill a hole in the back of the cabinet to run the cord out - it's barely noticeable!  I also thought I'd never be able to live without my toaster oven, but after nearly a month it's still in the garage and I'm pretty sure I can!  I mean I did use it a lot when it was on the counter at the old house, but it's not really worth hauling in and out of a cupboard.  The George Foreman used to also be on the counter - it's nice having that tucked away too!  

What are your favorite pins?  

how to change your life for $14.95

When you move, you make some decisions about what you want to haul into your "new life" - for me, one thing I didn't want to haul was an entire cupboard of mismatched plastic containers.  I had some of at least 2 brands, which meant that lids were hard to find, nothing nested well, and on top of that there were a bunch that didn't even have lids.  I convinced myself that they'd be handy mixing bowls, but I never used them.  So I decided to throw them all in the recycling bin and start anew!  I bought a set of Rubbermaid containers for $14.95 and they are amazing.

 Not because they're anything special - but they all stack together, and their corresponding lids snap right onto the containers, so everything is easy to find and super easy to store! I'm pretty sure this is totally standard for any containers now-a-days.  But now I have plenty of containers and they even fit in the little cabinet over the range hood (which has part of its space taken up already by the vent!)  I always want to think that stuff like getting 8 hours of sleep a night, or drinking more water, will make me feel amazingly better, but I never really feel any different - I expect a life changing improvement and I'm always disappointed.  A new container set, however, is life changing!  I've been telling everyone I see that they need to buy a new set of containers and set themselves free - pretty much everyone is sick of it by now because I forget who I've told so I just keep telling them over and over!  it's ridiculous, and I promise to never mention it again.  but seriously, you need to get a new set of containers!

Long time no bloggy!

Geez, I didn't realize that it'd been MONTHS since I last posted!  Lots has happened and I've been kinda stressed, I suppose!  Here's the Cliff's notes:  we decided we were kind of tired of historic district living - the houses are so close together it's claustrophobic!  So we called a realtor who used to live in our neighborhood and is a big lover of historic districts/urban living/old houses, so we knew if anyone could sell the house she could.  She helped us find a new place and we finally closed and moved in - it was a heck of a process, but apparently with all the new regulations and whatnot, it's just that way now.      Our main thing was that we wanted a few acres (and originally we wanted to not even see any neighbors, but that ended up not being so easy to find!) and we ended up choosing a 1961 brick ranch which was the furthest from what either of us thought we'd ever end up with!  We decided that the non-stop maintenance on a 100+ year old house was just not what we felt like dealing with.  This house is so sturdy and accessible and it'll be much less work!  It's nothing special to look at, but it sits on 5 acres!  It's a cute house (quite brown at the moment - but eventually we'll add some color by painting the shutters.)  The realtor did an amazing job and got the sellers to install a new roof and a new electrical service/breaker box.  I wanted the roof to be darker so it'd be less of a one-tone brown blob, but the seller was still sort of emotionally attached and didn't like my idea of charcoal grey shingles despite the fact that he was selling the place!  in the end I decided it was a new roof and not that big of a deal!

Here's a shot of the backyard - yes, that's ours as far as the eye can see!  and that shed out there is really big - enough for more than 3 cars (not that we're keeping cars there- it's just for size reference!)  One bay will be for my gardening stuff, pots, etc., and another will be for lawn care stuff, and other assorted junk, I'm sure!

My kitchen is extremely butterscotchy.  it's somethin'.  It was done in 1983, but decade styles don't change much in 3 years, so it's actually pretty 70's looking.  Check out the intercom under the cabinet there - there are lots of cool mid century touches like that!

We decided to not make a bunch of changes right off the bat (hence the butterscotchy plaid kitchen!) - we need to put our energy into getting the old house cleared out, cleaned up, and sold!  And man, that is no easy task!  There's so much stuff there even after the movers did the hard work - so much stuff was something i thought I'd just easily throw in the back of the truck, but it's taking forever!  you also don't realize how much dust is under things like beds until you move them!  yikes!  and how many imperfections are hidden behind furniture and really stand out when there's nothing there.  I thought I was stressed out before - now it really starts!  BUT - we really love our new place!  More later!