Excuse me while I slowly import all my old entries. This might take a few days. For now you can visit me at:

Little Plastic Castles

The Chiffon Won

So this past weekend we went to an out of town wedding. Little Miss T. was having a two day sleepover with Grandma and Grandpa and cheerfully shoved us out the door waved us off. The weather was wonderful and the happy couple were excited for their big day.

Mr. Man was in the wedding party and had related wedding duties to attend to, so another guest graciously agreed to drive us from the hotel to the church for the ceremony. I had bought a fantastic dress. This dress was great - it had a flirty little skirt with a chiffon underskirt, the bust was an architectural marvel that gave me the illusion of having cleavage, and best of all it matched my pink vintage pocketbook and my super cute high heeled sandals.

I was ready. Makeup done, hair done, and I had wrestled my way into my suck-everything-in undergarments. The only thing I needed was a hand in getting the zipper all the way up, as I could only reach halfway up my back. So Kyle knocks on the door, and I ask him to do up my zipper.

Disaster strikes. The zipper gets stuck. Fine, just pull it down and try again. Now it is really stuck - it won't go up and it won't go down. Kyle applies some superhuman strength to the task and the zipper promptly breaks off into his hands. So now I am stuck in the dress, half zipped. I send him down to the front desk to ask for safety pins or maybe a paperclip - something, anything that can be used to jimmy the zipper. He comes running back with a handful of safety pins and paperclips and... a shower cap. The person at the front desk had handed him the small box saying it was a sewing kit. Not so much, really. Although in a pinch I suppose wearing the shower cap would distract everyone from the fact that my dress was hanging open in the back.

Nine minutes until the ceremony is due to start and we are both sweating and swearing trying to get this zipper to just move, damn it. Admitting defeat, he uses a safety pin to fasten the top of the dress and I throw a cardigan over the whole mess. We arrive just in time and watch our lovely friends get married, me with a safety pin digging into my back against the wooden church pew.

The reception is being held at the same hotel as we are staying, so I return to my room to struggle with the dress some more. It's not budging. That zipper is stuck. Forever maybe. I can't get it to move at all, not up or down. At this point I admit defeat and decide to wear the dress I wore to the rehearsal dinner the night before. This is when I realize the true extent of my problems - because the zipper is stuck halfway I can't get the dress off. I am trapped in a floral print party dress, now down around my waist and twisted around so the zipper is in the front. I will have to wear the dress forever. I liked the dress a lot but I didn't expect to be buried in it.

I take a deep breath, grab a pair of scissors, and cut the zipper out of the dress. (I may have then crumpled it in a ball, dropped it on the floor and kicked it across the room, but no one would blame me, right?) Exhausted and sweating from my ordeal I take a shower and put on the other dress.

The rest of the night went well without any new dress incidents, although I did discover that when dancing to the wedding classic "YMCA" in a strapless dress, the less endowed of us must content ourselves with lowercase letters.

More House Pictures - Dining Room

So here is the dining room. Very exciting, no? There is an awful lot of beige in that picture. Beige everywhere! Oddly enough, the beige in the living room isn't the same beige in most of the dining room, which I am pretty sure isn't the same beige as the wall not pictured in the photo below.

The dark wood floors on this level of the house are awesome, and I love the trim and the old light fixture in the room - but the beige has got to go. So I am thinking...



A classic table in a dark wood. Nice and sturdy, and surely more stable than the wobbly IKEA wonder we are using now.

We will most likely use the chairs we already own for the time being, but eventually I would like something with a bright cushion - like these:



Or maybe painted a bright colour that would tie into the kitchen...



Maybe some pretty window decorations to brighten things up?



I really want a china cabinet, with excellent glass doors, but maybe in the same colour as the table, or a shade that matches the chairs instead of white.



I'd like to find some vibrant table linens, something that we can tie into the kitchen "decor". I love the idea of even having "decor". How high-falutin' of us.



I fell in love with these bright little vases, I think they would make excellent centerpieces, and be a fun accent to the mismatched china idea.



All this thinking is terribly tiring, I must admit. I have been pouring over home design websites for days now, obsessively looking at photo galleries. I can't stop - it's a sickness. It doesn't matter that I have already looked at 3700 bathroom pictures, I must look at more, more, MORE. The next one might contain the most amazing towel storage idea ever. (Trust me when I say that there are only so many ways to configure a bathroom and you really don't have to look at every picture ever posted to the internet. You just don't.) Once I regain my strength I will regale you with tales of my wedding guest weekend and the story how I became incapacitated by a fancy pants party dress.

Kitchen Inspiration

Here is some of the inspiration I am drawing from while I dream about our new kitchen. The awesome stove, Lola, is the starting point for what I hope will one day be a vintage inspired, totally kick ass kitchen.

I am thinking of panting the pantry door with chalkboard paint for notes and grocery lists.



I really like the glass cabinets in this picture. I think they would brighten up the small room.



An old screen door leading to the backyard would match the outside of the house...



I haven't gotten a good look at the sink in the garage yet, but I am hoping it will look something like this:



I love the idea of having all old mismatched dishes - not only are they bright and cheerful, you don't have to worry about breaking one and ruining the set.

I love coloured appliances, they are so very retro...



Some vintage dish clothes and hand towels would cheer up the space... plus the added bonus of a knitting project!

I want to do a small curtain over the sink, and there is another window on the opposite wall. I think some retro fabric would be a kitschy touch.





As I said before, I like big plans - luckily I also enjoy a project. I have a feeling turning this kitchen into a great space will be a project and a half. I have always wanted a bright and cheerful kitchen, something fun and functional. I think we will be able to turn this into a fantastic space.

Our Not Quite New House (part 1)

So here is the first in the series of pictures of our new home. Please disregard the clutter, for once I am posting pictures that highlight other people's deplorable housekeeping skills. Kind of refreshing, really.

The Kitchen:

The cabinets and all that:



The wall next to the door:



Under the sink:



Over the sink:



The fabulous stove:
















I am in love with that stove. I love it so much I want to give it a name. Maybe Lola. Lola the Stove.Of course, then I will be the crazy lady who named her stove, rather than just the crazy lady who always has sock needles poking through her purse, so maybe I will keep the whole name thing to myself.

We priced some matching refrigerators - let's just say that is an idea that will be biding it's time. I didn't even know you could pay that much for a fridge that didn't come equipped with it's own personal chef. The original (totally awesome) sink is currently sitting in the garage, and the previous owners agreed to leave it for us. I can't wait to install it. (Or at least watch while someone else installs it.) Questions like "How hard can it be to install a sink?" are super fun, aren't they?

I see big things when I look at this kitchen, and it makes me happy just to look at these pictures. Even the ones filled with other people's clutter. Especially those filled with other people's clutter -like I said - very refreshing. I will post more pictures of the house this week, along with some of our grand remodeling plans.

Oh my...

We bought a house. A house.

An entire house.

Holy crap.



I'll be posting more pictures over the next few days, along with long winded descriptions of the (grand) plans we have to make it the most fantastic house ever.

A Call To Reason

If I were to have to sum up my personal philosophy in one sentence or less it is probably "go big or go home." I like plans: big plans, grand plans. I can also be a little obsessive with a schooch of compulsive thrown in for good measure. Want mountains out of molehills? I am your gal. I swear I have "reach for the sky" or some other similar trite and inspirational saying ingrained into the deepest layers of my psyche. It is a compulsion, this desire to not only accomplish something but to also do it in the biggest, most insane way possible. This often leads to the spectacular collapse of the aforementioned plans when that little thing called reality sets in. Lucky for me, the results are usually amusing.

Take my attempts at gardening, for example. Please note, I live in an apartment - a small apartment with a small balcony. Last year - in the excitement of having a garden for the first time ever - I may have gone just the teeniest, tiniest bit overboard with the whole garden concept. I was so happy, buying lots of pretty pots and lots of cute little seedlings. The tiny plants in their tiny pots were so adorable! Four kinds of tomatoes, three kinds of peppers, cucumber, squash and cabbage, even rainbow swiss chard (whatever that tasted like) in their wee little pots. Once those tiny little seedlings started growing it became absolutely clear I hadn't considered that they would indeed do that whole growing thing, and keep on growing until the balcony was overrun with greenery. After about a month we pretty much had to abandon the idea of actually sitting down on the balcony and just let the plants have it. No one wants to risk injury fighting a seven foot tall cherry tomato tree, after all.

I am proud to say that I actually took some lessons away from last year's debacle. I am hoping this marks a milestone in my whole learning curve thing. I managed to buy plants this time around while practicing the admirable skills of moderation and restraint. (It helped that it started raining - hard - while I was standing outside choosing plants, but we will ignore that.) This year we might actually be able to sit and share the balcony with the plants. What a thought!

Orange & Green Peppers:



Cherry Tomatoes:



Dark Opal Basil and Oregano:



English Lavender:



Cucumbers:



Isn't it all lovely? I spared you all the photo of the pot of dirt that one day might sprout lettuce. It wasn't exciting.

I am also desperately trying to ignore the little voice in my head that thinks we really need a few more plants. I exerted such self control after all, there is room for a few more. Really, there is. I forgot some great plants we could really use, like thyme, and rosemary, and chives....

An Open Letter

Dear People Who Pack The Products Shipped To My Store:

I understand that your job is probably one of the dullest on the planet, and appreciate the effort you put into making sure my product arrives at the store in good condition. I really do. I don't mind that you often pack ten boxes worth of product into twenty boxes I will pay shipping for. I don't mind the mountains of bubble wrap and cardboard I now find myself surrounded with. I don't even question your insistence on wrapping boxes - boxes filled with sturdy items wrapped individually in bubble wrap - in even more bubble wrap and then placing those bubbled boxes into even larger boxes. I merely chuckled when I found you had opened fifty two pre-packaged boxes of wine markers and individually wrapped each tiny wine charm in it's own individual layer of bubble wrap. Once I have removed all three hundred and twelve charms from their tiny plastic sarcophogus' I might not be as good humoured, but even so, I will try.

So after all of that careful packing, and wrapping, and taping (Oh, the tape! Packing tape has never met such dedication as yours!) I am left with a couple of questions.

Why, oh why, dear friend, after all of that - did you see fit to throw ceramic planters, with nary a trace of bubble wrap, three to a box? At least, I think they were three to a box, right now I am faced with six thousand shards of what I imagine were once ceramic planters.

Also, if you could explain how after using a hundred miles of bubble wrap to protect wrought iron and plastic and paper(!) napkins, the decision was made to toss thirty six unwrapped, unboxed, glass bottles filled with scented oil into a large box with one haphazard sheet of bubble wrap tossed into the top? So many bottles smashed that it soaked the bottom of the box and my floor. You can smell my store down the hall and around the corner. Or maybe just me, since although I have washed my hands three times, I still smell like a department store perfume counter. Was there any reason for this box full of smashy, smelly goodness? Was my box standing in the way of your coffee break? Did you run out of bubble wrap after such heroic efforts to swaddle the rest of my order? Or maybe you had merely had enough, and gently laid down your tape gun and walked out the door. An explanation of the logic would be wonderful, if you please.

Sincerely,

Your Devoted Retailer

PS: Any idea where the packing slip is?