The Boss is Boss!

My vacuum's name is The Boss. As in, "Whoa! That vacuum is totally boss!" Here he is.





Sidenote: Lily (putty tat) is only slightly less afraid of him than Isabel, who as you can see, is nowhere to be found when the Boss is on the move. End sidenote.

He's pretty beastly. He's the papa bear of vacuums. He hasn't been my favorite appliance of late, as he's been on an extended medical leave. Pooped the bucket. Choked on hairballs and was never to be seen again (or so I thought, since I'm certainly not going to take him apart to try to "fix" him.) My apartment's carpets have been in major need of a facelift for weeks now (okay, okay months) since all that I've had on the front lines has been this faithful soldier.



(Eesh, looks like I should have been vacuuming that floor instead of photographing it. Oopsie.) Buster's been faithful, but let's be honest, ladies - size does sometimes matter. Besides, his attention has mostly been occupied with keeping the kitty litter at bay in the guest bedroom. Litter and stray poop gravel that kitty flings happily about after she does her business, which I appreciate. Long story short: I've been vacuuming my apartment with a dust buster, and I was sad face.

Enter Super-Husband! I came home from work and almost choked on my own spittle as I drooled over this image:



Ever heard of Porn For Women? (Careful Googling that one, ladies. Eeeek.)



Yup. It's that good. And after he was done fixing The Boss, he proceeded with this.




Wowza. Guess I've been a good girl. Keep in mind that this guy goes into work for 4 a.m. and gets home around 3 or 4 p.m. depending on the day. What a fella. Love him to pieces!

Painted Planters

Ever since that life-altering night that I stumbled upon Centsational Girl's blog and spent the next two hours reading all of her old posts, I've been officially bitten by the Do It Yourself (DIY) bug. She was inspiring. She was the first person to show me that budget redecorating was not only do-able, but relatively easy. My biggest obstacle thus far has been my own confidence level, but as I tackle more projects I know that I'll get braver. If you had told me a month ago that I would have shopped at a thift store for items to decorate our apartment, I wouldn't have believed you. (That sounds snobbier than it's intended.) What I mean is that I wouldn't have been confident enough to choose items that had the potential to be beautiful.

I've now spent literally hours and hours of time on Country Living, DIY Ideas, and Better Homes & Gardens to name a few. Not to mention all of the ingenious women bloggers I've since come across who have unique, fabulous, budget-saavy ideas that make my heart go pitter-patter.

There. I got that off my chest. So thanks, Kate, for being the impetus that I needed to get me rolling!

Now for a little show and tell. I painted some planters last weekend and now I'm going to show you the end result. My first DIY post, actually. *Deep breath*

When I started, the first planter looked like this one. My cherry tomatoes are growing nicely, incidentally!



This is what it looked like after a few layers of primer, a layer of white enamel, and some colored (if slightly messy) embellishment. It looks a little nicer if you step back a few steps. Not to worry.



For this one, it was too elaborate (despite it being only plastic, faux-terra cotta) to color all of the detail, so I only did a little. Also colored a bit out of the lines on this one, but still nice.



And it matches my Adirondack chairs from my father-in-law's hardware store.



Oh yeah! Haven't shared that tidbit yet. I have a lifetime 10% off at a local hardware store because Scott's father owns it. It's been open for business for over a month, and I've already spent mucho cash-o in there. It's going to be a valuable resource over the years as we improve on our apartment and eventually on the home we'll raise our children in. He can special-order anything that I need. Whew. Hardware-gasm. I'm okay.

Here's the other planter I've started painting. It isn't finished, but I like it much better with the green around the middle.



Not a bad start. And the infamous trip to JoAnn Fabrics has been pushed back yet again until tomorrow. Turns out it was a good thing, after my Savers spending-spree. Tomorrow I'll hopefully pick up some ribbon, some paper to decoupage my table, some beaded trim for a needy lamp, and perhaps some fabric for a kitchen window badly in need of a valance. Stay tuned...

Thrift Store Finds

Last time I went to Savers I didn't post my awesome finds. So here's the table I bought for $13. I have some decoupage plans for that guy. When I get around to it, I promise to post my work. For now, it's doing its job as dog walking station just fine.



The little vase on top is from the same store. It was $4. But today I found some really cute stuff that I love. I want to display some nice dishes in my kitchen on shelves, with some hooks underneath for teacups/mugs. The only problem was that I didn't have enough pretty dishes that I wanted to display. I hit up Savers this morning and found some gorgeous blue and white English transfer china.



Since I don't know much about this kind of thing, I'm hoping that I didn't pay too much. But looking even briefly online, I think I "done good". (Please tell me if I'm wrong so that I don't make the same mistake again!)

Here is an up close shot of the teacups, which I love. They were $3 each!



And a gorgeous carriage scene plate. Also $3.



The other plate is from Wedgwood. It was $1.99, but because items tagged in green (the 'color of the day') were 50% off, it was only $1!



The other blue plates aren't too special. I liked that the blue matched the other items, so I thought it would be a nice break for the eyes when I display them. Turns out, they didn't have pricetags on them, so the girl gave them to me for 49 cents each. When I got home, I noticed a Crate & Barrel tag on the bottom of one of them. Yay!

I also bought a little framed literary quote at Kohl's that was originally $19.99 but was on sale for $3.99. I put it up next to our door. The quote is from Emerson: "May you walk gently through the world and know its beauty all the days of your life." Lovely.



I love this little piece from Japan. The bright colors, the pattern... Happiness-inducing.



And now, my piece de resistance.... I found this mirror for $8. Eight!! I can't decide what I want to do with it. I like it the way it is, but I've been thinking of maybe painting it white and distressing the edges. What do you guys think?



Try not to be distracted by Isabel's cuteness. Hard, I know. And also please don't judge me for the print on our couch. It was free. Free. Heinous. *sigh* But free. I tried to buy a slipcover for it, but apparently you need to be smarter than the slipcover in order to make it look presentable. Fail.

All in all, a great day! =)

Dover Thirft Editions = Instant Literature Art

I was thinking that I might need to buy some more Dover Thrift Editions to create a frame of cover art from several books. However, I apparently underestimated my own literature-hoarding capacity, since once I gathered them all together I realized that I had these:



Sort of impressive, since I normally buy editions that are higher quality. Dover Thrift are exactly that - thrift items. Classic literature for under $4.00. They're the Happy Meal of books. A drive-thru special. If I want a new copy of "Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man" by the illustrious (and alliterative, which I appreciate) James Joyce, I am not going to choose a $1.50 Dover copy when I could get some quality out of my $10 by going with another publisher. One that might provide me with a different font than Times New Roman and might have higher quality paper than the grungy, grey, math class scratch paper bullshit stuff they use in the cheap books.

The moral of the story (no pun intended) is that I've acquired these editions over the years by picking them out of trash bins (literally - at book buyback, college students who paid $3.00 for one of these babies won't be able to have the bookstore buy it back. So they dump it in the trash rather than cart it home at the end of the semester. It's like Christmas for English Literature majors, if you're shameless enough to rifle through the garbage. You saw my pile. So you can see how worried I was about what people were thinking.)

For my "literary art," I arranged them by color so that it seemed vaguely pleasing to look at, and this was the result:



Now all I need is a poster-sized frame from Michael's or JoAnn Fabrics, and I'll be good to go. My sister-in-law and I are going shopping Thursday night after I get out of work. I'm attempting to acquire curtains (or at least rods) for the living room. If I can't find anything good, I'm planning on at least buying some beaded trim for some of our lamps. Drab to Fab, as CG says. ^_^ Night, all.

I leave you with a quote from Joyce.

...they were birds ever going and coming, building ever an unlasting home under the eaves of men's houses and ever leaving the homes they had built to wander... A soft liquid joy like the noise of many waters flowed over his memory and he felt in his heart the soft peace of silent spaces of fading tenuous sky above the waters, of oceanic silence, of swallows flying through the seadusk... -Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man

Etsy Finds & Book Art

I just had to share these items that I found on Etsy. They’re listed as my favorites. But any of them would make lovely presents. (Wink wink, nudge nudge.)

I’ve been on a tea-drinking kick ever since I bought my adorable little green teapot, so I searched for vintage teacups and teapots. Look at the cuties I found! I’d like to just display these pieces. Gorgeous.





And these handmade bobby pins are to die for. I could just look at them forever. They make me want to curl my hair just to pin them in it.



This wall sconce is made out of PLASTIC! It’s adorable and only $8. I might have already bought it if there was more than one available. But maybe cute enough for just one... (??)



This mirror would look amazing in our bathroom. Or anywhere really. Narcissus would have starved to death standing in front of this beauty. Small but elegant.



And check out this artwork I found! It's expensive (for me) and I don't like the large view, which is this:



But the detailed shots are amazing. I love it! Artwork out of the printed word always gets me going. Even though this is less "words" than "letters" I still love love love!



Isn't it stunning? I'm trying to find ways to display literature in my home in an artistic way. Books are my favorite worldly possessions in the world. So far I've found this piece here and also this below which I'd like to copy for some of my favorite works....



I'm thinking something from Shakespeare or James Joyce. Thoughts?

You can't BE the bride and eat it too...

I think I'm getting the quote wrong.

I got married two weeks ago... *Crickets chirping* Exactly. While I'm convinced that my marriage is the absolute best thing that ever happened to me, the wedding itself didn't seem to be top priority to anyone other than myself, my groom, and our immediate families. One person said he couldn't attend because he "had a thing." My own grandmother didn't come because it was the perfect occasion to use as bait for her drama with her daughter-in-law (my Mom/Matron of Honor), despite my somewhat important status as her only granddaughter.

Don't get me wrong - the wedding was beautiful, the ceremony was incredible, the food was awesome... and most of us had fun. (Well, the important people did.) Some remained uninvolved - sitting at their tables with bland looks on their uninterested faces, leaving early, or better yet (my personal favorite) not bothering to show up at all. Some were super-involved - agreeing to help with various aspects and then making their own decisions as to what would be best for my wedding... I'll leave the best details out, here, in hopes that my next major life event will have more loyal attendees (my funeral, for example).

It was my understanding that people had to do what the Bride asked. Hence the term "Bridezilla" which I did everything in my power to avoid being. Perhaps there's the rub. I should have been more of a bitch, and then no one would have dared not listen to me, for fear of my wrath! Well, there's always my funeral to be wrathful at. Anyone up for a haunting? I already have a few on my list...