my DIY is getting better

i've moved on from pouring paint into jars and calling it a craft to making things that are actually useful.

i used to keep all my jewelry (well, necklaces. i own like 3 bracelets) in a jewelry organizer that hung in the closet. when we moved to this house, i realized the rod in the new closets was too big for the hook on my jury thingie. so it hung on our closet door for months. until i saw this idea on pinterest.

i already had the towel rack (which was a blinding nickle silver) so i got some $5.99 shower curtain hooks from marshall's and some oil rubbed bronze spray paint.

i think i may have hung it a little high, but i have some long necklaces and i didn't want them dangling in the laundry hamper below. Dangle. Hee hee.

obligatory picture of "ella-pecia" in all her devil eyed glory.

now my coffee filter lamp has been a debacle. gluing on the filters was no problem. but when i screwed the shade on my original lamp base that was reeeeeeally skinny, it looked like a mushroom. on meth. a methroom. so i bought a plain white one at tarjay and spray painted it.

our guest bedroom has: 1) a bed, 2) a table, and 3) a chair. that's it.

oh and this lamp. it's a shame when a table lamp is the focal point of a huge bedroom.

lately i've been making tissue paper flowers like a fool but i've been too lazy to take pictures...mainly because they are lame.

it's been raining too much to run so that's how i've been spending my time. it lets my shin splints heal.

Now that we're home...

...here's my Top 5 Favorite Things About Seattle (besides food, since I already covered that):

1) The weather. Holy crap. It may have possibly reached in the 70s the first few days but after that, it never got out of the 60s. I don't think I even sweated. Like at all.

2) The coffee. Duh. I took pics of the foam art on our lattes/mochas but they're on my phone and I'm lazy. Seattle Coffee Works was our fave. All drinks had double espresso as a standard. Didn't have to bother with "an extra shot." And they had a "slow bar" that we didn't get to take advantage of. **hates ending sentences with prepositions.

3) The flowers. Soooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo beautiful.

These baskets hung from every light post.

The market had the biggest peonies I've ever seen. And $10 bouquets!

These window boxes ran along the top of every store in the market. Sunflowers are so happy.

4) The views. When we were riding in the cab to our hotel from the airport, we immediately noticed the beautiful trees and mountains. And then we actually went up to an observation tower and wow...
We didn't go to the Space Needle because it was too far to walk and cabs were a hassle. But the building we went to on Jefferson and 5th was actually higher so we got a better view. Say "hi" to the Space Needle!

5) The people. Cars stopped and let us cross the street. Just out of human decency. And all of our waiters/waitresses were sooooooo nice and personable. Is southern hospitality a myth?

Today, I'm vacation-sick. And I have to go back to work tomorrow.

Vacation Food

So Matt and I have been in Seattle on vacation this week. And while I love New Orleans food in all its fried-in-peanut-oil glory, I've loved eating some fresh, fresh West coast seafood.

These are my favorites (in order):

(also, misti, feel free to stop reading if this is going to make you eat your pillow or alan's head.)

1) The special at Serious Pie on Sunday was pizza with roasted garlic, chanterelle (sp?) mushrooms, and buffalo mozzarella. OMG. The roasted garlic was like candy. So sweet and creamy and NOM NOM NOM.

2) Ivar's crab cakes are the BEST EVER. With a stone ground mustard aioli and topped with basil/balsamic tomatoes. Holy rusted metal.

3) Shrimp cups!!! The fish market at Pike's would sell these little cups of huge shrimp drowning in a homemade cocktail sauce. We ate them twice.

And although not a food, we also visited The Juice Emporium twice for coconut, pineapple and watermelon juice. SO yummy. And healthy!

Soon will be back to the tasteless swill that manage to scrounge up so we don't starve. Saddest!!!

very, very, very basic DIY

i'm not terribly crafty. ok. i'm not crafty. i can't draw, paint, and i have terrible handwriting. but what i can do is smear paint on random objects and call it a craft. here's a collection of my elementary, simple, duuurrrhhhhh "crafts."

these were two vases that i'd held onto from the times matt got me roses. the color scheme i'm going for in the living room is oranges/corals and blues with hints of sage/avocado. so at michael's, i picked up a bottle of acrylic paint in pumpkin and one in turquoise. afterwards, i realized that the orange one really does resemble a pumpkin. but i digress.

all i did was wash and dry the vases and then pour an indeterminable amount of paint in each one. i added a dash of water (i really just wet my hand and let drip a few drops into the vase) to thin out the paint a little and then swirled it until it covered the entire inside of the vase. i put it upside down on a paper plate for about thirty minutes, wiped the top with a wet rag and then let it finish drying right side up overnight. NOT rocket surgery. but i like them.

also while i was at michael's, i grabbed two cans of spray paint (krylon's "blue ocean breeze" and "avocado"). the avocado is my latest obsession. i tried it out on my cupcake stand that was originally silver and i'm liking it.

i liked it enough that decided to paint a whole chair. i even went to the trouble to sand and prime the chair before using two cans of spray paint.

my old desk lamp needed a facelift so i gave it a coat of blue ocean breeze. i'm going to get brown coffee filters to make a "ruffled" shade for it, but i lack coffee filters. and a glue gun.

i didn't bother to take "before" pictures because i'm lazy and scared to try new things. this vase was originally a nice lemon/lime polka dot pattern. so it got ocean breezed too. i just put some painters tape around the opening and stuffed a plastic bag in it to keep the opening neat. it actually worked!

oh my. so i tried to make some abstract art for the master bath. michael's had some canvases on sale 2/$6 AND a 25 pc set of paint brushes for $4.99...!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! so i got two shades of blue acrylic paint and one white and just mixed in the white with each of the blues to make the medium and light shades. close up, it looks like it was done by a third grader.

and here's how it looks in the bathroom. adds some color at least.

i'm thinking about spray painting some picture frames (loving the warm "tuscan sunset" shade) and maybe the floor lamp in our living room (brass? voms).

lest i forget...

because TLC has decided that another show about a tattoo shop was in order, i now have even more tat ideas swimming through my mind. i need to make a list. so i don't forget.

1) a dandelion with its seeds blowing across my arm/shoulder/back with the verse from Ruth that says, "where you go, i will go." that's for matt. my love.

2) a hot air balloon. for two reasons: the first being that we saw lots of hot air balloons in napa valley on our honeymoon and i loved it. the second being the considerably cheesy fact that the more weight is dropped off the balloon, the higher it flies. see the symbology?

ssssssymbolism. what is the syyyyymbolism.

name that movie.

3) the much admired banksy drawing i posted a while back of the girl with the umbrella.

4) i have a porcelain hand mirror that my grandmother painted for me. it has a single iris on it and i'd love to get that tattooed somewhere in her honor.

5) an orange ribbon for MS awareness!!!

if i get all of those, that'll bring me to a total of 8. this is like a disease.

some pointless crap

our whole bedroom reeks of sunless tanner.

because i felt compelled to buy a romper. i'm 17, right?

no...?

bummer.

so i've started running. i'm slow as molasses and sweat like a hot donkey, but i managed to shave a minute off my mile time this week. don't expect that to happen again for a while. but i did find a $5 bill on the sidewalk across from the snoball stand whilst running. i gave it to the Lord.

and then i found $5 in my pants pocket this morning. full circle, bay-BEE!

so now that i'm actually doing some physical activity, my appetite is off the charts. my tummy begs for comestibles waaaay more than it used to and it has FORCED me to make cookies and buy a bag of chocolate chips today. to bake more cookies. and completely FUBAR some homemade pop-tarts. the strawberry filling hemorrhaged out of the "pop-tarts" while they were baking, leaving me with baked pie crust (i.e. lard) covered in glaze. my tummy does the dougie just thinking about it. oy.

also, i'm pretty obsessed with her blog. it's mainly about adoption (international, transracial) which isn't something i'm terribly interested in (yet) but i do enjoy her stories of raising 4 kids (all under age 6). and of course, i'm a sucker for a fellow cynical, sarcastic, socially awkward, closet twilight lover. her transparency when it comes to child-rearing gives me confidence that i could actually bring a child into this world and not screw it up completely.

*matt just closed the bathroom door and it scared the piss out of a sleeping ella. bless those hypersensitive ears.

cause you're my wifey...

i've felt very wife-ish this weekend. yesterday i bought two baskets of impatiens and an indoor ivy to spruce up our porch and living room. i mopped. i made another pillow cover (i accidentally did it wrong-side out so that was an hour wasted, drinking coffee and listening to offensive ganster rap while my iron did all the work). i made a yummy mexican chicken and rice casserole. matt and i washed both our cars and now we're both sipping on homemade margaritas, complete with fresh limes, simple syrup and patron.

we both took off work friday to go to jazzfest. actually, we took off last friday too. to go to jazzfest. last friday, we saw mumford and sons (i could cry just thinking about it) and both got burned to a "frazzlin' crisp" as my dad would say. i was smarter this week and wore long-sleeves, thanks to our purty 75 degree weather.

friday night we saw arcade fire. my life changed forever. if you do not know who they are, i'm going to have to re-evaluate our friendship. ok i don't mean that, but seriously. they are fabulous. and cyndi lauper magically appeared during their encore for "girls just wanna have fun." i was mad trippin, yo.

i also did a gallery wall in our living room that i wasn't digging at first, but now i'm lovin. i also googled "spackling drywall" so that all of my nail holes can eventually be repaired. i'm not real big on measuring...

and happy mother's day to my sweet mom. that i used to bring bouquets of weeds to, thinking they were actual beautiful flowers.

beiber on the next ABDC?? well, suck me sideways...

{dumb and dumber quote.}

{{not a perv}}