life and puppies

Archive Page 21

Is it May 22nd yet?!

Published May 12, 2016 bling blog 3 Comments

On a semi-arbitrary day in April – April 24 if you must know – I set about to do the undoable, the unthinkable, the unimaginable. I set out to do something NO ONE has ever done before. And when I say no one, I mean NO ONE. Except, of course, I don’t. Not at all. Not even a little bit. People do it all the time. In fact, it wasn’t that long ago that I did it myself. “When was that?” you might be asking yourself. I actually had to ask myself that, too, but then – while I was scratching my head and remembering high school someone politely reminded me that I was pregnant just over four years ago. Oh right. 2011-12. See? I can handle this. I’ve even handled this during this very same decade. Ok, so are you on to me yet, Dear Reader?

That’s right. This is that AO and I have been shunning alcohol since April 24. Or April 25, I guess. April 24 was the day of our last drop. Today is our 18th day without imbibing. My goal is 28 days, but we’ll see. I might go crazy and try 30. But I might not. One day at a time, right? Or 28 days at a time as it were. Or is. Anyway, here are a few of the things that I have noticed that are different in the days that I have had Not. A. Drop.

Not as many things are really that different. I was sort of expecting to become a brilliant, sage, well-coiffed, radiant person with a halo around me during at least my waking hours. None of these things have happened.
Sugar cravings are real. Turns out alcohol might have some sugar in it so that when it’s gone, the body kinda misses the sugar fix. Who knew? Weird.
After 9 p.m., without a glass of wine or a vodka soda and nothing great on Lifetime and having exhausted the Longform app and Slate, I usually say, “I guess I may as well turn out the light” and I’m asleep about two seconds later.
^^^ That was after the first couple of nights. The first couple of nights without the alcohol to put me into the sleepy slumber were a little hard. But since then? Zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz. I’m sorry, did you say som– zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz.
It’s easier than I thought it’d be, but I do miss it. Especially the social aspect. And the relaxing aspect. But, I’m still really grateful for this time to kinda reset. And happy AO and I are in this together.

Now then, do you think I should have a martini or red wine on May 22?

Kicking off the season!

Projects projects projects! And more … PROJECTS! This weekend we just went for it …

We swapped out a broken fixture in the dining room for this beauty.

I’m struggling with a decent pic because the rest of the room was messy, but here you go. It’s brass and it kinda unites the milky white and brass one in the adjacent front room. It also LIGHTENS (as in weight-wise) the room immensely. I hadn’t realized until recently just how oppressive our other fixture had been. I don’t want to speak ill of dead-to-me like fixtures but Oy. It’s pretty, I guess, but didn’t work well in our small space. Or, you know, any space that gets dust. Or that is near a kitchen that is used.

Upstairs, I rearranged some pictures (moving some from the dining room – stay tuned for my Etsy finds!, which is what I’m going to replace them with) to make the bedroom make more sense. Pardon the reflection of the bed and the bedside sconces.

IMG_1771[1]

And finally finished painting a cabinet we bought from an antique store two years ago. Yikes. Of course, there’s no before picture, but imagine it a very dark, very rough wood and you’ve got it.

And then perhaps the real piece de resistance, at least as far as I’m concerned, is some more self-adhesive wallpaper, which really has to be one of the greatest non-medical inventions of all time. I had bought this for our hallway but, as I was about to install it, I realized that the sizing was going to cause me some headaches. I’d already exchanged lots of emails with the company – Swag Paper – over the custom sizing I needed and I thought I had it all figured out. My plan was to put the paper up to cover a hallway wall from side-to-side and then AO and I were going to add board and batten underneath. But. The wallpaper was looking much longer than I’d expected. Or, honestly, our walls were shorter than I always remember them to be. So. I stared for awhile, realizing that any decent board and batten would be cutting off the map. I had known that some cutting into the map was going to happen, but once I saw in person how beautiful it was and when I realized just how much I’d be losing, I decided we should scrap the board and batten, move the map and install a basic chair rail in our already too-narrow as-it-is hall. Pretend all that info made sense. Or don’t and just look what I did!

It’s a 1909 map of DC in 4 panels that overlap each other. It’s also slightly uneven because I’m not so great at patience (up half an inch on the right side) and our floors and walls and whole house is wonky. I. Love. It.

AO also sawed and measured and sawed and nailed and created ~~two~~ THREE new garden boxes. And made me delicious pancakes. And let me watch lots of Lifetime movies. It was a great weekend.

And what’s up next weekend?! More projects!

Sneak to the peek

Published May 2, 2016 bling blog 4 Comments

I’m guessing a lot of you won’t like this and that is A to the O.K. But we love it. Our guest room is getting a total overhaul. There’s still a lot to do, but here’s a little preview.

IMG_1718[1]

Shopper

Published April 23, 2016 bling blog , local , Madisonia 3 Comments
Tags: fathersdaughter, festivalfoods

She just picks up a basket and goes in … Cheetos, doughnuts, strawberries, blackberries, deli Jell-0 (hello!), Rice Krispies, beef sticks … It was odd.

Papering tables

Published April 18, 2016 bling blog , home decorating , home improvements 2 Comments

Remember when the GAOOG did her guest post and the world went bananas for it? Well, I wanted in on that action. And what better opportunity for me to jump into the world of self-adhesive wallpaper than Chasing Paper‘s recent cutting room floor sale? I can think of none. So last week – fueled on by a cute email offering me free shipping – I sprung for a piece and it arrived days later at our door. I had no idea where I was going to put it, but since when does that stop me from pulling out my pocketbook? Unfortunately, pretty much never. Why does this paragraph have so many rhetorical questions? No clue.

Anyway, as you can see, the print is way cute. The flowers were much bigger than I had thought they’d be but this is neither a good nor a bad thing. It’s just an observation. After walking around the house for a bit, I settled on papering these Ikea bedside tables of ours.

You can’t really tell from this picture, but the finish on the tops are not great (especially on mine given that on most nights, I can be found with three to four different beverages on the night stand) and could tolerate a new look. So, after measuring them, I cut the paper significantly too big. So then I trimmed it. And trimmed it again. And again. And then stuck it in place.

Using my debit card (not an old credit card because I do not have expired cards lying around), I tried to smooth out the bubbles, but it didn’t really work all that well. I’m darn happy with the overall result, though.

For $20, I got a 2′ by 4′ piece of this beautiful paper (that is super thick and almost fabric-like, by the way), which was more than enough to cover two tables. I have some paper left over (and would have had more manageable pieces if I hadn’t been such a dunderhead about mis-measuring in the first place) and might try it on a couple of other things. I now really want to get cracking on wallpapering our powder room.