The grass is always greener...

Rather than redact my previous post, I thought I would give you a brief sampling of all the ways that I have tried to be crafty and DIY-ish in the last couple of weeks.  Please consider this my attempt to put a soothing, verbal ice pack upon the somewhat inflammatory remarks I unleashed upon the internet regarding crafters, shabby chic-ers, hoarders, etc.

Like I mentioned earlier, our apartment is pretty bland and leaves a lot to be desired, so I thought a personal touch or two could make the stark white walls look a little livelier.

First off, I journeyed the extremely perilous half mile to Pier 1 Imports to spend what I thought was a $50 giftcard, plus a little extra shopping moolah we'd saved.  By the time I made it to the front with a basket full of (heavy) goodies, I was too tired to put back any of it when the cashier said my total came to $40 something.  (That's right folks, the card held a mere $25 in decorative delight.  When I got back home and double-checked, the card paper definitely had "$50" written on it. Lies! I hope the folks who gave it to us did not actually pay $50 and get ripped off...)

One of the goodies I was NOT able to fit in my basket was this cute chalkboard hanger for the kitchen.

http://www.pier1.com/Catalog/Gifts/tabid/978/CategoryId/130/ProductId/33025/ProductName/Rolling-Pin-Wall-Hook/Default.aspx

The ones in the store were actually painted a pastel blue color.   Anyway, I remembered that we had purchased a wall hook set (is that what they're called? I don't have a clue) at IKEA a few months ago and had never quite figured out where to place it.  In a stroke of genius, I channelled my inner Katie and busted out the chalkboard spraypaint on a picture frame I found that matched the wall hook mount.

Wow, that sure was easy! And cute!  The Mister's fancy grilling utensils have also found a home here. AND it covers up the unsightly phone jack which haunts our kitchen with the Ghost of Landlines Past.

FYI, these pics were all taken and edited with Droid's inferior substitute for Instagram.

Thanks for the inspiration, Katie!  Check out her tutorials for all things chalkboard at Thrifty Finds and Redesigns.

Since I was on a roll, I decided to keep myself entertained while my other half hollered to high heaven at the TV about baseball and football.  His cousin had given us a really pretty glass jar as part of a wedding gift, and I had just been waiting to figure out a perfect purpose for it.  It may not be totally finished, but I decided to fill it with different layers of dried goods from the pantry and have it hang out with the other kitchen utensils.

I like it because it makes me think of Vacation Bible School sand art, and I felt accomplished when it finally took its rightful place in the countertop lineup.

A cool thing about marriage is that your whole kitchen will be full of things you didn't have to pay for! Thanks to everyone for the knives, Kapoosh block, utensils and spinner, frying pan, Caphalon saucepans, spoon rest, Keurig, napkin holder, and hand towel! ...OK, so I guess I did pay for the PAM and the Salt n Pepa.

Finally, I tackled the most daunting project: seasonal wreath.  All the supplies were super mad cheap with my variety of AC Moore coupons, and after fist fighting only two or three old ladies for the best fake pinecones, I came up with this:

Yay!  I love Fall!  ...Which is exactly what the wreath did, about an hour after I hung it on the front door with a Command hook.  I've been too afraid to experiment further with the hooks, so it's resting quietly in the corner until I have the time to go rustle up some ribbon or a real wreath hook.  I still feel like it's lacking something, but I can't decide exactly what.  Either way, I already bought a bunch of Christmas/Winter things for the holiday wreath I will soon be making!


There you have it, folks!  I have seen the green grass and smelled the paint fumes on the other side of the homemaking fence.  While the point I tried to make (albeit unsuccessful) in my last post about greed and really weird trendy things still feels right to me, I am sorry if I made anyone feel bad.  If there are two things I have ever been good at, they are being creative and being cheap, and all of these fun activities certainly meet those requirements!  


Keep an eye out soon for a couple of new posts about my Triple Coupon experience, as well as (finally) some wedding vendor rave reviews. :-)

And for goodness' sake, follow me on Pinterest so it will send me emails which remind me that I have a Pinterest account!!

Decorating With A Purpose: A rant in three parts

I’m usually pretty good at waiting until the stigma attached to new crazes wears off before I hop onto a particular bandwagon.   For example, I had just graduated from high school before I picked up my first Harry Potter novel, so by the time I showed up in costume to a midnight book release, Pottermania was so widespread that nobody thought there was anything too unusual about my evening plans (pink hair notwithstanding). 

Why yes, we ARE awesome, aren't we? 

This all changed recently when, while spending a few days vacationing with family friends, it was determined that I should join the new social cataloging phenomenon known as Pinterest.  For anyone who has been on an internet sabbatical or has a Y chromosome, Pinterest is basically a neverending virtual bulletin board where you can collect your favorite Google images and categorize them to make yourself appear more interesting.   At the moment, mine mostly consists of a tab of recipes I will never have time to make in real life, and some style ideas for my haircut appointment (it turned out amazing, by the way).   I do have grand plans of adding a few more ‘pinboards’ to try and maintain the status quo, though, such as “Décor for a House I Don’t Have” and “Things I Can’t Afford From Anthropologie.”

All of this (plus the clarity of mind that comes with no longer planning a wedding) has really brought to my attention the great lengths folks today will go to follow a trend.  With the downturn of the economy, it seems we are especially going to great lengths (and spending great quantities of cash) to appear totally broke.   What exactly are we accomplishing here?  I can understand perhaps feeling guilty or ostentatious for having nice things.  Instead, though, we’re becoming totally “stuff-obsessed” in an attempt to be perceived somehow as less materialistic.  I mean HELLO, you bought a house right after graduation—but sure, go ahead and be all self-congratulatory about reupholstering that loveseat you pulled out of the dumpster if it makes you feel good—I guarantee everyone who compliments you on your ingenuity secretly thinks it still looks nasty.

Oh cute, looks comfy.

Please don’t think me contrary—as the daughter of an accountant, I am no stranger to the thrill of a good deal, and anyone who knows me will tell you I am stingier than Ebenezer Scrooge himself.  My beloved kitchen table was a consignment shop college apartment purchase.  I’ve even forbidden Burke from going to the grocery store without the coupon folder.  But I can take one glance at some of the more popular wedding blogs these days and know in an instant that someone’s whimsical “DIY” wedding cost twice as much as my “PSETDIFY”* one.  The “Shabby Chic” section of Target contains some of the most expensive home goods in the entire store.   Apparently, false modesty is way en vogue.

*Pay Someone Else To Do It For You

Interior Design 101 for people like my husband who don’t understand these things:  Shabby chic is essentially when you take a piece of old wooden furniture and paint it white.  Or hot glue enough lace to stuff to make it resemble your grandmother’s sitting room—the dark, dusty one that nobody was allowed to go in except on holidays or after funerals.  It’s more or less the least masculine environment, outside of an OBGYN office, that a man can be forced to inhabit.  Fortunately for Burke and his family, though, they all live in legit old farmhouses, which is probably the only truly appropriate setting for this type of décor in the first place.    

Chic, but not shabby.

This is acceptable.

I do think part of my decorative angst comes from the fact that I live in your generic less-than-ten-years-old apartment.  Cheap appliances, bad cabinet space, white walls possessing all the charm of solitary confinement… in short, it’s hard to customize.  What I wouldn’t give for a house to furnish to my heart’s content!  Would I prefer some old sturdy wooden thing against some flimsy angular IKEA thing?  Absolutely.  But will that armchair from Craigslist seem like such a steal when it arrives at our home accompanied by bedbugs and a mystery odor?

I have no idea why women feel the need to constantly fill their homes with pointless stuff just because it’s thrifty or homemade.  If you need something, go out and get it.  I won’t judge you!  It’s okay to make it yourself, too—there’s a nice sense of pride that accompanies a satisfying craft project—but for goodness’ sake, enough with the pointless knick-knack Goodwill shopping sprees!  If you have to have something, at least consider gifting it to someone else before it’s too late: the things that you find cute today could turn you into Great Aunt Roomfullofdollsandfigurines thirty or forty years down the line.   

In summary, this:

Could potentially indicate a future involving this:

My DVR is already set!

Consider yourself warned! 

Monday Rewind

It's Monday.

Which means it's almost Tuesday.

Monday gets a bad rap, but let's be real here... isn't Tuesday so much worse? The warm fuzzies of the past weekend's activities will dissipate completely, while any promise of future fun and freedom has hardly even manifested itself on the distant horizon.

Tuesday morning's approach also means that I have to go to bed in about an hour. Combine this with the only-halfway-finished mountain of wedding thank you's taking up residence on my kitchen table, and it's a perfect storm of procrastination.

Still, since I don't want to abandon my newly re-re-rediscovered blog right out of the gate, I thought I'd share an entry I wrote a little over a year ago on my old URL: It's Not Procrastinating if You Don't Have a Deadline

I hoped we'd have a new chapter to add when we unexpectedly ventured out in LA over our honeymoon, but other than a six-degrees-of-Lady-Gaga incident involving our cab driver, this list currently remains the same.

I hope you find the advice useful... and let me know if any of it ever works!

Scratching the itch

Recently, I told my husband I wanted to resurrect my blog, for what I estimate is the fourth time.

“What for?” he questioned. “I thought you said you didn’t like other people knowing your business.”

I hesitated. “Well, I didn’t. But that was before.”

“Before what?”

“Y’know, just… before. When I was all stressed out trying to finish the semester and plan our wedding and move and all that jazz. I liked complaining, but who wants to read that?” I knew I was reasoning with myself more than I was really reasoning with him. “We’re happily married now. And sometimes we go places other than work. And we bought that expensive camera. That’s all a blog really requires these days. Bloggers like to think they are professional photographers, and I did take a photography class once, so mine will probably be even better.”

I continued on, describing in great detail the need for practically Pulitzer-worthy shots. A panoramic view of our new sofa. The warm, inviting scenes at the dinner table. A heart-stirring image of the niece blowing out her birthday candles. Yes, this was all profound and essential blog imagery. These followed up with some clever remarks, and the internet itself would practically explode with delight.

“Oh yeah?” Unconvinced. Or distracted by a baseball game; I couldn’t tell which.

“Sure. It’ll be easy. We just write stuff like: ‘Today we went to the farmer’s market and bought this crazy big cantaloupe… here is a picture of one of us eating the cantaloupe… and here is a recipe for something made out of cantaloupe.’ And everyone will think it is the most breathtaking photo ever taken of a cantaloupe slice. And they'd think I knew how to cook all this inventive stuff, even though I would have just Googled the recipe. It would be an easy way to keep our friends and families updated on our lives.” I was starting to sweat. I ended my speech with the nervous confidence of a well-researched thesis defense.

“Okay, whatever you want. I probably won’t write in it. Dang, why are we losing to the Nationals?” And with that abrupt subject change, I knew what I had to do.

I had to write. I have to get the words out of my head.
Whether or not anyone reads it, well, that isn’t really the point.

And just like that, we forge ahead on a new adventure. Won't you join us?

My musical train of thought tonight.

"I talked to your dad, go pick out a white dress..."

Here we are, about a year after I started this endeavor, and I have like… half a dozen posts under my belt. Yikes! I know I warned myself in the past that school would prevent me from updating frequently, but I definitely missed the mark by a hundred miles.  Part of the reason I updated so infrequently was that I couldn't ever really get cozy with the features and layouts available on WordPress (hence the move back to Blogger). In addition, although I was still writing, I had been going through a lot in my personal life.  Many of my drafts expressed feelings that were coming from a really negative place, and since I know at any moment the things I post online could be found and used against me, something always caused me to refrain from publishing those entries. 

The good news is that I have something else monopolizing my free time now (and over the past seven months….):

….I’M GETTING MARRIED!!!

Literally the day after my last post (in July 2010), I went to spend a much-needed two-week break at the beach with family and friends.  The night we arrived, my sweet and wonderful boyfriend completely caught me off guard by popping the question!  As a girl, you spend a lifetime imagining what that moment will be like.  In the end, though, I was too shocked to cry! It wasn’t until later, when we went back to the beach house to tell my parents, that the waterworks really hit high gear.  “The Ugly Cry”—as Oprah often calls it on her show—made an unexpected appearance that evening for all the right reasons.

I can only speak from my personal experience, but it really felt like one of those moments where your whole life flashes before your eyes—the childhood dreams, the adolescent insecurity, those lunchtime rounds of MASH that you secretly wished were true, the broken hearts, the lame dates... the list goes on. Visions of two little old people holding hands on a porch swing occurring simultaneously with the sudden sensation that you are thirteen again and not old enough to get married—my mind was dizzy with all the random thoughts and feelings in that moment!

Most importantly, I felt so thankful and comforted by the knowledge that I had landed exactly in the midst of a moment where my life had always intended to take me.  I can sit here and reflect on choices I made (or choices made for me) that seemed like wrong, painful decisions at the time, but were really opportunities being artfully arranged by God himself to ensure I became the person I was meant to be.  I credit this phenomenon for ending up at Appalachian and meeting the love of my life (even though we didn’t start dating for nearly another three years)!