happy new year!

January 1, 2012 //
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Happy New Year! We had a great holiday season and new year here, and it’s totally time for an update. Here are some things that have happened:

First, we moved the plants from the porch into the house for the winter. It hasn’t snowed since that weird freak storm we had back in October, but it’s still been cold. Next, we got a new TV! It’s nice and flat and has the internet on it, Alex is so happy. We donated the old one. Third, I got a sewing machine for Christmas from Alex and am making a lazy person quilt:

Fourth, check out the sweet Eames rocker my dad Santa got us for Christmas:

From another angle:

Also note the funny bunny lamp behind, a gift from my step-grandparents.

In other news, the puppy is getting huge! He was 6 pounds when we got him (when he was 10 weeks old) and now he is 23 pounds at 21 weeks. He is almost as tall as Puff, is almost completely house trained, and a really good little guy. I sure am glad we have him!

And don’t worry, Puff is getting along with him now, almost.

Happy new year! Eventually I’ll post about  some other things.

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Christmas time!

December 5, 2011 //
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Hi you guys! Look it’s December! How did that happen??

So my laptop died and then I got a new one (thanks, Black Friday internet sales on Thanksgiving), and haven’t been doing much house stuff thanks to this little jerk:

I’m dying to paint the upstairs stairway area or to take down the hidden secret wallpaper underneath the crappy paint in the guest room, but this guy can’t be left alone for a second. The last thing that needs to happen is for him to get into a bucket of paint or eat a mouthful of lead paint covered wallpaper.

Anyway, so we got some Christmas lights up. Next up is getting a tree, which we were going to do today but Alex came home late and then we put up lights instead. We don’t have a big ladder so we can’t put up serious lights like our neighbors do, but leave us alone we’ve only lived here six months. Six months!

I’ll post pictures of the tree when we get it up, and then some new sweet thrifty finds I’ve picked up in the last few months eventually. See ya!

PS look at Puff standing all proudly on the front steps.

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OMG snow

November 3, 2011 //
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First, we came back from Europe. Second, Alex got a big promotion at work. Third, we got this cute little puppy* (omg omg omg). Fourth, we had a big winter storm (in October?!) and Halloween was cancelled.

We lost our canopy for our little yard house, because we weren’t prepared for this storm at all (I laughed at everyone who said it was going to snow a foot in October). Oh well, now we will be creative and build a replacement next year!!

We made a snowman and a snowdog because it was the perfect heavy, wet snow for doing such. It was also the perfect heavy wet snow to leave us without power for three days. Three cold, long, cold, dark days.

Alex made a snow dog, but then Fritz (the puppy) ate his head. Anyway, I just wanted to say hi, and we made it through the storm, and coming up are some eventual posts about new furniture additions that I haven’t gotten around to posting about. Hope you all have power!

*Love him? He’s and English Setter, 12 weeks, and two of his brothers are still at the shelter. Go adopt them!

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What would you do with a shark thing?

September 19, 2011 //
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So I bought this funny thing at Goodwill today. It’s a ceramic shark head. There is a little hole in its’ nose, and its’ hollow inside, but solid on the bottom. Shark head is about six or seven inches high.

What would you do with this? Plant a little plant in it? Use it for a vase? Put it next to the sink to hold your toothbrushes? Use it as a salt pig? Mount it on the wall somehow? Help!!

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Upstairs hallway

September 16, 2011 //
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Remember the sad bright yellow hallway we have upstairs that I spruced up with a giant mirror? I decided the other day to paint it. Alex and I banged it out in a day and a half, then I finally hung paintings! I haven’t allowed myself to hang paintings until we finish the walls in each room, so help keep myself motivated.

I like the color of the living room so much that I decided to continue it upstairs in the hallway and the top of the stairs. It’s a great neutral, pretty grey.

See? I like it so much more than the bright, stupid yellow. I might someday decide to put a chair rail along the walls, but that is just an idea.

Here is the other end. See our gross floor? I hate it. Someday we will take it up, or else paint it if taking it up is too ridiculous of a project. Gross brown tiles. But look how nice the walls look! That picture at the end is of my mom and her sisters and brothers. I’ll take a picture of it sometime when it’s daylight.

I hung some silly flower pictures on the walls. These ones I made from some fabric I got from someone once a long time ago, I bought some canvas frames and used my trusty staple gun to tack the fabric to the edges. I love these, but they do tend to collect animal hairs. Those jerks.

This great flower painting was rescued from the side of the road a few years ago in Philly. My dog was getting ready to pee on it, and I rescued it and cleaned it and have been enjoying it’s silliness every since. It’s a real painting, brush strokes and all. I love it.

Alex and I are going to Europe soon, when we come back we will paint some more upstairs and maybe take on some big project like tearing up the upstairs floor or the kitchen! Hooray.

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Hurricane Irene

September 6, 2011 //
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Did you guys get hit by this hurricane? We did. So many trees fell down.


We lost electricity for three days, and internet for four or five. Luckily we were fully prepared, mostly.

My little sister was visiting, and she and I went to Goodwill to buy board games. We got Monopoly, Trivial Pursuit, and Pictionary. We played games all day long on Sunday during the hurricane, then played some more on Monday and then cleaned up the yard.


We had a lot of candles to keep us from being in the dark all night. Always be careful with candles, someone down the street from us burned down their house leaving candles unattended.

This tree was blocking the road for three days. We had a ton of leaves and sticks and things to clean up. While cleaning up we decided to build the fire pit. Yay!

Don’t worry, we are safe. I hope you all survived the hurricane safely!

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Fire Pit!

September 5, 2011 //
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Happy Labor Day! This weekend a bunch of friends came over and in about ten minutes Alex and my friend Tom constructed us a fire pit. We decided we needed a fire pit after assessing our hurricane damage (very little, sticks and branches and a torn down weather vane).

Originally we bought enough to make a little bit of a smaller circle but it turned out a little bigger than we planned, so we were three stones short. Later on we went and bought the missing pieces.

Here is what we did. First we decided we needed a fire pit. Then we picked a location, in the back of the yard near the back shed, not too close to the trees. Next we dug a little bit of a hole.

After digging up all the grass, the boys lay out the first circle. We used edging stones, thirteen to a level.

The boys alternated the rows to make the walls sturdier. After building up the walls, we dumped in two bags of large gravel in the bottom. I don’t know why but that seemed like the right thing to do.

That was it! This was a cheap project and really took the boys only a few minutes to make.

Later on we collected a lot of branches and twigs from around the yard and my sister Dana made us a fire. While wearing pearls! Dana is the fancy sister.

Then we roasted marshmallows and made s’mores! This was the best. Except that we got bitten all up by mosquitoes.

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Vanity project!

August 22, 2011 //
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Hi! A few weeks ago I bought this little desk-y thing at Goodwill for a few bucks, thinking I could save it or paint it and then use it for a vanity. It was pretty beat up. First Alex and I tried to sand some of the scratches off but that totally wasn’t going to work.

See how scratchy? Ugh. Trashed. Then we tried to rub it down a little with some wax, hoping it would fill in the scratches. Clearly we don’t know what we’re doing. Then we gave up for a while and it sat in the way in the dining room for two weeks. Then yesterday I decided enough was enough. I dug out the gross poison stripper gunk and slathered it on.

This stuff is magic! Twenty minutes later I scraped it off. I didn’t get all the gunk off, so I repeated with two more applications. Turns out this stuff is magic! All the scratches were just in the finish I guess, because they’re all gone! I only gunked up and fixed the top part because the sides were too intricate for me to deal with yesterday and I am lazy. Maybe someday, but for now it’s good enough! Nothing I own is perfect, I don’t think.

See? Check this out. The top is all smooth!! I could have restained it because the top is a little lighter now than the body (which I didn’t feel like fixing because it only has a few scratches and this stripper stuff is like poison). I chose not to because I am lazy! Plus you can barely tell the top is a different color.

Except in this picture. You can totally tell the top is a different color in this picture. Oh well! I replaced two of the knobs with pretty blue-green glass ones from Anthropologie (I don’t see them on the website) and we shined up the handles with some other poison stuff. I had planned to replace them with some prettier modern ones, but the handles are a weird little size. I also waxed the top twice to make it smooth and soft and lovely, which it is.

I set this guy up in the guest room in this little nook next to the window. I will probably sit there with my computer when I’m not busy watching tv.

This mirror isn’t the one that’s going to live there, but is perfect for right now. The mirror is the one that goes above my dresser. I will sit here and put on my makeup and girl things.

See? Hooray!!! Just what I wanted.

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Found box project

August 16, 2011 //
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Hi! I found this box in the garage, and finally got around to taking it out of the garage and cleaning it. It was full of spiders! Now it is bug free and clean (thanks, Clorox wipes!).

The box says some stuff on the top and sides. The internet tells me almost nothing really about this company, but it’s an old box.

After I cleaned it up, I rubbed it all over with this finishing wax. I only did one coat because my hand was tired, but I should have done two or maybe three coats. What you do is get a clean rag and rub some wax on it, then rub it all over the wood. Let it dry for 15 minutes, then rub off with another clean rag, or a non-waxy corner of your original rag. The finish will be smoother and soft and nice looking.

Now the finished little table and it’s currently living next to the leather couch in the living room. That won’t be the real home, but it’ll do for now! Also, sorry for bad night time pictures. My camera battery wasn’t charged when I was working on this project.

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Energy Audit!

July 31, 2011 //
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Hi! Connecticut is pretty cool. There is a program where you pay some nice people $75 and they come over and check out your house and do a bunch of improvements.

First they close all your windows, then set up this fan thing and red seal. When they turn it on, they get a reading of how sealed your house is. It’s cool, you walk around with them and feel all the air coming in from the outside – through the light switches, around the windows, under the doors, through the fireplace, etc. Once they’ve taken the reading and walked around and noticed where the leaks are, they go around and seal everything. They caulked all the cracks in the fireplace, around the windows, and everywhere they could. Then they put weather-stripping on the basement doors and the back door.

Once they’ve sealed all the doors and everything, they run their air machine and make sure everything is sealed up as much as they can. Our reading dropped in half from the initial reading.

They also went around and changed all our light bulbs and offered to change our shower head, which we said no to because we have a nice new one with a filter on it (hard water). We won’t know how much money this will save us, because we haven’t lived here a winter yet, but I think it was a good thing to have done. Plus we got a bunch of rebate info for in case we buy new appliances anytime soon.

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