I'm no Martha hater and, as you've probably figured out, I have fantasies about having a clean and organized house (in my eternal anti-hoarding fight, I removed six bags of Goodwill-bound clothes from our closets this weekend). If our Ikea kitchen cabinets are ever installed, this a fantastic idea for storing trays:
House of Turquoise finds the most beautiful images, it's always a treat to look at, especially if blue velvet couches make your day.
Our house is small, but it's really almost the perfect size for us-- except for the severe lack of closet space. I won't bore you with the description of the various ridiculous problems of the four existing closets, closets that were designed by morons. Right now my clothes are hanging in the over-stuffed closet in the Younger Child's room. So overstuffed that everything spills out of the closet into the room. And it is difficult to get dressed or undressed when she's sleeping or has left 50 Polly Pockets in front of my dresser. However, the latter situation gave me a bright idea.
The Polly Pockets were being played with in her room, not in the tiny sunny jewel-box of a playroom. That lovely room was almost unused except as a cluttered receptacle for toys. And it occurred to me that, technically, the Younger Child has two rooms to herself, but no closet, while I have no rooms to myself, and one overfull closet. Hmmm. How to remedy this situation? Why, wouldn't that delightful bright room make the perfect dressing room? And while it has no closet, thanks to Ikea's Stolmen system, couldn't one be easily and cheaply created? One that would offer two or three times as much hanging and shelf space as I currently have? Why, yes, that is an excellent idea, if I do say so myself.
Right after I had my genius epiphany, I saw this picture in the August 2009 issue of Country Living.
I adore that couch. That couch is the inspiration for my dressing room. I love the little table, too, and the giant mirror in back of the couch. The wallpaper, not so much.
So, yeah, the kitchen. It's coming along, Rex has been doing a lot of work whenever he has time, which usually means a big burst of work about once a month. We now have the new floor under 80% of the kitchen, yay!
Of the many advantages of having Rex do all the work is that when he does things like removing the cabinet beneath the sink, but instead of leaving us sink-less for months, he built a structure to hold the old sink until we're ready for the new one (which is actually old and may have a crack in the porcelain, which may be a problem). He also taught himself to hook the gas stove up to a longer hose so that it can be moved over six inches. Impressive. Seriously.
Warning: I am feeling very cranky so my opinions on the gowns may be excessively negative. That crankiness is probably intensified by having to repeatedly see, while viewing Photos on Celebuzz. Amanda Seyfried eat some guy's face on the trailer for Dear John. Yuck. Also, I'm so cold that I'm wearing fingerless gloves to type. I was feeling much more generous last night, it must have been the cava.
There was a lot of bad hair last night. A lot. Yes, yes, it was raining, whatever. That slicked-back hair looks terrible on a lot of people, and on the ones who can get away with it, it looks boring. And there was a lot of boring last night. A lot of perfectly lovely yet utterly boring dresses. Dresses in pretty colors but boring styles. Black in flattering but boring cuts. A lot of delicate pastels that might have looked good on a different skin tone, but looked bad on the person wearing them. I have a firm belief that one should be able to distinguish between where the dress ends and the skin starts. And, as I have noted in the past, what do these people have against necklaces? There is nothing like some good neck adornment. Way too many naked necks last night.
I didn't think I had any unqualified winners last night until I saw this, which I missed last night. It's the blond cheerleader from Glee who is uncannily beautiful on on the show and keeps up the beauty here by adding in a gorgeous and interesting dress. And this gray works on her, unlike a lot of people last night.
All photos from Celebuzz unless otherwise noted.
If I believed in astrology, I would think that some weird alignment of the stars lead us to make three major purchases (the Ikea kitchen is the first) in one week. We'd been looking for a new bureau for Eleven for months, trolling Craigslist and a local place, Uhuru, but we hadn't found anything that all three of us, Eleven, Rex and I, liked. Rex is especially hard to please, but his recalcitrance worked out this time. If he hadn't been holding us back, we would not have ended up with gorgeous bureau (which does have all its hardware, even though the pic makes it look otherwise). Don't you love how the all-white room makes it look like it's floating?
I still can't believe I'm letting Eleven have this instead of keeping it for myself. I must be an exceptionally good mother.
The Ikea cabinets-- glossy white Abstrakt with birch counters-- are purchased, but not yet delivered. All the decisions have been made, except for handles and lighting, so I really should stop scouring the internets for inspiring pictures, but I can't. It's a sickness.
So cute. (Two following pics.).
I'm still contemplating chalkboard paint.
I will admit that I bought this mascara based on the packaging, even though the name is embarrassing. And you know what? It it the best mascara I've used in 25 years. I used to use that pink and green stuff. I thought it smudged all over the place because my eyes water a lot. You know what? It wasn't me, it was the crappy mascara. The first time I used this Buxom stuff, someone thought I was wearing fake eyelashes. Yes, I was blessed with long eyelashes, but still, this stuff is amazing.
I live in Philly, near the Italian Market.
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