Weekend Project

This past weekend I painted a piece of useless furniture that I had to repurpose it as an end table. It used to be the part of my desk that held a computer tower. I no longer have a desktop so I no longer had use for this piece.

I primed the cheap Ikea piece with an oil-based primer and then followed up with a cool cucumber colored paint. Ta-da!

Lavender

I LOVE lavender. Purple is one of my least favorite colors, yet I love lavender. Not the color, but the plant. I have been threatening to buy a bunch of potted lavender for my apartment, but I wasn't sure it would survive. I did my research and have had the lavender for about 3 weeks and so far it is doing great. It has grown tremendously, which is hard to believe since they're just three little shrubs, but I swear they were much smaller when I bought them. Unfortunately, I am without BEFORE pictures.

Specifically, I bought English lavender because it does better during cold weather and the leaves smell even before the flowers bloom. If you put your nose up to the leaves you can smell a faint lavender scent.

It's supposed to bloom in late summer so maybe I will have some pictures to share soon that look more like this:


This was some of my inspiration for my lavender:

Bookcase

Davey's generous grandparents gave us each a check for Christmas and insisted that we spend it on something we WANTED rather than bills. We WANTED a bookcase. So we went straight to the bank and cashed our check, took the cash to the furniture store and purchased our bookcase (at a 10% discount no less because we paid in cash). I then stained the raw wood to match the rest of our furniture.



Now the plan is to continue to get rid of books we don't absolutely love. There is no reason to keep books that we didn't love to death! It seems bad for my chi to keep something around that I didn't adore. So the only books on my bookshelves are 1. those that either Davey or I adored or 2. those that are waiting to be read. Right now, the waiting to be read pile seems larger than the adored pile.

There are tons of bookstores that will take used books. I personally love this online system called Bookmooch. You can list books you would like to get rid of. Every time someone "mooches" a book from you, you receive a point. You can then use your points to "mooch" books from others. You also get one point for every 10 books you list. I've been using it for almost a year now, and I really love it. I can feel good about purchasing new books knowing that they will likely be read by someone else instead of sitting on my bookshelf forever. I also receive tons of used books! It's a great, green method of reading.

Wedding

Elham and Eric got married on Sunday! It was a beautiful wedding incorporating both their cultures. Elham is Muslim, while Eric is Jewish. It was a great fusion of the two cultures. Enjoy the photos!

Dear Davey

I love it when you grab me up off the couch and you make me dance in our living room. Sometimes I look down at the wood floor because I'm embarrassed, but usually I like to look into your eyes when we dance.

I love it when you ring the doorbell when you get home from work, even if you have your keys. I wipe my hands off if I'm cooking so that I can give you a big hug and kiss. I like it when you pull out a bunch of flowers from behind your back! But even when there are no flowers, I'm happy to see you.

I love it when you fill my humidifier with water, find my glasses, fill a glass of water, turn off all the lights and turn the heat on before we go to bed.

Obama

I have a lot to write about since I was in Miami this past weekend--a bridal shower and a wedding. But, I can't ignore that today, Barack Obama was sworn in as the President of the United States.

When he was sworn in, there was some hesitation because he could not remember the line that Justice Roberts fed to him. If you watched it, you know what I'm referring to. And if you didn't watch it, you probably have no clue what I'm talking about because I have not adequately explained it, so get online and google "Obama swearing in" to watch it! Anyway, do you think the "mistake" was a good thing in that it showed that he's human. Or do you think it was a bad way to start the next 4 (maybe 8) years?

Finally, I was watching CNN and I heard an announcers say "All but one of the Supreme Court justices are attending" and then I went to turn the volume up because I was interested in who it was that was not attending and why, but instead I pressed the wrong button and by the time I returned to the correct channel, they were onto a new conversation. Does anyone know which Justice did not attend and why? This may make a good trivia question or hot conversation at a cocktail party.

One last note: Mozilla needs to include Barack Obama in its dictionary, because I keep thinking I misspelled our President's name!

Dear Winter

Dear Winter,

I think it is time for you to hibernate. My toes just want to wiggle in flip-flops instead of being stuck in my Uggs all day. My hands want to swing freely by my sides as I walk outside instead of being stuffed in my pockets and mittens. Although it was fun at first to see my breath, it's long lost its novelty.

Wouldn't you love to play hard to get? Go away for a long, long time and then we will miss you and beg for you to come back.

Best,
Lauren

Anthropologie Craft Classes

Has anyone heard about craft classes being held at Anthropologie? Rumors are spreading like wild fire about the mysterious opportunity to attend a craft class at Anthropologie. I've scoured the shop's website for more information, but there's no evidence on the website. Alas, this is the only thing I could find about the craft classesOne of my favorite bloggers, Decor8, blogged about them here.

Please leave me a comment if you have the scoop on these craft classes!

New cowl...

I created a new cowl in a great orange rust color. It's a mobius cowl which means it has a twist in it. This helps give it structure. I didn't follow a pattern to create this puppy, I just worked on it until it looked how I wanted it to look. It is up for purchase in my etsy shop.

My Mirror

One of our Christmas gifts was this beautiful mirror from my mother in law. It is enormous and has great clean, classic lines.

Since Davey is handy-man-challenged, we called our super to come put up this mammoth-sized mirror. He did it with no problem. And as soon as it was up I gasped with excitement at how large our apartment appeared! Now I want more mirrors!

The only downside is that I had a corner in my kitchen that was very difficult to see so I stuffed a bunch of my appliances boxes (blender, crockpot, etc) up there and now they are visible in the mirror when you are sitting on the couch...so that means I'm going to have to find a new place for those boxes (or eliminate them altogether).

Anyway, check out this photo I took of our new mirror (without the kitchen view):


And yes I realize I need to invest in some windex:)

More Christmas Gifts Reviewed...

Today I'm going to explore some of the Christmas gifts I gave...


I purchased this gorgeous nest pendant from the lovely Galina of Designs by Galina. We gifted it to my fabulous grandmother in law who seemed to love it!


For my food-loving grandfather in law, we got a pound of fudge (which I expect has been consumed by now) from Shake Your Bon Bons. We could not resist the opportunity to try a pound of fudge ourselves (yes it was absolutely delicious).

Some Christmas gift reviews...

I received some really great gifts for Christmas. There was clearly a lot of thought in all the gifts I received this year. I'm going to try to review them all little by little so stay tuned...

One of my favorite gifts this year was from my brother-in-law and sister-in-law--and I'm not just saying that because I know she is a regular reader of my blog! She got me this amazing soft, supple leather bag from CallieCo.

We had seen these bags at the Renegade Crafts Fair in Brooklyn and since that day in June (May?) I have not been able to stop thinking about the bag. In fact, I almost purchased it for my sister in law for her birthday!

So here I am sporting my new leather messenger bag:


Last winter glittens were everywhere! This winter, when I finally decided I was a glittens girl, I could not find them. Mother-in-law to the rescue! She found an adorable pair of black and white glittens at Jcrew. This is me modeling my brand new glittens (notice I am wearing my leather messenger in this pic:)

Christmas in Georgia

I spent Christmas at my cousins' home in Watkinsville, Georgia. It was a full house. 2 dogs, a pair of ferrets, a cat, a bird, and 13 humans on 9 acres. Somehow, Davey and I ended up with a room to ourselves--just one of those perks of being married!

My seven year old cousin, Nathan, is well, seven years old. While we are still laughing at his potty jokes (most memorably, he wants to hold the world record in bathrooming), we had trouble keeping up with him. I gave him a project: to take a picture of every single person making a silly face. He did not fail me:















Davey calls the 9 acres summer camp, as it is complete with an ATV, a zipline and a lake!




It was certainly a memorable Christmas!