Brewing

Scoby

 We brewed kombucha for the first time.  It should be done with it's second fermentation tonight.  I'm curious to find out if it worked.  The kombucha we received along with this scoby was of superior quality.  Flavoring seems like a big experiment though.  When I made tea for our batch, one of the bags broke and quite a bit of loose tea stuck to the underside of the scoby.  I kept the baby from our batch, but threw out the mother.

Have you seen Starry Lights?

I put up different lights this year.  Starry Lights are on sale at Restoration Hardware, but I got these on Amazon (for less) and I love them.  I've used glass globe lights from Target for the past two years and I like them, but they're sometimes hard to hang.  This year, I can't find them, but it's okay.  Two strands of these puts off enough light and they were super easy to hang.  They're light weight and on a thin wire so they easily bend into place.

chugging along,

xoxo,

b

Pin-doing

I'm impressionable or maybe I'm just curious, but I have a tendency to run out and do what I read or see.  Yesterday Apartment Therapy told me that geraniums are easy to grow so when I went on break from work, I bought some (of course I pinned the article first).  Today they are already living in my yard.  Several days ago I was reading Young House Love's 2013 Pinterest Challenge.  They did window boxes so I rushed home and pulled mine out of the garage.  They are up and flowing with flowers now.

How did I choose my honeymoon location?  I read about it on Poppytalk.  How did I choose this year's first anniversary vacation destination?  I saw a photo of an amazing place on Pinterest.  Once I figured out this spot was in the US, it was on.

I've read a lot about people sitting and pinning, getting lost for hours in all that visual candy, but not exactly doing.  That isn't me, obviously.  I can only look at a screen for so long.  I have to be doing.  So my new term is pin-doing (say it all together and make it flow).  Sometimes it isn't exact pin-doing, but adapting something I've seen into something else.  Regardless, I usually pin it for keeping or find it pinned.

Anyway, I've made peace with my addiction, but sometimes I think the internet should just stop showing me things.

This was taken the day I read about window boxes.  Yesterday, the lawn was mowed, the beds were edged, and geraniums found a home.  I'll post the progress next week.

xoxo,

an ever curious b

Small Cool

This picture contains a couple of completed and recent DIY's!

Hi, I know I've been gone for awhile.  There was some some life stuff happening and I had to process it.  Once I got that done though, I got back to doing, but not posting.  Anyway, I did submit an entry to the Apartment Therapy Small Cool contest and they accepted.  My goal was simply to get my entry posted so I am quite excited, but since I'm already there, I might as well go for it.  If you have a minute it would be great of you to go give my entry a favorite.  You can use this link.

I am excited just to be there and I have my own criticisms of my entry.  I will apologize now for the beyond rough, hand drawn floor plan.  I couldn't locate a real one and Mr. Husband forgot to crank one out so I finally just sucked it up and roughed it.  I keep feeling the need to address every negative (or just not entirely positive?) comment posted and I know I don't have to, but this is just me.  Ima' gonna' cleanse myself here though.

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My Cleanse: you've been warned!

Garlands appear to be controversial.  I like them, but most of all, I like making them.  The ceiling is a great place for storage, especially if you have cats.

It actually isn't dusty and there are no spiderwebs.  How is this possible?  I keep them cleared out.  I was bitten by a brown recluse once and I won't be doing that again.

We are fans of Kitsch.

We constantly have stuff flowing through the house and back out; Mr. Husband has an eBay store and we're artists.

It is dark in there; it's a duplex and there's a lot of stuff near the house that blocks light.

Finally, the house does have 2 bedrooms and 1.5 baths.  My second biggest (or maybe it comes first) criticism of my entry is that I wasn't able to show more of it.  I am far from being a professional photographer and I'm working around a house husband and an adolescent to keep the house clean.  So it was a race to get the home from work in time to get a room organized and still have enough natural light to get a decent photo of it before the chaos happened again.  Real life, who knew?

Done, thanks for playing along.

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Okay, I'm done.  I feel a bit better now, but this is a different kind of experience than I thought it would be and I'm learning some skills that I hadn't thought about as being part of this process.  I think I'm going to go with the positive and say that I am an artist and perhaps my work is just controversial (That works right?).  Still, I'm excited and thanks to you for reading.

xoxo,

b

Easter!

This was the first time in 11 years that I didn't dye eggs and travel to my grandmother's for Easter.  The Lady Bean is in Disney World.  I got a text from her and she Instagrammed a picture from Epcot (not for me really, but for her 1500 followers).  So, Mr. Husband and I spent our first married Easter at home playing with our doggy house guest and working on projects.  He finished the garage organization, puppy chased a tennis ball, and I painted the kitchen cabinets... sort of a moment of spontaneous decorating (an outburst?).

Minty chalkboardy goodness!

and here is the bottom section

I decided the white on the cabinets was dirty and then I discovered that it wasn't just dirty, it was stained.  I thought it was probably time to paint, but the kitchen has been white for 2 years and the decor has been the same since I moved in.  The knife block on the counter was my cabinet inspiration.  I painted the block (and the brooms) a few months ago.  This is almost done, but of course all this green means that other things in the room have to change (the curtains, the red tins, the picture frames,etc.).  I'll be sewing and painting for at least a couple more weekends, but it's really nice and bright now.

Old kitchen remnants.

Once I got the cabinets going, I emptied the walls.  I had a red kitchen for a very long time.  Since moving into the house though, my kitchen has been transitioning and moving away from red.  Tonight I'm hoping to finish spraying the hardware and then I'll attack this pile to figure out what to do.  I hope to have the attention span to finish this before I start yet another thing.

xoxo,

b

DIY Inspiration

 I've been thinking of ways to convert the ceiling beam in the bedroom (which I think is actually a heating duct cover) into some sort of art work so it blends with the room instead of just seeming out of place.  I've had a few ideas.  One of them was to install DIY'ed limbs along the sides since I have an assortment of those in the garage and they were part of my original vision.

painted branches

suspended branch

The above are examples from my pinboard.  The outcome would be a mix of what's going on here.  I like it and I do want to use the limbs some where in the house, but I can't seem to stop exploring my options.

Antlers came to mind.  I do love vintage antler mounts.  There's just something about the shape of them that is absolutely great and today while I was browsing images, I saw this:

Fabulousness

 Then I was convinced I had to have vintage antler mounts for the bedroom, especially since yesterday, I saw this:

itty bitties just waiting for a makeover

then of course, I needed more of these (doilies)

So, in a frenzy of ,"This is such a good deal and my DIY will be fabulous!", I hit the 'buy it now' button.  Now I must wait impatiently for the two to arrive.  I picture them hanging in a row across the beam with more fabulous and unnecessary garlands draped in between.  Now I suppose I have to finish painting the beam.  

xoxo,

indulgent b

The Right Corner

Happiness

Okay, I call this corner of the room DONE!  I still have trim to paint, edges to finish, a smaller dresser to make into an ombre berry, frames to hang, etc., etc., but it's oh so close!  Today though, I woke up in a clean bedroom and that made me happy.

xoxo, b

How it's going...

Tarder Sauce

Left corner

Right corner

This is how the bedroom is coming along.  I think I'm going to add more to wall the bed is on (frames and garlands of course).  I've decided as well that once the small dresser is painted, I'm okay with an open closet.  For some reason I keep taking night time photos with the Ipad so the quality is fuzzy and I have a grumpy cat fixation.  Falling asleep in here is like going to bed in a gallery.  I imagine I might get a similar sensation from doing an overnight at the zoo (the kind where you take a sleeping bag and lay on the floor under the dolphin tank- does everyone have that or is it just here?)