Friday, July 30, 2010

Friday Musings and Lessons

Two key things I learned this week...

Always have an extra pair of heels in your trunk. On Thursday, I was on my way to a MAJOR client meeting. While I was walking from the parking garage to the office, my low kitten heel-ish sandal strap decided to break free from the base of the sandal, thus totally stranding me with no choice but to walk to my meeting without a shoe! Through downtown! With my boss right next to me! Classy! The sandal just wouldn't stay on a my foot and I had no other options in the wardrobe department. Luckily, the client laughed about it, and it was a great icebreaker.

Not my shoe, or even my picture... but a similar situation to what happened to me.


Mustard helps burns. I like to cook, and I'm pretty dang good at it... but baking? That's another story. I was channeling my inner Martha Stewart this week (HA!) and decided to make some some break-n-bake chocolate chip cookies. They were on sale at the grocery store, so I figured, why not? That's where my luck ran out. I managed to burn the inner part of my forearm on the cookie sheet when I was taking the cookies out of the oven. Ouch. Back in my college waitressing days, we were always told to put yellow mustard on a burn. I managed to get out of my waitressing career unscathed in the burn department, so I wasn't able to test this remedy... until last night. It really works! I was amazed at how it took the sting away. I've been trying to keep the skin covered with aloe and bandages and I'm keeping my fingers crossed for quick healing.

My real arm, and my real picture. Ouch.

Have a great weekend and try to avoid shoe and cookie sheet hazards! 

Thursday, July 22, 2010

My Blood, Sweat, and Tears from this Week...


...yielded this beauty. Well, the picture isn't exactly beautiful, but what is INSIDE the box is truly beautiful. Not long ago, I had a stack of manialla folders that were a mess to try to file paper into. Now, orgainzed hanging file bliss that travels anywhere I need it to go! Yes, I am an organizing nerd, and I'm fine with it. Thank you, my dear sweet Container Store, for helping to organize my life.

For as obsessed concious as I am about cleaning, purging heaps of garbage each week from the far cormers of our basement, and organizaing... I don't know why I didn't start a beautiful love affair with The Container Store years ago. Mr. Married better watch out.

Now that the end of July is upon us, the summer heat is putting me in a mood to shed heavy, excess baggage from my life. Whether it's clutter from my basement (this is an ongoing battle), spammy emails from my inbox, or papers from my desk, summer has really inspired me to get rid of, or at least organize, the messes in my life. It feels great.

Thursday, July 15, 2010

More Bedroom Transformations and #50!

50 posts? Really? I feel like I just started my blogging journey! I'm thankful for the blogging and twitter friends that I have met during the course of the first half of 2010, and for the encouragement to keep writing and documenting my thoughts.

When I look back to where I was in January when I started this blog, I am blown away with how far I have come as a working professional-- hello, I quit my job and started a new one. How much fun we have had with home improvment projects--yes, really, it has been fun!  And some of the wonderful breakthrough that MrMarried and I have had as a married couple!  All good stuff!

For those of you that follow this blog, you know I've been posting a lot about the decor transformation that I have been putting our master bedroom though. It was beige, and blah, and full of mismatched furniture. A night stand from here, and a lamp from there. You get the picture.

I've found that living in a house that is always somewhat torn apart with renovations, having one room that can be your haven to escape the drywall, paint cans, and endless piles of supplies is critical... and I chose to make that room the master bedroom. For me, haven = matching. Don't know why, but it does.



I still have a little bit or work to do, but I give you... the matching lamps and nightstands in our master bedroom.

Before... please excuse the dark picture. 



And... after!


Another side bonus from this project is my new found confidence in spray paint. It comes in dozens (and probably more like hundreds) of colors, and when done right, can really change the look of any piece. I will certainly be reusing items and spray painting them in the future! 

Thursday, July 8, 2010

A DIY Painting Project

I recently sought some help in bringing color into our master bedroom because I am... ahem... a beige-a-holic.

Since I can be a little bit a raging type A personality, one area that was driving me nuts was the fact that I didn't have symmetry (and in mind, any sense of order) on either side of our bed in the nightstand department. We had mis-matching nightstands and mis-matching lamps, so I set out to change that.

I searched far and wide for matching lamps that wouldn't break the bank. I was even open to painting the lamps if necessary. (Spoiler alert: I painted the lamps). I found a set of lamps that I really liked, but they were a pale spring green that just wasn't working with the color palate I was trying to achieve. So, I bought the lamps and a $4 can of spray paint from Home Depot and went to work.


Here are the original lamps from PB's website. They were sold out of the white, so I ordered two of the green. I'm thankful I looked past those hideous shades that they are displaying with the lamps. I can't say that I care for them too much...


I headed outside to see what kind magic I could work on the lamps.


I made sure to carefully cover the lamps with my high tech paint blocking technology-- aka, a ziplock with a rubberband. Kind of looks like a ponytail, right?


The "ponytail ziplock" worked like a charm!

I moved on to the second lamp and repeated the process.

Not bad right??

I paired them with simple white linen drum shades and I know that they look crazy blue in these photos, but they don't look crazy blue in the room. The white shades help to tone down the color a bit too.

I think spray painting might be a knew found hobby of mine.

I was going to save this post for when I actually had pictures of them in the room, but that will just have to wait until I get the new nightstands into the room. They were shipped to the store, and I haven't had the time to go pick them them. The master bedroom redecorating marathon continues :)