Friday, September 23, 2011

Late Summer Projects

Hello All!  I'm back!  The 30B30 tired me out from blogging, but the onset of fall has turned my thoughts back towards the house.  We've made various bits of progress since I last posted.  Let's take a look.  Cue Wayne's World "doodly doo, doodly doo, doodly doo..."

One of the most exciting things I've done around the house has been a little cleaning.  (OK, "exciting" may be slightly the wrong word...) Whenever I move to a new place there always seem to be these little pockets of chaos, where stuff that doesn't have a home swirls and festers.  When we moved into our co-bedroom last fall, I developed just such a chaos pocket in my dormer.  My delightful vintage vanity and vintage chair moved into the dormer.  Along with various hatboxes of hats, gloves, scarves, a couple wigs, a bunny mobile...you get the idea.  I'm bad at taking before shots, so I don't even think I have a picture of the chaos, but imagine yourself knee-deep in flotsam and you'll be about there.

Finally a couple weeks ago I just couldn't take it anymore and I did a huge sort, purge, elimination of the Ross-Dress-for-Less hatboxes, and now it looks like this!
OMG, there's actually carpet under there!  (Yes, that's my 1980's cropped pink leather jacket on the chair.  It inspires me every day to try and be as fabulous as possible...)
The scarves and wigs that escaped the purge (yes, I have to own multiple wigs, what do you do with pink hair when you go to a funeral?) went into those tidy little boxes on the bottom.  The vintage hat box on top was actually an amazing wedding gift, it houses a pea green feather hat complete with veil!  Someday we'll have to take a tour of my closet's gems because there are a couple doozies.  Unfortunately, the pink leather jacket and the green hat-ette don't really go together, per se...

The fabulous husband spurred me on to one more sorting project before I ran out of steam.  Again, no before picture because the wedding stuff stacked to the ceiling was truly mortifying.  But now the "closet" at the end of our hall looks like this!
Suitcases only and nary a wedding detail to be seen.  Yay for clean closets!  Feels so good!  Fall cleaning is where it's at.

Not a lot of progress has been made in decor-land.  My favorite recent addition was totally impromptu, spurred by my delightful friend Lisa's wedding.
Yes, that's a dingle-ball headband which I accidentally stole from the photobooth.  I just walked out with them on my head and didn't realize it until I was suddenly scratching on the ceiling of the car with my antennae.  When I got home, I tottered upstairs, pulled them off my head and stuck them over a nail that happened to be coming out of the wall right there.  But I kinda love it.  Doesn't it look like I hunted down some exotic glitterbeast and mounted its antlers on the wall?  It also keeps them nice and handy for the next time you need to feel fabulous.  Besides that, where else do they go?  Filed under "F" for fabulous?

Also in the works is still my chandelier.  It's looking better!
Yay pink!  Hopefully this weekend I can hang the crystals and get the hubby to wire it in for me.  I'm such a sucker for good light, it really can make your whole room look better, and in a room the size of a phone booth, it's critical.

Also in the works is the Great Molding Extravaganza of '11.  It's the master bedroom windows first, which are rolling along.  I didn't want to jinx anything with a photograph but soon (if we're lucky) I can share some pics of all the steps.  Stay tuned!





Saturday, September 3, 2011

#30 - Turning 30!

A note on pastries: I felt SO loved over my birthday in many ways, but most notably through the medium of pastries.  If pastries seem like an odd way to show love, we have clearly never met.  I love sugar and all things pastry/dessert/confection like.  Over the course of my birthday I received:
- Four giant boxes of gorgeous pastel petit fours (lovingly made from scratch and individually frosted at great pain) from my dear friend Mallory
- A three layer red velvet cake with cream cheese frosting, also made from scratch (and all the more notable because the poor chef was allergic to cocoa and couldn't even TASTE her amazing confection) from my wonderful friend Becca
- A pear galette in the French style, also made from scratch by my delightful friend Giancarlo who somehow remembered that pears and tarts and butter are my favorite.  (Yes, he owns a fluted tarte pan and yes, he's single.)
- Two chocolate caramel cakes from the bakery in my hometown, the dessert of my childhood birthdays, from my hilarious friend Jonathan (who managed to drive 250 miles to surprise me, while managing to smell the cakes and not eat them!)  
If that isn't love, I don't know what is.  So to all of you, and to the many people who worked hard to make my birthday a success, thank you all SO much.


Without further ado, the final installation in the birthday story.  So, shortly after the tea party, the husband had scheduled a surprise activity.  I'm not a huge fan of surprises, so I was a little nervous.  The surprise?

Bunnies!  Fred (with the help of my friend Paula) had hired a service called "Bunnies for Birthdays".  It's quite simple, a lady arrives at your house with a quilt, a basket of greens, and a dozen baby bunnies in a box.  And then you frolic on your lawn with baby bunnies until you are so happy you can't see straight.  The bunnies are each only a couple weeks old and are totally tiny and adorable.  Let's do a runthrough of my guests with their favorite bunnies.  Now that I'm re-reviewing the photos, it's like a bunny fashion show!

Mallory is looking lovely in the afternoon sun and don't you love the way she coordinated her dress to match the bunnies?  Perfect!
Paula snuggled with the crazy one.  They are both bringing the fun to this party!
Pam was already looking lovely in blue.  However, adding a tiny tan bunny to this outfit really takes it up a notch, don't you think?
Becca always looks adorable and pixie-like, and her vintage dress for tea was quite charming, but I think it's hard to see it for the adorableness she's got in her hands!  (She also appears to be accessorizing with lettuce, which is a good choice in this company.)
 Sheila is communing with her bunny of choice.  How sweet are they?  Sheila has the most lovely tiny hands I've ever seen, so that gives you a feeling for how little the bunny is!
Miss Anna is cooing to her tan bunny.  Her vintage Pucci dress can be better seen in the next photo of utter adorableness:
 
And as for me:
Pure delight. My husband says I'm 30 going on 7 and he might be right.  Speaking of my husband:
He favored the sleeping bunnies.
 
Careful baby, don't squash it!  Big men and tiny bunnies make me happy.
Bunny in a pocket!  The adorable-ometer is pegged out right now. Fred was so cute with the bunnies, we eventually heaped all the bunnies on top of him for maximum adorableness.
Look at the tiny tails!  Sooo cute.  Turns out bunnies in a pile tend to go to sleep when their brothers sit on top of them.  This was so cute it had to be repeated again:
A lap full of sleeping bunnies is as close as one can get to utter bliss.  OK, I might just really love bunnies, but I think you should try it if you ever get the chance. 
After this I really did have an adult birthday, I swear.  The bunnies went home to their mamas, and we set up for a picnic party in the yard.  It was awesome.  Friends brought so many bottles of rose that we ran out of space in the ice tub.  The table overflowed with cherries, cheeses, crudites, and as I mentioned earlier, the world's most gorgeous Tarte Tatin:
Dude, from scratch.  Someone I know actually made that from scratch.  I continue to be impressed by my friends. 
OK, not those reprobates.  :)  The rest of the party was pure delightfulness, picnic-style.
The whole thing was capped off by the immense and amazing red velvet cake made by Becca:
 Pure fantasticness.  I really can't thank enough all my helpers.  Especially Becca, who worked like a slave, Miss Anna, who decorated and loaned stuff until the party looked exactly like I was hoping, and Mallory, who spent hours of her life on petit fours, you guys are amazing, thank you so much.  And to my husband and Paula who came up with the bunnies, and to Jon and Giancarlo, for the pastries, really, the thanks should go on and on.

So, with this, fair readers, I cross #30 off the list.  If a tea party, a trip to the Space Needle, a dozen baby bunnies, a picnic party and four kinds of pastry love doesn't qualify as the awesomest birthday ever, I don't know what is!  Yaaaaaaaaaay birthdays!