Halloween Festiveness

I have to say, I just wasn't feeling Halloween this year.  Summer didn't start till September, so one month later I wasn't ready to pack it in and commit to all things black, orange and spooky.  That said, you know I can't let a holiday pass without getting my Martha on just a little!  So I had a couple little cheerful Halloween decor projects, nothing too effort-intensive.

Festiveness #1: Teeny Bat Pumpkins

 

This really WAS a Martha project, I copied it straight out of Martha Stewart Living.  (Right before the best pot-roast recipe and just after the article on how to arrange moss.  Just kidding!  Actually, maybe not!)  But the whole shebang took 10 minutes after procuring said tiny white pumpkins.  And look how cute!

The instructions are as follows.  Get some tiny white pumpkins.  Cut wings out of black construction paper.  Glue them on with Aleene's Tacky Glue (no, don't cheap out on other craft glue, Aleene's got your back and everyone else sucks!)  Admire the cuteness.

Festiveness #2: Leaf Garland

This project was of my own conception, which is why it maybe looks a little less...polished than some of my Martha crafts.  I was inspired by a fall bucket list I saw which had "Make Leaf Art!" as an item.  I don't know if you have seen some of the leaves change color this year, but it's been pretty epic around Green Lake for sure. 

 

En fuego!  So gorgeous!  When I was in college, I had never really seen the leaves change.  (What? I grew up in an evergreen forest in Oregon.)  When the the sweet girls on my freshman hall saw how amazed I was by all the yellow and red that nature could provide, they used to collect the prettiest leaves they'd see on campus and slide them under my door for me to discover when I got home.

So worth trying to immortalize, right?  So here was my funny little craft.  I was attempting to go for a bunting look, but in leaves.  It wound up looking like a 5th grader's fall project, but whatever.  Think bunting.

Instructions: collect 20 of the prettiest leaves you can find.  Flatten them under some books for a couple days while you forget about the project.  When you remember, pull them out and cut out pieces of fusible interfacing the same shape as each leaf.  (Fusible interfacing is what makes your collars stiff.  It can be procured at any fabric store.)  Iron the interfacing onto each leaf.  Press them under books again until they're good and dry.  If any of them become disattached from their interfacing, apply Sister Aleene, you'll be good as gold in no time.  String them onto yarn, and hang somewhere festive.

I hung mine above the door at a height appropriate to a 5'3" person.  Then I realized I had a 6'2" person coming to dinner and I got back on the chair and rehung them.  They do make the porch look a little more welcoming though, right?

Festiveness #3: De Rigeur Jack O'Lanterns
It isn't Halloween without jack o' lanterns no matter how bah humbug you're feeling.  We always have a lot of pumpkins because we have to entice trick or treaters up our long and daunting stairs!
This was our set this year:

 

Yes, that's four normal scary faced pumpkins on the left.  But my favorite are the two on the right.

I'll spare you the totally disgustingly cute story of these two pumpkins, but it was a "gifts of the magi" moment.  I carved the one on the right for the hubs as a surprise and he carved this one:

 

As a surprise for me.  Yes, it is a house with a door that actually rotates on toothpick hinges.  (Yes, we are nerdy engineers.)  

So that is the extent of the Halloween decorating, but those three projects go a long way towards making it feel like fall in our little home.  Do you have any Martha fall projects up your sleeves?  Do tell!

The Road Ahead

This post also could have been titled "A Million 'Befores'" or "My Not-so-secret Shames".  I loooove a good before-and-after.  They're always my favorite part of ApartmentTherapy or Young House Love or any of the other home blogs that keep me trucking through this renovation.  However, I suck at actually remembering to take "Before" shots.  As I've mentioned before, I tend to be very focused on DONE.  Done is my goal and I'm liable to jump in with both feet on a project, before immortalizing the awfulness that spurred me on to the project in the first place.  So, I'm doing a "before" roundup.  We've got a lot of projects on the docket, and hopefully some of these will turn into "afters" before long!

#1: Sort the Craft Room.
The craft room actually looks quite charming when you're in it.  It's hard to photograph due to it's diminutive size, but it really is cute.  However, every time I take photos of it I'm reminded how many THINGS are in it and how much that stuff could stand to be sorted/neatened.

This is the pile under the sewing bench.  Clearly could stand some improvement.  Those bins are under there because the built-in shelves already look like this:

A certain amount of clutter is required, as it wouldn't be a craft room without craft supplies, but I really aspire to improved and beautiful organization.  I think the problem with this project is that it is probably best done in small doses.  Which, as a done-centric person, seems beyond the realm of possibility.  I'm going to give it a shot this weekend though, I'll keep you posted.

#2: The Pass-Through
The pass-through is this odd little opening between the two sides of the house.  There is a door in it that leads to the basement...but the stairs have been removed so the door opens onto a hole filled with ductwork.  We cut this hole last year, so it still looks like what it is: a jagged hole in the wall.

This project will require every ounce of the husband's carpentry knowledge in order to look decent.  This is not a job for the wifey, unfortunately.  I may tackle some of the easy things like painting the door.  But this project is slow because there are so many questions.  How do we cover up the creepy brown linoleum floor and make it blend into the linoleum on the other side, with no budget and no skills with linoleum?  Do we want to do a built-in bookshelf in the pass-through wall?  Do we want to attempt a pantry in the hole behind the door?  How do you put trim on a surface that is just the edges of two sheets of drywall that have been stapled together?  Tricky!

#3: The Window Seat
This is one that is more of a luxury than a need.  (But there's still gotta be a before pic, right?)  We have the good fortune to have two beautiful bay windows in our house, (yay Victorians!)  In the one that is in the dining room, we're planning on installing a window seat that looks out on the street. 

It's a bit of a lumberyard right now, so a sub-goal is to finish re-flooring the porch so the wood can get out of the dining room.  Some better bike storage might not be a bad sub-goal either.  (City dwellers, what do you do with your bikes??  Why is there such a lack of good storage solutions?)

#4: The Basement
I try not to beat myself up about this one too badly because I know it is the bane of homeowners everywhere.  And I just moved!  (OK, a year ago.)  And we're still renovating!  But truly, the basement is a filth pit.  Check it:

 

And that is actually an improvement over how it was a year ago.  This side too:

The husband actually worked hard to get that section to where it is now.  I know it still looks a bit like an episode of Hoarders...

But if there's ever a worldwide paint shortage we're totally set:

But hey, we're fortunate to even have a basement.  I'm grateful for the storage, I just can't wait for it to be organized and clean.

So there.  In the interest of keepin' it real, all of our secret shames laid out for the world to see.  Hopefully, this is making everyone else feel better.  A.k.a. don't live in a house with a jagged hole in the wall?  Pat yourself on the back!  Excellent work!  We'll get there, and someday we too will live in a house with real walls and well painted molding.  Can't wait!

Gotta Have a Goal

"Cause ya gotta have a goal.  Do you have a goal?"  "Well I always wanted to be in the Ice Capades..."  C'mon, what movie??  Although I'm not Julia Roberts, I also have goals. 

These are my house goals for October/November.  I realize we're already 2/3 through October, but we've been working on #1 for two months now so I'm reeeeeally hoping we'll get it done by month's end.  Also October/November is a great home improvement time block because no one wants to be working on the house around the holidays.  And, once it gets cold, no one wants to be in the shop.  So:

Goals for October/November:
- Finish molding (getting so close!)
- Photograph historic newspapers inside History Wall downstairs for reals.  (Subgoal: find a friend with a really nice camera to come over and help us preserve the 100-year-old-wallpaper in our walls.  Any volunteers?)

- After photographing, put up insulation and drywall the History Wall.  (I know, sad, but it will keep the paper intact for the next person who tears down our crappy drywall job.)
- Do something about the pass through.  (What?  You didn't want this ragged hole in the wall there forever?

 (Yes, it still looks pretty much just like that.  Well, we moved the stereo cable...)
- Try sanding down one window with crappy chipping paint and try repainting it myself.  (This is going to be the trickiest, because I have to live up to the hubs' professional standards!  I'm looking forward to the challenge.)
- Get siding on the back of the house and hopefully reclaim a little of this deliciousness:

Hello Victorian, nice to see you.  Let's be friends!

OK, that's a lot of big goals.  We'll see how we do.  Do y'all tend to over-goal?  Do you ever achieve all of them?  Wanna do an over-under on whether we accomplish all these?  (I'm giving us 20:80, but I'm going to try real hard!)

Molding Madness Midway

I have a serious pet peeve.  Lack of molding.  I am a judgemental S.O.B. when it comes to not having any molding.  I think it comes from going to so many people's "in-progress" houses when I was little.  Out in the country, "in-progress" is practically a style movement.  When I told my mother that my pet peeve was molding, she pointed out there still isn't have ceiling or baseboard molding in the house I grew up in.  Hmmm.  Good point, Mom.  I'm sure Freud would have something to say about that. 

In any case, when we first put in the new windows I told the husband all about my lack-of-molding phobia.  He took it serious (dear thing), but a bunch of other stuff was actually pressing and somehow we've been living in a bedroom without molding for almost a year now.  It probably helps that the summer view looks like this:

All that greenery and sunshine is very distracting.  But if you look close, you can see the telltale stripe of foam insulation.  Ugh.  A closer look at the yellow heinousness?

So yellow.  So foamy.  <shudder>  I also have a foam phobia, but that's another story.  (Other than that, I'm not afraid of a thing, I swear.  I heart spiders.)

So after a long summery, sunny, delicious hiatus, we finally turned our attention back to our poor languishing house.  There are three major things on my to-do list right now, but molding is at the very tip-top of the list!  The first step in this arduous process was to make a tracing of the profile of the original period-appropriate molding found downstairs, take it to a custom molding shop, and promise our first born child in exchange for a custom molding knife.  Seriously, that stuff is expensive!  Once they have the tool made though, they can make a ton of molding for you, no sweat.  We had ours made out of really nice pine because the husband is a wood snob. 

(Ooh..So piney.  So profiley.  Such good wood grain.)

Once we had the molding itself made (which took about a month,) the husband lovingly cut it to length and then sanded down the areas where it would attach:

(Cue wifely freakout about scraping off the walls around the windows.  But he covered the bed and the duvet cover I love so much with so much care that I can hardly complain too much, right?  Repeat after me: "it must get worse before it gets better...")

Then finally everything was nailed in place!

WOOT!  Check it out in daylight:

This is the phase of the project where I cruise into the room every ten minutes just to ogle it and then gush about it.  Course, this phase is always followed by the interminable-sanding-which-cues-impatient-wife-teeth-grinding phase, which isn't pretty.  We're STILL not done, although we have moved on to:

Blue tape phase!!  OK, not quite as exciting as it sounds, but it IS exciting in that we are one step closer to having beautiful white molding that matches the rest of the room.  I know some of you bare wood people out there are going to freak out that we are painting it.  However, even the resident wood snob is resigned this time.  A.) the rest of the house has white molding.  B.) the rest of the room has white molding.  C.) no one is up for stripping the rest of the windows in this house (I believe there are 27.)

So there you have it, the molding midway.  Our goal is to be done with the whole thing by the end of the month.  What do you think about white molding?  Crisp and clean or go au naturel?

The Elusive Pink Chandelier

Sorry this post took forever, but I've been in China.  Did you know that China doesn't want the Chinese to read blogs?  So you can't actually get to your blog from China.  Weird.

Anyway!  Slowly but surely we’ve been making some early fall progress!  Woot.  First project up, the elusive pink chandelier.  I always joked that I didn’t want to cohabitate before marriage because I wanted to live in pastel girly heaven for as long as possible before marrying the manliest man on earth and accepting a life of masculine colors and a house filled with navy.  Luckily for me (although the sheets are now a lovely ecru,) I still have a pastel haven.  A.K.A. the Craft Room. 

I am totally one of those delightfully spoiled ladies who have an entire craft room.  A tiny room that occasionally spits out intricately wrapped gifts, hand-made cards, lovingly sewn baby clothes, perhaps even a quilt or two.  The craft room has nothing masculine about it.  Unfortunately, when I moved in, the light fixture was a terrible plain globe set in horribly crumbling plaster, giving off the same amount of light as is found in your average prison cell block.  It had to go.  I had my heart set on some day replacing it with the perfect tiny girly chandelier that would just whirl into my life and magically install itself.  Then I ran into this beaut:

OK, less “beaut” and more “beast”, I saw some potential lurking in the brassy depths.  This lovely lady cost me $50 in the town of Renton, WA, home of SolidWorks training courses, awesome Indian food, and surprisingly wonderful antique stores.  My plan was to take this baby home, paint it pink and give my craft room the light it always deserved. 

I have to admit, painting is always the hardest task for me.  I am not detail-oriented enough to really complete something with as much perfection as it deserves.  Often, my excitement for the job to be finished prevents me from doing a good job on silly things like preparation.  I am all about the “done”.  So I raced home and spray painted that sucker pink!  Which flaked off in approximately 2.7 seconds.  Cue game show “wah wahhhhhhhhhh…”

OK, take two.  I sanded the whole thing down with some very light sandpaper furnished by the hubby, trying to remove the paint and the shiny finish without leaving giant gouges.  I carefully taped all the white “candles” and tried for coat #2.  Not looking too shabby, chandelier!

This process took a million days I swear!  No, that’s just the impatience talking.  The second time around it took two days, one day to prime and another day to coat with several light coats of pink.  I followed the advice of Sherri at Young House Love and tried to get 4 even coats (and “if you’re spraying, your arm better be a swayin’”) but it was still a little drippy in some small and unnoticeable spots.  I think I’ve still got things to learn about the mystical ways of paint.  However, I did manage to be detail oriented enough to go back and get a second can of paint when the first can ran dry.  This qualifies as major spiritual growth in my book.

(Sidebar on pink: the best selection of pink paint in Seattle can be found at the Maple Leaf True Value hardware store.  At the Greenwood True Value?  Zero shades of pink.  At Stoneway Hardware?  Two shades.  At Maple Leaf True Value?  SEVEN shades of pink.  Go Maple Leaf.)

With the final coat on, the husband helped me wire it in and screw it in.  Mostly because he’s tall.  Wiring it isn’t tricky, we turned off the breaker (ok we were scofflaws and didn’t actually do that but we should have) then we unscrewed the last light fixture, lifted it halfway out, took off  the turn caps on the wires, untwisted the old light fixture, gleefully threw it out the window (ok we didn’t do that either but we should have,) held up the chandelier, twisted the bare wires back together with the wires out of the fixture, put the twist caps back on, held up the chandelier and screwed it in.  Total piece of cake!  Getting the screws in was the hardest part since it’s an old mounting.  We then spent a billion years replacing all the crystals and….drumroll please…..

Ta da!  It’s everything I wanted it to be and then some.  It really makes the room look awesome and girly at the same time.

Taking this photo made me realize how far I have to go on sorting those shelves.  But hey, the light fixture fills me with joy, zestiness and hope for a new project.  It’s a brand new season and I can’t wait to see what else it brings!

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!

#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!