i love snow...

merry, merry, merry from the three peas!

felt wreath...

excuse the washed out photo, folks. this is the result of the end of daylight savings time, leaving for work when it is still dark and getting home at sunset -- no good picture-taking light.

also, the wreath is a little smooshed from being sandwiched between the storm door and front door all night. imagine it a little more fluffed and it will be more accurate.

this was easy to make and only took about an hour. i used felt scraps that were already just lying on my cutting table.

i love it and now i want to make a million of them in every color in the rainbow...not like all of the colors of the rainbow in one...like this one.

happy tuesday, party people!

all hallow's eve...

yeah, that's right! it's a flaming pumpkin head.

lucky, lucky, girl...

while i was at work yesterday (in the bad luck dress, i might add) our dehumidifier shorted out, burned and melted to the extension cord it was plugged into and as a result melted and shorted out the extension cord connection to the wall. it all might have gone unnoticed had i not gone downstairs to iron something. i heard not the usual whir of the dehumidifier and thought that it needed to be emptied. then, realizing it wasn't full, thought the breaker had been tripped. nope. not that either. then i checked the plug and sparks started to erupt. eeek!

and when i went to check the smoke detector because now i was really freaked out...the battery was dead.

i'm just glad that i had a house to go home to and not a charred pile of burned up rubble.

so the dress has overcome its curse and brought me luck. long live the lucky plaid dress!

fragile...

the furniture arrived and i love it to pieces. two of the items were in ginormous boxes emblazoned with bright orange stickers reading, "FRAGILE -- EXPENSIVE WOODEN FURNITURE INSIDE." as opposed to the cheap-ass stuff we usually buy, i guess.

but along with it came two tons of cardboard, styrofoam, bubble wrap and a multitude of little silica packets. we took a full car load of cardboard to the recycling center last night and will have to, unfortunately, throw out all of the other icky mess because there's nothing else to do with it...build a styrofoam fort? send all of my friends styrofoam care packages? sound-proof the basement? insulate the attic?

although it gets easier with each passing day, it's still very difficult to be a conscientious eco-minded consumer. even if you buy items that are kind to our planet, the amount of packaging makes my heart break a bit.

we already recycle everything that we can. our neighborhood doesn't offer free curbside recycling. even if we did participate and pay, the trash company doesn't take cardboard, paper or all plastics so we'd still end up at the the recycling center. does anyone else find it asinine that we have to pay to be good to the planet?

our family of three often puts out less than one can of garbage each week. the couple across the street, though, regularly puts out two or three overflowing cans of trash. how much are they consuming over there?

i guess this is all offset by the bachelor who lives across the street who has never put out even one can of trash. not one. i suspect that one day the roof will be pushed off of his house and coffee grounds will drip down onto the driveway. that is, after i see him on an episode of oprah.

another thing i am not...

patient.

when i have a desire or an idea for a project or a craving i must satisfy it -- right now, if not sooner. i know this about myself. i embrace this character flaw due to its ability to help me accomplish so much. outside of that benefit, though, it can often make me a less than pleasant person to be around.

so when i ordered new living room furniture in APRIL and the salesperson said it would be six to eight weeks, i (i) tried hard not to audibly gasp and (ii) foolishly took him at his word. i saw this window of time as an opportunity to grow as a person. and let me be quite honest...unless i could learn how to be a master cabinetmaker and upholsterer, i really didn't have any choice.

i could have gone to any number of other furniture stores that stock all of the pieces in their showroom and will deliver them to your home in less than one week. i do not wish to impune the quality of those stores' merchandise. i'm sure it's sturdy and well-made, but they had very few sofas that appealed to us. there was one in particular that offended -- a cowboy themed cattle drive emblazoned across the entire back of it. no, that would never do.

furthermore, i am not naive. i've ordered custom made items in the past and know that six weeks often miraculously becomes 9 or ten. but now, ELEVEN weeks later, without any living room furniture, i have grown as much as is humanly possible in the area of patience and crossed the threshhold into an alarmingly, restlessly, skin-crawlingly, want to yell a little bit, level of intolerance that i am finding difficult to overcome.

when the call FINALLY came earlier this week that the furniture had arrived and would be delivered this weekend, i was over the moon with bliss. when it arrives, if it lives up to my expectations of perfection and the ability to transport me to another realm merely by being my new place to fall asleep in front of the tv, i will be satisfied.

i will try to recall fondly these three months of my life as my "patience period."

my summer to do list...

1. finish the basement cleaning extravaganza. this includes:
a. sweep (for the one millionth time), vacuum, wash, and paint the concrete floor;

b. paint all of the bookshelves, cabinets, and dressers that hold my voluminous art supplies a lovely shade of buttercream yellow;

d. pick up my sewing machine from being serviced and, oh, i don't know...MAKE SOMETHING! maybe the silk scarf curtain lesley pointed out to me in elle decor.

2. clean out my closet. this includes:
a. folding the sweaters from overflowing sweater shelf;

b. figure out a real solution for the shoe issue (you know you have this problem too!);

c. get serious about the purses. come on, i'm never, ever going to carry that woven perry ellis bag again, but it never wore out. it's hard to part with;

d. and i know this isn't the closet, but get a handle on the drawers of the dresser.

3. redeco the living room. this includes:
a. reupholster the arm chair languishing for oh so many years in the basement;

b. refinish (stain) said chair;

c. buy and assemble entertainment center, bookshelves, sideboy and media cabinet from home decorator's outlet;

d. paint the living room a soothing, retro dove/pearl grey;

e. pick out reasonably priced area rug and window treatments;

f. come up with some stunning arrangement of almost free artwork.

4. the backyard:
a. wash the patio;

b. wash the patio furniture;

c. paint the adirondack chair, ottoman and two metal lawn chairs;

d. re-do the woven seat/backs for the aluminum lawn chairs;

e. weed, weed, weed.

5. collapse over the labor day weekend.