Oh Microsoft.

Corrupting our IKEA catalogs with your Verdana font.

Chandelier.

After I painted the dining room and the countertop, the old brass chandelier we have really started to look old and out-of-place. I don't mind the shape of it, but I hate brass, so I've decided to try and paint it. Then, I came across the photo above (via Apartment Therapy) and I think I might also try the round-shaped light bulbs. Very cute. My chandelier won't be pink, however. Most likely it'll end up black.

A Very Long Engagement.

I can't decide if I really liked this movie or not, but visually, it was beautiful. It also reaffirmed my love of all things vintage. And my belief that Audrey Tautou is adorable.

Orange.

We decided to try orange on the front door. I love the color--not so impressed with the color of the door and the color of the house, but that color isn't going to stay. With some landscaping in front it'll really look fantastic.

Photo Inspiration.

New hearts.

Heart 1 (her house is great)
Heart 2 (I can finally get exactly what I want)

Ikea.

Found a fun blog today, ikeahacker.blogspot.com. I'd love to attempt this as all my jewelry is now shoved in an old shoe box.

Reminder.

Hudson Paint: Because one day I am going to have a giant chalkboard wall, so I need to remember where to find the cool colored stuff.

Mmm, sleep.

Found some new quilts, sheets, pillows, etc., that I love. John Robshaw Textiles--he travels around Asia and works with their textile artists to create his stuff. Its beautiful. Incredibly expensive, of course, but beautiful. I want the bed above.

Etsy.

Such a cool Web site. Two particular sellers for a future project here and here.

If I had room.

I'd want this dresser. Very cool.

Pillows.

I love pillows. I would probably cover couches, chairs and beds in pillows, except I hate having to artfully pile everything back onto the couch, chair or bed after they fall off when someone sits down. In any case, these are fantastic pillows (I heart trees!). This designer has a ton of interesting stuff on his Web site.

Bathroom art.

I love the silhouettes Apartment Therapy posted today. I think they'd look neat as art in the bathroom--and I have the projector to create a great shadow. Look for my and my hubby's heads coming soon ...

Love.

I love the bookshelf over the window in this photo (via Apartment Therapy--thanks Misty!). Wonder if that could work if it needs to be attached to plaster walls ...

Color.

Two photos: The first are some tulips Craig brought home from me that lasted an incredibly long time. The orangey ones are my favorite, and I found an old, turquoise mason jar that I thought looked rather springy with the flowers.

The second photo is Craig making my birthday cake (lemon cake with lemon frosting--yum!). Notice the lovely hand action. I just love the red/yellow of the cutting board and lemons. Probably one of the reasons as soon as I'm motivated, our kitchen will be red and yellow.

Table.

I found an awesome 1950s patio table on Craigslist the other day, so hubby and I went to pick it up after work. I was afraid it wouldn't fit in the car since the legs didn't come off, and my fear was correct. We could get one leg in the car, so it wasn't sticking out. The other three wouldn't go. One trip to the hardware store and about 20 bungee cords later, we drove home very s l o w l y and now we have a lovely table in the backyard. Along with the three plastic chairs we inherited with the house. It looks great with the white flowering tree. Ignore the ugly, dead plants in the background of the photo--one of my weekend projects is to dig those out. Now, if the weather would just cooperate so we could use our shiny new (old) table ...

Judging Books By Their Covers.

Found another neat Web site, if you're interested in book cover design. I always thought that would be a fun job. Maybe for my second career ...

Pollock.

I found a neat Web site if you ever need to waste time: jacksonpollock.org. It lets you create your own Pollock-esque work, directly in your Web browser. Pictured is my attempt. Now I might have to go home and dribble some paint somewhere ...

Penelope.

We watched Penelope last night, mainly because it was short, and it ended up being a really good movie. I liked it more than my husband, I think, but that's probably because the sets and the color in the film was so great. Plus, Penelope had fun fashion. She looked like she came from a fantasy version of Anthropologie. One of my favorite things in movies is when they really tweak colors to get certain affects. The more apparent sometimes, the more I like it. None of the photos really show the great sets, but they give an idea. Plus, James McAvoy is a great actor. Its the third movie we've seen him in, and he's been really good in all three.

(All photos are copyright IFC Films.)

Bread.

I found a super-simple recipe for bread online last week, so I decided to attempt to make some today. Flour, water, salt, yeast. And it worked! I'm amazed--last time I tried to bake with yeast, whatever it was never rose. Although it just tastes like very basic bread and I'm probably years away from every creating something as good as the Macrina bakery, at least I had a small success.

Flowers.

We finally made it into the back yard this morning to assess the best place to put a garden. I also managed to take some photos of the flowers that have popped up in our yard. This is going to be an interesting spring and summer--we'll find out what plants are dead, which plants are in good shape and see what we like and what needs to go. So far, around the house daffodils have exploded and one tree/bush thing has red flowers. I have no idea what type of plant it is, but the flowers are pretty. Two different blooms by the middle of March isn't too shabby.

Silhouettes.

I love 'em. We had flower silhouettes I painted in our last place, and I have the new one in the living room. Today, via the blog Laissezfaire, I found the Web site Vinyl Silhouettes. Some of their examples are really neat. I would argue you don't need to pay someone else--if its a simple shape, silhouettes aren't that hard. And if you have an overhead projector, it's even easier. Just turn a printed photo into a transparency and trace it. That is what I use. Best $10 I ever spent on Craigslist.

Reading Chair.

I've wanted a comfortable reading chair since our old apartment. There, we didn't have room. Moving here, we finally had some room (kind of), but I couldn't find anything I liked that was in our price range. Even IKEA didn't have what I was looking for. Enter Craigslist, the wonderful find-everything, including things you don't want, Web site. We are now the proud owners of a brown leather chair. I do need to rearrange the living room to get it to fit and not look silly, but for the moment, its there, and I love it.

101 Ideas.

I love lists. I get sucked into almost any TV show that is a list, and will usually read list stories first on Web sites. I found another one today: 101 Easy Home Makeovers. Perfect! I'd love to have a magazine-ready home, but I always find that I fall in love with really expensive things for my house. Some of these tips are fantastic, but I think my favorite is to wallpaper the inside of the closet. At the moment, my closet is stuffed full of clothes and shoes since it is so tiny, but some day I'll have a closet with visible walls--and they'll be wallpapered.

Here is the original story, which I found reprinted in the Seattle PI online. I do plan on trying out a few of these ideas.

For the love of teal.

Our house was owned for years by the same woman, and grandma loved teal. When she died and her granddaughter became the owner, they inherited teal doors, windows and trim. We still have some teal paint peeking out around various places in the house, especially on the windows. My dear husband found that Google's street view feature in Google Maps has an old image--one featuring all the lovely teal. That has explained the teal counter top in our dining room. Funnily enough, I had a bedroom that color when I was in high school.

While I'm glad the house has been repainted with nice white trim, the siding went from white to this strange purple-gray color. One of my warm-weather projects is going to be tackling that paint job. I really want a navy blue house with white trim and a red front door.

Cake.

It was a friend's birthday at work today, so a coworker and myself made this kick-ass cake for him. The french fries are sugar cookies. The bun is pound cake frosted with peanut butter. The hamburger is chocolate cake with chocolate frosting, then covered in crushed cookies. The lettuce is tinted coconut, ketchup and mustard are tinted frosting, the tomatoes and pickles are marzipan. The seasame seeds are Rice Krispies. I guess it tasted good, too.

Some photographs.

I finally remembered to bring my CF card to work and pull some photos off of it to post. They are pictured above. A canvas I painted that still needs to be hung on a wall, the wedding photo over the mantle (the mantle needs some different things on it, but it works for now) and our wedding photos on those shelves. My apologies for the flash on the photo glass. It turned out pretty well.

House guests.

We successfully hosted two house guests this past weekend. While I did borrow an aerobed from friends, at least our guests had their own bedroom with a door. In the apartment, they would have received a lovely camping mattress in the living room. Now if only we had two bathrooms ...

On another high note, the television is back against the wall where it belongs. We had moved it weeks ago so I could paint behind it, and just tonight it was returned to its rightful home. It feels like there are about three more feet in the living room when really we only moved the TV about a foot and a half. Its a joyous occasion.

We are in the homestretch for the housewarming party now. Only about three and a half days. I'm excited.

Spots.

We finally, successfully hung shelves in the living room last night. After multiple screws, some drilling, some swearing and some sanding, we have two shelves that actually turned out incredibly level. I'm quite impressed. Unfortunately, after hanging them too high the first time, our wall is full of holes. Nothing a bit of patching can't fix, but my once yellow wall is now yellow with white spots. So alas, I don't have a photo yet because I need to paint the wall.

On another happy note, we hung a wedding photo over the fireplace. Our mantle is quite large, so the photo looks WAY too small, but it works until we buy a flat-screen television to mount over the fireplace. Guess the large mantle is a good excuse to buy a rather large TV...

Wedding photos.

Although my husband and I have now been married almost nine months, we hadn't purchased or hung any wedding photos, mostly because we knew we'd be buying a house and I wanted to get the appropriate size for wherever we ended up living. We finally hung a few photos last night.

We moved into our house Nov. 1, but I had still put off buying photos. Finally, over Christmas, our photographer offered a discount on any prints that were ordered. Figuring there was no better time, Craig and I bought three large (16 x 24) prints I wanted to put on shelves in our living room. After we ordered and received prints, frames and shelves, I realized I probably couldn't fit three 30-inch shelves on the wall I wanted to put them on. Problem one. Instead, two would go on the wall and one would go over the fireplace, since we don't have a nice flat-screen to hang there.

Last night Craig hung the shelves where I said I wanted them, only to realize after the shelves and photos were up that they were too high. Problem two. So tonight we start over, lowering the shelves. Here's hoping we don't hit problem three. I'll post a photo once everything is the way I want it.

The beginning.

In order to keep an account of online explorations and inspirations, I thought I'd try logging it all in a blog. We'll see how this goes. So following, my own aesthetic escapades.