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.