Landscaping!

Anybody who knows me knows that I don't have a green thumb and lack landscaping skills, talent, and drive.  But our sad frontscape even made a city girl like me want to do something about the front of our house:

So sad:

But for my birthday, a friend brought over 8 bags of mulch with a promise to help me transform my front "yard":

She had big shears to trim down the shrubs:

And the mulch really made the green leaves pop!

Total improvement right?

Party Time

The girl had her first big birthday bash here at the house over the weekend. 20 teenagers. Wow.  What was I thinking? Trust me, future gatherings will have a LOT less kids. Fortunately, she had a couple of friends who came the day before and helped out so much in terms of setting up. After we burned a twenty at the dollar store, they decorated the front porch:

One of the oddest buys were these balloons from the dollar store that came in "assorted shapes".  Seriously, what kind of shapes are these?

We made one wall a photo booth area and set up a prop station (which you'll probably notice included more dollar store finds like the mustaches, boas, leis, straw hat, sunglasses, and a foam cowboy hat):

I loved the signs that the girl's friend made:

Obviously this friend dislikes wasted cups of soda.  My kind of girl:

They even moved the furniture around and hung balloons and homemade banners around the room:

As the kids came in, I'd lead groups of kids to the photo booth wall and some would try props and pose together.  Some really got into the props and others preferred plain group shots.  Before they left, I printed out pictures for the kids to take home.  Since the party was in the afternoon, food was simple--chips with dips and cookies that the girls made:

Good use of one of the balloon shapes, right?  Less sure about the mustache:

Some kids dug the temporary tattoos and went for a "sleeved" look:

And there were birthday cupcakes that the girls baked and frosted.  The part you don't see is after the girl blew out the candle, a cupcake got smooshed in her face.  One of her friends said it's kind of a tradition--I guess it's not just for weddings anymore!

I'm sure a lot of kids would "just die" if I posted their photo booth pics, but I do have this one I snapped of me and the girl post-party.  I think this party managed to age me ten years and ten pounds.

But the girl had a good time. Happy Birthday to my big girl!

The neighborhood

Even though we've been here almost two years, I still feel like a newcomer in our neighborhood.  It seems I learn about it through humorous buttons:

Or sometimes in the "Rant & Rave" section of Columbia's "Free Times":

I learn a bit more:

To which I say, shouldn't we all be keeping it classy?

Highlights from Mother's Day

For Mother's Day--I enjoyed one of my favorite dinners--sashimi and sushi!

Definitely a treat! We went to dinner on Friday night because I like to avoid the crowds on actual Mother's Day.

On Saturday, I enjoyed an Intro to Quilting class at a local sewing shop:

Surprisingly, I was the youngest one there by about 20 years. I kind of thought this was one of the skills one is supposed to pick up early on in life. It was definitely an intro class, explaining the basic concepts of quilting and how to use a rotary cutter. After 4 hours, here is what I had to show for it:

I'm going to confess that I'm a little daunted by quilting.

On the more productive side, I finally went through my hundreds of CDs:

And sorted some for donation, and put the ones that made the cut into these binders:

Now here's my next conundrum--I've been buying most of my current music as mp3s--should I still burn a backup CD to file in here?

And on Sunday morning, surprisingly, we woke up craving breakfast food prepared by somebody else and attempted to go to the Original Pancake House. What a mistake--because, duh! It was Mother's Day. The line was out the door. We tried another place, Cafe Strudel, but also line out the door. We ended up trying the brunch offering at a local natural food market, Rosewood Market--and surprise, no line at all!

I enjoyed their tofu scramble, vegan grits, tempeh "bacon", and vegan biscuit with nutritional yeast gravy:

Hope all the Moms out there had a great day!

Porch Redo

Another area I wanted to spruce up before my sister and her family's arrival was the back porch. They love being in the fresh air and since it's been getting milder here, I thought it'd be nice to have an area where we could enjoy beverages and some snacks:


Previously, we had been using the back porch just as a convenient place to bring out the trash and put out recyclables.


Though I spent about $35 investing in the artificial grass rug, a few cans of spray paint, and a couple of Dollar Store LED-lit paper lanterns, I really wanted to use what I had on hand. I used folding chairs and an old folding table we had as well as icicle lights.


I attempted to spruce up the folding table with some color. I have dubbed this table "The Learning Experience". I had tried different spray paints (e.g., one for plastic since there is a laminate on the table) and realized that some reacted unevenly with each other and the surface. Also, I learned a couple of lessons the hard way about using hand-made stencils. Anyhoo, it'll do for now:


Also the girl had this faded blue paper lamp that I spray painted in Chrome to make it pop against the paper lanterns:


It all came together quickly and fairly painlessly and I was pleased with the simple redo. To summarize, here is Before:


Here is After:


And here is After-Dark:


I stuffed some icicles inside the chrome star paper lamp. And since the green paper lanterns' LED lights didn't work, I stuffed a few icicles inside of one as well. Who would have thought there would be such shoddy workmanship from the Dollar Store?


The girl liked it a lot--she said she looks forward to hanging out there with food and friends.


Hope my sister's family enjoys it!

Spare Room to Hotel Room

In my journey to make the spare room an amenable guest room, I had a few breakdowns along the way. Ever watch "Hoarders" and they inevitably hit some point where the hoarder breaks down and cries and then justifies/Charlie Sheens it? God dammit, this is my life and you people just don't understand! I don't have a problem, I'm winning, dammit! What?! Yes I'm high. The drug is Frances and I'd tap out a line for you but it's too darn potent! Or something like that. Anyhoo, I kind of hit that point a number of times where I had to take a break and walk away and reassess the next day. But in the end I was able to get a lot done condensing like items together and labeling nearly everything. The hard part was taking a harder look at stuff I don't/won't use. Eventually I had a pile of empty containers where I planned to put the bed:

But remember how the furniture store slated delivery for the day of my sister's arrival and I joked that nothing could go wrong with that? Well, of course, I get a call yesterday and they say the truck isn't going to make it till Saturday. They offer me two options: they'd give me the Queen size version (I had ordered a Full size) of the same model I ordered for the same price and deliver it since they have it in stock or they'd give me another model in Full size and then replace it with the model I ordered on Saturday. In the end I went with the Queen size option, but it meant rearranging and making more room for the bigger bed. But it got done! (You can check out the "Before" in this post.) Wha-la!

The bookcases are all on one side:

I cleared the table and I can now close the closet doors.

I moved out the record albums (of which I ended up donating a third of them) and put the labeled supplies that I use less often in the closet for now. I did allow myself one "panic box" of miscellaneous items that I didn't have a place for yet and I will sort out later.

Overall, I'm very pleased and the girl even said it looked like a hotel! Perhaps because it's got a tv in there now?

With a hospitality card listing my guests' favorite channels?

Or is it the little welcome basket?

Can't wait until my sister's family arrives!

On to the next one

The house is still in the process of getting unpacked an organized. Honestly, I feel like the only room truly done is the kitchen. The living room is a close second but I still have to organize the CDs/DVDs and hang more stuff on the walls. But it's almost there too. I guess I'd reason the slow progress is that I don't want to rush anything and just put stuff away for the sake of putting it away--that I want to really have a good system in place and filtered out what we truly want/need to keep.

So the next room I'm tackling is the spare room. It's been kind of a holding area for crafting stuff and all the record albums, as well as some overage from the SoCal garage. The current goal for this room is to craft stuff as well as be a guest room. As you can see, it could use a little organizing:

Okay, there's a little path here...

Yeesh, that's a lot of stuff on the shelves, probably need to filter again

There's all the albums. Oh and the turntable to turn them to mp3s. Still in the box.

Sigh. Well there's a ways to go. Especially since I've got two weekends to organize this and fit a bed in here. Why the sudden motivation? 'Cause Augie (and his parents) is coming for a visit! Best motivation ever.

Well at least it's not as bad as the craft room in SoCal:

Uh, right?

Anyhoo, I'm open to any suggestions and wishes of good luck and focus. Here we go...

More unpacking

Finally unpacked all the pictures that used to be on the fireplace mantle:

Hmm, I might have to get a bigger space for these.

I also hung up some paper lanterns, one of which is also a lamp.

Though I have got to do something about that hanging cord. I think there is some kind of clip that I can get to have the lamp cord lie flat against the wall. The shadow of the cord is driving me crazy.

I also unpacked more boxes. Since we had lost a bookcase to the move, I was hoping that we could donate enough to not warrant a replacement. Unfortunately, I think I lost that battle, though I did manage to fill another box for donation.

Anyhoo, it wasn't all work. The girl had some friends over and they made these pretty chocolates:

Sweet way to end the weekend.