House Color

We need to decide - BY THURSDAY - what color our siding will be. Choices are as follows:

Help!

Joël Penkman

Just so you know, we didn't do much this weekend. Well, I planted grass on Saturday, but then it snowed on Sunday so who knows if it will even grow. Boo.

Whatever.

Let's look at some artwork by Joël Penkman.

Joël Penkman is a New Zealand artist that now resides in the UK. As you can see, she paints a lot of food. Really pretty food. I love her popsicle paintings, her 100 teacups paintings, and her "Fictional Food" paintings (right column). The middle "Fictional Food" is entitled Holly Golightly's Breakfast :)

She also paints "Things." My favorite has to be these marbles. I love how they reflect the light. 

For those of us who can't afford her original paintings, she does have a few prints for sale in her etsy shop. It's probably a good thing that she doesn't have her marbles painting there or I would be really tempted.... Though a candy print is really tempting as well... So cute!

Window Advice

We met with a contractor that is willing to do what we want to the house; namely, non-vinyl siding and non-retrofit windows. So now we need help with a few decisions. We are replacing all the back windows entirely, but I need to know if we should replace the old windows in the back bedroom, kitchen, and den with two double hung windows or one big sliding window? Another thought we had was to make the windows in the back bedroom bigger... not wider, but taller (we are in agreement that even if we don't do it in the back bedroom, we are definitely doing it in the front bedroom). But back to slider vs double-hung. Right now I'm thinking slider in the kitchen and double-hungs in the bedroom and den?

We also really need advice as to color of our house. We're going to have to replace all the siding eventually, but we kind of need to decide what color to do before we get going on the back of the house. I'll probably be calling you, Mom. Watch out.

Confession

We did absolutely nothing this weekend. I mean, we hung out with some friends and went to a birthday party Friday and Saturday nights, but the days.... nothing. It was snowing here and really cold so after I made Eric walk me around Target Saturday morning (for exercise) we went back to bed and slept pretty much the rest of the day. Must have needed it.

Second Confession:
I keep seeing pictures of cute little couples in front of cute little houses (bungalows, craftsmen bungalows, little brick cottages or tiny gothic-inspired stuccos) and I compare them to our house with scaling siding and awful windows and giant roofline and feel like a failure. While our house will be nice when we're finished with it (if we're ever finished with it), it will never be cute.

When these nagging doubts creep in and threaten to destroy my ambition to fix the place, I remind myself of the following:
Our house has huge bedrooms
Our house has a lot of closet and storage space, especially for how old it is
Our house has a gigantic basement
Our house has a den
Our house has coved ceilings (!)
Our house has gorgeous wood floors
And, last but not least,
Our house has the potential to be pretty awesome (on the inside, at least)

Basically, our house has everything I would want except for the darling exterior; and the fact is, we couldn't afford both. Hopefully our next house will be the best of both worlds.

The Link Collective

Furoshiki. Have you heard of this? Furoshiki are Japanese wrapping clothes. They're used for carrying goods and clothing or even for wrapping gifts. I found some gorgeous ones handmade by Link Collective on Etsy.

They sell bag and strap sets so you can make a kind of purse, but their site also shows how to fold the scarves in order to conveniently carry different kinds of things.

It's like fabric origami!

Definitely check out Link's site as well as reading this interview about the dyeing and printing process here. Super fascinating.

Rifle Paper Company iPhone Cases!

Rifle Paper Company is an awesome stationary store that just came out with a new line of iPhone cases. I would seriously consider buying one of these if they had more options in the 4s, instead of just for the iPhone 5.

They're so pretty!

I think my favorites are these....

Or maybe I'll just settle for a bobby pins print?? Eric is always complaining how I take them off and sprinkle them about the house...

A Very Productive Weekend

We removed the last remnant of green shag from the hallway this weekend, and boy, did it feel good! I love ripping up carpet. Seeing the gorgeous floor underneath is a huge treat!

After the carpet was gone, I continued pulling up staples while Eric headed outside to tackle the last of the tree stumps. I should have taken before and after pictures of our side yard because the transformation is amazing. All the stumps, gravel, weeds, and overgrown bushes are gone. One bag of top soil to level a couple of places, and that thing is ready for grass seed. I'm super excited. Perhaps it was stupid to get rid of all that stuff when we had a perfectly fine path, but all the overgrowth was driving me mad. Nice, smooth, lush lawn makes me happy. Thank you, dear husband, for your patience in that back-breaking, blister-creating endeavor. You are seriously the best.

Sunday, Eric went fishing with some co-workers and I finished up the painting and cleaning and waxing in the hallway. It was so great to wake up to this:

Remember what the shag used to look like?

Other weekend highlights: hockey-watching, fridge cleaning, bread & muffin-making, movie watching, and garage sale-ing...in which....Eric found me a bike!

Ignore the fact that I look like a goon, just look at that beaut! Eric has been searching forever for an old bike frame that he can clean up and make fancy (not technical bike jargon) for me, and he scored this old Schwinn for $35. Perhaps he will complain less when I drag him around to garage sales, now :)

I am already looking forward to next weekend!

The Standoff

Windows & Siding

We've been meeting with window and siding people the last couple of weeks. We finally got a reasonable estimate, and the contractor was really nice, but when we went to look at the houses he listed for us to check out, we were far from impressed. I mean, the quality of the work was fine, but seriously, can we talk about how hideous vinyl siding is? It's awful. And retrofitting windows should be illegal. My soul is hurting a little. Why can't people just sell us nice, paintable siding? Why are American people so allergic to home maintenance that somehow, vinyl has become the norm. Obviously, I'm being dramatic, but just look at these houses!

And the windows!

Look at how sad their recessed trim is. And how tiny they look - like little portholes, as Eric would say.

Obviously, vinyl would be fine and work and be affordable....but I'm hoping we can drum up a few other options. Are there other affordable options? And, more importantly, will they look good?

The Calligraphy of Seb Lester

Note: I should warn those that are swear-word adverse to avoid this post.

A couple of months ago, I checked out a few books from the library in an attempt to learn calligraphy. A few frustrating weeks later, I gave up because, well, I wasn't that great at it and I wasn't sure what I'd actually want to write once I had mastered the skill. I'm not really one for hanging cheesy quotes and "family, friends, faith" plaques around my house.

However, it would seem that Seb Lester, a calligrapher and type designer hailing from the UK, doesn't care what the words he's writing say, so much as how beautiful they are. For example:

Good heavens. I feel so guilty just posting that. Look away! 

As you can see, Mr. Lester has a bit of an attitude, but his calligraphy is lovely. Of course he has a real job where he designs book covers and typefaces and perfectly presentable quotes which he sells as art prints. He's pretty good at it, too.

But my favorite work is that in his sketchbook:

Especially his series, "Break Bad News Gently with Calligraphy."

You can follow him on Instagram @seblester or see his portfolio at http://www.seblester.co.uk/

And again, sorry for all the swears....

Easter Weekend

I'll say it again, three day weekends are where it's at.

The weather here is finally starting to feel like spring, so we spent most of our weekend outside. Eric moved the gas line (in preparation for our new back door), and I did a few little projects around the house.

The first was inspired by these planters from West Elm Market. I really like black pots (which are super hard to find) and I've been wanting some herb planters so this was the perfect opportunity. I bought three terra cotta planters from Home Depot, and an hour later, voila!

 The only thing is, chalkboard paint is like...three times as expensive as regular paint so I used cheap, black matte paint for the first few coats, and then re-coated the rims of the pots with chalkboard paint.

And then, on Easter Sunday, we had a few friends/co-workers over.

It was really relaxing. I'm looking forward to more spring weekends ahead!