tinseltime

not only is black friday a time for before-the-dawn crazed shopping, but it is also the day i am officially allowed to decorate for christmas.

now, i don't have many christmas decorations yet, but i do have a few boxes of ornaments and decor to spruce up my house for the holidays. plus, i already have up paper snowflakes, so i'd say my house is pretty festive -- and that makes me happy.

a snowflake blizzard

a perfect project while watching a movie on a chilly night...paper snowflakes. and because it's a "winter" craft versus a "christmas" craft, i can actually leave them up until spring, instead of a month!

luckily for me, my overly drafty windows and doors keep the snowflakes spinning in the breeze.

a peak inside

most everyone who visits me has said the same thing: "what's with the paper hanging in your door?" well, we'll get to that in a sec.

here's the back story:

august 2009. summer. it was my first night staying here, and although it was under-construction, i was excited to finally sleep at my own place. i locked my bike to the fence right outside my door, ready to bike to work the next day. but as i opened my door on that raining morning, the bike was gone, and in it's place, the broken lock lay in two pieces on the ground.

i felt a little uneasy, someone had been footsteps from my door. maybe they tried the door handle -- just for fun -- to see if it was left unlocked. my mind was filled with imagery of what had happened the night before. even if it had been a somewhat innocent crime of uptown late-night carousing by excited bar-goers after last call, i couldn't shake the feeling that someone had been peeping through my windows, looking to see if there was anything worth breaking and entering for.

so i ripped a piece of lined notebook paper in half and hastily secured it over my window opening in the door with masking tape. phew! now no one would be able to peak in whenever they felt.

i finally decided that little piece of paper needed to be replaced. i grabbed the leftover fabric rachael had given me along with her circle wall art frames (currently hanging my dining room) and picked out a pattern with tiny flowers. i made it four sheets thick -- so it's not completely opaque, but also not thin enough to be see-through.

i also decided that since the fabric was so thin, it would need to be weighted down at the bottom (so the wind from my fans wouldn't constantly blow it about).

my solution? i sewed a little tunnel (i apologize for not at all knowing the proper sewing terms) just large enough to hold a thin magic marker. but one wasn't heavy enough, so i added another "tunnel" for another marker to hide, to help weigh my fabric curtain down.

next i sewed two small one-sided pieces of velcro near the top of the fabric, on the backside of course. then cut equal lengths of velcro to stick to each, and secured each of those with a 3M command strip to attach to my door.

and voila! my new door window covering. definitely a step up from the lined notebook paper and masking tape...

tipsy on twinkly wine bottles

 

i'm back into the whole decorating kick again. (i think my whale coffee table gave me the push i needed to feel creative and inspired)

my next project: wine bottle christmas lights. i thought it'd be really cute to hang them on my railing along the stairs that lead down to my door. something like this:

materials:

• empty wine bottles (with the labels peeled off)
• strings of christmas lights (i'm planning on using the tiny white ones)
• something to secure the bottles to the railing (copper wire wrapped around the neck?)

here's a tutorial i found from eHow: how to make night lights using wine bottles
and another from Wit & Wistle: http://witandwhistle.com/?p=1041

i know it's not as discreet to bring empty wine bottles over, but if anyone happens to have some laying around, i would be glad to take them off your hands :)

the tale of the fail whale

it all started last summer when i bought a cheap $7.99 coffee table from savers and made a plea to anyone who drinks bottled beverages to save their caps. for months i would randomly received a zip lock baggy from a weekend party one day, or two forgotten caps from someone's jeans pocket another.

then one thunderstormy night i sat down in front of all my stacks of organized bottle caps and decided to go at it. i was going to first sketch it out and then lay out rough borders with the caps, but instead i just did it. and here's the final product.

note: i still need to replace some of the bottle caps around the whale so they are all darker colors since those seem to look the best.

PS: i have to give a shout out to jennifer of new home economics for suggesting the twitter fail whale idea!

i spy a bottlecap

first of all i'd like to say a big thank you to everyone who drinks bottled  beverages and is nice enough to pocket the caps and donate them to me, you guys rock! (and now you have proof your donations have not been in vein)

alright, so if you remember back to last summer, i bought a cheap $7.99 coffee table from savers with the intention of collecting enough caps of various colors to create a cool design for the tabletop. and this past weekend i decided i finally had enough to get started on my diy table. an hour or so later, i finished stacking all the caps by brand...there were roughly 1,029 bottle caps.

any ideas for a design? i've been kickin around the thought of making a design of the twitter fail whale. for now im going to use my blue wicker table with the glass top so i can change the design whenever my mood changes. kind of like an etch-a-sketch for furniture...

the secret of happiness

turns out certain people are worried that naming my dining room the opium den might hurt my reputation. well how about the poppyseed lounge? hmm, this might take some time, so as i ponder more socially acceptable titles to help you understand my vision, here are some photos from last weekend's project. what do you think?

here's a little background on my inspiration for this room: those who know me can understand why i ended up choosing a different (but equally vibrant) color for each of my four walls. as seen in my daily wardrobe, i am intrigued by mixing together as many patterns and colors as i possibly can. and now that i have my own place, it's starting to show through in my home decor as well.

the circular wall hangings shown above were a diy birthday gift from my lovely baby sis and i am so happy i finally got them up on the walls. i decided to have them hanging down from the ceiling, so i secured a string of hemp across the entire middle wall, and then hung each fabric circle down from there at different heights. i didn't plan it out in advance, and should have probably thought about their placements, measured, and used a transparent thread, but i was impatient and just wanted to get them up.

PS: for those of you still worried about the negative connotations of the term opium den, here's what a little google searching uncovered to prove that the word can be used to describe a design style:

• a peek into the home of olga naiman via design*sponge
• a post from the BBC's design inspiration section
• an LA spot, the figueroa hotel
• and of course, the one and only kitty cat klub in dinkytonwn

and i leave you with a quote (also found on my google search), which inspired the title of this post.

"i took it, and in an hour...an abyss of divine enjoyment suddenly revealed...here was the secret of happiness...at once discovered." -- thomas de quincey.

my windowsill garden

i ordered some herbies online in january...

...then i wished them luck as i buried them in soil. hoping they would grow big and tall...

a week or so later, they were already beginning to sprout :)

 and here they are today! i've already had to re-pot a few of them. and of course some of their plant friends from ikea and home depot have joined them too.

sink + vanity = happy girl

most of you probably know that there was a crazy cat lady living here before me...which meant that the place had a somewhat distinct odor, if you know what i mean. luckily we've already replaced nearly everything reminiscent of her (floors, walls, ceilings, closets...) but there is just one thing left. my bathroom vanity.

so tonight me and dad drove over to building materials outlet and picked out a 48" vanity and a 43" sink top. wait. 48" and 43"? that doesn't sound right. well, that's because i have only 42" to work with between the wall and the shower. and apparently 42" is not standard (unless you want a really short vanity...) it's either 36" or 48". im sure i just lost everyone there.

anyways, after exhausting all ideas of what we could possibly do (like buying a 36" and a 12" tall cabinet and putting them side-by-side) we finally decided on buying the bigger one. now dad will have to cut it down, make two new -- slightly larger -- doors, and reassemble the whole piece.

have faith, it will all come together somehow. my dad is nothing less than amazing. and plus, then i can actually use my vanity for storage. what a novel idea!

bottle cap coffee table

another great find at savers. this little coffee table has a great black base that should go with my living room decor. i wasn't impressed with the light wooden top (not in the picture), but that's ok since i plan to completely make it over anyways.

here's my vision: a bottle cap coffee table (see my progress here). and there's tons of inspiration on the web. for example:

i've begun collecting bottle caps, but it might take a while to get enough variety. so if anyone drinks a beverage with a fun bottle cap, send it my way!

and on the down side, if i mess it up, im only out a $7.99. man do i love savers.