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...

fried green tomatoes

just a little update on my hanging topsy turvy tomato garden. there are a handful of little green tomatoes growing among the leaves, and i am patiently waiting for them to turn red. well, not so patiently...does red come after green? i hope so.

the last of the speckling

like the tiny elves who fixed the shoemaker's shoes in the middle of the night, my dad and brother surprised me by starting AND finishing my ceiling while i was at work on friday.

the actual spray texturing process only took about 20 minutes, but a few hours of setup and teardown made it a much longer project. just like when we spray textured the living room ceiling last year, they first had to cover the entire place with plastic, then mix the putty, and then spray. they did the dining room and the kitchen, so now my entire place has been (as matthew calls it) stuccoed!

the next step is to paint and glitter it.

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!

salsa on a ledge

my little herb garden has been through a lot in its day. if you remember back to the beginning of this year, i planted the tiny seeds in the windowsill of my dining room. weeks went by, and even though a few didn't make it, the surviving plants gave me the confidence to plant a few more varieties. right now my jalapenos, parsley, and oregano are growing strong!

now i just need my tomatoes to ripen and homemade salsa here i come!

a breath of fresh air

it's been pretty miserable trying to get a good night's sleep in such a hot muggy bedroom, so i finally gave in and decided an air conditioner had turned from luxury to necessity. we picked up a soleus air 12,000 btu unit, complete with a remote so I can control it from my bed. how lazy am i?

anyways, turns out my window doesn't open...so dad had to go at it from the exterior of the building. he took the window off completely, cut a board to fit the empty space, cut out a square from that board to fit the air conditioner through, put it all back together, bolted it in place, plugged it in, and that was that. easier said than done of course (thanks for all your work on such an incredibly hot humid day dad! i know it was a lot more work than that).

 it's been a week now and i can honestly say i am loving the latest addition to my condo. not only can i sleep straight through the night, but i have a new-found appreciation for hearing little birdies chirping in the morning (there's still a sliver of open air around the unit that dad has to caulk up) and rain drops pitter-pattering on the air conditioner. it's oddly comforting.