SUCCESS!

things are looking up in lil' ugmoville. well, kinda. structurally, in terms of renos and repairs - not so much. the electrical will be done on monday at which point we can have our contractor in doing drywall and whatnot. it's looking increasingly UN-likely that we'll have everything painted before the big move. but what can you do. that was a bit of a pipe dream anyway, considering the fact that we're PAINTING AN ENTIRE HOUSE.

but i'm tired of focusing on the negative! here's how you can tell that the dotytron and i have been together forever - we're a good balancing act. like a lever and a fulcrum if we remember our 5 (6?) simple machines from grade 3. when one of us is down, invariably the other one will be totally optimistic to prevent a downward spiral into split-wristville.

more often than not, ***I'M*** captain half-full. i know, surprising, right? the thing is - i get negative about the small things: dishes not being done, neighbours sullying my immaculate green bin, people cutting in line representing the downfall of civilization as we know it, etc. when it comes to THE BIG STUFF, i just put my head down and plow through until its done. get 'er done, is my motto. it's the indomitability of the karl lagerfeld spirit. i'm driven as a mofo. the dotytron is all-too-easily bogged down by the perception of the magnitude of whatever the task is at hand. i can see EXACTLY where we have to be and then i just work myself to the bone getting there. sure, my life isn't RELAXING, per se - but it's productive. and in the lagerfeld universe productivity is worshiped with the fervour of the true believer.

the point is: the dotytron had to pull a rotting mouse carcass from the kitchen cupboard in lil' ugmo yesterday and it damn near broke him.
ming).

here's the positive side. this is the kitchen we inherited:




so. gross. (that's not the positive side - it's coming) our budget for renoing the kitchen right now: -$2002020202020202. (still not the positive side). i was so disgusted by this kitchen that i had hatched an elaborate plan to spend a whole year cooking dinner using ONLY the following: microwave, toaster oven, panini machine, rice steamer, slow cooker, deep fryer - until such time as it was possible to gut the thing and have the kitchen of my dreams (cork floors! gas stove! stainless look appliances! bosch dishwasher!) (STILL not the positive side). that plan is obviously impractical - but let's face it, if i spent a year doing it and blogging about it, i would probably turn into some kind of blogging celebrity and get a book deal. not half bad. look at what that "julie and julia" broad is doing now. precisely.

so i decided to paint the cabinets. BRILLIANT IDEA. the cabinets are laminate. normally, i would have to sand, prime, and apply two coats. i was feeling lazy. we bought behr paint and primer in one and i removed the hardware and started slapping that shiz on. COLOUR ME IMPRESSED. it's sticking! like crazy!!!!!!!!!!!!!! on LAMINATE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! this is kind of a big deal. i've saved myself like 5 hours of sanding and priming time and jebus knows how much drying time. i think 2 coats should do it, so the first batch will be done by the end of the weekend. it's going to make the kitchen look MUCH better. and maybe i won't have to do my weird, restrictive cooking-for-a-year-sans-stove challenge after all.

in other good news - our landlord is a SWEETHEART and is GIVING us extermination services for our mouse/roach problem (he works for orkin) as a WEDDING PRESENT. how effing sweet is that? so cute! AND he can do the treatment whenever. we were kind of worried we'd need to get him in there while the ceilings were open and everything was exposed but he says he doesn't have to. we can move in, have our shiz in there, and he can do it in a couple of hours. sweet! amazing! apparently people like to throw around the word "fumigate" but to actually fumigate you have to close down like a block. they don't do that anymore. they just put poison traps around and the roaches take it back and slowly die a horrible death and take their roachy brethren down with them. amazing.

probably the most awesome thing about getting hitched was how the community comes together around you. to wit: the dotytron needed dress socks. he goes to ashraf at lb luomo (that muslim men's clothing store across from the big mosque that the dotytron loves shopping at) to get the socks, happens to mention to ashraf that we're getting hitched, and ashraf GIVES HIM DRESS SOCKS. so sweet! so cute! stuff like that tears my heart into a million pieces of joy. THAT'S the kind of stuff worth fighting for. when you really become a PART of your community - the community will come together.

ANYWAY, the other success story of the day is that i got an amazing massage from my massage therapist who worked me like a stiff sourdough. it felt goooooood.

but the principal one is that WE FOUND A QUEEN SIZED BED FRAME. and by "we" i mean "i". as you well know, i LOVE my teak veneer headboard and bed with the built-in nightstands. love it. adore it. but the dotytron is 6'4" and costco has really affordable memory foam mattresses and while-we're-moving-why-bother-taking-our-crappy 50-year-old-double-mattress-with-us-and-why-not-upgrade, etc. but the dilemma is, our current headboard is almost 9ft long - so a queen is going to be even longer and the master bedroom isn't THAT big. so we want our bed to be in proportion to the room. i believe in that. i'm willing to sacrifice the queen sized bed in order to serve the higher cause of proportion and form. form over function! did i mention that i LOVE our current bed frame? so the last little while i've been trawling craigslist and coming up with bupkes. sad perogie.

so today i went by g.u.f.f. probably my FAVORITE store for mid-century modern furniture (along with upsidedive). the prices there are always fair and they've had lovely queen teak beds before - but nothing lately. so i wander in and ask. i'm told that queen is the most common size for frames and the fact that i have a double is actually a little rare. but queen frames sell out in the store in MINUTES. they JUST had one, but before they could even get it into the store, a dealer came by and whisked it away. BEFORE THEY COULD GET IT INTO THE STORE! so i kept walking, bought a lovely mid-century electric lemon lamp to assuage my aggrieved soul and SAW THE GUFF GUYS DROPPING OFF A BED FRAME TO ZIG ZAG ON QUEEN EAST. i waited a bit, walked in, and casually inquired if he had a queen sized bed frame. and (of course) he did. i saw it. it's quite lovely. needs a little bit of cleaning and an oiling but it'll be fine. the lines are actually nicer than the one i have now - it's got lovely tapered legs and the HEADBOARD IS ACTUALLY SHORTER THAN OUR DOUBLE. which means it'll fit into the room even BETTER! huzzah!

he told me that he didn't charge me much over what he paid for it at G.U.F.F. plus, once is slang my double on craigslist it'll offset the costs. so that's one thing i can scratch off our list and now we can order our memory foam mattress and have it delivered to the house and it's all glorious.

i was also describing the rosewood buffet that we have to the zig zag guy (remember it? it's got the slatted wood doors - the zig zag guys says the correct nomenclature for that style is tambour). apparently rosewood pieces are collector's items, because rosewood is rare or endangered now. and the fact that ours has tamboured doors makes it even MORE rare - he told me to hold onto that piece and that it's highly sought after. according to zig zag guy, if i ever get tired of it, it's better for us to refinish it rather than get rid of it. score! i wouldn't ever get rid of it anyway - i love that piece and it was a total find.

so yeah, that's the good news.

today is my day off from work. i'm off to take our water sample to the city to get it tested for lead. i'm also going to do some light grocery shopping and then do some errands. we're going to go back to the house tonight to try to rip out more of the baseboards.

last night i made us nicoise sandwiches for dinner. i'll post a pic later - the dotytron has absconded with the camera. tonight i don't know what we're going to have - maybe take out at lil' ugmo while we're going to town on the baseboard and boraxing the hell out of the kitchen to kill les cucarachas.

fin.

school of bob villa, lesson 1:

if you apply ENOUGH of many different types of wood glue, one of them is bound to work and will make the joint stick. !!!!! success! i'm not gonna lie, things were looking pretty grim there for a bit, exacerbated by the fact that the home depot mission that i had been (wrongly) priding myself on (i should have known that it was eerily too well to be believed, what with me finding everything on my list with only a minimum of waiting and grade 9-style pantomiming to a bevy of pleasantly disengaged orange-aproned staff) yielded the wrong web clamping. BOO! i injected about four different kinds of wood glue into the joints of my practice telephone table and finally, in a fit of desperation, completely flummoxed by the workings of the web clamping (or what i *thought* was web clamping), i grabbed a crate of records and balanced it precariously on the upended table to put some weight on the setting joints. i'm supposed to let it dry for a good 12 hours, but when i went into the room (which i have hermetically sealed against all interlopers in a superstitious appeal to woodworking karma) and gingerly wiggled the joint, it didn't wiggle at all. it's too soon to tell, but i'm cautiously optimistic.

i also went to town with my brand-new upholstery staple remover on the existing seat covers, peeling off god-knows-how-ancient cheap filling and a tacky, "cream" (i think it must have once been cream) coloured naugahyde fabric. i did all this while wearing safety goggles and breathing through my mouth. i get that from my mom. my mom has a very strange habit of breathing through her mouth whenever she's put in situations like: being on public transportation, using a bathroom in the developing world, on the (rare) occasions that she does the dishes. it's kind of weird to me because as i have learned, smells are actually particulate matter, which means when you mouth breath around off-putting odors, you're actually EATING them. this didn't stop me from fulfilling my lagerfeld genetic destiny by mouth-breathing like a mofo as i lifted one staple after another. i procured some foam ($10! for 2 seats!) and now i just need a staple gun and i can go to town.

i'm documenting the whole process. i likes me a good crafty before-and-after like few other things.

so, yesterday's meeting with our lawyer was...um...interesting (if not exactly confidence-inspiring) to say the least. he works out of a barebones storefront across from a subway station on the danforth. it's like, one room, with no privacy, so when his next appointment walked in while he was dealing with us, he had to ask them to wait outside. on the street. when i had called to book the appointment i had tried to get something during the day but he had told me that he was "in court" all day and wouldn't be able to see us until after 7pm. so we get there and i noticed that on his right hand, he had a FRESH scrappy doo wonderland stamp. !!!!! i surreptitiously pointed this out to the dotytron who responded with raised eyebrows and suppressed LOLs. i can't BELIEVE how cheap this guy is. he looks like a cross between the dad on "american dad" and troy mcclure. the lowest rate i had been quoted from other lawyers was $695 for the house and $295 for the mortgage, plus disbursements. this guy charges a flat fee of $500 for both the mortgage and the house and that's INCLUDING some of the disbursements! i am SO GLAD my mom is a real estate lawyer right now (she can't represent us because it's a conflict of interest). she's going to be checking over everything that happens and she's totally in our corner so it's a nice insurance policy. lawyers nowadays (for real estate transactions) are hella lazy and don't do their due diligence and rely on title insurance to cover their butts. it's crazy.

"scene not herd" was a complete 180 from last year's selection. while last year was super indie, with like a billion new pornographers' videos and like a billion emily haines videos, this year was total hipster, with an almost all-electronic music card. it's disappointing what this series has become. it's really poorly curated. even three years ago i saw some AMAZING videos. the international selection is so lacking and it seems to be used as an excuse for the curator to show how much street cred he/she has. show me videos that ENHANCE the music video genre! show me videos that are doing something crazy! there's so much re-treading of ground that it's shocking the creative rut that people are in. my favorite of the night was this one:

it's pretty cute. it's also really hard to lose with stop-motion animation.

tonight we're having dinner at the roomie's new place. i'm not sure what we're getting to eat, as usually "cooking" for the roomie means ordering takeout. i made a banana cake with cream cheese frosting for dessert. after that, depending on how ambitious/motivated we're feeling, we might go to a party at one of my dodgeball teammates' house...but that's VERY far away (well, st. clair and oakwood) so we'll see.

fin.

what a day! what a week!

so...I WON THE WORK COOKIE BAKE-OFF! it was surprisingly nerve-wracking for a throwaway kind of thing (and by "throwaway" i mean "agonized over my [multiple!] entries for a couple of weeks beforehand") what can i say? i'm a competitive, go-for-the-gusto kind of a gal. i have a despicable habit of really, really enjoying winning stuff. my two entries were: chocolate cornmeal cookies with orange cream, and a classic chocolate chip cookie with sea salt. i really thought the sandwich cookies with the orange cream were the clincher, but i actually won for the chocolate chip. at the end of the day, people really always come back to comfort food classics. T and i held hands as they were announcing the winners. lol! to be honest, the funnest part was trash talking T leading up to it. to balance out my olympian dreams, my teams lost at bocce AND the relay race. my lunchtime bocce team also suffered a humiliating defeat on thursday. WE LOST 11-0. that's right, we didn't score a SINGLE point. fastest bocce game EVER. that was pretty humbling, considering T all but announced it on the p.a. so that by the time i trucked back into work after eating a post-game hot dog, i was confronted with snickering, good-natured ribbing from my colleagues.

yesterday was kind of hectic. i hauled my butt home straight from the picnic, did a quick change, and then was picked up by my friend's D's friends to head to the ancaster old mill for D's wedding. it's a pretty spot. D and her new hubby N had already had the religious ceremony with the imam a few weeks prior, so this was just a chance for her to wear her pretty dress and sit down to dinner with her friends. it was very intimate...maybe 40 people in all? quite cozy and everyone was super friendly. there was no alcohol (D and N are both muslim) which cut down on the rambling, crass speeches and no dancing. the food was excellent and even though i went on my own (the dotytron couldn't make it because he had to oversee the final recital for his after school program thing) it was easy to talk to everyone and chat and mix and mingle.

look at how pretty she looks! and how handsome he is! he looks like a hockey player (kind of sergei federov-ish) this was my first time meeting him - it had been a bit of a whirlwind courtship but he's very sweet and gentle and shy and you can tell they're good together. her dress was awesome. i recommended the same place that dr. rei got her dress and D said they were so amazing there. that jacket she's wearing? it's made from the part of the train and dress they chopped off (she had it shortened to mid-calf length)! and that little ruffled pleating above the sweetheart neckline? also added (she needed the dress to have more coverage)! pretty awesome, eh?

so now i'm about to eat my breakkie and start my day. my day is kind of a wonky one. i'm going to head out to the hardware store and this place called lee valley to pick up supplies like: teak oil, strap clamps, wood glue, medium grit sandpaper and chrome polish to fix up my various chairs and whatnot. and then i'm going to put on a pair of gloves and get to work and see how i do. i'm cautiously optimistic. the plan today is to do the gluing and the clamping and to go at the chrome chair and see if i can get any of the rust off.

the plan for this evening is hopefully to somehow watch "he's just not that into you" lol! pretty ambitious, eh?

the worldwide short film festival is starting this week! it totally crept up on me without warning. usually i'm totally on top of it. it's a bit of a tradition for me and the dotytron spanning the entire length of our relationship so we'll have to try to squeeze in a couple of viewings. i really associate this festival with summer, with the dotytron, and with the nascent stages of our journey together. i'd feel a little odd if i missed it for no good reason (ie. i was in town, but just didn't go)

okay...time to start my day of impersonating bob villa! wish me luck!

my fair lil' ugmo: bathroom edition

so i'm kind of keen to get going on the bathroom. with some basic fixes (paint, a new door way, punching open a wall and installing closets) the upstairs would be COMPLETELY done and gorgeous. the bathroom is another thing standing in the way to one floor of the house being in tip top shape. as i've already mentioned, i'm feeling the hex tiles on the floor. and then i thought...what about GIANT hex tile? and then i googled up my vision today and found exactly what i was looking for! isn't it cute? i kind of like the look of the chubby hex tile with the subway tile backsplash. if tile floor and tile halfway up the walls gets to be too pricey, i'd settle for wainscoting, but my first preference is tile for such a damp space. just for the peace of mind and cleanability factor. i'm not a super-fan of the sink pictured above...i think i'm going to go for a wide pedestal style.


i'm also a fan of the deco style sink fixtures.

with a mirrored medicine cabinet above

and the ikea asker containers suspended on the grundtal rail and S hooks for toothbrushes, toothpaste, etc.

above the toilet, to make up for the under counter space you lose with a pedestal sink, i would either want open shelving (with a piece of fabric stretched over top so it's still hidden) or maybe three of these shelves spaced out vertically, if i have enough width above the toilet:

fin.

petty economizing...

lagerfeld style. behold my new rosewood buffet! it is even more beautiful and lustrous than the photo would indicate. the doors slide BACK into the sides, because they're all sliced up into a million pieces and curve back. don't ask me how it works. know only that it is BEAUTIFUL. it cost $450. not cheap. but it's definitely a collector's item that will retain its value. even after we drill holes into the back. it's our new tv stand. it works a little better than the other buffet i bought (which remember, was a steal at $280) because it's a foot shorter. the other buffet we're going to put in the dining room and use it to hold plates and bar supplies and other buffet/sideboard/credenza type things (the dotytron totally busted me on the nomenclature: "why do you keep calling it something different?") the rosewood buffet is heavy as all f**k and in better shape. i'm in love with it.

the petty economizing comes in when i bought expired tropicana orange juice at $2 off to make up for it. lol! and i am going to return all those anthropologie clothes. no more clothes for me, no sir. not for a long while (or, as long as i can stand it...which probably won't be all that long.) it's working out to my benefit that this summer isn't much for being hot. i don't have an opportunity to run through my copious amounts of summer clothes.

i've also snagged 2 very very old and rickety telephone tables which i'm going to turn into my first diy furniture refinishing project. i'll document the results. this weekend is busy with crafty projects. i'm going to try to clean up this chrome chair i pulled out of the trash. i gave one to H to go with her school desk (H and i are kind of setting up mirror homes...we have the same school desks, now the same chairs, and the same ikea tray underneath our respective kitty dishes...lol) i've done some research. you can apparently use 0000 steel wool and chrome polish, coca cola, or a ball of aluminum foil. i'm going to try all three to get the rust off.

on tuesday night i made up the last of the farro and black bean burger mix and made a new batch of the smoky red pepper spread to go along with.

tonight we just ate salad...i wasn't very hungry as i had a big lunch. we took a colleague out to lunch in the workplace dining room as a last huzzah. i had a pretty decent turkey burger with excellent, skinny-crispy sweet potato fries. after work i came home and met up with the dotytron and we played some no-rules tennis. i can't really generally handle eating a big meal at lunch and dinner unless i've kind of set myself up for it (ie. vacay/an "eat whatever i want" day, etc.) so i wasn't terribly hungry so i ate the spinach, grape tomato, red onion, avocado, and sunflower seed salad i couldn't eat last night. the dotytron supplemented his dinner with some leftover black bean chili.

now i'm gearing up to bake off my entries for the workplace cookie baking competition as part of the picnic on friday. i'm in it to win it (as they say.) no prisoners. it's been getting really ugly at work with my old supervisor, T. there have been accusations of sabotage.

in other news...my sister bought and devoured (her words!) sarah dessen's "just listen" in one night and then promptly went out and bought like, 3 more of her books. lol! amazing! i've gotten dr. rei hooked on the e. lockhart ruby oliver series too. i've still got a horrendous backlog of book reviews to do.

okay...i gotta put the finishing touches on the performance invites. eeks!

fin.

things i didn't know were possible

/ house edition of roll call of awesome:

a) that you could fall in love with a shower curtain:



b) that i would suddenly go apes**t over oilcloth tablecloths and marimekko prints. i could picture any of these providing a jaunty and practical jolt of colour to my dining room table (while protecting it from the dotytron's tendency to becrumb everything and the cats' tendencies to scratch everything up):






so so so lovely!

i also love the look of european high-gloss cabinets in kitchens. i want a blue and white kitchen (the better to show off apple clock!) with cork flooring. that's the dream. i had originally wanted blue high gloss cabinets with a white tile backsplash (words of advice: NEVER GET WHITE CABINETRY!) but then i saw the ikea 2009 catalogue and a whole high gloss kitchen is actually TOO reflective and it would be a fingerprint, smudgy nightmare. exhibit A:

so eighties! so i think now i want light grey or blue cabinets, white backsplash, cork floors.

i can also totally envision the upstairs bathroom worked around that shower curtain as inspiration, too. all soft blues or bright greens with little white hex tiles:

those are marble. that is NOT happening. but you get the drift. like all white hex tile with just the random soft blue one every so often.

that's all a long way off. like, dotytron has a job and all the big stuff has been dealt with long way off. our priorities are probably something like this:

i) electrical
ii) furnace/hvac
iii) roof
iv) plumbing/intake pipe upgrade
v) adjusting the closets/size of upstairs bedrooms a bit
vi) basement finishing/opening up staircases
vii) kitchen
viii) deck/garage
ix) landscaping the front/digging up the back
x) not killing each other

le sigh. it's going to be a long, dirty, slog...IF we get it.

so we've put in an amendment on the price. we'll see if the sellers' take the bait.

--------------------------

edit: later that same evening

so our realtor presented the offer and the sellers went ape shiz. we ended up coming in $8,000 under our existing offer (that has been accepted.) the seller is apparently under the belief that if he put 8 grand in the house he could sell it for $400,000, which actually made our realtor LAUGH OUT LOUD (if you could see the interior, you would too.)

so maybe they'll knock a grand or two off.

tonight i made spaghetti and meatballs for dinner. there are few things that spaghetti and meatballs CAN'T fix. and lemme tell you, i needed fixin'

two nights of minimal sleep can get to you. last night the dotytron and i got into a very immature tiff that resulted in me sleeping upside down on the bed (my feet where my head was supposed to be) out of sheer stubbornness. we had gotten into a tussle brought upon by stress and anxiety and overwork and a few too many sleepless nights in a row. i threw his pillow onto the ground. he told me to pick it up. i refused. then it became a battle of the wills. after 20 minutes, he said, "i work with 8th graders, dude, i can wait it out" which is the point at which my resolve solidified into an unyielding, lead obelisk. the short of it is, i didn't pick up the pillow and i successfully proved that i could be more stubborn than an eight grader, even if it means sleeping upside down on the bed with no covers. lol!

'terminator salvation' and book reviews forthcoming! tomorrow night my friend T is arriving by way of a conference in ottawa from vancouver. she was here over the holidays but it's been 8 years since she's been back in toronto during the spring/summer. i'm so excited! she's going to be staying with us for a week and a half. joy!

fin.

well, that escalated quickly

dearest readers...i bought a CREDENZA! and it is GORGEOUS! it's a gorgeous teak with a very dark, almost walnut stain. long and low, 6 feet long with both shelves AND drawers. it was a very fortuitous find and i'm absolutely in love love love with it.

i've been on the lookout for a long, long, long, time. i hate our tv stand and the stupid bookcase we inherited (it got left behind in a previous apartment) to store our dvds and videos (yes, i said videos.) so i've been trawling craigslist, various used furniture stores, ikea, looking for something suitable. everything was either too expensive, or not quite right, or overpriced (ie. craigslist - people overvalue their stuff like crazy.)

i was considering this piece on craigslist:

but i wasn't too sure of the wood colour or the leather top. it was okay, but not perfect.

this little number seemed aight...but all the way in etobicoke. and the finish was meh.

i had kind of resigned myself that i might get two of the ikea ps lockers in red:

this is an affordable option (although not really, if you get two, you're up at $260.) plus it has its drawbacks: the doors open only with a key, which means you have to either never lose the key, or keep the key in the lock and turn it every time you want to open it and access the dvd/vcr whatever inside. plus you'd have to drill holes in the metal to get the cords running through and i don't even know how to do that.

yesterday i did my crafting, did some light spring cleaning, then went over to help H move, showing up fortuitously in time to grab the last garbage bag...lol! some help i was. then i zipped down to queen east to see if i could find anything in the junk stores around.

i stopped in at one place...he didn't have any teak, but he had some walnut pieces (i like walnut too, i'm not a 100% teak fetishist.) they were too tall. finally, he showed me something that looked like this:


with a 4 shelf bookcase on top, the whole thing selling for $395. the credenza bit was only maybe 2-3 feet wide...and he was willing to separate the two pieces and sell the bottom to me separately for $225 plus tax. the finish was more blonde...i didn't love it, but i think i was in a credenza buying/nesting/roomie moving out so i have a proper living room again frenzy...so i thought about it and seriously considered it. then i called the roomie cuz she was in the area and i thought we could shove it in her car and be on our merry way. i went to meet up with her, but en route, popped into another store, and lo and behold fell in LOVE with my little beauty piece.

i don't have a picture. it's gorgeous. it has some minor scuffs and nicks...nothing a little go over with steel wool and teak oil won't take care of. it has shelves on either side hidden with sliding doors, and three drawers in the middle. one of the drawers was missing, the dude at the store told me it was being fixed. it was being sold for $250. TWO HUNDRED AND FIFTY! i had just walked along a strip of queen east where similar sizes (already oiled up) were going for $1000+. so i snapped it up. i was in lovelovelove and it felt rightrightright. it turns out that the drawer is outright missing...but i can deal with that. i can slide the doors over to cover the space, or take out drawers entirely, put in shelving, and put the vcr/dvd/pvr (eventually) player on that. that's why it was so cheap. it's so lovely! i'm in total love with it. the drawers slide smoothly, and everything is in good shape. i can deal with scuffs...i mean, if the piece is from the 1970s, i don't expect it to look new. otherwise, i'd buy a reproduction, right?

i also really love these industrial things...but i figured i should get out while i'm ahead:




then i went by upsidedive to pick up a dress of H's that she had bought online. they're having a $5 clothing sale. i bought a $5 stripey, cotton, polo tennis dress thing with a drop drawstring waist for FIVE DOLLARS! i'm in lurve with it. it's grey and pink. i can't believe it was still there. it's the perfect beach/swimsuit coverup. then i saw THIS and fell in love all over again:

a chrome rocker!!! i sat it in it...it's pretty comfy...nice high arms would make it good for knitting. it's rare to find vintage rockers that aren't all colonial style...or the DAR chairs...i hate the DAR rockers (example below)...i think they're super ugly:

we're going back today to grab the rocker...and then i'm done buying stuff. lol! we're going to get some expedit bookcases to sub out for our mismatched, falling apart ones...and then stick everything back in the living room once the roomie is gone. i'm so excited!

ohhhh!!! i also picked up this little number at upside dive:

hi cute apple clock! why are you so cute?!? isn't it adorable?!??? i love love love upside dive. they're the best. they're a team of siblings (it helps that the guy is kinda hot! lol!) and everything is really gently priced and they're super nice and so close to my house! they're the ones that sold me my bedframe.

look at my crafting! my bread bags turned out really swell! i'm pleased...i especially love the poppy print.


this is last night's dinner. i almost poosed out and had us order pizza, cuz i spent about a million hours at H's helping them unpack. i hate moving but i'm a fiendish unpacker...i'd rather stay up all night unpacking because the sooner the new place is in order, the sooner my troubled heart can be at ease. H was ready to quit a few times but i was totally bossing her into finishing the kitchen. ha. the last few times we've moved, the dotytron has taken beer breaks and he'll come back and i've got two rooms done. i have the energy of like, 5 mes when i'm moving. considering how much money i spent yesterday, i decided it was prudent to cook. it was delicious! yummy tartar sauce, yummy fried artichokes, the arugala cut through everything, the shaved parm add a little salt and texture. and the fried lemons! i love fried lemons! i sliced them on the mandoline, peel and all, and then battered them and fried them and sprinkled them with salt. i could snack on fried lemons like chips.

okay, i'm about to eat a bacon'n'egg breakie and then embark on shopping with the dotytron hell. wish me luck! then goosetang forever!

fin.

another brief interlude

i know, i know - you're all chomping at the bit for alinea review.  fret not!  tonight i got home late because i had dinner at tacos el asador with a new friend, S.  then i came home, did my weights, and got a little spooked in a face off with a raccoon while trying to hustle a yard waste bag to the curb.

anyway, we may not have time for a lengthy review, but we DO have time for another thrilling installment of -

roll call of awesome:

lately, i've been OBSESSED with the look of a traditional, english, chesterfield sofa, preferably in a gleaming black leather. it's so posh! i know i'm generally miss mid-century modern/affordable design, but i feel like there's something about these sofas that still harkens back to great screwball comedies from the 50s, when the intrepid girl reporter would be trading quippy barbs with the clueless gumshoe detective in an office featuring just such a piece.

i know they don't look all that comfortable, but they must be! this velvet version would kind of be a nice middle ground, but it still doesn't look as nice as the leather version, i think:

the other thing i've been festering over is reupholstering a wingback chair:

you can find these chairs for a song on craigslist. there are detailed instructions for reupholstering them online...i feel like i have the drive and werewithal to make it happen - just need an electric staple gun and some needle nose pliers and my keen eye for colour. i REALLY REALLY REALLY want to do this! i feel like i could turn poo into slightly more gilded poo! i'm thinking either a quirky toile, or a traditional upholstery fabric but in a different colour, or maybe a gingham or tiny houndstooth. houndstooth would be ill. or, ideally, a red and black buffalo plaid, but i'm not sure if that's my inner hipster speaking. i just think a wingback chair in red and black buffalo plaid would be dope.







finally, i've found my quilt pattern. i'm going to try my hand at making this bad boy:

isn't it gorgeous? i don't think i have enough fabrics to make mine do the same kind of colour progression but i don't think it needs it. it'll look just fine without the subtle gradation. i'm pumped!!!

yay projects!!!!!

fin.

odds and sods

- i have successfully answered two final jeopardy questions in a row. tuesday night's was ridiculously easy...wednesday night required a bit more deductive reasoning, and i wasn't confident, but it ended up being right in the end.

- my mug of milk last night smelled strangely and inexplicably of human b.o., but because i'm a creature of habit and because i believe strongly in the sanctity of the union between sweet cakes and milk, i doggedly kept at it - i have to admit, it wasn't entirely unpleasant. i think the source might be that the roomie does the dish washing in our house and not only insists on natural (read: ineffectual) dish washing detergent, but also won't wear rubber dish washing gloves, which means that - lacking the insulating protection that the gloves offer - she ends up washing our dishes in lukewarm water. it's kind of gross and sometimes i have to put dishes that still have a greasy film back into the sink for a second go around.

- i applied for a gold visa with my bank online because i wanted something with no annual fee, that had collision damage waiver insurance for when we rent a car (CDW ends up doubling the cost of a car rental.) when i didn't hear back, i called visa and found out i got declined. this was VERY troubling for someone like me who prides herself on her fiscal responsibility, unnaturally high osap repayments, and fastidiously prepares a monthly budget months in advance, leaving myself a spending allowance of like, $50 every week because i'm crazy like that. i went into the bank and tried to figure it out and immediately reverted to kid-in-the-prinicpal's office demeanor, desperately trying to decode the customer service rep's body language to figure out why i was declined and shamelessly prostrating myself for assurances that i was in good standing with the bank (i am, i ended up getting approved, i probably filled out the form wrong.) i'm not going to lie, it was quite an unbecoming display of neediness - whatever the financial institution equivalent is of grade grubbing. i wanted good credit rating gold stars and i was willing to stop at nothing debasing myself to get them.

- faithful readers of this blog know how insane i am about sorting and vigorously maintaining the cleanliness and appearance of my garbage, recycling, and the receptacles that store the aforementioned.  nothing stresses me out more than having a dirty green bin, and at that, nothing makes me more distraught then when the raccoons get into the green bin, knock it over, and the first thing i face when i leave the house to go to work is a pile of rotting vegetable ends strewn about our walkway.  it guts me.  to this end, i've devised a system whereby we encircle the green bin with heavy things on all sides so it can't get knocked over, and then weigh down the lid with no less than 3 bricks so that they can't open it up. the emphasis isn't unintentional. for some reason, toronto raccoons have such brute strength at their disposal that the odd times when the dotytron or the roomie only stacks 2 bricks on top, we're inevitably met with food waste armageddon the next day. to this end, i've developed the saying: "2 bricks are an invitation, 3 are a deterrent!" which i repeat like some daft, urban detritus sage as a reminder when the green stuff goes out. i'm crazy. I'VE DEVELOPED A SAYING ABOUT BRICKS ON MY GREEN BIN.

tonight for dinner we had leftover spicy grain and black bean soup (frozen and defrosted) with cheddar cheese quesadillas and salsa and sour cream. super simple, super easy. the dotytron is having no less than 50 stress related meltdowns a minute. poor little guy. the antidote for that is a long weekend spent in upstate new york watchimg M-TOD, playing with the kiddies, and making your colon asplode at brian's u.s.a diner (my sister is freaking out because they've been advertising for cooks in the penny saver - i say: bring on the penny saver talent!!!)

because we're being fiscally responsible, we don't TRULY get the benefit of the long weekend and my FOUR DAY WEEKEND because the dotytron has to work on saturday. this is HELLA bogus but it's the right thing to do considering he missed a couple of days of teaching when he had the flu. i'm a little gutted about it...i'm not gonna lie.

the watchmen is INCREDIBLE. a game-changing comic that is a dark, swirling, thick and sludgy descent into the depths of pessimism, cynicism, and cold war tension. alan moore is kind of a notorious brilliant curmudgeon in the comics world, and no wonder...the dude looks like this:

the watchmen is DENSE. there are about 4-5 different parallels stories that are interspersed within the main narrative, one featuring a comic a periphery character is reading, a treatise on owls written by the night owl (the second), journal entries from rorshach, letters, an autobiography - and the world is so vividly realized that it's hard to see the connection between the standard comic parts and these collage elements. it has a mystery type main narrative arc, following a group of former vigilantes in a united states that has banned masked vigilanteeism and is continually teetering on the brink of nuclear apocalypse with russia. the psychology of the characters is twisted, real, and conveys a certain tired, gritty world-weariness. this is not the fantastical, glittering metropolis that meets superman and spiderman with open arms. this is a dirty, seething, roiling, troubled nihilistic world beset with decadence and deviance and the watchmen all have different answers to the problem (ranging from dr. manhattan's quantum physics, the contemporaneousness of the past/present/future approach, to rorshach's absolutist violence, to the night owl's everyman idealism.)

i can't recommend it enough. it's rich, satisfying, laden with intertextual references, and captures the moment when it was written (mid 80s). i'm worried that the film won't be able to do it justice...i can't imagine that it will. bringing something like that to the big screen and satisfying the core fans is a herculean task. it's also not something that franchises well...i'm not sure hollywood and the director (the dude who did 300) is up to the task. we'll see. the viral marketing campaign is off the chains though.

k, that's enough out of me for one day.  i can't believe i don't have to go back to work until tuesday!  can i say again that my earn-day off is THE BOMB?!???

roll call of awesome:


it's really wrong to love a chair as much as this...but the herman miller eames recliner with ottoman is a touchstone of design. it's like visual opium - so soothing, so warm, so clean.  

fin.