New Chair

I think I'm addicted to spray paint. Not in the bad, "huffing in an alley" kind of way. But in the good, "as intended by the manufacturer" kind of way.

My favorite paint to use has been Krylon Indoor/Outdoor Gloss. I've used it on metal, wood and ceramic so far and it's worked great every time. The colors are awesome and it does dry glossy and smooth, making it appear that it's the original paint.

I bought this stool at an antique store last weekend for $9. The paint was scratched and scuffed. It looked pretty haggard. I slapped a couple coats of paint on it and it looks as good as new.



I also used it to paint the two green chairs.

Update On the Living Room

We (I) started working on fixing up our living room back in September. This is what we started with...



We rearranged it a couple of times...



And this is where we're at right now.





If I had more money I would continue to fill the room with furniture.

I. Love. Furniture.

I think the room still needs more texture too. Another rug, maybe some wallpaper... It just needs more. The room is really open so I kind of throws me off. An interior decorator I never claimed to be.

It feels like our home though. It's definitely a room that looks like Matt and Christine live in.

Long Weekend

I took yesterday off work and gave myself a three day weekend. How did I spend my day? By doing three loads of laundry, two loads of dishes, reorganizing the living room and getting our taxes done. How very relaxing!

The living room is looking pretty awesome. I hung up some stuff I bought a while ago... and then never hung up. I also moved a couple things around to open up the entryway. I'm really excited to be one the way to having the room finished. I have a couple chairs to cover and a new coffee table to buy that I've got my eye on ($135, thank you Target), and then the room will be done. And it only took a year.

Taxes are the work of the devil. Or Congress. Whatever. We had ours done with a CPA yesterday and walked away with a whole $50 tax return. Hooray for not owing money! About a third of Matt's income is considered self-employment so he usually ends up owing a staggering sum of money every year. This year I was a receipt Nazi and made him save nearly everything. It really paid off. We got about 1/4 of his gig income written off with all of his on-the-road expenses. I'm not getting a huge return back like I'm used to, but I guess that's life.

Addictions

2008 was officially the year that I kicked my clothing addiction. The success of my sartorial rehab was the result of growing older and wiser and not getting the same thrill out of shopping anymore.

Okay, that's completely untrue.

What really ended up happening was that I bought a house and I longed to fill it up with stuff. (Dear Ford, please do not let them open an Ikea in Omaha. Amen.) So, my clothing addition was parlayed into a home decorating addiction. I'd like to think that buying furniture is less selfish than buying shoes since I'm sharing everything in the house with Matt. And I don't have to worry about my butt getting too fat to enjoy an end table for the next ten years.

For instance, it's absolutely fine that I bought this lamp yesterday because we are both going to enjoy the light it will bring our living room.

The Emperor's New Table

I've been thinking a lot lately about our "next" home and what I want to look for in it. Five bedrooms for all of our kids, a mudroom, a green kitchen (the color not the buzzword). What the eff am I doing? We just bought a house in March 2008 and last time I checked we didn't have any kids. I think we as a society in general spend way too much time wanting for the future and not enough time loving what we have.

That being said, let's talk about all this stuff I want.

Yay, consumerism!!!

I love our house but I'm still working on loving what we put in it. The inside of our house is very nice but we're not great decorators so the style of it is still striking me as bland. Since my husband is gone and I'm not allowed to watch Planet Earth without him, I occupied an embarrassing amount of time last night updating my little living room want/have board and searching for new crap to waste our hard earned money on. Blame it on the new CB2 catalog. There is some goooood stuff in there.

Here's what we're working with. We have about half of this stuff. The rug, blue chair and orange lamp are off CB2. That lamp is as good as bought. The rug is beautiful in the catalog. The picture below doesn't do it justice.



I've decided to expand the funkification into the dining room now too. Partly because it makes sense (the rooms run together) and partly because I bought that awesome birch wood hanging lamp before realizing that the living room isn't wired for it. So, I made the executive decision that it's going over the dining room table. And that means that I need to head over to Velocity Art and Design and buy a bunch of crap for the dining room too now. And this too I would imagine. $350 isn't too much for an invisible table, is it?

Progress Report!

Let's recap a couple projects I've been working on:

1. Nursery Mural - No progress to report. Its in the same state now as when I last saw it Saturday. I didn't get a whole lot done that day so needless to say I'm a little behind. In my defense though, I was a little hungover that afternoon so it's amazing that I even made it to her house. I wouldn't have gotten as far as I did if my dad hadn't shown up with some Heineken's.

2. Scarf Orders - I'm still working on Elisabeth's scarf order for her shop. I took a peek at it on Facebook and it is darn cute. I can't wait to send these guys off to her. I'm also making her an additional scarf for a silent auction during a benefit concert. I still owe Matt and Kate each a scarf, as well as Cols asking for one. So in all, 3 scarves down, 6 to go.

3. Mastering the Art of Photography - I bought a couple books and signed up to take the first in a series of digital SLR workshops. So far I haven't mastered it, but I'm finally learning things I should have learned nine years ago but never did. The only problem is that now, I want tons of equipment and crap that I'm reading about. Lenses, filters, tripods, flashes. It makes me drool.

4. Stop Spending MONEY You Fool! - Aside from the huge salon bill and groceries I haven't paid for anything this week. Not bad actually. Not. Bad. At. All. But we're going out of town this weekend so I'm sure that's not going to last.

5. Rehab the Living Room - Going great! Everything has been ordered and most of it has arrived. We finally hung up the curtains. FINALLY!!! It only took two hours, one argument and countless utterances of the eff bomb. It's just about ready to be photographed and shared with the world.

A sign of things to come.

I finally decided to order some furniture online that I wanted and discovered that shipping was going to cost an arm and a leg and then another arm. (Do you know that it costs $288 to ship a $279 ottoman from Ikea? Doesn't that seem completely outrageous?) So, I scrapped the online ordering idea and we went out today to hunt furniture.

We went downtown and cruised some boutique furniture stores looking for some things for the living room. We ended up finding a chair we both freaked out over and ordered the matching ottoman. Matt showed sincere interest in this chair so I felt it was necessary that we purchased it immediately. He does not share my interest in home furnishings so any interest from him is a sign that I should buy whatever thing he likes NOW. We also didn't mind spending the money on it because it was going to a small business and not Nebraska Furniture Mart, the store that sells a million dollars worth of crap a day. That's not an exaggeration.



Am I the only person who gets a rush from buying furniture? I hate spending money on toiletries and groceries. I don't understand spending lots of money on electronics. I enjoy clothes shopping but it feels way too self-indulgent to actually spend too much time and money on it. (I just look and drool mainly.) But furniture. Wow. I felt like I needed a cigarette after buying that chair. It was so much fun. Is that weird? This is the first piece of furniture I've ever bought that wasn't out of necessity. It was thrilling!

Living Room Re-Deux

Our European dream vacation is going to cost us $5400 not including the cost of feeding and entertaining ourselves for twelve days. So, that's not going to happen next year. We'll save it for 2010. Or 2015. That means the living room rehab is back on. I searched again for some new stuff for the living room. I made a few changes and dropped the price on the makeover:



I love it! It's a lot more grownup and a lot less "burn your retinas" with all the yellow and red everywhere.

I swapped out the club chair ($359.99) for an identical chair from Ikea that is $99. It's fabric, not leather. But who cares? Leather furniture is kind of gross to sit on in the summer anyways. The ottoman ($699) got traded for a yellow one ($279), also from Ikea.

I'm going to pause here to say that Ikea is exactly the same as CB2 except much, much cheaper. Is this common knowledge? I've only been in each store once so maybe it's just me who didn't catch on.

The white credenza, from guess where, is $299 instead of the CB2 one that's $499. Again, it's the same freaking thing! How are they getting away with this? I changed my mind about the end tables because the other ones were sort of cheesy. This one is $79 instead of $119. I'm still obsessed with the yellow table so that stays. And as far as that couch goes, I really love it but spending $899 for something that the dog is going to end up sleeping on seems like a bad idea.

Obviously I never had any real intention of buying the $3200 photo print. I really want a large piece of art to hang in the living room above the couch though. I was looking on Target.com and came across their wallpaper section. I know! I didn't realize they sold wallpaper either! There is some great stuff on there. I really love a red and white patterned one and at $75 a roll it would make for a really cheap piece of art. Since framing something that large would be way pricey, I'm going to find (or stretch if I have to) a really long canvas and then paper that and hang it up.

The total price of the furniture is like $1200 less than before. I think it's actually affordable now! Couple that with the $3100 reduction on the wall art and the room is a bargain! Matt might actually go for it this time.

Cheap Until I got to the Furniture...

I went back and priced everything, just out of curiosity. And, this way I know exactly how much money I have to convince Matt to let me spend out of his gig paychecks this month:

Waverly Damask Window Panel - $34.99
Indigo Flora Glasses Set of 4 - $12.99
DwellStudio™ Lattice Decorative Pillow - $24.99
Cynthia Rowley Stainless Steel Shaker - $7.49
Teardrop Table Lamp - $59.99
Bing Table Lamp - $59.95
Radinka Table in Red or Yellow - $119.99
Chirp Pillow - $29.95
Sol Console Table - $299
Halogen Credenza - $499
Chet Sofa - $899
Broadway Leather Ottoman - $699
Barrel Club Chair - $359.99

Living Room Inspiration

Matt and I are really excited to redo our living room after our inspirational trip to San Francisco. We want to do something that feels very 1960s mod inspired, but is still comfortable and fits us and our home. I would say that as people, we are of a very 1960s flair. Our home is not though. Our home is a culmination of hand me down furniture and mismatched stuff from my 400 square foot (yes, really) apartment. It's very colorful and comfy, but Matt and I want to pimp our house so it's time to mix it up a little.

Here's the wall colors that we're working with:



And here's what I've come up with:



It feels really good. Everything is sleek and clean and bright. The idea is to stay away from the Austin Powers "mod" cliche of cheesy egg chairs and purple velvet. Not that there's anything wrong with that. I'm a person who would probably kill for a piece of Eames furniture, after all. I just don't want it to go over the top.

Everything except for the wall art is from CB2, Crate and Barrel and Target. The San Francisco poster is something we bought after our last trip to SF and the couch sized tree photo is from Images Of Nature. That print is like $3200. Ya. Okay. I used to live above an Images Of Nature gallery, and while the stuff is nice, it's really overpriced.