August Cure before picture

When I moved into my apartment two months ago my roommate was in the process of moving the personal fitness business he was running from his apartment to a new retail space a block away. Therefore the future living room was full with an elliptical, treadmill and weight set among other strange pieces. 

Now everything is gone with the exception of one lone weight bench and an old desk (that are going to be picked up hopefully any day now and taken away) and my roommate has moved the couch and rug he previously had stored in his bedroom into the empty space. This is what I have to work with. There is a huge bay window with an window seat on the far wall and the room is bright and big with wood floors. Those are in the plus column. In the minus, all of the paint needs to be redone (there are three different trim colors currently) there's no furniture save the aforementioned couch and rug, and there are three large doorways and the window seat breaking up the wall space. There is also an enormous mirror filling the molding on the wall with the door to the kitchen that my roommate has requested I keep as it has sentimental value to him. These are the challenges I have to work with. Along with, you know, a very limited budget. Hopefully I can make this space into something pretty awesome. Fingers crossed.

My weekend (mostly in food)

My mom came to visit this weekend and we had a lovely time. In fact there were so many adventures I often found myself forgetting to take pictures because I was enjoying myself so much.
We managed to score two free quarts of paint, a free cab ride and some free photobooth pictures, plus we ate a ton of delicious food. Here's a few of the snaps I managed to take when I remembered that I carry a camera with me on my phone!!

I made a batch of blueberry corn muffins Friday night so we had a handy snack for the weekend. Saturday we got brunch at Radish which I am obsessed with and it was so good (Dixon scramble with pulled pork and caramel french toast).

We also checked out the flower market (I'm in the market for some greenery to liven up my apartment so it was good to do some research and it's such a riot of color there!)

We got pedicures (moms toes matched my shoes the next day)

We saw the new lights on the bridge. I thought it looked like dewdrops on a spiderweb. It was mesmerizing.

We went to the retro soda fountain in my neighborhood where I got a basil ice cream and grapefruit soda float that was so green and bright and refreshing tasting that I just couldn't get enough of it! Will be trying to make basil ice cream soon.

And yesterday we spent the whole morning at the Alameda Point Flea Market. I haven't been in a while but it was amazing inspiration. So many rows of treasure and so wonderful to dream about all the possibilities.

Like vintage movie theater seats....

Or this carnival wonder woman piece (the woman who bought it told me she got it for a mere $24 and I wept a little bit thinking that I had missed out on something so amazing.)

Overall we had a wonderful time and I will be looking forward to our next adventure filled visit.

August break week one

I've decided to take part in the August Break 2013, a photo challenge on Instagram and other media.

The idea is to take a photo every day, with or without the suggested topic/idea. I like the push to do something every day and the platform to share it on. I am posting my daily photos on Instagram as they happen and I will do a weekly recap here as well. So far I am really enjoying it!

Day one: Breakfast

Day two: circles

Day three: yellow

Day four: love

August Cure:Quiz, style inspiration and window shopping (virtually)

I've decided to join in with Apartment Therapy's August Cure. The last one in the winter was more of an organizing, cleaning challenge, whereas the idea behind this is to take a room that is lacking in style and make it over. I immediately knew I would want to tackle my living room.
I took the design quiz on the first day of the cure and discovered (unsurprisingly) that I like color, pattern, and gravitate towards homey, layered spaces with some level of quirky grandma to them.
Next I got to pinning (see my August Cure Pinterest board here) and I am clearly craving gray walls and a bunch of color. A lot of the rooms had orange/red/persimmon-y pops. I also love lamps (I loath overhead "boob lights" ) and strange furniture (I have a think for glider love seats, maybe I can find one?) and black and white rugs. The paint I can definitely do, I will see about the rest as I go.
These are some of the spaces I was drawn to the most.

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I've also been wanting to find some of these open wire lampshades like this one on etsy for a while and paint them bright colors. Maybe this is something I can do in this space finally?

 Next I will have some before pictures of the space....

{snapshot}

I started doodling leaves in my sketchbook yesterday. I'm thinking of making wallpaper for my apartments entry hallway and I've been thinking about black and white patterns and line work and nature. This was one of the pages I came up with.

Easy fixes

I had forgotten I had these pictures saved, I think because I did this project so soon after moving and I figured I must have posted it already.
Anyway, my bedroom used to be the living room. Or the dining room, I'm not sure. Old apartments, full of "character" and such. There are a set of french doors that open onto the living room and another door to the hallway. There used to be one of those two way restaraunt swinging doors leading to what is now my closet (you can see the hardware on the floor and door frame still) and so I'm guessing that was some sort of pantry or butler space? Who knows. Old house mysteries. But I digress. What I'm talking about today is the glass doors from the hall and living room.
When I moved in they ad ancient off white blinds on them.

The blinds looked horrible (I always think blinds look horrible) made a lot of noise and seemed impossible to get clean short of soaking. I wanted to take them off but them a huge portion of my bedroom wall would be a big window to the living room. However, plastic blinds aren't really my idea of snazzy decor. Conundrum. Luckily my papa had a super smart idea involving decorative paper, and double stick tape.

I got a basic white rice paper at the art supply store. It's handmade so there's still a lot of variations in fiber density that makes it feel very soft, but it's pretty opaque as well. I measured the glass in the doors and cut out the paper. Then I applied double stick tape to the back of each pre-cut paper piece and stuck the to the glass. Sounds simple right?

And it was.

The whole thing took less than an hour, and while it's not without flaw (being that it's an old house, some of the panes of glass are inexplicably larger than the others causing the pre cut paper to fall a smidge short) but I feel it's nothing one would see without looking for flaws so I'm ok with it. And it certainly serves it's purpose. No more clattering blinds and no more peep show through the living room. Also it cost me about $12 total so that was pretty nice as well!

How to safely indulge my sweet tooth

I am not a baby person, with one exception. My baby-cousin (that's the baby of my cousin, but I like to be confusing so whatever) is ridiculously adorable. I'm not sure why I find her so inarguably cute but I do. So I'm just going with it. And this is a good thing because I've been saving up ideas for cute kid projects forever with no kids to make them for so this is a win!
I've been seeing lots of images of play kitchens and play food and knowing how much I loved food and cooking as a little one I thought it would be fun to make the kiddo some play food. So I of course chose a lovely healthy option.
Doughnuts!

I know it's not really promoting health eating or veggies but they are so cute! Sprinkles and frosting colors!!

I used polar fleece and embroidery floss for the sprinkles. It was a very soothing project to do and satisfying to see the treats pile up in front of me.

Then I had to make a bakery box because I want to make sure that there is a convenient place for the doughnuts to be stored. And of course because it's cute. Bakery boxes of course are pink. I used felt for the box and vinyl for the window in the lid. It closes with Velcro and I added the name with puff paint (don't turn up your nose at the summer camp t-shirt decorating material. It's amazing stuff!)