two things i want to try

1) document a day in my life. the idea is from her. i think a day in my life when i'm shooting would be most interesting since my job is deemed "cool" by the majority and we are shooting thursday and friday so i can try, we'll see how busy we are.

2) a field trip with you guys. currently i think about plants an awful lot so i'm thinking a field trip to H&H Nursery in Lakewood is in order, followed by afternoon tea. might treat all attendees to a houseplant up to $5.00.

by the by, this entire post should be read with an english accent as i've been surrounded by an english agency, client, talent, director, producer, and production assistant. bloody hell.

bunch of muppets this lot is.

if i had a porch porch

I'd do this. Oh me oh my. I love when someone can add black to beautiful light pastel colors.

Turquoise planters and blue painted wood front steps? Don't mind if I do...

uh oh, matt was right

Current dining area looks like this. Lovely. Love it. Whoo. Here's the problem, a problem we all saw coming with EvY's tendancy to entertain. It can reasonably only seat about 8 people. Which presents a problem for things such as Thanksgiving and Christmas parties.

Enter the Bjursta. When closed it seats 6-8 and is about the size of the two tables that make up one of ours now:

 

When extended, it seats about 10, 12 if you push it.

One more person perhaps if you add a $90 bench. I have bench fever. I want a bench I don't care how I get it but this one might actually be a reasonable excuse!

 

We know I love picnic tables and benches so it would be phenomenal if I added a bench. It would look like that, with my yellow chairs around it instead of whatever those things are.

Le problem. Well Matt's on board because he told me to do that in the first place, to get a table that expands but I didn't because at the time we didn't have much room in our apartment and could not have forseen we'd be moving to a room with a giant seating area in so short a time. So convincing Matt is not a problem, he's given me the green light. The problem, is that I cannot and will not have a black shelf and a black table. Which means, I would paint or purchase a white one.

I wouldn't really want to get rid of the black one but I might only be able to convince Matt to let me buy a white one if I first sold ours. Craigslist had a bevy of people selling a white one for $50 which leads me to believe I could sell ours for $30-40 because it has pre-drilled holes to hang wine glasses and people don't like their stuff to be damaged. 

Do we agree I need a bigger table?

open apology to nicole

I thought your blog would suck once you had a baby. But you're actually still really really good. I've been re-reading your blog and going back to your home's beginning and it's been enjoyable watching it go from ugly to lovely. In particular, I'd love to duplicate this whole thing here for our patio.

Keep up the good work.

these things bewilder

This picture was taken at Target 02/25/10.

This picture was taken at Ikea 03/12/10. Amazing how fast they grow and change and begin to be more interesting. Let's face it, infants are dull as doornails, they just sleep and eat. This kid's getting to be more interesting.

And there's a pic of me and my niece on St Patrick's Day. Of course I look good with a baby, she's a good looking baby.

And yes I take her shopping, what of it? She's an American girl after all.

gardening beginnings

Friday morning before work I paranoidedly realized I hadn't watered my gardenia in a few days and so in my work clothes with laptop slung over shoulder, I grabbed the garden hose and sprayed my plants. Then at work I realized I'd forgotten to water my plants in the office, particularly my daisy that keeps reincarnating, and asked my dearest to take care of it for me and he did. I then woke up at 7am on a Saturday, from a dream where I had gone to Lowe's and purchased a bunch of plants and proceeded to plant a big garden. Everyone has dreams about buying boston ferns yes?

It might have had something to do with my newest purchase, this book, with its most unfortunate title but really cute looking cover that is an easy, gentle read. It's written by someone young and doesn't treat gardening like a hobby for the rich and retired. Not that there's anything wrong with that, heck it's my goal in life to become that person. She breaks down the basics of gardening and I'll probably refer back to it in this blog, along with their corresponding blog of the same name.

 It's ridiculous how happy the sight of a potted plant will make you. It's a living thing that depends on you and rewards you for your hard work. I can't believe a living flower is still alive since October in my home and because of it living, it encouraged me to go out and get more plants and flowers. The daisy in my office makes me happy. I mean, they are the friendliest flower.

I usually don't tell people what to do but I recommend, nay CHALLENGE you all to go out and buy yourself: a houseplant. Maybe it's something we can all do together and check in with each other from time to time, make sure each others plant is still alive. And If you're really really scared of killing a plant, grab a succulent, a cactus, or bamboo. Succulents and cacti survive in the desert so you probably won't kill it. My dad gave me this guy and he just needs water kept in his his cup and he keeps living.

 

 So tell me if you are up for the challenge or are already a plant owner. I'd love to hear what you guys have in terms of greenery or gardening experience.

el shower para mi sister (part 3)

Tabletops. NO cheeseball crap. Simple, wrapping paper "table cloth/runner" and two little vases that cost $1.00 at Target. One flower per vase.

I did consider removing the lettering or wrapping it with something but meh, I'm not keeping them, people can take them home if they want so they can do whatever they want with them.

Prizes! I was just gonna give them out but found these treat sacks at 12 for $2.99 and put the dollar prize into them, punched a hole, put some ribbon through it, made a tag that said you're a winner and voila...

Cuteness. The boy gifts are in the blue and green sacks. Girl gifts are in stripes and pink. Clever huh? I know, I'm so original. I sort of feel bad that the prize will be a disappointment after such cute packaging but I'm hoping that the thrill of victory will be enough.

Further decor to explore will be the candy shop. That's always a winner. Like you!

it's the first day of spring!

...and my gardenia has a friend!

  This morning I just looked out the window and a fat bird with blue tail feathers went on the bird feeder and munched away. Then he left, and a smaller bird with red breasted feathers came and munched away. I hope to catch them in the act tomorrow morning. And I should refill the feeder, freaking fat birds are eating like my cat.

man i feel guilty

Well Matt and I watched Capitalism: A Love Story. It's about the greed of Wall St and America and how corporations basically own us. And it's about Capitalism, our vicious cycle that makes it so if you don't have a job then you can't buy things, which lowers the profit for a company, which makes them cut costs, which makes them cut jobs, which means you can't buy things and so on and so forth.

This is my blog so I'll cry if I want to. The fat bastard known as Michael Moore may be a complete pandering showman that kind of exploits his subject's pain for his movies and way too anti-American for my tastes but I watch his movies and the dude makes some really great points. I love him and hate him all at the same time, you know? Seriously, you owe it to yourself to watch one of his movies and judge for yourself. And if it'll make you feel better, bro's a Catholic, so he can't be all that evil.

 Or can he?

It wasn't so much about consumerism but that's the part that I focused on.

And I have guilt. You try watching a bunch of people struggle to survive and live in their van and then look at your recently purchased picture frames and try not feeling guilty. You think about how a lot of your time is spent lusting after things you want and things you think about buying and how much time you've wasted lusting, just lusting. Which reminds me of the time when Scott Derickson was introducing the directorial award and on the cards, which I wrote, it says coveted award and he says "Wow, when I was at Biola, coveting was a sin". Makes me laugh.

Back to lusting.

It's gross. It's awful. It's me. I'm a luster, a buyer, a sheep, a corporate shill. In fact, I'm employed to help sell more products. Currently I'm selling something about the size of a tangerine that you do not need. And I buy things all the time that I don't need. I used to say to my uncle Rey, when I worked at KFC, which I would still totally eat at if I wasn't a vegetarian, after he had given me my paychecks that I was gonna spend money I didn't have on things I don't need. It was a funny saying I was known for that my Uncle would even quote me on. And that's American credit card consumerism. We buy crap and we get into debt and they own us for life.

Here I must also defend myself because well, all my innards are on display. Matt and I had our moneys analyzed by some financial dude and he told us we was doing good. The debt we had, mind you, the ONLY debt we have is the money we owe to Sallie Mae because they fronted us some dough to go to COLLEGE. When we use our credit card, which is to pay for everything we possibly can, we rack up points and then at the end of the month we pay it off in full. Finito. No finance charges. No charges of any kind. No credit card debt. We also have a fixed amount that automatically goes every week into our savings account without fail. We have not touched our savings account in approximately a year, maybe more and add to it whenever we can on top of the weekly savings.

But seriously? Who needs to buy all this crap?!!! We could have saved double the amount we have if only we hadn't oh say purchased a new TV or furniture or made all those repeated trips to Target I don't care if you were going to buy stuff for Liz's baby shower.

CRAP. That's what all the stuff I buy is. It's crap. Sure I need clothing, and I need food, those are legitimate. But how many pairs of jeans do I need? Do I really need to own all these flats? Why do I want to find that perfect handbag? Don't I have a bunch already? Why do I feel compelled to buy buy buy.

Of course if I make the effort to not be such a BAAA! this blog will be pretty boring. After all, as much as I find it hilarious how high and mighty the kids over at my favorite blog think they are (it's a subtle sort of superiority complex where you can almost hear the pats on the back they're giving themselves for being so awesome whereas I outright inform you and hand you amplifying headphones so you can hear my pats and also provide you with a recording device that will play back the pats in case you missed them the first time) they are giant purchasers and my favorite posts of theirs are when they buy something new. Yay! They fell for that ceramic chess horse head too that I totally would have purchased if Matt hadn't insisted it was ugly and refused to let me buy it!

It makes me think of the whys I buy all this stuff and why I want to buy this stuff. Theories. AKA Excuses.

1) Growing up I was poor. Single mom, five kids, bla bla. Now I have a job, a husband, a house, a job, a family, a job. Did I mention a job? A job that allows me to buy things if I want them unlike when I lived with my mom and siblings and was unable to buy things I wanted cause I had no job and no money. 'Cause I was a kid.

2) I am filling my empty life with stuff.

The second one is depressing. And it's not true. Obviously I have a full life with a beautiful family and good friends and wonderful weather. But I saw Confessions of a Shopaholic and sometimes I am guilty of such feelings of that one thing being able to complete you and change you a little bit. And you get that little high of coming home with the full bag of stuff and then the fullness extinguishes and you gotta buy more. If only the stuff wasn't so cute!

I often think about fires. As in, what if the whole house went up in flames, what would I save. After husband, cats, and dog. Laptop. Harddrive. Everything else can go up in flames because everything else is replaceable. Yeah, it would be sad and really inconvenient to lose your passport and marriage license but you can just pay to get another copy. And all the family photos, well most that matter are on my computer anyway. But I think about it. It would suck to lose everything I owned but they are just things. Things that in the long run, do not matter.

Still again I feel the need to defend myself.

Home is very important to me. Making a house a home is a very important priority for me. Partly because we moved around a lot as kids and even during college, every vacation time rolls around and you're homeless again. Having a place I can depend on to come home to and drop my hat off, yes I do wear hats, that's a big deal to me. That's why I spend so much time on my home. It's obvious it's important to me, come on, I have a BLOG devoted to it so that's not a shock. Does it shock you to know if I lost everything in it, I'd be okay with it? It's true. It's just stuff.

So what do I do with the guilt? Move my money to a credit union. Stop shopping big corporations. Give money to pennies for pilots.

I could do that. But I live in capitalistic America and that kid that rung me up at Target, he needs to stay employed so I will still buy there. But I will try to buy less.

Try really hard.

Because it is just stuff.

el shower para mi sister (part 2)

For the decor, we made these little poufy ball things from a tutorial at MarthaStewart.com. So easy, it's just tissue paper and Mari, Liz, and I spent a few hours on Sunday making like 20 of these and I still have more tissue paper left! We're gonna hang them all over the place to make it cutesy. You should see the closet of the drum room, packed to the gills with poufy balls. The colors are sort of hot pink and green but mainly just colorful. I coulda sworn I took a picture of the proposed table decor but I guess not, I'll upload it later. It's so simple.

 

I decided on an activity, well kind of one. I made a box and wrapped it with ribbons that go with the projected colors of hot pink and green.

Then we will have the guests fill out a card with either baby name ideas (sis has not yet settled on a name), parenting advice, or general well wishes. You write your name on the card and we'll have a raffle with fabulous prizes AKA whatever I find from the dollar section at Target that boys and girls would like. I might even spring for $2.5 prizes.

It's really helpful to have a printer and office fully stocked with index cards and ink to do such projects in 15 minutes.

 

This took some more time. In lieu of the candy buffet thing which I love how it looks and maybe we'll have a few on display just for funsies, we're gonna have the parting gifts be these little candy bags with a card that says:

Again, it helps to have some semblance of computer skills/supplies on hand.

I hate baby showers, detest them. A brilliant blogger said she doesn't understand theme-ing it to a baby because the shower is for the mommy, so why not make it something the mommy will enjoy? This shower is like Liz, happy & fun.

Plus, let's be real, the shower is an excuse to get presents for a first time parent and I used to feel weird about it but now, heck no. My sister is gonna be a 20 year old single mom and she needs stuff for the child that she can't afford to buy herself. And when people get married, they're starting out and need stuff too. So I know that my investment in the party is gonna have immediate results when my sister gets baby stuff she genuinely needs. endrant

not to be greedy

I mentioned I wanted magazine files and I think the ones below next to this girl's desk are pretty adorable.

Magazine files, the cute ones, are usually expensive, or outrageously priced for something you can make from a box of cereal. Like $10 each x 5. Fifty bucks for fabric on cardboard. Who made up that price?

minor note

I've taken new pics of what home looks like now. Check out the new slideshow.

oldies but a goodies

Been re-reading my old Domino issues and found a few images that reminded me why the magazine was so good.

I'm not big on backsplashes, but DANG that thing looks amazing Lighting? Beautiful. Glass shelves with just the right amount of cute stuff. Obviously the yellow:

I like having a shelf below the cabinets that's open, glass looks good there:

From Domino, May 2008.

scenes from my office

Magazine displays:

Ah, you know it's spring when the little fan comes out of the closet:

Matt gave me his Nintendo desk calendar. Generous:

Tracking my income tax packages:

 

Typography print looks awesome:

Moved things around again. Waiting for Staples money. Need more magazine files:

Liberty of London box. I love how the E looks on top of it:

 

I frame my inspirations & heroes:

Mom gave me the suitcase:

hurt me patio style

This patio is awesome.

el shower para mi sister (part 1)

Throwing another baby shower. That's me. Here's the deal. While at first we were going to have the party at our house, we went to the pool/cabana area of our complex and decided since we're expecting about 40-50 people, that having it there would be awesome. Especially with beautiful California weather. I'm waiting to hear back from the guy that's in charge of the pool area to see if it's avail.

It has an outdoor seating area:

 

Awnings galore:

A grill:

A little grassy picnic area:

We know how I feel about picnics:

And of course, a pool:

There's even some indoor dining available:

There's a fridge:

And a perfect place to put drinks:

 

And the best part, bathrooms so no one has to go to my house and pee:

Keep your fingers crossed for us.