Wednesday, May 8, 2013

April, May, and Other Things I Forgot

Oh hey, I promise I didn't forget I had this blog. -promise-.

The last two months have been absolutely nuts as you can imagine. For one I got married, that was pretty cool. For two I had to travel down to California for my wedding reception a month and a half later. Less cool but equally exciting. It turned out beautifully and we had a huge group of guests which just made it even better. Here's a sneak peek of the fabulous part-not-a-reception my mother surprised us with.

(Did I mention my wedding ring has a wand engraved on it? We sorta like Harry Potter)
At last! I am free. So here I am, technically supposed to be editing photos....writing a new entry with new fun things that I can finally revisit.

I'll start with the exciting stuff. I have a new puppy!! His name is Remus, we just call him Remmy Dog. Hes an Italian Greyhound and was our missing piece. Since we brought him home last week from our Cali trip he has mastered "Sit", "Down", "Up", "Wait", and more. I'm so proud of him. He and Noodle are getting along brilliantly and my neighbors say they can't hear a thing. Fingers crossed they are being honest! Even 10 pounds of dog running down the hallways must make some noise right?

Along with plenty of wonderful wedding gifts my wonderful Auntie, who took care of him until I came for him, gave us a potty patch! The kind I thought was such a hassle at $75. Well at Petsmart in the states the small size only costs $35! It's a complete life saver. When I'm overwhelmed in editing and forget to take him out he just goes straight to his little patch and squats. I only change it every two days or as frequently as he uses it. I use arm-n-hammer potty training pads that smell like flowers but don't fit so I have to cut them before placing them. Not a big deal in the end since the benefits greatly outweigh the 30 seconds it takes to lob off a piece of the pad!

Then there was my silly project. I thought I might grow myself a patch of grass for the pups to use which would naturally filter out the bad stuff and just water the grass. Well it actually wasn't silly at all. It works wonderfully and there is no smell. I bought a 24x18 wooden garden box with chicken wire on the open bottom for $10. Then we found a garden basket mat for $2.50, organic composted soil for $5 and some basic green seed for $6. I cut the mat to size and added the soil on top of that, sprinkling of seed, and waited for it to grow. I predicted I would have spent $30 on the project which ended up being only $23.50 which was a pleasant surprise. Here's what it looks like now!


I may be no green thumb but I am definitely proud. I have a plastic mat underneath to prevent leaks but so far all it's done is collect condensation since my little patch doesn't leak at all. Pretty proud of this little thing.

Onto home-y things. My mother in law has this darling shop above their studio where she sells vintage home decor and hand painted one of a kind art cards. This summer she is properly opening to the public and wants to offer a few pieces of refurb every month. A task that is now in my hands given that i'm on the big island where all the good pieces are! We just have to find them. So far we're already learning things like, ask for detail pictures if they won't let you view it in person before buying, not a fun lesson. But all things aside we're both very excited to see what we can create.

I've also begun my own projects at home finally. We now have 11 art pieces mounted on the wall with 15 to go...Do you think we have too much art? I'm also finally getting to my darling chairs to finish them off, one of these days, and my bedroom lighting situation. I'm not going to show you what it looks like right now. One of those awful in between phases, like when you grow your short hair out and for a while you have an unavoidable mullet? Like that. However I can't ignore all of it's needs, for example it's great lack of lighting. Half of the plugs in the whole apartment don't work, a consequence of living in an old building. We've been making it work but the more I read with a flashlight at night the more my eyes are suffering. We have one gorgeous lamp, a gift from my mother in law, but no shade and no space for one. And just one. Finding a partner has been a huge pain until I finally cracked in Walmart and grabbed a lamp with a future full of spray paint fumes. It was a big chance and I wasn't sure if the paint would take given that I didn't sand it but my sturdy Krylon pulled through and gave me a wonderful product.


(Yay for peeling paint. Slowly fixing this table up for my MIL)
The lamp on the right is the spray paint job which I am now looking to distress and give a quick coat of light dove grey. I can't wait to get shades and put them in. I'm really picky about shades which makes shopping for them super hard. Too big, too bulky, too old style, too much shine, too much cloth. I may be taking inspiration from one of my favorite blogs, Little Green Notebook with this post http://littlegreennotebook.blogspot.ca/2013/04/inexpensive-black-lamp-shades.html and make my own lamp shades. We'll see!

Thanks for reading.

-Julie.