It's The Little Things...

I really, really wish I could find the connector cord for my digital camera.  I'm sick of posting with grainy iPhone pictures.  Hold that thought...

OK, I found a connector cord that will work, but now my camera batteries are dead.  Just a sec...

Great.  No more AA batteries in the house.  Ugh...

Sweet! My sister Kristen is actually letting me borrow her new digital camera.  Thanks Kristen!  Now on with the show!

Warning, this is a picture heavy post!  I've spent the last couple days trying to rearrange what was the living room half of my "suite".  Now that my ex has taken the furniture it doesn't really have a function assigned to it.  I've put in an antique dressing table from the 1930's to serve as a desk, but other than that the space is sort of random at the moment.  I don't want to use the bench seat that goes with the table because there is no back to rest against, so for right now there is a folding chair.  Classy!

All this decorating has made made me realize that it is the little details that really bring a room together.  My style seems to be this weird mixture of antique and modern, yet it somehow seems to work in a way that makes my bedroom all cozy.  I'm trying to do the same thing for the other half of my "suite".  You can already begin to see it in the picture above- notice the antique desk along with the modern prints on the rug and curtains?  Heck, you might be thinking I have no taste at all and it looks like crap, lol, but I like it.  I've taken some close ups of some of the other details that add to the room:

This is not an antique (in fact it says Made in China on the knobs), but being the history dork that I am I like it none the less.  My mom was about to donate it to Purple Heart, but I snagged it out of the box.  I just wish I had some oil so I could light it up!

I have no idea who this is.  He is part of my "Cute Dead-Guys" collection.  Yes, you read correctly.  I have a growing collection of antique photographs of men who I personally find attractive and are most likely deceased.  This one dates from WWII.  It is the only one in which there is even a possibility of the subject still being alive.  I choose this photo for my desk because of the brass frame, hoping it would tie-in to the oil lamp.

I don't know who this is either.  He actually was the first of my CDG photographs.  I was just walking through an antique store years ago and saw him, and something drew me in.  It is actually part of a set, there is a second photo of his wife.  I couldn't split the pair up so I bought them both, and she hangs above him on my bedroom wall.  Judging by their clothing (her dress and hair mainly), I think they date from the 1840's.  Definitely dead.  I think he kinda looks like Heath Ledger.

And this is the most recent addition to the collection.  No info on this one either, other than he probably lived in the mid-19th Century.  I actually used this one to be my first "husband"  at work.  (For those of you not in the know, I work at a living history museum where I portray a woman living during the Civil War.)  My character was a widow who's first husband was a dairy farmer and then died at the battle of Gettysburg, and I used this photo to portray him to the public.  He now sits on top of my TV.

I was given this butter sign as a gift from a co-worker at the museum.  It was for sale in the gift shop and I had had my eye on it for a year before she gave it to me.  I love it! It's cute, and has meaning to me since I played a dairy farmer's wife and can actually make butter from scratch.  It hangs above a bookshelf in my bedroom.

This too was a gift from a friend at work.  It's a Cat's Meow replica of my favorite house to work in at the museum.  It was "my" house last year, and hopefully will be again.  It adorns my windowsill.

Next to the window I have an actual  prop letter from the movie "A Walk In The Clouds".  I bought it in Disney World when I was 21 and stuck it in a frame as "art".  If you've seen the movie, you'll know there was a trunk full of letters written by Paul Sutton (Keanu Reeves) to his wife Betty (Debra Messing).  She never bothered to read them.  There actually is a letter on the inside too, it's not just the envelope for show. Say what you like about the movie, but I like it and I think it's cool to have such an integral prop.

Below the window I re-purposed the bench seat from the antique dressing table-now desk.  My cat is always trying to lay in the window sill to look outside, but it's too narrow.  I figured this could act as a little kitty-seat for him, but since I put it there a couple days ago, he hasn't used it once.  Ungrateful cat.

This photograph of Marilyn Monroe actually came from a calender.  I just cut it out and put it in a "floating" frame due to it's odd dimensions.  Isn't she lovely?

Above my bed are two framed prints by the pin-up artist Alberto Vargas.  This one is my favorite.  If you can't tell, she is holding a letter in her hand.  I've always wanted to know what it said to create the expression she has, and I can't quite figure out what exactly that expression is.  Happy?  Sad?  For me it's like trying to figure out the Mona Lisa!

This stained glass lamp was given to me by a former employer.  She didn't want it anymore, and I needed a bedside lamp so it was a win-win situation.  Next to it is a small jewelry/music box I put my rings in when I go to bed.  This prevents the cats from turning them into toys as I sleep.  It plays "All I Ask Of You" from Phantom of the Opera.

Last but not least, my silver plated piggy bank I've had since I was a baby.  He needs a good polishing, but for now I'm calling the tarnish "character". 

This is not an exhaustive list of everything in my "suite", just some of the highlights.  These are the things that help me feel like this is my home.

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New Year, New Digs

On New Year's Eve-eve there were some changes made around here. During our relationship my ex and I purchased bedroom and living room furniture together. These items included a bed set, couch, recliner, coffee table and a wool area rug. My ex came to pick up the pieces of furniture he won in our "divorce".    I was not happy about having to divide up these belongings, having the strongest emotions over who got the bed.

Even though it wasn't really my taste when we first bought it, I grew to really like the bed we picked out together and had a very hard time letting it go.  Yes, there was sentimental attachment involved, but also I just really like this bed! I was not happy with the idea of him walking out the door with something that was just as much mine as it was his.  But, after several arguments and tears, a compromise was made.

Because I had another bed available to me (the Shaker-style four poster I picked out when I was about 14) and he didn't, it really was only fair that he get the bed.  But, to lower the suckage-level for me, I told him I got the mattress. He could have the one that was supposed to go on my bed, a barely-used hand me down from my sister.  He agreed.  At least this way it still feels like the bed I'm used to, even though I haven't slept on this one for a decade.

He also got the recliner that was purchased to be "his" in the first place, and my pretty blue couch with an optional chaise lounge.  Again, not happy.  But, he did take over the final payments for the living room stuff after we broke up, so it was only fair.  He did leave me the area rug and coffee table.  I call them my "consolation prizes".

I spent most of December 30th and 31st rearranging my bedroom to get the new set-up to work and feel homey.  This was not fun.  The biggest problem I ran into was that the bed I now have has four tall posts, and one perfectly blocked my view of the TV. FYI- I have to watch TV as I fall asleep.  HAVE TO. Don't give me that crap about it ruins your sleep blah blah blah.  I'm set in my ways.  After several attempts to move things around, it finally came to the point where the only solution was for me to change which side of the bed I slept on.

I don't know if any of you have had to make this same change at some point, but for those of you who haven't, I think it sucks!  Everything feels all wrong! When I walk in the room I automatically start heading for the other side and have to correct myself.  I never realized what an ingrained thing this was for me until it changed.  It's only a distance of 3 feet, but it feels like another world.  It's hard for me to sleep now too, and even my cats seemed confused by the new arrangement.  I need to retrain myself to navigate my own room.

Anyway, I got things moved around in the bedroom mostly to my liking.  I really wanted to recreate the cozy feeling I had made with the previous arrangement as soon as possible so I was wasn't living in a state of chaos.  Things are looking pretty cute in here if I do say so myself.  Don't get me wrong, since it's only been a couple days I would gladly put things back the way they were in a heartbeat given the chance.  It still doesn't feel like "home" yet.

Here are some pictures, all taken on the iPhone since I can't find the cord to my camera that allows me to upload pics to the computer:

Bed before.

Bed after.

The trouble-making TV.

Replacement nightstand.

Bedtime.  TTYL!

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You Have GOT To Be Kidding Me!

Yeah, I know.  I haven't blogged since September.  That's pretty bad.  Guess what?  I fell off the FlyLady system too.  Shocker.  As per usual, I burned out on FlyLady and blogging.  This time they just happened at the same time.  Probably because I blog about FlyLady. Go figure!  I'm hoping that with this post I can Babystep my way back into doing my routines and posting on a more regular basis.  I'm actually surprised I even have followers left- I expected you all to get bored and abandon me.  How surprised was I when I logged on to see that I actually have more followers than I did the last time I posted?!  It's most likely thanks to Rosie from HomeRoutines for putting me on her web site's blog roll.  Thanks Rosie!

I actually tried to get back into the swing of things a couple weeks ago by finally modifying my routines and Zone work to better reflect my current living situation.  Then, two days later, my iPhone broke.  Broke with no hope of repair.  I had to buy a new one.  Suckage!  When I got home I went to sync the new phone to my laptop to get all my apps, music, etc. uploaded.  And, what do you know- my laptop decided to wheeze it's last breath at that very moment.  This death would involve buying a new mother board to resurrect it, and that ain't gonna happen anytime soon.  So, I had to manually upload all my apps, ask everyone for phone numbers, blah blah blah.  I'm using my mother's laptop for the time being, but this little setback-turned-project got me discouraged and annoyed so FLYing got put on hold again.

Now I'm back, phone has stuff on it (I still miss my music, hopefully a friend can remove my old hard drive and retrieve my files) and I have access to a working laptop.  I have recreated my routines and am working my way back into doing them.  My "suite" (the term I am now using to describe the 2 bedrooms and bathroom I occupy in my parents' house) actually looks pretty good.  I'm sitting here dressed to shoes, but no makeup yet.  That will come in a couple hours when I go out for the evening.  Overall, not bad for a FlyLady Flunky.



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Shedding Some Light On My Perfectionism

Working in a living history museum where modern conveniences like light switches and flashlights are non existent, we must go the period appropriate throw-back route and use things like oil lamps and candles. For portability we put candles in lanterns kinda like the one in the picture, only not with  big honkin' pillar candles as shown. We use and abuse these candle lanterns, especially during the Christmas season program called Lantern Tours.  They end up absolutely covered in wax and soot, the glass sides are broken, etc.  It's quite the hot mess.

Anyway, a charity group is renting our establishment this weekend for an event and they requested to use some of our lanterns, i.e. someone needs to clean them beforehand.  That someone would be me...

Day 1 of cleaning lanterns I did have help, a co-worker took the job of cleaning the metal frames themselves by scraping the melted wax off the bottom with a putty knife then giving them a bath in industrial strength degreaser to remove the soot residue.  We might have gotten a little high off the fumes.  I set to task getting the wax off the glass panes themselves.  To do this I modified a little trick I learned years ago to get wax out of clothing: Pick off any big hunks of wax, then place a paper bag over what remains and iron the spot.  The wax will instantly melt and absorb into the bag.  Ta da!  For the lantern glass I didn't have paper bags so I just found an old thin cloth rag and laid that over the panes, ironed, and ta da again, clean glass!

Day 2 of lantern cleaning was me alone scrubbing more frames. More getting high. At the end of this day, there were 21 totally clean lanterns ready for the event.  My boss said that should be enough, and I breathed a sigh of relief thinking I was done.

Yesterday was Day 3.  My boss texted me around noon and said that the co-worker in charge the rental had just informed her that the renters wanted a total of 50 lanterns for their event.  50.  5-0.  As in, more than double what I had already finished.  Oh boy.  I drove on down there and got back to work, but this time I knew I wouldn't be able to be as thorough as we had been before.  Working alone I had time to de-wax, but not to de-soot.  By the end of the day I had chipped the wax off the 29 additional lantern frames, but still had to go in today to de-wax the glass.

Day 4- (Today) I de-waxed the glass and was able to leave with 50 completed lanterns ready for use this weekend.  The only thorn in my side was that the final 29 never got de-sooted (is that a word?)  In my mind I had a mini-fail because I couldn't get them as clean as they could be (and the first batch was) due to the time constraints I was under.

Later this afternoon my boss texted me again, and part of our convo went like this (she is white and I am green):

Apparently even my boss knows I'm a FlyLady Flunky/perfectionist at heart...

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Gillette, The Best A Girl Can Get...

Hey guys, I just wanted to do a quick post and pass on a money saving tip I found awhile back whilst perusing the black hole of time internet.  I don't even remember how it was I landed upon this video, but I watched it anyway and was intrigued. It's all about how to make disposable razor blades stay sharp for a looooong time by using only your arm! Before you watch I will warn you- the man in the video is shirtless, but you do not see anything below his shoulder line.  I only bring this up because apparently some people were bothered by this according to the comments left on the video.  You have been warned.  Also, the sound is kinda quiet on this one, or at least it was for me, so you might want to turn up the volume a notch or two.



Seems too good to be true, doesn't it?  That's what I thought, but after having tried it for the past year, I have to admit that it seems to do a pretty good job!  I didn't make my razors last as long as he has, but they were pretty far gone before I started this technique and weren't as good as those made-for-guys Gillette Fusions that he was using to begin with. (God I love those things, even if they do cost an arm and a leg and don't come in pretty girl colors.  They work awesome!) I just bought my first new pack of razors in a year, and I'm going to see how long I can make them last this time.

Some people seem to do this same technique, but instead of using your arm they run it up a pair of blue jeans.  Haven't tried that one myself, but it seems worth a shot.  And here's a random thought- I am so tired of men whining about having to shave.  I'm sorry, but the last time I checked, it was socially acceptable for a man to grow a beard in this country, but for a woman to not shave her legs/underarms/etc.- not so kosher.  Plus, when it comes to actual square-inchage of surface area needing to be shaved, I think we ladies have a tougher job. So- zip it boys! End rant.

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Stopping To Smell The Febreze

I have a confession- I am addicted to Febreze.  It all started ino-scent-ly enough.  (Get it?)  About a year ago I stole borrowed a can of furniture polish from my mother to restore the shine on my bed set.  As I sprayed and wiped away smudges I began to notice how utterly fabulous the stuff smelled.  I took a look at the can to find that it was Swiffer Dust and Shine with Febreze's Lavender Vanilla and Comfort scent.  Hmmmm, not bad.

Fast forward to my time living with the guy formally known as Roomie.  The  first time I wanted to mop the floor in that apartment I discovered that he didn't actually own a mop, but instead used one of those Swiffer Sweepers with the wet cloths.  I pulled it out, stuck on a cloth, and there was that smell again!  Heavenly. Again, the cleaning agent in the wet cloth was scented with Febreze Lavender Vanilla and Comfort. Because of that smell, I actually started looking forward to mopping the floor.  Unfortunately, the wet cloths didn't do the best job at getting up the ground in dirt one finds on the kitchen floor of a single guy.  I went out and bought a real mop, and while I was at it, went on an obsessive hunt for other products containing that scent.

In my search I found Mr. Clean Multi-Surfaces Liquid cleaner with my new-favorite aroma, which is what I now use with a real mop when cleaning the floors. I also picked up some actual Febreze Fabric Refresher spray (the extra large bottle of course), and was happy to see it came with a small "Febreze To Go" bottle that I keep in my car.

It was filled with the standard old-school smelling Febreze, and you can bet I used that up as quickly as possible so I could refill it with- you guessed it- Lavender Vanilla and Comfort. Oh, I can't forget to mention Febreze Air Effects, a sprayable air freshener.  This I have in several scents for whatever tickles my fancy at the time:

I love how Febreze freshens up my "home" (be it a shared apartment with a friend or my sister's old room in my parents' house, sigh), but the only problem I have with it is that is doesn't last nearly long enough!

When I walk into my "home", I want to be greeted with that delicious smell.  Well, unless I just sprayed the fabric refresher/air freshener/mopped the floor/polished the furniture, that wasn't likely to happen.  I needed something that was going to guarantee smell-ability any time of day.  Enter: Febreze NOTICEables:

If you've never heard of this before, the NOTICEables are a plug in air freshener that has two rotating scents in the warmer that change periodically so your snoz doesn't get de-scents-itized to the smell.  (See, I did it again!)  It is rather effective at this goal, and now whenever I walk into my room I immediately notice the welcoming smell. 

A couple  side notes on the NOTICEables- I was a little nervous about using a plug in freshener again after a bad experience I had when I used to use some made by Glade.  Although I loved them and their wide range of scents, my cats had bad reactions that resulted in vomiting whenever I plugged them in.  If I removed the freshener from the apartment the puking stopped, and I tried out this theory several times, so I know it was the Glade.  I read somewhere that animals can be sensitive to essential oils, (which are claimed to be in a lot of these oil warmer/air freshening plug in things) but luckily after months of use with the Febreze NOTICEables we haven't had the same pukey problem.  Secondly- the NOTICEables version of my favorite scent doesn't smell the same as any of the other products I have mentioned.  There is something about the NOTICEables version of all their scents, really, that are a bit off.  Not that is smells bad, just not the same.  Even the name is slightly off, in this case it's called Lavender Comfort and Gentle Vanilla. Just sayin'.

Today I noticed that my NOTICEable was due for a refill, so off to Target I scampered to purchase a new one.  Whilst browsing the aisle dedicated to making your home smell better the urge hit me to *gasp* try a new scent.  Yes, it's true, I have strayed from my beloved Lavender Vanilla and Comfort.  I decided I wanted to go with a nice fall-smelling scent to compliment the recent changes in the weather, so I went with this:

Pumpkin Harvest and Fall.  Yummy.  I could have gone with another that had something to do with apples, but the NOTICEables version smelled kind of chemically even though the candle I used as a control smelled great.  I can't even find that scent on their website, so buyer beware, I guess.

As a final thought- Normally I do not care for the smell of lavender, but there is something about pairing it with vanilla that makes me want to lay on the carpet and inhale like they do in the Febreze commercials.  Nor is there anything in my home that smells so bad that I actually require all this stuff to cover up a stench, but rather I just really like the way it smells in general.  In fact, I may or may not use the Febreze On The Go bottle as "perfume" on occasion... With my "signature" scent of Lavender Vanilla and Comfort, of course.

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Overwhelmed and Under-energized

<------ How I feel!  I loathe the actual moving process- the packing, lugging boxes around, etc.  I am finally now at the part I do like- the unpacking and making everything in the new space all pretty. 

Since I ended up moving back to my parents' house I'm pretty familiar with the landscape, but I'm still having trouble figuring out where to put everything.  I've also hit a cleaning roadblock.  As I am putting things away I find myself thinking "I don't want to put that there yet, it needs to be dusted/wiped out/hosed down so I might as well do that first instead of having to pull everything I've just put away out by doing it later." (Apparently I think in run-on sentences.)  This has caused a slow-down in the actual unpacking process, but all this compulsive cleaning should help things run pretty smoothly once it's time for me to start a new Zone cleaning system.

I really need to get back to cleaning/unpacking, so I'll leave you with a few bad iPhone pictures I snapped on Tuesday, my last day in the old apartment:

Empty living room/my bedroom.  :(

Empty kitchen and bathroom.  :(

Roomie (who is no longer my roomie) waving goodbye to y'all in his empty bedroom.

:(

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