24

Yesterday I turned 24.

Our friends John and Kait came up to visit over the weekend.
Kait and I have been great friends since 3rd grade.
She brought me some really fun stuff for my birthday!

+IKEA vase (awesome thrift!)
+Burt's Bees kit (a plantable one, at that.)
A really cool mushroom thing (I love mushrooms!)
A neat little pine tree fob (you know about my pine tree obsession...)
Sock Dreams gift card (aaaand you probably know of my knee high sock obsession)
AND 2 boxes full of chocolate covered fruit from Edible Arrangements (where she works)
(what's funny about this photo is that the owl is from them too and so is the tree...they are both from separate occasions. damn they get me cool stuff!!!)

I had to eat the fruit with a fork and steak knife because of the whole teeth removal thing, but I discovered that I like eating them better that way.
Much more satisfying.

We went to A LOT of restaurants over the weekend.
I wish I had photos, but I don't...I blame it on hating my camera. Isn't that terrible? I need to just take pictures already and stop caring.
+ + + + + + +

My list of 24 things to do over the next year:
1. learn to knit
2. learn to play guitar
3. get a tattoo (on the side of my ribs. a tall pine tree, of course)
4. plant a small garden on my balcony (tomatoes and mushrooms)
5. get a new car to replace my piece of shit car
6. walk the dogs at the shelter
7. start keeping a journal again (i miss doing that)
8. go to lots of farmer's markets
9. take more day-trips with joe
10. get new glasses (i'm bored with the ones i have)
11. make jam and give it to friends + family
12. go camping
13. start running again (i miss this one a lot)
14. pay more attention (i have a TERRIBLE short term memory)
15. start screen printing (i've had my supplies for 2 YEARS now)
16. learn how to weld
17. build a table for our bedroom (soon!)
18. keep a restaurant list in my journal (that would be helpful)
19. learn all about canoeing and kayaking (more on that later)
20. write to my penpal more
21. learn how to sew
22. stay in town more this summer (i hope for this one so much)
23. take a short spur of the moment road trip
24. enjoy life

Passing Time, Slowly. Slowly.

Wisdom teeth are out!
I'm feeling pretty good so far, with only minimal tension in my jaw area.
According to the dentist, today and tomorrow will be the worst for pain.

{shot from my bed}So what have you been up to?
Not a whole lot here, just planning out the next few things I'm going to build.

Well I got that job I was talking about, so that's good news!
More on that later, I start on Monday so I'm sure I'll have more to talk about once I get going.
The only bad thing (and it's not even that bad) about the job starting when it does is that it cuts into a zine project I was going to start on the 26th at midnight.
Looks like I will have to re-think that...

Floating Nightstands

A quick sneak peak at what I've been up to over the past few days...

:: Cut ::

:: Stain ::

:: Mount ::

This is 1 of 2 floating nightstands that I made for our bedroom.
I'm pretty excited about them!
More info about them and the items on the nightstand over on flickr.

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Next I'm making a new sweater/bag rack for our room to replace this one.

Also totally swooning over prints by Andrew Bannecker over at Charmingwall
so I'll probably pick a couple of those up, too.
(p.s. charmingwall is a neat little site. if you get a chance, check it out.)

Updates on the bedroom (before + after pics) to come.

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I'm getting my wisdom teeth extracted in 14 hours and I am a nervous wreck.
Very on edge.
Extremely irritable because of it (just ask joe...i'm sure he's noticed).
Just plain cranky.

Off to take the garbage out.

Missed It.

I was watching this fan on eBay and then completely forgot to bid before leaving for work...
Too bad because it went for $30, with shipping.

Then I found this one, and while I like it, the other one was cuter. The blades were more unique.
But I might still bid on it, since I want one that works for our "new" bedroom.

Maybe I will start collecting these old fans...I'm sure Joe would just love that...I could have snagged a million of them at that 127 sale I went to last summer, but it's so hard to know if they work when there is no electricity to try them out. Of course, I guess I don't really know for sure if the eBay ones work either. I just have to take the seller's word for it.

The bedroom is coming along nicely.
I'm building floating nightstands for us to free up some space on the floor, I'll show you once they are hung.
I'm lucky to have a cool husband who enjoys making our space look nice almost as much as I do!
I know a lot of guys who don't care and leave it all up to their wife/girlfriend/etc, so it's really nice to have one who does.

For now I'm going to finish staining the nightstands.

Oh, PS, I need these for the living room:

Hello

So I closed the shop a couple days later than I was going to, just because Thursday is the day that I ship, so I figured I could stay open a little longer since I was going to the PO anyway.

Since I haven't had to make anything on my days off, I'm finally able to focus on decorating our bedroom. Have I ever told you how much I hate using the term "decorating"? I don't know, I just can't stand it. But anyway, it's been almost 4 years since we've been dealing with primarily hand-me-down items. Fortunately, I've recently been able to start buying things that are geared more towards our style. More on that later, I'll have to show you what I've bought!

And now I'm dreaming about this alpine bed from CB2:

But it's $600 (plus $100 s&h! geez). And we could really use that money towards a down-payment on a house (or another car...damn it.) So for now it will probably have to wait, and then it will probably be sold out, and then I will probably be entirely bummed about it all, etc. So maybe I will have to win the lottery or something. I could definitely afford it if I could just.keep.working.for.another.few.weeks at my current job, but the season is ending and they are letting me go within a matter of days, I'm sure. Isn't that how it always works? Oh well, at least I was able to get my student loan and most of my credit card paid off.

Today I went and applied somewhere that seems like it would be a pretty cool place to work. I have an interview next Friday, so fingers crossed. I decided not to tell Joe because I like to casually surprise him when it comes to that sort of thing. And honestly, I don't like all the questions that would accompany the idea. I tend to get a little bit crabby when it comes to random questions that refer to something that either doesn't matter or might not happen.

Okay so that's all! Before and after bedroom shots to come soon. I'm excited! The theme is "Stormy Day, Seaside" but that's all I can say for now. I wish we could paint. Dumb. Oh well.

Off to the Post Office and then time to get Joe from work.

Announcement

Well here is the announcement that I was supposed to make yesterday...

Originally I was going to close the shop entirely, but then yesterday I got all bummed out about it. So for now I'm just going to take a break and see what happens during that time.

On my list of things to do during the break:
+learn to knit
+go snowboarding
+make a few zines
+get a sewing machine and learn to sew
+organize my studio and turn it into a place to relax rather than what it has turned into (utter chaos)
+go thrifting. lots.
+read a book. i haven't read a book since 6th grade because my mind wanders too much.
+get a road bike and go go go
+start keeping a journal again
+learn to play guitar
+volunteer
+blog about all the above experiences!

Most of these things have been on my to-do list for YEARS. So I thought that it was time to do something about it. The Yellow Canoe break will start on Tuesday the 6th of January.

Thank you everybody who has supported me in my little adventure!

Hope your new year is a good one- what's on your agenda for the next few hundred days?