Ramblings

Today was my last day of work for my season at Rutabaga. I was bummin' about it for a bit...I'm going to miss my work buddies. But it's not all bad- it will be nice to have a shorter drive for a bit and I have to admit that I do love getting ready for a day at the office (read: dressing nicely).

My other job won't start full swing for a couple of weeks yet, so I'm going to spend some time working on some new art. I've been wanting to make new pieces for awhile now, and it's nice to know that I will be able to soon. I don't touch my art stuff in the summer because it's just not a good time for me. But with fall being here, and winter being it's pushy self and moving fall right along, I'll have tons of time indoors to do this again.

The other things on my list, now that I'll have a little more time each week?:

Play more bass guitar

Journal more

Cook again (I haven't cooked since January!)

Work on house stuff (truly my favorite thing to do...other than thrifting)

Watch more movies (i only watch about 2 movies a year, but i'll give it a shot.)

I told Joe that we can have a TV in the bedroom if we can get floor to ceiling windows in the bedroom, so I can see out into our yard from the bed. Now I'm realizing that our bed is not very comfortable so maybe we should get a new bed first. And the other problem is that I *think* I would eventually like to end up in Madison again, so that's a lot of money for something I may not be around to enjoy for very long. BUT at the same time, floor to ceiling windows isn't really something we could ever have in Madison (hey, neighbor!) so we'll see. I just think it'd be great to crawl out of bed in the morning, shovel the drive, crawl back into bed with a movie and hot chocolate and watch the snow fall outside. But really, how often is it that we get a snow day? About as often as I watch movies. Um, I don't know why I'm in winter mode. Could it be the snowshoes that were put on display at work today? Hmm.

Anyway, the other thing I've been contemplating is renaming the blog. Eek! No more Operation Paper Cut? *Sigh* I think I'd miss it. I miss things easily. Have you realized this about me? Yeah. Anyway, it just doesn't suit the blog anymore and my original intention for the blog has evolved into something else. Remember when I used to spend hours cutting paper and binding journals? Well, that's where the name originated. I just pulled this photo from my flickr stream. If I look at it for more than a second then I will have to add "bind journals" to my "do more of" list. Another thing that I miss. I can't believe that almost 4 years have passed since I made them on a regular basis. Ah well, good things come and go.

So if I come up with a new blog name, it will change. I'm not going to push it, though. Then I'll be up all night. It's late as it is...waaay past my usual 9:30 bedtime.

Hallway

So here are the photos of the hallway that we painted last week. I've been pretty happy with it since painting...I didn't realize just how much I hated the wallpaper before.

Before:

After:

View into guest room:

View into our bedroom and guest bath:

We finally hung some artwork up...it's been nice to walk through and see it.

View into office:

The house definitely has a much nicer flow to it now. We still have a lot of painting that we want to do but all the adjoining rooms upstairs, minus our bedroom and master bathroom, have been painted. We're pretty happy with the blues and greys we've chosen. The house feels calm and collected, which is what we were aiming for. We're hoping to find the right color for the bedroom soon so the upstairs can be finished until the next step, which is new lighting, hardware, window treatments and doors throughout.

Party People

We had our party last night. I'm still in bed...it's 3:34 PM. We stopped getting crazy at about 4 this morning. And to think I was trying to make it till the sun came up? I'm glad I didn't. We haven't partied like that in a very long time. I had about 5 beers and 6 shots of tequila. Yeeesh. Usually I'll stop at about 3 beers, but I knew I'd most likely be in bed all day so I had to make it happen. I'm okay with wasting a day if it's only once in a great great while. And if I know I'll be sharing a hangover with people, it makes it a lot easier.

It was pretty much the first time that we had a large amount of friends over. Almost 30 people showed. My friends have been hassling me to have a party for over a year now, but I had to wait till the house was at least a little bit more me first. I'm glad I waited. We got lots of compliments and I felt like I was glowing all night because of it. I'm also glad that I decided to tackle the hallway because, interestingly enough, it was a very popular spot to hang out.

A few friends found some guitars and had a little jam session in the Guest Bedroom off the hallway. It was fun. We do need to improve our instrument selection, though. I recently started telling Joe that I want drums. Last night proved the fact that yeah, we do need some percussion instruments. We'll have some by the time the next party rolls around.

 

















So this was pretty much the funniest part of the night. I came into the living room and people were passing this wedding photo around...at first they were just saying "oh my god! erin with long hair! i can't even picture her with long hair!" and then it evolved into a new conversation. You can't really see it (that's okay...enough people have seen it now) but there is a pretty serious ass grab happening in the photo, compliments of Joe. My friends know I'm a blusher so they had a good time teasing me about it. Then they dragged Joe in and started high fiving and "yeah"ing him. That brought the shade of color on my face to the next level, haha.

Of course, much of the night was spent around the fire, too. It was a great night for some flames. The pit only suffered from one bruise (I'm super protective of my firepit!) and since I already have to pull the mortar out again before winter (i never did technically finish the fire pit) I'm not concerned about it. It hasn't seen a winter season yet and to say that I'm nervous about that would be a huge understatement. Once winter attempts to kick it's ass I'll know how tough it is and won't freak out as much.

Overall we had a great time. It was a nice way to say goodbye to the summer. My last day at Rutabaga is this week (i'll go back again after winter), so I was happy to spend time with friends from work.


There are two things that we need before the next one, though. A new camera and a sound dock for the iPod. Two things that have been on my wish list for years. I'm going to wait for Black Friday or Cyber Monday and get both of them if I can. The sound dock that I want is like $300 so that gives me about 60 days to talk Joe into it. :)

Switcheroo

I pretty much live on procrastination. Well, okay, no- let's just say that I'm not motivated until the last minute. Is that the same thing? Damn it. I know, it is.

We're having a party this weekend. Like, up to 40 people. I made a spontaneous last minute decision to remove the wallpaper from the hallway (which ended up being a huge undertaking) and then today I decided that the bathroom could use some sprucing up as well. The bathroom is off the hallway that we painted, so it began to stick out like an even sorer thumb that it already had been. Anyway, I did it on a whim when Joe left for work at 6:30 this morning.

Before:

After:

Nothing too major. Just some paint and a shower curtain that we had from our apartment. But I'm so glad I changed it- it's like a breath of fresh air. Especially during the day. That green curtain was new when we moved here, from the previous owner. I hated it. Then the cats got into it and I hated it more. I don't like green in my house when it's drab. I consider it to be one of the most depressing color ever. Ick. We had a lot of drab green when we got here a year ago but almost all of it is gone now, thankfully. Anyway, it occurred to me that we had this curtain folded up and that it would match the newly painted hallway. Photos of the hallway to come next week.

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After we finished our massive to-do, we went to Goodwill to drop off a few bags of stuff and I asked Joe if we could go inside. Well that was a terrible idea. There is a dresser there that is perfect and I originally thought it was $10. It was MINE. I made Joe stand by it while I shopped the rest of the furniture aisles. I watched him like a hawk to make sure he was doing a good job. He was. Then I realized that the price was wrong and that it was actually $30. Shit. $30 is still a great deal for a dresser and an even better deal when it's perfect and just what you've been waiting for. I wait for a long time for things. Half of it is for financial reasons. The other half is because I don't buy things unless I love them. And I loved this. It's a small dresser- like between the size of a nightstand and a long dresser. But the hardware is perfect and I can even live with the color (off white) for a bit. The fact that it's still sitting at the thrift store is burning a hole in my brain. I told that to Joe when we pulled out of the parking lot and he said "well, we could have Taco Bell for dinner instead of going out" (it's our 4 year wedding anniversary today. :))) and I have to say that I seriously considered it but knew he was half kidding. The worst part is that dinner was kind of gross and the margaritas that I had been anticipating all day long were terrible. Taco Bell would have been just fine (minus it being Taco Bell...)

Ugh. I'm going to bed now.

New Project

Whenever I run into an obstacle with a project, I just move onto the next. I wont get into the reasoning behind the obstacles, but here is the latest project:

Removing the hideous wallpaper from the hallway upstairs. Edited a couple days later: why do I always refer to the main level as "upstairs"? I don't know...I guess that's the 2 story girl in me crying out. Just kidding, I do love our ranch. :)

We want to wallpaper eventually but it's going to cost a lot of money so we decided to just paint for now. That's not something we usually do, we like to do things the way we want them to be the first time around. But I think I can justify spending $20 on paint for now and a couple hundred on wallpaper later. Wait. No. There is no way I will ever be able to justify spending a couple hundo on wallpaper, but I will just close my eyes when I run the debit number and pretend it never happened.

Clothes

I started at the good ol' winter job yesterday. I know, it's not winter yet. But it's still my winter job.

I'm still working at Rutabaga as well, but that will be ending shortly. Driving 15 miles in Wisconsin winters is far enough, and if I stayed at Baga I'd be more than twice that distance away. Last year I got stuck for in a line of traffic for 2 hours on 2 separate occasions because of wintery conditions, so I can only imagine what a commute twice as long would hand to me. In my next life I will live in town.

Anyway, part of the fun of the winter gig is getting to participate in Wardrobe Remix.

 

This a different photo than I was going to share, but I had to post this one with Clem because he's feeling much much better than he was 2 weeks ago. You can't really see the outfit too well because of the lighting/being far away but my house is project zone and I couldn't take the photo anywhere else. Here's the other one.

 And my new shoes.

Thrifted, of course, for $3.

The entire outfit cost less than $30. I estimate that it would have cost about $175 new. The sweater is 100% lambswool and has sweet buttons and I got it for like $12 last autumn. Steal.

Yeah. Thrifting is the only way, people. The only way those of us who like nice things but work at normal jobs can get anywhere in life.

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I finished a project today that I hope to share soon. It has to do with the office room. I still haven't come up with a great name for that room...it may end up being "the library" one day. But I first have to buy some more books and that's not going to happen for a very long time, so for now it's the office room. I guess I could just call it the office, but then I think of Michael Scott and I wouldn't want him in my house. He's just too damn loud!

Another Week

There goes another week. Or, should I say, another month.

I get quiet and distant when things are busy or not going right, so there hasn't been much that I've wanted to talk about. There are a lot of things that I've been wanting to do at home, but most of my time has been spent running errands, going to appointments and working. And to think that I don't even have children...yeeesh.

I did manage to make a list and cross a few things off. But it's all just life stuff, not fun stuff.

Things should be better in about 20 days. That's when I have a day off. I'll probably just spend that whole day playing catch up but for now I will just look forward to it. I'm hoping to finish a few projects before then so I have something to blog about, though.

I have a really hard time deciding what to do with the free time that I find when I'm working a lot. Part of me wants to do things. But then the other part of me knows that if I do things, I won't be able to rest for a long time. And when I don't rest, things are not good.

So this evening, after work, I sat on the couch, then took a nap, and then sat on the couch again. Sometimes I'm okay with that. But now that it's 9:20 PM and time for bed, I'm sort of regretting it. Should have varnished the shelves. Could have washed the mountain of dishes. Would have taken a walk if Joe was up for it. The list goes on.

But it's Labor Day and since I've only had Labor Day off once in my life, I will just be okay with sitting around after work.