Friday Cat Blogging

Its a whole new world....

Weekend Projects

Does anyone want to help me paint some furniture? They are very ugly...

They all need to be cleaned, sanded, sanded thoroughly again, painted, sanded, repainted and then they all need some pink! The interior of the brown table is going to get all of the above and it also going to be painted, most likely in fuchsia. Everywhere else is going to be a more glossy version of the wall paint.


Look, I have all the goodies!

Come on!  Who wants to paint some old furniture!

Projects, projects, projects

Before

Better.

My next project, well, I have two projects. One is easier than the other. I need to pick up some rustolium and give the  new-to-me deck furniture a going over.

 It will brighten them up and protect them. I'm just going to go with black, I thought about yellow or violet or baby blue, because I like those  - but I decided that if I want to brighten up the scene I can get some pillows or something of if I shift the table a little I could get an umbrella.

Black is easier to live with long term.

I am also going to get serious about the  paintable furniture in the living room. I want an orange and after looking at a lot of oranges, I think maybe the tangerine end of the orange spectrum, not the pumpkin end. The pumpkin end is too brown and looks like crap with the gray. I think the tangerine end of the spectrum is more the right shade, there's pink and red in it and it goes with the other colors. Hopefully.

And of course, I need to rebuild the living room and see what goes back and where it goes so that I can reclaim the downstairs bedroom before it gets hot and I have to move downstairs. So. Projects.

How to wash your snow globes

Prior to moving my snow globes into there new home I had to get them cleaned up and ready to go. They had been living kind of rough for a long time and now they are moving up in the world, I want them to look the part. I hummed The Jefferson's' theme to myself just then.

We had to start somewhere

I know, disgraceful.

 Scrub a dub dub, one globe in the tube

Disgraced, ignored and ashamed no more. Cleaned up and ready to move in their new home tomorrow!

More thoughts

Today I'm trying to decide if I want to pursue trying to find an orange rug for the dining room. I know they are out there but I'm not sure there are any orange carpet remnants out there for me to find. I do not think carpet remnant shopping is quite as fun as china cabinet shopping.

I also do not think that there will be as many choices available.

Did you know that area rugs are very expensive?.  Specifically large area rugs are incredibly expensive! Target has a very nice area rug that would be great and its in my range but I would have to get two of them and that is not in my range, but as pretty as it is, it might be doable.

I bought a tiny version and its really nice. I like the orange and the gray is lovely. I think a nice gray would be good for the living room. I don't think an orange rug, especially one of that size, would go with the burgundy couch and chaise. I think it would just be too much color and make the room too dark. If I was able to find a lighter orange, which would be cool, might be too light and end up as stained and ugly as the current carpet. I think I should just go with a mid-tone gray carpet remnant and a lot of nice orange through the room. Thoughts?

More cabinet drama

Friday after work I hit two thrift stores and found five possible kittens for my friend searching for kittens and one possible cabinet.

I went to the store initially  because they said had this nice piece, which I would have bought on the spot.

Liars. This one was on Craigslist and I wanted it. They all ready sold it, and never removed it form the site. So customer friendly. They also can't answer their phones, deal with their email or be bothered with customer service. Lovely folks. They didn't have the one I came there for, but they did have one I could live with.

Its nice and it has some of texture I thought I wanted. But not enough and it was not really what I wanted. Also they never got back with me on a price and that cost them.

So. Saturday I was up at the crack of noon and on the road in the rain. All Day. I went to six different stores and trekked as far as Durham in search of the perfect cabinet. There are a lot of thrift stores out there, and if you are looking for some stunning mid-century lamps or some design textbook quality mid-century bedroom furniture, I can hook you up. I was not having luck finding my cabinet.

My first stop got my hopes up

It was certainly nice and it was in my price range and it would look great painted out. I had high hopes for this one - but I wanted to see what else was out there.

Answer? After hours and hours and a lot of miles, not a lot in my price range or to my taste. The one I really liked at the Durham Rescue Misson Thirft Mall, was all ready sold and the other one they had mad me sad.

So, the end of the day I went back to the first store and looked again. I still liked it but I saw another that I liked better. It was more than I wanted to spend, but they were open to negotiation and we made a great deal. Its gorgeous and solid mahogany. I'm not going to have to paint it or mess with it in anyway. Its just going to be pretty. I can't wait for it to be delivered. Yay!!!

Friday Cat Blogging

Knows everything

Choices, choices

Today I decided that I am absolutely going to get a china cabinet or failing that, a curio, to hold my entire snow globe collection and if its large enough, also my little animals. I have disgracefully  neglected all of them  for far too long.

I have a lot of snow globes, not that anyone would know that,  because for years they have been hidden upstairs on the attic bookshelves, that are now, moving forward are  going to hold actual books. But first I have to find the right cabinet.

There are many choices. Among them :

 $85 (would get painted out, would look so amazing) no longer available

 $150 (would not get painted, probably, the best choice most likely, would have to negotiate a better price)

 $125 (would get painted, would also look amazing)

 $600! (would not get bought)

$129  So cool and so different, maybe too curved for the space? .(to paint or not to paint?)
(too small for my needs, sadly, took myself out of the running)

 



Does anyone have any input? They are all the correct size and I have contacted most of them.I will have to borrow my brother and his very large SUV to get most of these. Hi Broskey!

Disgruntled Employee

Happy Administrative Professional Day!, yesterday.

In years past, management has taken the secretaries to a nice lunch and handed out some office "thing" and you know, Go secretaries! Thanks for being so docile!

This year I got a African Violet in a plastic pot and note card from my boss thanking me for my service to the people of the state of North Carolina. Do I strike you as someone who wants  an African Violet? Did you know they are really hard to take care of? That they really can't live outside? They don't produce anything. They die if you don't use the right tone of voice with them.

I can't have plants inside! Cats eat plants! I don't think they can safely eat violets! One of the intake people took custody of it and is going to put special AV dirt in it and put it in a better pot. Its going to live in out in a common area in a window with nice Eastern exposure. It can't even stay in my office.

I feel so appreciated. I hate the teapartiers for making it so state workers can't even get their heads patted.

After work while Rocket and I were going downtown we ran across a rickshaw bike guy and he gave us a free ride down Fayetteville Street. Rocket and I really enjoyed it. That made me feel good. Yay Me!.

Garden Update 4 2015

I posted the After pictures yesterday, I kind of jumped ahead because I was excited. Today we see how it got from here to there.

We start

I am locked out of the closet of my shed and I can't get my rakes or shovels or anything else I needed to level the garden spaces post tilling. This was not ideal, I ended up going to Big Lotts to buy a rake - they only had leaf rakes, which while nice, but not what I needed. I had to go to Wally and hope they had something that wouldn't snap in my hands. Fortunately, they offered two levels of rakes and I went with the slightly less cheap version, its nicer than my existing one, to my memory, and it didn't snap in my hands! It did a nice job leveling the dirt and letting me get the weed barrier down.

This year I did not go with the drip irrigation for the first time since I started this gardening habit. I decided that it was just a huge amount of work to get set up and then to get un-set up and after throwing away yet another set of drip hoses, I decided that I needed to learn about my options.

I bought a very nice sprinkler last year for vacation coverage and it is a jewl. It worked very well and offered options and I said to myself that there was no reason to not move it up to the starting line up for this season. So I did.

It waters both gardens and the yard and the tree and hanging baskets to be named later. There is a lot covered in its reach. I have for years read that its very bad to get the plants wet when irrigating them. It brings bugs, the water can potentially knock off blooms and it wastes water. I get it.

However. I had to run the drip hoses for long periods of time because I had to hook multiple hoses together and the longer your hose is the weaker the flow becomes. I had to have two hoses hooked up to have enough water pressure to get adequate water pressure to fill the monster hose enough to water anything - and then it was never balanced and some parts of the garden ended up soupy and others were barely damp. This is not great.

So, now I'm going to go with top down irrigation. Rain comes from the sky! The plants deal with it. We'll see if there is any change in the quality and quantity of the harvest this year.

The genuine rain from the sky finally stopped falling and I got the rest of  garden in the ground. This year I planted leeks for the first time, I had to look up how to do this and I'm glad because I would have just planted the pot they came in and waited for leeks to happen. They would have happened, but they would have been disappointing. They would have been leaky not Leeks.

I looked online and learned that unlike all the rest of the plants that company sells that you can't just plant the pot the pot they come in. You have to separate  all the individual baby leeks out of the leek bunch and plant them one at a time , and there are a lot of individual leeks! You make a tiny trench and you put the leeks in it, as time goes on you build a cone of dirt around your leeks so that they stay partially covered - like potatoes, this is called "blanching". Its to keep the greens flavorful and supple, unlike potatoes where you keep them covered so they don't turn green and poisonous. Viva la difference .

 some of the leeks, the pellets are alfalfa, I used them liberally.

 Corn, soil amended with store boat bag dirt, manure dirt, alfalfa pellets and coffee grounds

Everyone all together

Okay, totally off topic, I was trawling craigslist and I found this . I don't want this, I don't need this, I'm not sure if I would be comfortable using it  - but  isn't it cute? I mean, if you were into solo camping or just liked being able to go without having to make reservations and just wanted to be able stay where ever you end up or  didn't think it looked like a very well appointed coffin,   or went on over nights to somewhere that didn't have room for you for whatever reason...this would be ideal. It even has a tiny kitchen! I kind of wish I needed one.

Garden Update 2015 3

When I wasn't doing an extended dance of joy that the painting was done and the painters were finally gone and I had my house back, I put the garden in.

But first I had to get my veggies, to to decide which varieties to get. I stood there in the stands at the Farmers Market going from one to another checking out the plants and deciding what I needed (a few of each) and how many of each ( some of these and some of those and a few of them) this sauce variety verses that sauce variety and aren't all sauce varieties pretty much the same? I had been getting a super sized sauce variety from Burpee that grows a very large fruit, and I liked it and the tomatoes it produced, but it was expensive and took a looonnng time to reach maturity - which left it open to all kinds of harvest lightening predators.  Faster  to the freezer is better in a world full of things that steal my vegetables.

So now I a lot of small  sauce tomatoes. And I got them in the ground. And I saw I needed more. I changed the lay out this year and  that opened up a lot of new land for tomatoes. I had to go back to the Farmers Market to get more.

and I said "Hmmm. I like those for my uses, but I have people who like the other, bigger varieties. I found three different large, sandwich tomatoes and I got those in the ground. I have a lot of tomatoes now. A lot, a lot. More than I need. But, I use what I have and the more I have to put up, and if I end up with a lot to share, that's good too. I had to get more cages too, now I have all the cages.

And I did it all in the rain. It rained the whole time. It was a joy! The ground was nice and soft and my baby plants got a lovely, gentle start  (not too warm and overcast) and though all the digging, and there was a lot, because you need to bury tomato plants deeper than other vegetables- I only found one grub! This was fantastic news, one year I planted winter cover because I heard it was good for the soil and fed it over the winter, so I did it because lets hear it for healthy soil! What I got in the spring was a jammed tiller and a garden full of grubs and a terrible harvest. Now instead of winter cover, I amend, amend, amend. I feed the garden compost, bags of new dirt and as many alfalfa pellets as it can swallow.And I get no grubs and decent harvests.


I didn't  find  grubs but I did find worms by the handful! I decided  that this  spoke to happy, healthy, well airated soul that will produce bountiful happy vegetables. I found more  with the peppers than with  the tomatoes.


And then it was time for my peppers! I love peppers! I changed the lay out so that my peppers could have a better life away from the faster growing, taller, shade causing, sun hogging tomato plants. I also had to buy more of those than in years past. Darn.

I don't cage then because they don't get as big as the tomatoes and they seem to do better without their assistance.  Also note, still raining.

I also picked up some corn plants, I wasn't going to do corn but there it was and I saw it as a sign. While I was getting corn I wasn't planning on, I got some leaks. I'e never grown leeks so it will be a learning experience. They are not planted yet because the corn is going in a container and it needs to be filled with lots of dirt ( genuine store bought dirt, thank you very much) and very amended because corn is a big eater. I don't want to do all that in the rain. The onions I just haven't decided where they are going to go. Yay for learning!

My Own Private Eldon, Day 5-6 : The Finishing!

We started here, more or less.

I was hoping for some better before pictures but I either never took them or they are on my phone and I am too tired to go fetch them. Suffice to say, it looked different before.Once I get the whole room put back together, I'll do a real search and I'll post the before and afters.

The curtains are pretty crucial to the whole look and they won't be up for a bit. I am bit by bit going to reintroduce my pictures and chochkies back into the room but under very controlled circumstances. The painted surfaces need to cure for a while and its been pouring for days so I'm in no hurry to get them restocked. The same goes for the walls, I think there are going to be hard choices to be made with the redecorating of the spaces.

The end tables will be painted burnt orange soonish and in June, when it comes back in stock at Wayfair, I'm getting a fab new arc lamp that will really light up the room. I got very nice new curtain panels for the dining room at Wally and they are going to be lovely in the space.

Right now I'm just enjoying how pretty everything is and how happy I am to have my house back from Eldon. He was a very good worker ( not so  outstanding I don't have a punch list, his son is not the worker Eldon is, that's for sure), but after six days of them, I'm glad to be alone in  my house again.

I know a lot of the old stuff is not coming back because I am so looking forward to shopping for this new room! I have an artist I really like and I think I'm going to get a print of her work in honor of the rooms new look. Also, a new rug, because the old rug looks like utter shite now. 

I'm like Santa, making  my lists, setting my priorities, looking for bargains. Yay!

Art Dog

Friday Cat Blogging