House of Devign

Well said little sign, well said.

Yesterday was a bad day for me.

Early last week, I went through all the trouble of rearranging my studio so I could finally work in it. Why? Because my husband's french country desk takes up a vast portion of the space and his chair juts out into everything. whenever I tried to work in there, I would get whacked by his chair, or trip over it, or I would get boxed into my chair and couldn't get up because his chair was forced against mine.

I managed to rearrange the office so I could see the TV from my sewing table, my armoire could close, and so Lilly's crate coud finally live outside the closet. Oh, and I could finally open the window! I had even managed to toss out some garbage and organize some of my crap. I was pretty proud of myself.

So, yesterday I walked into my newly organized office and sat down to create. I proceeded to go through every single drawer, box, shelf, container and book that I owned. It took 6 hours, I came up with absolutely nothing. I had worked so hard on my room, and couldn't come up with any inspiration at all. Not even a desire to make a simple earring.

It was terrible.

I have apparently worked so hard on pulling my house together that I have been drained of all creativity. I was really unhappy, I have NEVER been unable to create.I was so upset that I told my husband. I think he actually felt for me, because he gave me some money to buy new craft supplies for inspiration. I love that guy.

So, I need to be taking the advice of that sign up there. I need to keep calm.  It isn't the end of the world.

Therefore, as soon as I get my supplies, I will be making some new things you have never seen from me. I hope it brings me out of my creativity funk.  I really need it.

Oh, and the sign is from Jenny's Bake Shop so you can have one of your own. I keep mine in it's plastic sleeve so it stays nice and clean in the kitchen.

More things to eat that I grew

Tomatoes
Originally uploaded by basty

Today, I plucked all the red tomatoes off the vines. They are supposed to be roma tomatoes (I think) but they are smaller. This is only the first batch, but I don't expect to have an enormous crop, like the cucumbers. I think I will be drying them out and making them with pasta.

Ignore the dog in the background. She thinks they are red rocks, and she wants to play with them. My dog is crazy.

DIY drum shade part 2, the DIY table lamp shade.

I have been getting insane hits on my drum shade DIY. INSANE!!!

I never realized how many people are looking to make their own lamp shades. It is easier than you think, and a fair bit of fun. I decided to take another photo of my drum shade, this time with the light out, so you can see more of the birds and insects:

I have raised the chandelier a foot higher since I first put it up. I also trimmed the fringe shorter, which has made it look trendier. I haven't added anything extra to it yet as I haven't really been shopping for flowers, birds, and bugs. But, I did want to show you my new lamp shade:

Ignore the lacy bit, I haven't decided how to make it work, and I might remove it, hence why it is tied in that hideous droopy bow. But, I adore the rest of it. This shade was much easier to shape and didn't require the copper frame circles. The chicken wire at this size already makes a pleazing drum shape so all that was required was the closing of the circle, trimming the ends as close as possible, and putting in the top piece that attaches to the harp.

I didn't realize until I was making this particular shade that these types of shades are really easy to customize to your house. It's so simple to remove the old ribbon and reweave in the new color as your decor changes.

Again, photos don't ever do projects like this any justice. The texture on this shade is really interesting. I tried out different tie methods, but the fringed, knotted ends turned out to be the prettiest and most dynamic. Also, I used the original shade from this lamp as a template to make sure the new shade was as close in size as possible.

I am still considering selling these, but I wan't to make sure I have some techniques down better, and I want to see if I can find some prefab items to make them look more professional.

I am always looking for your suggestions and comments on these shades, so please, comment away!

The Guest Bedroom

It isn't 100% finished, but it is almost there, and in good enough shape to show you the colors. We have already had 2 sets of guests stay in it and it didn't scald their eyeballs off, so it isn't that bad.

Yes, I am still missing the headboard, but it will be here soon and it will complete the room.

I wanted a guest room that encompassed a shabby vintage cozy look, but had a bit of modern to it. Most of the items in the room are either antiques, reclaimed, vintage, or things I had growing up. There is a sewing desk/chair that was my grandmother's, an enormous 6 foot tall antique stained glass transom window I picked up when I was 22, a couple vintage porcelain dolls (the bride doll I have had since I was little), a re-purposed flip-top sewing table, and other things I have picked up along the way.

The bed is hard, but we were finally able to get a soft egg crate topper to make it pleasant. The linens are a mix of old and new. The wool paisley pillows and throw are a leftover from a design job, and I decided I had to keep them. I paid very little for the set, and the pillows are down filled. The sheets are a mix of plain and crocheted, and one pair of pillows are handmade with tatted inserts. At some point I will replace the old comforter with a white down alternative duvet.

You can't really see the chandelier in these photos, but it is black with tulip shades, and is a real statement in the room. It is definitely an improvement from the standard "boob" ceiling fixture that was originally here. I also have a decorative paper lantern for task lighting and a modern red glass lamp for the bedside. My prized piece is an impossible to find lithopane tart warmer that has 4 watt bulb in it so it not only becomes an oil warmer, but is a nice diffused nightlight.

The last bit of work I have to do to the room is to find proper curtains. I have a custom made roman shade in a camel color that will stay, but I need a long pair of thick white cotton curtains with a baby blue accent to cover it. Right now I have rigged several swaths of fabric just so it doesn't look awkward.

Beyond that, the room is ready to host all sorts of guests, so if I know you, and you want to come to Reno or Tahoe... I am open for regular business!

Tooting my own horn for fun and profit! Ditching Bare Minerals for something a 1/3 the price

I am a very objective person when it comes to products. If you are a rep for a company, no matter who it is, if i ask for an honest answer to a concern for one of your products, I expect you to be honest, not just try to sell me something to line you coffers. I guarantee that if you tell me the whole truth, I will spend more money with you, because I can trust you aren't just after my wallet.

With this in mind, being a new Avon rep and all, I would put my money where my mouth is and give you some HONEST impressions of products that Avon sells. If i hate something, I will tell you. And I promise not to beat around the bush.

So, first up is Avon's Smooth Mineral's Foundation:

I decided to demo it because as much as I love mineral foundation, I hate the price. Avon's intro price was good enough for me to try, and at a 1/3 of the cost of Bare Minerals and Clinique (my usual foundations), I was all up for it.

I have to say, I love it.... not only love it, I think it is BETTER than Bare Minerals. I am used to having to lay it on over and over again to get decent coverage, and with Avon's version it just goes right on. In fact, I am still getting the hang of not having to spackle it on and I keep making a funny spot on my right cheek where I put too much on before I realize I didn't tap it off.

It also makes less of a mess in the application process. It seems to just stick to the brush and me better. Whichis good because I kept getting foundation on my shirt every day, GRR!

The jar is the exact same size as a Bare Minerals jar, and the sifter is situated deeper in the jar. Only negative is that you can't really try before you buy with any real accuracy. You can get a sample, but it's too small to give you a true all-over show of coverage which is what you need for soomething as varied as your face.

Good thing Avon has a really good return policy. I would suggest just buying a jar and guess what is the closest. If it's way off, return it. If it is close, keep it, get the next step down or up and either mix the jars or use the other jar as a high/lowlighter or when the seasons change and your skin tone changes. I tend to use more than 1 foundation color as a rule, since my skin tone changes from month to month.

If people really are interested in trying it and are utterly confused by the color swatches, I might be convinced to get my hands on the miniscule samples. It will just take me a bit.

Okay, no more self-promo.

Just buy my stuff! :)

Eating the goods

Cucumber curiosity
Originally uploaded by basty

After months of crossing our fingers, our cucumber plants are finally making tasty treats for us! The cucumbers are about the size of large pickles, so they make nice snacks.

Tonight, I sliced up that little harvest you see in the photos and made a simple cucumber salad with a red wine vinaigrette.

I expect that we will soon be overloaded with more cucumbers than we can eat. The plants are continuing to flower and make baby cukes faster than I can pick them.

The next harvest I anticipate occurring is an overflow of okra. I can't wait!

Starting the whirlwind

We are gearing up here to do a ton of work around here. With the arrival of house guests, we always feel that push to get things completed inside and outside our home. New houses are a fair bit of work. Sometimes I wish we cold have had a half brand new house and a half old house, just so we wouldn't have to worry about things like buying blinds, basic landscaping, yet still have the nice new appliances and not worry about old house problems.

Nathan and I finally, FINALLY painted the hallway yesterday. It is a shame that we have no more rooms to paint (don't tell him I said that) because we have gotten so skilled at taping off and painting quickly and efficiently. We had 7 doorways to tape around and we still banged it out in about 4 hours, if you don't include our break to watch True Blood. It is the same chocolate brown as our guest bath and makes a real difference in tying all the rooms together. I am just excited not to have to paint anymore.

Today, I thought I would show you or backyard landscaping progress:

This is our path we had put in a couple months ago that ties into our front driveway. We had anticipated having the sides filled in by now, but you know... stuff happens. The left side will just be sanded in up to the level of concrete with some decorative stone artfully laid out. the right side will be filled in with dirt for planting. you can see we started to nail up a rubber edger to keep the dirt from going through the fence or rotting it, but we only got part of it up. I am hoping to at least get this finished before winter comes. The pipe running along side already gets water, just have to tap it.

Today, we got TREES! The far left is a really beautiful maple with these mixed plummy green leaves which will grow big enough to shade the pond. The one on the right is an ornamental cherry tree. We picked it because we wanted a colorful tree, but not a very common one. Everyone here always seems to have ornamental plum trees and we just couldn't stand being the same. And the center one is a fruit-bearing cherry tree. Which means we will have cherries next year, assuming it doesn't have a shock season. Anyone for cherry pie?

This also shows you the current state of our pond. We ran out of rock early on and we decided to wait til it gets cooler to finish it since hauling heavy rock in 100 degree weather is not our idea of fun. We have been testing out the best way to keep the rocks from shifting, and have settled on sand with a top coat of pea gravel. We just have to wait til it is cooler to finish that as well.

Meanwhile, we have been babying this part of our yard:

Our raised bed.

The plant in the red ribbed pot is a roma tomato plant laden with green tomatoes. The one on the right fell victim to too much rain so the seeds got washed away. Our raised bed has been a bit of trial and error. We have numerous okra plants which are putting out tons of okra and flowers right now (they go from flower to okra really fast). Our cucumber plants have taken over most of the rest of the bed and we might just have a HUGE abundance of them, since they are already baby pickle sized. Cucumber salad anyone?

Everything else has either been anemic or has not made it. We have only used a bit of Miracle-Gro as a fertilizer, mostly because the animals hang out outside. Lilly especially is allergic to all sorts of things and I didn't want to risk it. We have had almost no bug problems with the exception of that one giant caterpillar who got re-homed a couple weeks back, and the aphids that seemed to like our dying radish crop. All the other bugs have been bees, yellow jackets, ladybugs, butterflies, and TONS of dragonflies of every color and size.

You can also see into the bottom of our pond:

The sunlight makes photos of the water come out a funny color, but I promise, it is clear and clean. Don't mind the pipes. Once we get the rest of the rock in place, the pipe will be mostly out of view, and you wont be able to see the liner hardly at all. We will also be adding aquatic plants. We would have picked some up this weekend, but they were all sold out except for one, and when I went back to get a price on it, someone had already pilfered it!

I do have to say, I can't wait to have everything complete and in place on the pond, I absolutely hate leaving things half-done, so it kills me to have to stare at excess pipe that I can't cut until I have it properly placed, or electrical cords that are all over the place because we don't have the landscaping done enough to cover them. Talk about a lesson in dealing with the imperfect!

Well, just to prove we do have Koi, here's a close-up of them finally being less skittish:

It is hard to get a clear view of them with the sun giving the water such glare. They are over double their original size already. I don't know if you can tell, but each one is different so we could tell them apart. We have finally seen 2 of the plecostomus in with them, and they are very happy. The koi like to bully them when they are out so they stay in hiding mostly. Now that we now we aren't fish murderers, we will likely be buying more Koi soon. Hopefully the better species...

Enjoy your Monday!

Paint and Flor and all things in between

A precious little Jewels
Originally uploaded by basty

I am trying to make sure I have interesting things to blog about because I am working really hard to raise my viewership. I have a post in my brain that eventually will make it to pixel form, but right now, it isn't a priority.

We are getting to know Jewels a bit better. She is still bunking in the kitchen nook, but I sense her getting lonely, and we often find her in the hallway longing to come in the bedroom. She will eventually get bold enough not to care about the other animals and make her way on to our bed. Every couple of days we learn more about her. First of all, she LOVES to squeak at us of we are within a 10 foot radius of her. Secondly, she has very soft kitten toes. It's like they have never walked a hard surface. Thirdly, she adores playing with string (I discovered that today). We really just can't resist her. Look at that face... could you?

We are also getting ready for the visit of Nathan's parents. This means The hallway will finally get painted chocolate brown this weekend, which will take care of the last remaining unpainted walls in the house. WOOT! I will be doing some hand-painting and more vinyl decals, but it means I will finally be able to go into the garage and put all the leftover paints in smaller cans, and dispose of random crap. I am a fiend for organization. I expect that at some point soon I will do a small post on simple garage organization.. uh, as soon as I clean mine out again. Don't blame me, having a new house makes for lots of garage mess!

I digress...

By getting the hallway painted, I will finally not only get the last remaining art and mirrors up on the wall, but I will also finally be able to go around the house and touch up rooms, color by color and get the stupid baseboards all even and be done with it. I might even out the ceiling to wall transition issue in the living room, since I sense that it might be a while before I get that crown molding I so want.
But, I am definitely happy to be nearing the end of the major painting. I am also finally getting to the point that all the rooms are finally appearing tied together. It helps when you can afford to buy things!

I don't think I have sung the praises of Flor to you yet, but I have to say... WORTH EVERY PENNY. I had initially purchased 8 dusty blue tiles for my foyer a few months back. They were the cheapest of their regular tiles, and I have been living with them and evaluating for quality this whole time. I realized that I adored them. They are easy to clean, and the rug has barely moved a 1/4 inch out of place. So I went back and discovered that their outlet had teal floral tiles that were perfect for my kitchen floor, so I got 8 of them. I highly recommend buying them, and I am even considering using them as a series of bathmats in my master bedroom since they don't move.

I promise that at some point soon, I will be taking a picture of my Raspberry guest room. Almost all the furniture is here, so I will be rearranging it this week and putting it together. I expect it to be a bit of work, but I think you will like my take on modern shabby chic.  So stick around.

One last thing, I have had an overwhelming response to my DIY post on my Anthropologie Drum Shade. I am in the top 3 search results on Google, which made me giddy. Due to the increased traffic from it, I think I will be A) making more to sell, and B) doing more DIY posts to mimic more expensive items that people are unwilling to pay for. I will be taking suggestions from you guys, and I would love to hear back from anyone who has actually made the drum shade.

Have a fruitful Thursday!

Papaya love

When I work on my home, I become obsessed with finding the perfect things for it as cheaply as possible. Moving into this house over a year ago provided for some challenges I hadn't really allowed for.

Our new house is only 210 more square feet than our last house, but it is set up completely different. We have 6 less windows that are more dynamic, but luckily, smaller (yay!). We have much better light control, and since there is a symmetry to their placement (which was non-existent in our old house), setting up the rooms was more straightforward.

This also means that our new house, had a ton more wall space to fill, and I mean A TON. We have purchased a few pieces of furniture to fill in some of the spaces, and we are still lacking. The biggest problem I have been facing is finding art to fill up all these walls. So much of the art I encounter is dull and boring colorwise, and as you know, my house is anything but.

So, I was surprised when I stumbled on Papaya one day doing some link surfing. It has some of the cutest, colorful art ever, and it is reasonably priced. I have had it bookmarked for a while waiting for some extra money, and was finally able to buy one a few days ago.

This is the one I got, and I must say, I adore it. This is just the first of many I hope to own someday. This particular one is all glittery, and all of them come with a ribbon hanger. Papaya even sent me a very generous free gift which I think I will be regifting to someone who can use it.

I think this little print will be my next purchase:

...Among others.

So, if you are looking for some new art and are tired of the same old same old, take a gander over at Papaya and try to control yourself!

Vintage photography

I am a fan of vintage photography. Not "from the 70's" vintage, but the "holy crap that's 100 years old" vintage. As you well know, I have a Flickr account and on occasion happen upon interesting accounts capturing very vintage photos that I just have to save for future use. I thought I would share a few with you.

First up is George Eastman House. As in Kodak.

George Eastman House has incredibly preserved photos for perusal. Many of them look as if they were just taken. The above photo was take in 1915 and still looks phenomenal. Pretty much all of the photos have no copyright restrictions which means you can use them for whatever you like. There is a wealth of information given under each photo and in many cases people will have links with more information about the subject matter. This week they even uploaded photos of the Apollo 17 mission.

What is great about George Eastman House is that much of the subject material is artistic. They frequently have photo shoots for magazines as well as product ads, attractive in-action sittings of famous people, and the unusual capturing of life. I recommend Taking the time to look at each and every picture they have.

The Library of Congress also has a Flickr account. They specialize in mostly the detailing of history.

They do not have the best quality photos, but have many highly historical highlights as well as milestones and portraiture of important people. It has it's morbid points too. There are a few pictures here and there of wrecks, disasters, and the solemn corpses (yes, dead bodies) tastefully photographed for the history books.

The Library of Congress has many photos of sports stars, royalty, members of government, stage actores/actresses, and so on. They open up their comments to everyone so they can update their files on any missing information that classifies the photos better. The photo quality can be downright poor, but it isn't all bad. I highly recommend the site for anyone who loves history.

Lastly, There is Powerhouse Museum Collection.  Powerhouse is like a cross between Library of Congress and Eastman. There are a lot more beautiful landscapes and buildings, but has people engaging in the everyday joys of life as well.

The photo quality is generally good, and there some amusing staged shots here and there.

The above picture is in a series (spread out among the photos) where the ladies are play boxing, apparently one got "knocked out". There are many more great photos like this, some with people in costume. Powerhouse is definitely a must see.

If you have any more Flickr accounts that should be mentioned, let me know. I am always looking for more vintage photos.