I have finished my chair! It turned out to be a bit of an undertaking, but I followed this simple tutorial from creative maven and it turned out great. The cushion was tough, but I made it work.  It is definitely not perfect, it’s actually a bit puckery.  But oh well, it holds your ass.  I want to paint the legs at some point.  I probably should have done that first…oops.

I chose an avocado green chenille for the fabric. I think it goes really well with the other furniture in our living room, which is where it lives now.  It actually serves the very noble purpose of hiding our rediculously oversized subwoofer.  It is successfully doing the job of not letting our living room look like an electronics lover’s paradise.

I feel like the corner needs something else to round it out and make it look put together and finished.  However, that’s another project for another day though.

I’ve been out of touch for a while. I have been really busy though!

My chair redo is almost done, thank goodness! It turned out to be a pretty large undertaking but I am starting to see the light at the end of the tunnel.

My garden is coming along very nicely. I have a ton of tomatoes. Now I’m just waiting for them to ripen and turn red. I have a few peppers. The onions and garlic are still surviving. My herbs are still doing really well. The cantaloupes are awesome! I have been eating tons of lettuce too! My lettuce actually started to “bolt” (apparently that’s a technical term) so I had to harvest all of it. When your lettuce starts to bolt the lettuce turns bitter, so they say. Luckily I got to it in time and there is no bitter lettuce here!

Hopefully I’ll have more of an update soon.

A few weeks ago my husband and I spent a couple hours in the morning building a raised garden bed. We followed these simple instructions from The Pioneer Woman. It was certainly a lot of work (on his part mostly), but it turned out great!

Later that day I filled the bed with a mix of garden soil, manure, compost (my own!), and top soil. I used the top soil in moderation. It’s cheap, so it’s great filler, but it drys out quickly and has little nutritional value for the plants.

Compost on the other hand, is chock full of the good stuff! In fact I’ve apparently been growing cantaloupe and didn’t even know it. Evidently I put some seeds in my compost, and by some I mean all the seeds from the innards of a cantaloupe. I have seedlings sprouting up all over the place! I’ve been keeping an eye out for them, and when I see one or in most cases ten, I pull them and replant them in a corner of the garden. I’m going to wait until they grow some and then pull out all of the small ones.

Speaking of plants. I think this was a classic case of my eyes being bigger than my stomach, or I guess in this instance my garden. I got three different types of tomatoes, two types of lettuce, four types of peppers, garlic, onions, and lots of fresh herbs. I also purchased some seeds, but I didn’t have any room after I put in all the live plants. I guess I’ll just have to keep the seeds until next year, and hope they germinate then.

Now I just have to worry about keeping them alive and hope all the plants produce something edible.  And hope that I get to it before my dog does.

I have some great plans for this chair. I acquired it from a friend and can’t wait to recover it. Once it is finished it will live in the corner of our living room that has been rather vacant since moving into our house almost a year ago.

Spring is finally making its appearance here in the valley.  The days have been mostly sunny and warm.  I’ve been trying to get outside and enjoy this lovely weather.  Soon it will be unbearably hot and these gorgeous early days of spring will be gone.  While I was strolling around my backyard yesterday, thinking about all the things I want to get done this spring, I noticed something poking out of the ground.  Three of the five Hostas I planted last year are coming back!  I was so excited that I immediately called my green thumb wielding mother.  It’s always nice when she shares in my enthusiasm for the simple things in life.

Here comes my resident garden stomping, hole digging, mole hunter.  Hopefully the little guys will survive her massive clodhoppers.

For Valentine’s Day my husband and I have a formed a tradition over the years of cooking a nice meal together. We always choose something that we’ve never made before and spend the evening making it together. This year we decided on a menu of chicken cordon bleu, broccoli cheese casserole, spinach salad (to keep it healthy), and mini molten chocolate cakes for desert. Everything was amazing, especially the molten chocolate cakes. I used this recipe and they turned out perfect.  And is there any better combination than raspberries and chocolate?  I don’t think so.

Remember when we first moved into our house and I posted about the master bedroom decorating? Remember the “Jendro” doily that was a wedding present that I framed and hung above our bed?  Well, I did.

Afterward I thought it looked a little small and I wanted something more substantial.  But I also wanted the “Jendro” doily to stay there.

After that I found this neat design post involving doilies on ohdeedoh and got very inspired and very excited.  Because it just so happens that I have access to tons of crocheted doilies.  Both of my grandmothers were big into knitting and crocheting and my parents have tons of their creations stored away for safe keeping.

Well, with a boost of inspiration and a plan I went to my parents house and started digging through old boxes and the hope chest.  I found a ton of great doilies in all different patterns and sizes.  I stuck ones that were done in white/ivory to keep with the color scheme of the bedroom.   (As you’ll notice I also decided to redo our bedroom in all white and brown because as it turns out I couldn’t stand the blue.)

I had my doilies and I took a rough measure of each one and set out on a quest for frames.  I purchased all of them from Michael’s for 40% off.  At first I wasn’t sure if I wanted to keep the frames monochromatic or use different types of frames with different finishes.  In the end I settled on all the frames being black wood, but with each having a little bit of a different design.  They are all relatively simple because I really wanted the prettiness of the doilies to be the standout.

Once I had the frames I bought the matting that I needed keeping it dark so the intricate patters would stand out.  I framed them all pretty easily in about an hour.  The doilies are all actually held in place by nothing more than double sided scotch tape.

When I had them all framed I played around with the arrangement by laying them out on the floor.  This helped me get a feel for the spacing as well.  Because we spent so long patching and painting every room in our house it hurts my soul to put holes in the wall for a piece of art, just to discover I don’t like it there and I have to move it.

Finally I hung them all on the wall  with only two nails having to be moved a tad.  I marked out a border with painters tape and made sure to stay inside of it when hanging the frames.  I think this project turned out really well.  I like the mix of the modern frames with the old doilies.  And the fact that I know who made each of the doilies makes the whole thing personal and very special.  It gives my grandmothers’ sweet creations new life.

As 2009 has come to an end and 2010 is beginning I’ve been reflecting on the past and thinking about the future.  2009 was a great year for me.  My husband and I bought our first home, we celebrated our first anniversary, hubs achieved successes at work, and many more things.

But rather than look back too much, I’m looking forward to the year ahead.  There are quite a few things that I would like to see happen in the future.

• I would like to finish decorating our home.  We’ve been in it for 9 months now and while I’m mostly happy with it, I feel like a hit a wall when it came to decorating.  So I would like to finally complete it, at least round one anyway.
• I, well we, would like to start checking items off our DIY house project list.  It would go a long way toward personalizing our home as well as making it feel complete.
• I would like to find a creative outlet for myself.  I need to be able to busy myself in productive ways and feel like I’m accomplishing something in my down time.  TV isn’t the most imaginative way to spend my time.
• This one is really cliche, but I would like to take better care of myself and my body.  The hubs and I have started working out together again.  It feels really good and hopefully we can stick with it.
• Get organized!  Right now I’m just shoving stuff where ever it will fit that gets it out of sight and out of mind.  I need to purge the junk and organize my spaces.  It helps me think clearer and get more things done when I feel like everything around me is organized.

Well there it is, my list of goals for 2010.  I don’t call them resolutions because I have never actually kept a single one!  Lately though I’ve been feeling hopeful about the future and am really looking forward to what lies ahead.  Here’s to hoping for a year that is even better than the last.

I don’t have a fancy party on the agenda this new year’s eve, but if I did I’d be wearing something like this:

I love the subtle sexiness of the dress and the little bit of glitz that is added by the gold accessories.

Dress: DVF – This dress is kind of pricey but simple enough that it would more than pay for itself.

Shoes: Paris Hilton – I love the bow detail on these shoes as well as the pink soles.

Bag: Jessica McClintock – This clutch is wallet friendly, which is nice since I rarely have a need for one.

Earrings: Isharya – These are big and fancy, perfect for New Year’s.

Because I have fine hair I get tons of static in the winter. The dry winter air makes my hair frizz and fly-away and stick to my face and other unruly shenanigans. It always takes me a few days to get it under control but I do manage. Here is my list of things to help combat dry staticy hair.

Be sure to condition extra well. If you already condition every day then try a leave-in version or use a deep conditioning treatment once a week.

Get a humidifier. Put some much needed moisture back in your home’s air. This will help with dry winter skin too. It also helps with that annoying static shock you get all winter.

Touch your hair as little as possible throughout the day. The more you run your fingers through it or brush it, the more static you are putting in it.

Also don’t blast the heater in your car. It just strips the air of all moisture and pumps it full of ions. Not good if your hair is already standing on end.

That’s just a few things I do to get my frizzies under control. Good luck.