THE QUEEN OF QUIRK

cleaning out the office....

AGAIN.

It seems I have to do this quarterly because we are so incredibly bad about picking up after ourselves in the office.

This is midway through. Ick.

My plan of attack? Top to bottom. So, the top of the cabinet and the windowsill were the first to get hit with furious scrubbing and sorting.

After that, I cleaned out the big cabinet and was left with a massive pile of junky junk on the floor.

But at least I was making progress. I actually started this yesterday. I ruthlessly purged my scrap stash and promisd this HUGE box of goodies to the girls if they could get their art room cleaned up before bedtime tonight.

I snuck downstairs and peeked in on them and they were all getting along so well and being really helpful. It was lovely to see. It's a nice break from the catfights. ;)

But I can now say that after 2 days of intense purging and cleaning, my office is finally a place I can function in.

To the left of my desk:

The little red journal is my 2011 December Daily album. I can't wait to get the photos! I am so ready to get that scrapbook completed. :)

And to the right:

That little drawer unit is my "nook" I've carved out for Project Life.

The bottom drawer holds adhesives. The next drawer stores my stamps, ink pads and mounting blocks. The top drawer is where all my punches and cutting tools live.

The next 3 drawers hold my paper (along with a little tub full of the 3x4" pieces I cut), my alphabets and my page protectors.

On top I'll keep my PL journal and the camera.

And lest you think I just shoved everything into the cabinet...

Everything is all purdy and super organized now. This is where I store all my blank cards, paper scraps, glitter, flowers, rhinestones, labels, stickers, markers, ribbon, work supplies and mail stuff.

I am sooooo freakin' happy that my office is done.

Now all I have to do is lock everyone else in my family out of here and then hopefully it will stay this way.

Yeah right. ;)

missing

I know I've been a really bad blogger lately but it's for really good reasons! I've been devoting my time to my little family and we've been getting lots of things done. Bike riding, gardening, renovating, parties, birthdays, etc. It's been lovely. The weather has been really nice for almost 2 weeks now and we are taking full advantage of it.

Wanna see where we spend our time?

What irks me most about moving all the time is leaving behind things that I really love. I really love this garden. It will be very hard to leave this house because when I go in my backyard I feel like we've stepped into a Pottery Barn catalog.

And there's a couple of spots around the grass if you prefer to sit in the sunshine. :)

We also had a huge housewarming party on Saturday and in anticipation of 50+ people showing up, we picked up a couple of these German beerfest tables. You see them almost everywhere beer is served. They're very typically German and I'm excited we have a couple of sets now. I like them so much better than a "dining room" type backyard set. They're very streamlined and simple.

I hope you enjoyed this little tour of our garden. I'm off to bury my head in Photoshop. I have the itch to get some designing done! :)

dining room

We've had this dining room set for years. I got it for an absolute steal because the antique shop owner was eager to sell it without having to actually clean or prep it. I'm not scared of elbow grease, so I happily walked away with all of this for a mere $600. Score!

We've been wanting to refinish it for years, though. I loved the color when we first got it, but now it's a bit on the minty side for our taste. What I really want to do is repaint it in a soft, pale grey. I've been reading up on refinishing and it seems that we don't really even need to strip it since we're repainting it. We will just need to scrub it spotless and then re-glue it all back together. We will need to get a professional to do all the re-gluing, though. I want to make sure it's done right.

For the time being, though, this is how we'll leave it.

I also found the perfect fabric to reupholster the seats in but I don't have enough. So sad.

 

I've searched in vain for it. If only there was a way to search fabric...or a forum where you could post questions and magical, fabric-seeking people would search for you. sigh...

:)

norah's 4th birthday

You would have thought it was Christmas around here with all the parties for Norah. One at school, one the evening of and one on Valentine's day with our guests form England. It was insane. But she loved every minute of it.

When we asked her what she wanted for her birthday, she said she wanted a pink cake. That's it. No toys, no junk. Just a cake. I love that kid.

So, we had a tea party with sparkling pink apple juice, little sandwiches and tons of baked goodies. Lara's best friend, Chloe, and her mom were here with us so we had a lovely time.

The two best friends sporting their matching hats. Lara hasn't taken it off her head since Chloe left.

 
It was a lovely weekend and we've been working like crazy ever since. And then for some crazy reason we decided to wallpaper the living room Saturday night. Then we painted the dining room all day Sunday. And Colin only has to work a half day today so we're heading to the hardware store later to pick up the lovely blue-green paint for the living room. And then we'll finish painting the hallway as well. Yay! The main floor is finally coming together.

Be back soon!

hallway: before

I will admit that I like to make a good first impression. I like a perfect outfit, fabulous hair and a darn good ice-breaker.

You would never guess that from my foyer, though.

Upon first impression my foyer would let you in on a little secret. The only place where I'm all put together? You guessed it. Online.

So I'm making a real effort to get our house together. It's ridiculous. You'd think we'd have this whole "moving" thing down already. I mean...we do it every 2 years so what's the big deal, right? So, this time I am devoting a good chunk of my time to getting this house looking the way I want it to. I am really taking a close look at each room and listening to what it wants to say.

The foyer?

It says, "Let me do all zee ard work for you. Let me wow zem. Let zem love me."

Oui, the foyer is French. ;)

Yesterday while waiting for 1.2 gigs of our next Songbird kit to upload I tackled the hallway. I started and Colin jumped right in when he got home. We didn't stop til midnight (well, that's because we decided to do the stairwell and upstairs landing as well) and then we got up this morning, packed the kiddos off to school and I immediately started the second coat. I've missed a few spots, but it's coming together nicely. I'm paused now because we ran out of paint.

And this is the nook by the front door.

We took the house in an un-renovated condition so it's up to us to get it into shape. The walls in the foyer were a creamy beigey yellow and it gave the whole place a dingy look. I used to hate white walls but now I find them refreshing. I left this back wall of the nook unpainted because it's going to get slapped in the face with something fun...and orange.

And where the floor is taped off in the top photo? That's where I'm putting this baby.

It's the Besta bench from Ikea. I love that it has a slight sheen to it. We'll be re-purposing some artwork from around the house and we'll finally be incorporating my lovely coat hooks from anthropologie.

It looks all clean and spiffy right now but that's only because I've moved everything from the foyer into the living room.

Nice, huh?

I should probably get back to work...

recap: frankfurt west end

During our incredibly long settling in period here in Germany, we rented a furnished apartment for 7 weeks in Frankfurt West End. It was lovely, in a beautiful building and was in an incredible location near Grueneberg Park, Palmengarten, the Korean Garden and The Old Opera House. We love Frankfurt and It was nice to be able to go downtown so easily and get to know the city really well. I feel really comfortable there now and can't wait to get back there every other weekend or so. We're not apartment people, though, so we felt a bit out of place. We like to stay up late, we're loud and we love having a garden. And even though the apartment was very nice, we were ready to move into our house. :) I thought I'd snap some photos of it, though, so we could remember the place we lived in the shortest. :)

This apartment also gave me new found love for white walls and sparse surroundings. After living here and then getting all our massive amounts of junk and stuff, it made me want to pare down our belongings and take greater care about what we bring into this house. I can't wait to really get decorating and get this house looking the way it really want it to. I know it will take time, but it's an undertaking I am very excited about.

the countdown

Hey there.

How are you?

You doing good?

Not too stressed?

That's nice.

Good for you.

For me...well...

Let's just say I'm getting reaaaally good at treading water. ;)

Ok, so things have been insane around here. You can probably guess that, though, from the lack of posting for however many weeks it's been. I still need to update on Halloween, Mia's birthday, and our time here in Frankfurt.

I can't just right now, though. I'm focusing 100% of my time to Songbird Avenue and I have so much work to get done before Thanksgiving. Then we are having Thanksgiving at a friend's house and then we get the keys to our house the next day and need to start moving out of the apartment. Then we get to move in on Saturday and start painting. THEN our stuff arrives on Monday morning. THEN we have 3 days to get settled before our house guests arrive. :)

As soon as we get our stuff delivered (including all the lovely cords that go with our cameras) I will update this thing properly. Until then, though, the blog is going to have to be a little patient.

I have been doing some Christmas browsing during my lunches with Norah. It's all about the multi-tasking right now. :) Thought I'd share some of what I found.

 

For most book lovers, there is a little wanna-be librarian living in our hearts. I know I sure have one. She has horn rimmed cat-eye glasses and a cardigan twinset in every color. ;) The personal library kit is perfect for someone like me. Heck, I would buy it just for the stamp alone! 

You didn't really think this post was going to be about what I'm getting other people right? hahaha

Anthropologie just revealed their new holiday decor and I have to say I am in love with the ornaments...

 

And the tree skirts. Makes me want to redo mine...

This calendar is gorgeous. If it wasn't so expensive, it'd be a perfect teacher gift. I think we may be going more "low key" this year. Probably some of our homemade sugar cookies we always do. :)

Well, folks, that's about as much of a break as I can allow myself right now. Need to egt back to work. Songbird's new marketing director will be crackin' the whip if I don't! ;)

I hope you have a lovely day! See you in a couple of weeks!

new design eye candy

Finally.

And as much as I love to flip pages, having a magazine that has links and further peeks for you at the click of a button is ideal for me. And when that magazine is a darn decent replacement option for the very-much-missed Domino and Blueprint, well...I'm a happy bunny.

Head on over to lonnymag.com to check out their premiere issue. It's fun, sassy and gorgeous. It's cheeky and quirky and I love it. So happy to have a fresh source of inspiration!

3d art

I just love a good, simple &, beautiful idea.

FRAMED FLOWERS

Absolutely LOVED this idea when I saw it on HappyMundane. I love that you could put practically anything on the shelf. I have to admit, though, the vase of flowers is especially appealing.

I don't actually have the magazine and didn't want to steal the image from the HM blog so I'll just direct you over there.

a new watch

I've been wanting a new watch for a few months now. The one I have is about 4 years old and, let's face it, it's seen better days. I'm very hard on watches and they wear out quite quickly. My current watch has a dodgy battery anyway that's had to be replaced 3 times already. So annoying.
So, while at the mall one day, we popped into a jewelry store to see what they had. My eyes settled on 2 really pretty watches. I tried on the slim bangle-like one first. It was pretty, but once I tried on the second one, the pretty little slim won lost, fair and square.

This watch is so expensive it's not even funny. Actually, my husband would find it very funny...

Oh, a girl can dream right? :)