Sneak peak of things to reveal

As you may remember once upon a time I mentioned that I was doing a redo on the landscaping. Everything was going as planned when bad weather interrupted we scrapped that because we needed to get a new roof instead. That was actually the good news. In the landscaping plan there were a couple of other things that were going to get done, and FINALLY after the whole summer, we are in the home stretch. Well sort of. I'm only going to give a sneak peak, but come back soon for the whole shebang.

You might know what it is already, it's kinda clear, but you can't see the whole effect yet. 

Junkin' Finds

I swore that I would go junkin' before the summer ended come hell or high water. So it was good for me that my friends mom had a garage sale and I scored on this huge wicker basket/hamper for $2.00.  I probably got the friend discount but everything counts. She had a ton of other stuff but I got there at 4 which for junkin' is like don't even bother. It's the perfect size for all of Ari's toys - we outgrew the small basket that was previously used for toys. A quick coat of white and silver spray paint makes it a bit less country.

I also picked up two ceramic planters and a bottle with a cork top. I will use the bottle for storing the loose sea salt that is currently sitting in a plastic bag. The planters,  at first I wanted to plant some moss in them but with winter coming and the air being very dry in our house it might be hard to keep moss green and fresh. Maybe some maidenhead ferns for the bathroom?

Planters $3.00 each, bottle .72¢, hamper $2.00, left over spray paint free. All in all I think I came away very well on my one junkin' trip.

Ohh here is a good tip, if you need to clean a bottle and don't have a bottle cleaner, fill it with dry rice some dish soap and water and shake it around. The rice will get in all the corners and edges and clean it. Works great on baby bottles with milk that is a bit stuck on. 

What to do with 30lbs of shells?

I love shells, but a lot of times when ever I see shell art or things that are done with all shells they tend to get gaudy, fast. While on vacation, in shellers paradise I might add, I thought to myself, yeah these are pretty but what am I really going to do with these things once I bring them home, thats not tacky, or too beachy. I live in Chicago, my furniture is of the dark variety, it doesn't lend itself to the "beachy" theme.

So my plan was to bring shells that I can group into categories and display somehow in a clean way. This is what I came up with, let me know if anyone has any other suggestions because literally I have about 10 more lbs. of different shells.

My first grouping was a plethora of pink shells that I put around my snake plant in a white ikea planter. They seem to contrast nicely with the variegated green spikes and the white geometric planter. I also added the white shells to a dark planter that my ficus is in, I won't show that one since the planter is not to my liking and am currently searching for something more modern. I'll keep you posted once I find something else.

The other thing that I put together was a bunch of these pearlescent shells, almost capiz like but they aren't capiz and grouped them with a few of the white shells in a round short vase. On top was one of the air plants that I grabbed off of a tree that grew all over the area. I checked, I wasn't stealing, I was actually, come to think of it, propagating. 

These air plants grew in clusters all over trees, and they would attach themselves to the trunk and just grow all over. There were a couple of the larger bromeliads on the tree that I think these spawned from.  You can't see on this pic but they have these tentacles that grow and at the ends are seed pods that when the wind blows it carries and "seeds" itself on a different part of the tree.  

I wish I grabbed more but I wasn't too sure if I would have a hard time bringing these babies home. I was able to wet a paper towel and stick them into a plastic baggie filled with air. Wouldn't you know it, they survived the trip home and are doing pretty well. Every few days I just mist them with some water and a bit of fertilizer.

My biggest coup from the trip was a bunch of barnacles, that I thought I might display on my media stand between the stand and the top shelf that the plasma rests on. I don't know what I was thinking, I thought the space was much bigger than it actually was.  When I brought the two barnacles home, they wouldn't fit in the space so I had to figure an alternative. 

Oh and that beauty sitting next to it is a FARM raised coral from Indonesia, that I purchased in Florida. I have been looking to buy some coral for a long time but they all are very fragile and the bigger they get the more unlikely a place will ship. Most of the ones that I looked at before are pickup only.  I know the coral was farm raised, they were too perfect to be something that was found in the ocean, and I paid about the same amount I would have paid for synthetic coral i.e. plaster. Anywho, the barnacle, those things I was told are a nuisance and grow on most anything. I know this to be true since a ton of shells that I picked up from the beach had tiny clusters of barnacles already forming (you can actually see a barnacle growing on the seashell picture of the potted snake plant).

So for now these specimens are on my console table, hopefully curious little fingers won't go trolling while my back is turned. If you notice I have a clear plastic stand to prop the coral on and the barnacles have these felt stickers on them, both of these are really sharp and will scratch up the wood mighty easily.  

As for whats on the media stand between the shelves, well that's a work in progress yet again. I'm hoping to fill it with some objects that are bright that will stand out amongst all that dark wood. Back to the drawing board for now.

Imagine this!!!!!

Well that's one way of me trying to sell this idea to my husband. I know he would never go for it but its fun to think what we can get done. Since I don't see ourselves living in this house much longer, not that I don't love it but we need more space, but I don't want to do too much to the landscaping.

Yeah I'm sure the pergola is not gonna fly, its way too much to spend on a decorative object but I thought hey why the hell not, if I'm photoshopping some landscaping why not go all the way.

So you see we are going to get our siding done, we dont have much since the house is all brick its just that triangle up in front and the back, which you cant see from this angle, of the house which is the negative space of the triangle. Oh and the garage, which isnt much we are also planning on doing the soffits and fascia and gutter and I want to go a dark grey but Im not sure if we can do the same thing for the gutters and everything or if that needs to be special ordered. 

But on to the landscaping. We are replacing the cherry tree with a nishiro japanese willow and behind it will be pink and yellow scotch brooms that grow pretty fast. And then I want to add some sort of grass that is a perennial, like maybe pampas or some other ornamental grass to give it some height. Also there will be some mounding white flowers and to give the rock facade some more color, there will be overflowing ground cover that spills over the rocks. In the back, on the right side of the fence where it currently is dead now will be my autumn clematis, that grows green all summer long just to bloom in august when the rest of the flowers are done. Smells so pretty especially at night when the windows are open, I love that time of the year. 

I went yesterday and bought some of the items listed like the scotch brooms, in yellow and pink, although they are pretty small they grow really fast, and to pay $20 for a full grown one was ridiculous since the ones that are for $6 will grow in about a month to the other size and be fully grown by the middle of summer anyhow. 

Also for $5 a pot there was montana sandwort, never seen it before but it grows in clumps and its perennial. So I picked up 3 pots. 

It's not much but it does add up quickly, the most expensive thing will be the willow tree and the extra soil we will need to raise the bed up, which I'm figuring to need about a ton? So you see when I go to my husband and say "Imagine this" he's gonna ask me how much and do we really need a pergola?

Well no we don't need it, but it sure looks pretty. 

Oh and just to leave you with a pretty pic, this is our flowering crabapple that I picked up for $30!! It was being nursed back to health and no one wanted it, but I saw the potential and after 2 years its holding up pretty well. 

Wish me luck, and if any of you gardeners out there have any suggestions on anything that I have talked about please feel free to comment and give me any advice. I sometimes get lucky and pick the right type of planting but this is fairly new to me for front yard landscaping.

It's so hard to say goodbye to cherry tree

I know its corny, but I have to admit, it was hard to say goodbye to our purple sand cherry tree. When we bought our house 5 years ago the thing that drew me to the house was the full size cherry tree that was cascading over the property in front of the windows.

This was taken two years ago, but you can see the tree in the background, how big the trunk was.

From this angle you can see the branch that cascades over the front lawn.

Unfortunately I don't have a pic of the front of the house with the tree in bloom, never thought I wouldn't have the chance to take a pic.

Last year we noticed that the tree wasn't getting  leaves through some of the top branches, and I noticed some white stuff growing on the bark. I took a pic of the stuff and took it to our local nursery. They took a look and said it was lichen and that it was ok, its not going to harm the tree. Well in the spring we usually get beautiful pink flowers all over the tree not so much this year. I called an arborist out to the house and he said that there was nothing we can do to save the tree, it had gotten peach tree borers. It was 60% dead. 

Thats sad, I was hoping we can spray something on it but unfortunately this type of tree, which is a purple sand cherry doesn't live past 15 years, and its probably right at that marker. Plus our neighbor has the exact same tree and he got the peach borers also. So not only is my full grown tree going but so is theirs.

This is what it looked like before we cut it down, it wasn't really blooming, except for the lowest branch everything else was dead. Look how pitiful it looks, by this time it would have had a mound of pink flowers on it. 

But today after cutting it down, even the skies are sad, well not really I just took the photo later in the day.

It really is EMPTY now. We are planning on planting something in that spot and I thought of adding some other type of tall plants but thats going to take me a bit before I get the plan together. I really wasn't planning on replacing the tree at all and in the last two weeks I have had to come to the decision that curb appeal means a lot if you want to sell a house. I know that is what drew me to this house so we will have to do our best to liven up the curb appeal before we think about selling. 

Reupholstered chairs

I might have mentioned that I stalk craig, on a regular basis. I have a restraining order put on me by my husband as of late; so I can't go and buy anything currently. But I have to show you my best craigslist find. It is a pub table and {6} – really 6 pub height chairs. All for $300.00 Thats a steal in our neck of the woods, new ones don't come that cheap and this one has 6 chairs AND the table expands.

My dad and I drove 45 minutes to pick it up, we stuck it in his van with all 6 chairs and didn't need to disassemble anything. The table and chairs were in a great condition. The only thing that I did not like was the cushions that came on the chairs.

I thought that's an easy fix. I was going to go and buy fabric for them right away but I wasn't sure what I wanted to put on them, plus I didn't feel like spending a lot of dough on fabric either. So being the resourceful girl that I am; I used the leftover fabric from our couch fix that the upholsterers left for us. Which essentially was FREE since they were repairing a tiny rip and they kept sending us the wrong side, after the rip was repaired the guy who was out here fixing it let us keep it, which came out to 5 yards.

So thats what I did I covered the chairs in the leftover couch material. It was ok, but was not what I really wanted in the end. Plus it was way to matchy with the couch being in the next room and I can see from one into the other. They were microfiber, which is fantastic when you have kids, cuz everything comes right off. But they were boring.

As you can see, it's not bad, just well, ho hum I guess. They come clean real easy. I know since my daughter, Ari, drew with ball point pen, red marker and highlighter all over that material on the couch. It all came out. Thank God for her sake.

But one day on a whim I was trolling Hancock fabrics and out of the corner of my eye in the discount bin I see something. Ohh its grey, and yellow, grellow, my favorite combo and its reduced. I look at the pattern and I instantly fall in love. I have to have it. So I went home without it. 

I know, what the hell was I doing? I didn't want to impulse buy so I went home to think about it for a few days. Needless to say I couldn't get it out of my mind so I went back 2 days later  and was going to get a few yards.

As I was at the cutting table it seemed like such a waste to grab only a few yards, I took all of it, all 6 yards for $32.00. I thought that was a great deal. I wanted to come home and change the cushions out right away, but I held back. Don't ask me why, maybe I was just lazy and didn't feel like striping all 6 chairs again and stapling with that heavy duty stapler. *Note to self or to whomever reading this, if you are ever going to use a staple gun, get a good one; one that is comfortable in your hand cuz after awhile the sucker hurts.

I waited till after the holidays and after the winter blahs and decided that today was the perfect day. In between making Rick Bayless enchiladas, come back for pics and recipe later, I recovered the chairs. 

So without further ado, tada... oh wait I'll show you the material closeup, it's a nice heavy nubby material. 

And NOW for the chair, who knows, maybe in another year or when we move into a different house they'll get another makeover. But for now I love them.

Kitchen Crush

When we got married, we got as a gift a set of knives. I also went out and bought myself a set of stainless steel knives from overstock. 2 sets of knives, although they are great knives I have literally no counter space. So two knife blocks are getting ridiculous. The solution was to get rid of one of the blocks and try to put most of the knives into one block. Not a great solution when they are all clean and put away there are always too many or the holes aren't right for the width. It's completely frustrating. Until – I was at BBB and saw the Kapoosh knife block. The model that they had in stock I wasn't into and I wanted to get the larger one. I decided to go online and see if I can find one that suits my kitchen more. I sure did, they aren't cheap but I really want to get it.

Do you have one? Do you like it? I read a comment online that the "sticks" get all bent out of shape, is that common? Looks pretty awesome, you can fit multiple types of knives from different sets and have them all corralled in one place.  Let me know what you think about these.

 

    

Upholstered Dreams

I'm constantly lurking on craigslist, and I always find something that needs to be taken home, to the dismay of my husband. 1. Since he needs to haul the item and 2. I really have no more room in my home for such purchases. I don't know what it is, I love chairs, all kinds of chairs I would put them everywhere, but that starts to look real cluttered real fast. But if I had a bigger bedroom I would totally get this chair and put it in a nice nook.  

Designer: Beth Dotolo  Photography Kevin Dotolo

Isn't this pattern gorgeous, and look how wonderfully the shapes line up with the cushion and the frame. This is not the work of an amateur, I should know. I have a book on upholstering and it looks easy but it's really not. The only thing that I have done are my kitchen chairs. I bought them with an off white microfiber on the cushion and it was from craig, so they were used. I had this leftover fabric from my couch when it was broken we had it fixed and they sent over soooooo much fabric that I decided to keep it.  Well I was able to reupholster the chairs but it's a boring fabric choice . So I'm doing it again.

I found this fabric in the discount bin, and all Im saying is its a little grellow. You know... grey and yellow.

But until I actually do them, I will show you a few of my other  upholstered benches that if I had the space or little grubby hands weren't a problem than I would totally get.  

That is if my local salvation army weren't such greedy bastards and actually sold something that wasn't an arm and a leg. I mean come on'. How is it other people can find all these gems at the salv army or thrift store and cost $15? I find a chair thats stained and the wood is nicked and they price them at $60 and up. After you factor in the fabric and the batting the chair will come out total 300 buckeroos. And if you decide to take a stab at it yourself, forgetaboutit'. 

If you see a nice chair or bench that has great curves and doesn't cost a fortune, send her my way, but leave her on my back stoop so my husband doesn't see. 

Punxsutawney Phil... dang you!!!!

You know when the ground hog said there was going to be six more weeks of winter, I figured yeah hopefully that means that the snow will linger around but we won't get anymore real snowfall... wishfull thinking.
If you live in Chicago and east of it you know what I'm talking about. Although Chicago didn't get hit quite as hard as the other eastern cities we did get in some places anywhere from 6" - 14" of snow. Which means it will be some time before that melts and we see some sort of action coming up from the ground.


If this is what you have to look at, when you look anywhere, is blinding white...

Than maybe you need a bit of spring just like I do to brighten up your day. I saw this pot at Trader Joe's for $11 and I had to have it, although it says its Jasmine it doesn't smell like the jasmine that I grow in the summer. It almost smells like lilies which isn't to say it's bad, they just aren't fragrant. But I don't care, that burst of green and the lemons in the bowl certainly brighten up my day anytime I walk into the kitchen.

Oh hurry spring don't be late, it's not that I hate snow, I just love green trees and flowers more.

Paisley is fresh again.

I have loved paisley forever – or since I saw eons ago Crate and Barrel carry a paisley bed set that was too pricey for me working a minimum wage job. Well it seems paisley has been making a quiet comeback in the recent years. Not only do the finer retailers start carrying paisley bedding in fun, contemporary renditions but also the budget retailers have too.

Photo credit Pottery Barn

Is this just not GORGEOUS!!! It is definitely not your grandmas old paisley patterned bedding. Pottery Barn sells this and it is on my list for new sheets for spring. That cherry blossom branch doesn't hurt either.

Photo credit Pottery Barn

And even this set priced for a lot less at Walmart is very cute. It has the benefit of being an all in one instead of just the duvet cover.

Decisions, decisions...

A, E, I, O, U

THE on sale for $99 originally $325 atwestend 

I already have an ampersand but i definitely need the @ and maybe one of my (our) initials.