i love lamp

I don't think it's any secret that I've become a little obsessed with the lighting in my house. I want it to make an impact and bring my 1950's rambler into the modern era as well as give it some personality. We've already started this process by picking up some great ceiling mounts for the bedroom and bathroom. But ever since we rearranged our bonus room, I've noticed that it is sorely lacking in lights. All we have are terribly placed 1980's pot lights and a table lamp. It works okay for the middle of the room, but the corner where I like to read is as dark as a cave.

This is where you come in, dear readers. I need some help figuring out what to do with this corner. We will be changing the pot lights in the ceiling to something sleeker when we open up the ceiling to rewire, but until then I need something with some personality. Something that fits in with the industrial/slightly modern/vintage/comfortable thing we're doing with our house (get all that?). So in the comments, give me some ideas; pictures, descriptions, whatever. Be creative.

Your incentive for this sharing of your genius? A special gift from csn lighting! I have one special promo code to give away to the person with the best idea. So take a look at the dreary image below and  help me out! Use the website above for inspiration (I've done this before with csn. Their website is vast and has something to fit every taste. And no they aren't paying me to say this.). I'll pick a winner Thursday night, March 3rd.

Some rules and such? Hmm. One entry per person, but feel free to comment all you want. Inspire each other! This special promo code does not apply to international fees. Only one winner will be picked. But who knows? Maybe this will lead to more giveaways! Best rule of all: Have some fun. Looking forward to hearing from you!

and we're off

I'll just warn you now, this is going to be underwhelming. But I am so excited to see bare wall and nails and a mess in my bonus room. A mess!

Husband is almost done getting the wood and paper off the wall. He's been very busy so this has been over the course of a few days, but I think he's made good progress. Until the bathtub is in, there is no huge rush anyway.

Now I realize I might sound super lazy, considering everything that's been done so far has been done by Husband. But there is something you should know about him. He really likes doing things his own way, which typically means doing it himself. Since we've been together for 10 years, I've learned how to handle these situations. I make myself completely available should be need an extra hand, and he in turn is sure to ask for that hand if he happens to need it. It works for us, even though I end up doing a lot less work than he does. Luckily, because we are both aware that this is how he works, there are no hard feelings.

I suspect that part of his reasoning for wanting to do things solo is that I'm extremely clumsy. I have been known to smack things into other things and cause a bit of a ruckus. I try really hard not to do this for the wellbeing of our house and its inhabitants, inanimate and otherwise. I'm sometimes successful, but mostly not.

Anyway, here are some closeups of the wall. So far the process has been fairly painless. It seems the part that takes the longest is organizing the wood as it comes down. We plan on using it in other places throughout the house, since we like it and reusing is green and all that.

And lastly, Husband is ever the improviser. His tools are out in the shed in a giant toolbox, and we don't have a smaller one in the house for him to use (why don't we have one? We should remedy that). So to keep things within reach, he has repurposed the cat tree (that they never use) as his tool box. Genius!

I totally married him for his brain, and not his butt.

Okay maybe a little bit for his butt.

Lost and Found

Over the weekend, my husband started tearing off the wall covering where our bathroom will be built. Two of the walls are covered with old barn siding that is over a layer of roofing paper. The paper is black and was used to create a dark backdrop for the wood to pop against. It's a unique look that we both fell in love with when we first saw the house, although it has proven difficult to decorate around using our own tastes. I'm a modern girl. I love clean lines and shiny finishes. My husband is a traditionalist with a bit of contemporary mixed in. But we both love vintage industrial touches, including wood and metal. The wood seems like a perfect start, but it hasn't been up until now.

We've rearranged what remains of the bonus room and added some more modern touches to it, and it looks fantastic. Now, this coupled with all the hard work my husband did would amount to a few in-progress pictures. Where are those pictures, you ask? Not taken yet, because I can't find my camera. It's somewhere around here, on some surface or other, possibly buried amongst some papers I haven't put away yet. It's that messiness I've told you about. It rears it's head on a regular basis.

So I'll have those progress pictures for you as soon as my camera shows it's face. It shouldn't take too long. As soon as my husband reads this post (because I'll invariably forget to ask him to help me find the camera), he'll find it, probably in a shoebox or under the mail.

love of home

I am a Seattle resident through-and-through. I love my city in all it's rainy glory. I love when the sun pops out in the afternoon after a miserly morning and the streets glisten and steam. I love being able to see Puget Sound from just about any vantage point. I love wandering Pike Place Market and the piers and taking pictures like I'm a tourist. I do this on a fairly regular basis, and I'm hoping to amass a good collection of photos to decorate the walls of my house. I want to bring the city that I love into the house that I love. David and I have already collected some vintage maps of the area from Metsker's for the bonus room, so adding my own photography of present day Seattle seems like a good way to tie all the rooms together.

I'm hoping to feature some of the photos I've decided on for decorating each room. I have a few I've taken while camping, and of my first successful attempt at a garden. I don't think of myself as a seasoned photographer, but I feel like I have a pretty decent eye, and I'm eager to learn more. I hope you enjoy these snippets, and I'm very open to opinions on which photos would work best as prints.

bathtub dreams

I don't know what your plans for your tax refund are (or payment, but that's pretty straight forward...), but I am buying a gorgeous bathtub from here. baths of distinction is no lie. These bathtubs are amazing. I think I could live in one and be perfectly happy.

What's most distinctive about them, you ask? They are true to their era, nicely made, and the price could not be better. And I would know. I spent what felt like decades (read: a week or two) trying to find a tub just like the ones you will fall in love with at that link, and they are all at least twice the price of the perfect shower combo, double ended beauty available at the website. However, they are not cheap, and this is why we had to wait for our refund in order to afford it. Are there other things we could do with this money? More practical things? Absolutely. But I'm not well known for my practicality.

This tub is extremely important right now, not only because I'm in love with it, but also because we need it to get the bathroom/bedroom renovation going. So far, we have a big pile of lumber where the bathroom will be, and our bedroom furniture in the bonus room. It's been fun living like a college kid in a studio apartment, but I'm totally over it. Come on tax refund!

Limbo

Things hit a big stand still this week, but don't give up on me. There will be more to come this weekend! And once our tax refund makes it's way here, the bathroom will really start moving. I'm excited to share it all with you, so hang in there.

In the mean time...puppies! 

Light it up

I've recently felt as though my life needed a major uplift. I found myself gazing in my closet and hating everything in it. My kitchen makes me want to scream from it's drabness, and the light throughout the house is, to put it mildly, blah.

So with the help of my mother (love you!), my wardrobe got a big update and I found myself almost giddy last night from the thought of wearing my new creamy, grey, high-waisted sweater with dark wash trouser jeans (I look fab today). Also, the fact that my closet is this clean and roomy is a miracle. Look at the lower bin: it's empty! I have space to fill!

The kitchen is still in progress, so no images there, but what I'm most excited about is the email I just got. My new lighting for our bedroom has shipped and is on it's way to my loving embrace.

I'm so impatient for these pieces. Who knew lighting could be so exciting. Rejuvenation, that's who. I love this store. I want to live in it. It inhabits an old mechanics shop in Sodo and they kept all the old beams and this enormous crane hangs from the ceiling. And there are hundreds of lights. They feature one-of-a-kind antiques and reproductions that are gorgeous. The period basics are a great place to start, but I seriously fell in love with the Industrial section and plan on talking my husband into one of the gas-style fixtures for our dining room. Unless I fall in love with another fixture before then...

Love can be such a fickle thing.

In perspective

Today is one of those days when I miss summer. a lot. I wish I could go outside and not see my back yard full of mud. I want to see the rhododendrons in bloom and the grass growing too long from so much sunshine.

However, it's also a day that I'm eternally grateful that I live in the PNW. The weather here is distinctive, but manageable. The rain can become monotonous, but rarely causes the kind of havoc that half the country is dealing with right now. I could be buried in two feet of snow.

But I'm not. What I am, though, is stuck with a bunch of lumber in my bonus room and a project on hiatus because going under the house right now would be unpleasant. and yucky. I just need a relatively cold day (to keep the bugs at bay) that has come after a bit of a dry spell (to keep the mud at bay). Is that so much to ask? 

Yes. Yes it is.

to my husband

You will always be this to me.

Truly, Madly, Deeply Hold my Hand

I'm cleaning the house today. I'm one of those people who is a neat freak inside my head, but I can't seem to make that image of myself actually come to fruition. I'm messy, I have pack rat tendencies, and I'm terrible at putting things back where I found them. I desperately want to be obsessed with vacuuming and organizing though. This is slightly depressing, but when I was younger I used to lay in bed at night and wish that I'd wake up thin. Now I lay in bed at night and wish that I'd wake up tidy. Deep down inside, I know that's about as possible as that childhood dream. If only I could come to terms with my messiness the way I have with my body.

Anyway, all this cleaning talk leads me to these days when I wake up with every intention of scrubbing my house clean. To keep the pep in my step, I turned on the 90's channel and went to work. Now, this might tell you a bit too much about my poor taste in music, but I loved the 90's. I was born in 1984, so I grew up during the last decade of the 20th century, and it will always hold a special place in my heart. It's making me think back to junior high with fond memories (even though it wasn't perfect by any stretch of the imagination. Catholic school can be brutal). This nostalgic feeling isn't discriminatory. Even thinking back to the last few summers makes me feel warm inside on this rainy Saturday. I want to sit in front of a fire, drink a beer (or 7...what?), and think about happy things. Not cleaning the dust bunnies from under my sideboard. Hootie and the Blowfish and Savage Garden can croon to me in either scenario though.

Paved with good intentions

Despite the fact that my husband made this list of things to do:

• Build walls for bathroom
• Do everything else for bathroom
• Finish touches to bedroom
• Pull barn siding off of wall (more to come on this...)
• Build new camp at property, including fire pit cover and cabin
• Move washer and dryer into new laundry room
• Build new laundry room
• Install garage door (that we have yet to buy)

I also have taken on the task of reorganizing our kitchen. The list above is going to cost us most of the money we have and then some. So instead of a new kitchen (which I would do dirty things for), I spent a small chunk of change on general organization items.

It all started with this article on lifehacker. It was inspiring. I suddenly had the answer to my kitchen woes. I'm still not sure of the logistics, and who knows if all the crap I bought is even going to be useful. But I've got good intentions and gumption on my side. What could go wrong?

Our adversaries

There are two very prominent things keeping us from making much progress in these beginning stages of our home renovations, and they each have 4 legs. They are Hurricane Pickles and Tornado Stella. Each one causes havoc in her own unique way. Stella has a knack for instigating wrestlemania in the middle of a work space. She can also hypnotize you with her little t-rex eyes.

Exhibit A

Then there is Pickles. Her attention span correlates directly to the proximity of treats and/or squirrels. The farther the distance, the less the attention span. She also happens to be a chronic licker of any appendage within reach, as well as a bodily fluid maker, of which is the entire point of this post. She left a surprise on the bed this morning for my dear husband to find, when I had every intention of posting about our progress on the work in there thus far. But I lack any means to punish her for this, because like her crony, she gazes at me and my heart melts.

Exhibit B

Yea, good luck getting your brain back. I think it just died of squee. You're welcome.

Where it all begins

It only seems appropriate that I introduce our first project with the namesake of this space. The lumber. It will never be seen once the walls are up, but I know that each board was meticulously chosen. It's hardly the most interesting thing I'll write about (great way to start things off, eh?). But it's important. It's the foundation with which this all begins.