Yay? Nay?

I've been looking for a smallish table lamp for my living room for months. I've looked just about everywhere, and not found much that I liked. Part of the problem is that it really needs to be small! My living room furniture is on a very small scale, and even smallish normal table lamps seem too large for the space.

Today, however, I found some promising candidates on etsy, from seller Mariposa Avenue! The lamp shades are made from recycled tin cans, painted and with designs punched in them. Very unique, and I appreciate the "green" aspect of them. They're small, too. But are they ugly? I can't decide. You tell me. I think they're cute, but I'm not sure how well they match with my other decor... Which is mostly vintage. Here are the couple I'm considering.

They look pretty cool lit up!

I think the colors of the blue one would go better in my living room, but the flower design is almost too chintzy. The third option is to contact the seller, and ask for a custom lamp... White base, blue shade, and some sort of retro/mid-century modern-inspired pattern stamped in the shade. Boomerrangs, maybe?

They're gone!

I do believe that at some point during this past weekend, my neighbors moved out! They left behind a recliner in the front yard, and a futon frame, "patio" table and chairs in the back yard! Oh, and the swan figurines are still on their front porch.

I'm wondering, should I freecycle these items for them? Maybe I'll wait a few days... But I really don't think they're coming back for any of it.

Here's hoping that even worse neighbors don't move in soon. And here's hoping that the slumlord who owns the place spiffs it up a little before new renters do move in.


In other news, I am having some artwork commissioned for my living room! Yes, commissioned. I'll call it that. I'm expecting some Lichtenstein-inspired paintings on vinyl records. Pretty cool, huh? I can't wait to see them! My friend Paul is painting them, and you can see a test run of his interpretation of Lichtenstein here.

Oh and... All of the projects that I possibly had planned for this spring are hereby ON HOLD. The taxman raped me this year. Because I was stupid and filled out my W-4 for my second job incorrectly, so I guess in this instance I was asking for it. Those little economic stimulus checks we're all supposed to get will just barely cover what I owe the feds, and the two states of which I was a resident in 2007. Live and learn, I suppose. In the meantime I'm just going to save my money, and maybe this summer I can do it up big with an even nicer dishwasher, screen door (or two), and new deck. Sometimes I feel like an ant climbing a mountain, living in this house. It's very hard for a goal-oriented person such as myself, to have to keep postponing these things due to issues like taxes, unexpected ice storms, etc.

And yeah, it would still be nice to have a house husband. Even if he only just stuck around long enough to clean my gutters. (....No pun intended? I think?)

Contemplating a "holiday" party.

I'm a little scared to have another big party at my house. This is why.




That's what was left of my deck after my housewarming party in July. I know it wasn't my guests' fault (OH! She Who Shall Not Be Named is apparently not a realtor for the same prestigious brokerage anymore...I can't find her on the website. I assumed she would quit her job and begin life as a Fat Housewife [yeah, I said it, you should see all the Lane Bryant and fat underwear catalogs I get here for her] as soon as she unloaded this house.), but... Still. Scared.

Here's my tree! A lame picture of it, with the lights in my living room off. It is very difficult to photograph a silver tinsel tree when it's all lit up in broad daylight! Especially with my crappy camera. (Attn, Santa: please bring new digital camera this year.) It is a completely secular tree, well, as secular as a "Christmas" tree can get, anyways. Santa sits on top of it.


Dante keeps knocking the ornaments off and chasing them all over the house.

Like Lichtenstein, but not!

Perhaps now would be a good time to explain the VERY rough idea I have for my living room. It all started with this picture I found in domino magazine's gallery archives.



This seemed perfect. I wanted red and black in my room, and I already have a lot of heavy mid-century modern furniture. But it always seemed too serious and...boring. Plus I'd been trying to find another color to bring in, and aqua was a new idea.

So this has been the image I've kept in the back of my head for sometime now when trying to decorate my living room. I don't want to re-create it perfectly; I don't like the silhouettes, for one, and while I like the *idea* of the black trim on the walls, I'm not sure how hot it would look on my heavily-textured walls. It seems more suited for the type of walls shown here.

Anyways, I looked at Lichtenstein prints and even Andy Warhol prints, and came up sort of empty-handed. They all seemed old and too familiar and over-done.

Tonight, though! I found some pretty awesome stuff on etsy. I've tried to find original pop art before on etsy, but never had much luck. Look what I found tonight!





These are perfect and I want them. If only I had $300 for original art...

Fait Accompli!

I did it. Not perfectly, but I did it.



I quite like them. Here is a close-up of the pattern and my lovely red walls (which need a third coat, I'm well aware).



I'm also pretty crazy about the Marimekko prints I have hanging in my dining room. I stretched the fabric around the canvasses and stapled them myself.

Sometimes it is hard.

The first entry to "My House is My Boyfriend," this here blog, will be a documentation of a sad, sad evening.

Being a single, female, YOUNG home-owner is overwhelming, most of the time. Sometimes even the smallest of tasks turn into an ordeal. And to someone used to having a man around to fix that or do this, it's doubly difficult. This does not contradict the fact that I am very independent and always have been. So yes, I can be terrified of my mortgage, frustrated I don't have a man around to just FIX THE DAMN THING, *and* be disappointed for not just bucking up and figuring it out myself, all at the same time. It's a triumvirate of failure, in my Type A/ISTJ/Virgo perfectionist world.

Tonight the task was to hang my new curtains. I bought some awesome new curtains on sale at Urban Outfitters, that perfectly match the 50s/pop art vibe I'm trying to go for in my living room:



Pretty awesome, huh? I love them. Anyways, I went to Home Depot this afternoon to buy some hardware to hang them with. The "invisible rod" I bought to hang them on from CB2 didn't come with hardware. I knew I needed drywall anchors of some sort, because my built-in-1950 walls are pretty brittle and don't support much weight with plain ole screws or nails.

I brought my friend Randy with me, because I don't know, I feel better in Home Depot with a male by my side. Yes, I am really a feminist. I promise. Randy's an engineering student, so I figured he would know his stuff when it came to...drywall anchors. I don't know. He insisted I buy this kind I'd never used before. The anchor part was metal...The little instructional picture on the side of the box showed the whole thing being hammered in, and the screw being unscrewed afterwards so you could hang something on it. Alright.

Well, that didn't exactly work. I don't know why. Hammering the entire thing completely destroyed the little holes for the screwdriver on top of the screw (like I know what those are called), so it was pretty damn hard to pull the screw back out so I could hang the bracket on it. So then I tried hammering the whole thing in with the bracket already screwed to it, and nope. Wouldn't work. I ended up pulling one out of the wall completely, so now I have another giant gaping hole in my poor, poor old walls. After already patching and painting over holes earlier this afternoon.

Day 3 without curtains. Hopefully tomorrow evening I can finally figure it out. After I call another boy I know for advice. Hah.