Life in Color Photo – Page 131 – Celebrating crafts, kids and the everyday through photographs.

First the Good Stuff

Okay seriously this weekend was phenomenal for getting the old stuff, the old good stuff that is. After the thrilling morning on Friday Sciarrino, Brain, Melissa (his girlfriend) and I headed to the McNary Estates garage sale. They only have it one day a year and this year 97 families were participating. We still had Kathy’s pick up (did I mention she rocks for letting us use this?). The first thing I snagged were a set of these chairs:

Exciting for me is this little camera kit. I have two cool old cameras now. I bought both purely for their decorative value so I can set up this little vignette I have in my head of my travel pictures and souvenirs. By the way these things go for next to nothing on eBay if you’re wanting to do the same thing.

And the other things. A one dollar rain jacket, two blankets for five. I realized last night as I stumbled cold to my mom’s linen closet that I had not extra blankets for these kinds of incidents, so these will work out nicely. Plus they are lime green. Can’t beat it! The basket was thrown in for free, and the jar is a cool square one for a future special collection.

I’m probably done with the thrifting for a bit, I need to get settled and see what I still need. I know I’m still looking for a few random things, like more pots and pans (hard to find in really good condition), and paring knifes (I have zero, and I love them). And I should actually stock up on some boring things like yard tools. Oh but maybe I could paint their handles all cute hmm….

A Prayer to the thrifting Gods

The paper said it first, a church pew, at an estate sale. I had to have it, entry way, what? what?

A dollar each, love the type on these, and I love having little bits of chowder or a handful of crackers in this size of thing. I am going to have the weirdest collection of dishes I tell you:

A bunch of stuff for a buck, including the little wire basket. I am so getting back into sewing when I move.

I find it near impossible to say no to $1.00 chairs. Especially nice sturdy ones. I also got some child’s metal chairs, a big huge wooden desk that is in piece in the garage (necessary for moving it – the things massive), a metal cot frame (only three bucks, I have tons of ideas for this), some old candy jars, this funky tin thing, a big bushel basket, and I feel like some other stuff, Sciarrino? Mom? Is that it? I loved having the truck. I didn’t say this before, but last week at the mirror-cot-candy jar-strawberry basket place my mom and I had to leave some prime stuff behind because we had no way to get it home. I know I should get over it, but there was this five dollar aluminum lounger with terry cloth cushions (my mom may comment that they were ugly cushions, but still I thought they were cool)… Anyway, ya the truck rocks.

We have another huge sale to go to tomorrow (try 97 houses participating), and lots of work to do, but your eyes do not deceive you, we moved that stuff right into the new house. I still have so much freaking trim work to paint I can’t believe it. And if anyone has any good links or info on how the heck to paint windows with out painting them shut, please let me know.

And if anyone else found anything good we should all drool over let us know!

Your mission, should you choose to accept it…

Do you have a nasty (usually brown) old thermostat? Like this:

Do you want your old place to look like it has a whole new heating system? Do you want to save the earth one little unit of energy at a time? Do you want to save money too? Then you need a new programable thermostat!!! Installing this cool new gadget is as easy as 1-2-3!

1)Take off old thermostat from wall, but be careful, they are usually full of mercury so maybe get a friend to hold it while you unscrew and untwist the wires from the thing. No need to disconnect power as it’s low voltage (but um, I did because I saw this thing where this guy was electrocuted through his drive though window (he was a bank teller) and then he was messed up his whole life, so I have a fear of that now).

2)Set the date and time on your fancy new thermostat. See the great thing about these is that they will kick on your crummy old energy sucking furnace exactly when you say, every day! And you can set them differently for weekends and stuff.

3)Connect wires to new thermostat and screw to wall. If you have old plaster you might have to drill itty bitty holes for the screws like I did, but that’s easy!

I got my thermostat at Home Depot for 39.97 (if you live outside Oregon add tax), how cheap is that? And I got a 7 day programmable! Try this! It’s easy!

Bizzaro Salem

Today was the weirdest day, just plain psycho weird. You know that episode of Seinfeld where Elaine starts hanging out with Bizarro Jerry? Well it was Bizarro Salem today. First of all I spent the night last night up in Portland and as I was driving back into town I see this sign "incident ahead" Okay… Then I see the smoke and everything, right on Brent’s block! I ask the cop redirecting traffic and there is this huge four alarm fire going on half a block from Brent’s (his apartment "smells like crap" now). This is weird, it’s a place that was going to be going out of business so the whisper around town was that they did it for the insurance money. But that in and of it’s self not too weird, right? Well then I’m at my house paint, with my mom and she gets a call from Bill. He’s just been evacuated from the Roth’s he had a meeting at because of a pipe bomb. And yes he saw it, it’s real. Holy crap what? I’m stuck in this house with nothing but paint fumes, no radio, no TV, no internet. So I call up the Sciarrino-nator. She had heard nothing of the pipe bomb, so I said, look it up, and call me back! She calls back, reads from a page online, "the bomb at the hospital is similar to the one described at Roth’s." What? two bombs? My mom keeps trying to call Bill but he’s not answering and we don’t know what’s going on so I call Bj. "Bj, check this out, Bill’s just gotten evacuated because of bomb, and there’s one in the hospital, is any of that on the news?" "No, it’s all about this foiled terrorism plot." Me: "um, what?" "Ya, they caught like 20 guys, and now you can’t take liquid or electronics as carry ons." "what?!?!" My mom (to whom I’m relaying) "I’m never flying again."

So the day was stranger than strange. I’m sure our "little" incidents didn’t make it very far on the news, but still weird. Eventually they exploded the bombs, the one at the hospital was in a parking garage and targeted to a specific woman. She saw a wire on her rear view and when she moved it a bomb rolled out from under her car. She called 911, I, well I would have shit myself.

And I can back this up:
the pipe bombs (holy crap they just found another one!)
the fire (related to the pipe bombs? no one is saying)
the foiled plan and the liquid ban

Let’s hope I can survive Salem long enough to get some good thrifting in tomorrow.

Violet Clementine

I love little baby Violet. Spent the day hanging out with Michele and the babe today. Baby love, it’s the best.

Baby Violet and Mommy:

My favorite:

I remembered to have Brett take one of me and Violet together, doesn’t she look like she’s kinda smiling? hehehe. Oh and on a totally separate note I stopped by the house on the way out of town, the yellow looks awesome. Mom: "You don’t need anything else yellow in the house because you have plenty in that room" I don’t really like yellow all that much, but I just felt the need for a yellow room, so no worries mom no yellow accessories for me, that would be too much! Also have a ton of plugs in the basement now, and am even getting one outside, for Christmas lights!!

An ode to paint

I want to tell you something that you should never forget:

Trim should only be white, nice clean, white. It should never ever be cream. Cream looks dirty. It should be white.

Now, you may disagree with me, but you will never change my mind, especially after today. Because I had to undo years of cream, green, and even (gasp) peach trim paint. This is so not okay. I just want to show you how wonderful white trim looks:

Oh my mom, I love color and think I rock at color, but my mom can READ MINDS PEOPLE! I am telling you that degree in Interior Design really works! Now I’m not just saying this because she’s my mom, but she is the best designer ever! She would not let me settle for a color just to paint it and get it done with. She went above and beyond and I know I will be so happy with the room now. If you are in our area she free-lances and she rocks, just saying. I mean she even drafted up a plan for the electrical in my basement and now I am getting 15 plugs down there just were I want them because the electrician said he could just do everything according to the plan. I swear if it wasn’t for my mom I’d be going super crazy just about now.

So ya, paint your trim white. Be happy. And if you want to use my white, it’s Picket Fence by Martha Stewart, Sherwin Williams Pro-Classic Semi Gloss (but remember eggshell for the walls!!!), but pick a white that works for you.

Swapity Swap Swap!

Dude, the swappin is rockin. The peeps are getting their packages and some of you are just so over the moon about it:
"I know the RAK you’re doing is meant to be random…."
Wanting to nominate their buddies for the jar o ribbon prize. I am going to wait to draw for that until the end of next week. I want to make sure there is plenty of time for the boxes to arrive, as your name doesn’t get put in until your buddy gets the package. So make sure you are communicating with your buddy. Get to know each other now that you know who is who (if you do). And if you’re like me and stalking the mailman, know that there are still 13 boxes floating around out there.

If you have gotten a package please post here with a link to your blog so we can all check out the sweetness! I’ll keep this at the top of my blog for a while (unless something besides painting, painting, and more painting starts happening around here).

1 wedding and a concert

On Saturday Bj and I went to his friend Salman’s wedding. Well it wasn’t actually a wedding, it was a kind of ceremony for the bride to say goodbye to her family and the families to join (as I understand it). I really had no idea what to expect, I had sought out some help in this matter from my Indian neighbor, but things went horribly when I didn’t choose my words very well. I told her I had been invited to a Pakistani wedding, and asked if she would mind going over what everything meant with me. She said yes, and then as she was leaving, "you know I’m Indian right?" I was like, "oh, yes, oh no, I do know that, I just thought that it might be similar." Oh I felt so horrible. I should have said, "I know you’re Indian but." I apologized, and my mom apologized for me, but she’s still not really talking to us. Anyways we had no idea what was going on. It was funny because Salman called Bj and told him to come an hour late because we had to walk in with him and when we got there none of the other white people had been told that and all Bj’s coworkers were sitting around not knowing what to do. Eventually we did go in, and then the picture taking started. The bride came in and she was beautiful, and her outfit probably weighed fifty pounds:

I really want to wear a sari someday. sigh.

Then yesterday I decided I just couldn’t stay away from the house (I know, surprise, right?). So Bj and I drove back down to Salem and went to Home Depot where I watched my card get used for the millionth time. Got lights, new thermostat, smoke alarms, and gravel. Bj installed the thermostat, and it’s so easy people. If you have a fugly old one on your wall where you just move a piece on the bottom you should upgrade to a programmable one and save yourself some crazy energy money (plus it looks like five million times better). I put up all the little light fixtures since the ceilings are done (finally after five coats!) and oohed and ahhed over the quarter round instillation. Seriously I am in love with my carpenter! Then it was back up to Portland with Karen and Sciarrino. We dropped Bj off in Beaverton and headed north to go the Kelly Clarkson concert in Auburn. We were totally crazy to do this I think, in a good way. We got the tickets forever ago and it took freaking forever to drive up there. What is with traffic like that (no wrecks or roadwork) on a Sunday night? We were late, but caught the last song of the opening band, Rooney. Un holy hottness, that lead singer is very nice, very, very nice.

With cute short hair:

(another big screen shot) It was so much fun. I don’t know very many of her songs, but she was great live. It was really cool too because it was there last show after two years of touring and so there were all kinds of pranks on each other, and people in skeleton suits, and gorilla suits, and roadies holding up stuffed Nemo’s while she sang. She even came up to the middle section so she was pretty close for a while.

The thing that sucked was the drive home. Well I didn’t drive because Sciarrino drove her new GTI, but we got back so. so late (3:45am) we totally should have stayed the night, but none of us have that kind of money right now, and we all had to work today. My mom woke me up early this morning and I just about killed her, she kept talking to me and I was like, "GO AWAY!!" So it’s back over to the house today to check progress, and paint.

17 cubic feet of cold cold love

It has like a million slots to move the big shelves and the little ones on the door. A sweet drawer, ya it also has some kind of perfect temperature system but I haven’t read those directions just yet.

But this people was the real clincher. Check out this freezer. Now, having not used it yet (okay maybe there’s a little ice cream in there) I can’t say for sure. But I do believe it is the most perfect freezer ever invented of the non hose connected variety. What I mean is, I don’t have plumbing to the fridge area so I need to use the trays for ice. This is no problem to me because it’s very energy efficient (my main reason for wanting a new fridge, okay that and the looks). So they have come up with this great idea, a mini drawer just for holding cube trays!!! Sciarrino remember all the cube spillage we had at 1222? PROBLEM SOLVED! I am going to start a new collection, an ice tray collection baby! Besides that the top drawer down there pulls out and then the bins can be taken out to be washed. That top left one I’m going to use for frozen fruit and then just pull it out to make smoothies, I am a genius, no?

Buying things is a very easy way to upgrade, but we did lots of real work too. The electrician came today, but didn’t finish so I have to leave all the holes in the ceiling of the basement open for now so he can thread wires through them. I had to come up with more things for my kick ass carpenter to do so I though having him help me with the quarter round would be perfect. My mom painted all the trim upstairs while I primed and painted the quarter round. It will be installed between the floor and the trim to cover small imperfections or gaps. I also had the hole drilled for the dryer vent, no more ghetto window situation. Check out the picture of the day for details.