Tablecloths.

So, I made this tablecloth, and then, once we put it on our enormous table, we realized two things. 

 

1.) A white backdrop makes the carpet look very dingy.

2.) A pattern on a 120 inch table looks really busy. 

 

So we decided that from now on, only solid colored tablecloths and no white.  It was hard to tell, because I ordered the fabric from Fabric.com, how busy the tablecloth would look. However, ordering fabric is probably the way to go, because most tablecloths are far too expensive for our tastes.  The width of this fabric was good (I think it was 54 inches), but I definitely didn't need 4 yards. I think in the future I would order 3.5 yards.  Probably something like this textured indoor/outdoor fabric could work well but I'm not sure how the bright green would look with the dark green of the carpet (but our existing green tablecloth looks okay.)

Parking pad woes

If you are buying a rowhome in Baltimore and require a parking pad, I strongly recommend that you drive your car to look at your house and see if you can fit it in the parking pad.  Because we bike to work, and always biked to the house for inspections and walk-through, we never tried it. The owner had a Nissan Versa which fit fine, so we assumed our corolla would as well.  The first night we drove to the house, we were like, "are you kidding me?" Our alley is super-narrow, our pad is really narrow and pretty short, and our behind-us neighbors have a pretty massive fence and gate setup that is...pretty easy to hit. 

Widening the pad by 2 feet is on the agenda, but it wasn't high on the priority list.  I had some trouble getting into the parking pad, which eventually ended in an incident that did this:

During the same week, I also hit the front bumper along the other side of the parking pad. After that week, I called my husband every time I came home and he would park the car for me. Now he just watches me park it.  It's not my car, so I follow these requests. 

 

We needed to get an estimate for getting the car repaired, but I didn't want to fix the car if I was just going to do the same thing.  So hello, bumpers.  Technically they are called corner guards and are cheap and generally available.  I was a little worried that they were a bit of an eye-sore, but the alley is pretty ugly anyway and it's really nice how reflective they are.  It definitely helps parking in the dark. 

We took the car a couple of places for an estimate on repair and got quotes of around $2000.  Then my friend recommended Colors on Parade, which took care of the damage and smoothed, buffed, and repainted the car in a few hours while my husband was at work, all for under $500. 

Holidays

I'm not sure how early I want to start decorating for the holidays around our house.  Normally, I'm steadfastly in the "IT'S TOO EARLY FOR CHRISTMAS PUT YOUR TREES BACK." camp.  However, I'm thinking I would actually like to get our lights up on the earlier side this year (like probably on Sunday when we get home).  This is for a number of reasons.  The first, simply put, is that we're really busy and every year it seems like we have less and less time to do things like hang lights.  The second is that I have a really hard time with daylight savings time.  Monumentally, insurmountably hard.  Holiday lights make me happy.  So why not hang them already?  The third is that we have a LOT of windows and it's going to take a lot of work to get them up. 

I also want to deck the halls, but we have limited storage space, so I'm trying to think of creative ways to make that happen without spending money/being wasteful.  I love the ideas of putting together a bunch of these to go in windows and around the house.  I also like the idea of decorating with found natural materials or compostable materials - one year, a friend and his wife decorated their whole tree with pinecones and other nature things, which, as much as I made fun of them at the time for having a "themed" tree, I really liked and thought was nicely executed. I just need to find a place to get some holly and some other stuff.  I'm sure that if I wanted, I could go to a Christmas tree stand and take all of their braches and stuff off their hands for use in decoration.  Popcorn strands are a thing, but why am I stringing popcorn instead of eating it? 

(source)

We have some rosemary that we re-planted from our community garden, and if that flourishes, we can use some of it in the décor and also to just make the house smell plain delicious. I also, apparently, really want to create a fake fire in our fireplace and imagine I'll be thefting some wood this weekend and making a creative display with red Christmas lights. 

(source)

Another question for this year is whether we will get a real tree.  We have a pre-lit artificial tree.  Is it so amazing that it doesn't look fake? No. Is it nice to just set up the damn tree in three easy pieces and plug it in and turn it on? Yes.  We decided that an artificial tree was probably more environmentally friendly than a real one, and that while we lived in 2nd story apartments we would have a fake tree.  Then we would buy a house and have our fake tree in one room and our big real coniferous fir tree in another with electric trains running around it.  Then we bought a 12 foot wide 1400 square foot rowhome in the middle of downtown Baltimore and so I think the fake tree is staying for the forseeable future. I also hate watering real trees and worry about house fires, so fake tree it is!  (I'm not sad about this, even if I sound sad, because seriously, my worst childhood memories are pouring two liter bottles of water into the tree stand while I got needles in my hair.) 

The one thing I do think we will finally invest in is a really nice wreath or a big wreath form.  We have a couple crummy ones and those will probably go up in various places in the house and I think I'll bring one into work, but I want a big, bushy, pretty, real green wreath with a big red ribbon on it.  I'm thinking of buying a wreath form this year and then decorating it with leaves and then changing out the decorations during the year, so we don't have to store the wreath and because I think it would look nice. 

House Tour!

Our house is done.  Well, decorated, and everything is put away, and there are only a few things to deal with for now.  Like holiday decorating :-D. 

So come on in:

 Front Door

 Non-functioning fireplace and secretary desk.

 

Expedit shelving over desk

 Desk, shredder, maps and posters in a tube.

 Our living room

 What a sectional couch looks like when you divide it.

And into the dining room:

 Our massive table and a large amount of food.

 Our new curtains in the dining room.

There isn't much to say about our awesome kitchen.

And the finished bathroom/laundry space. 

And then upstairs:

 The beginnings of a gallery wall

 We're having some issues with it.

The bedroom:

 This painting over our bed is by my grandma.

The only two closets in the house. Race medals, ties, and belts are opposite.

The guest room:

 The painting is by my great aunt

The sewing room/office/second guest room:

 Husband's desk space

 The futon

 My craft area

All of my scrapbooking stuff is under the table. I'm still working on the organization.

And the bathroom:

Tada!

Photo Storage

Amongst other boxes of hard-to-store can't-get-rid-of items are my photos from middle school and high school. I'm so appreciative that my college years are all-digital and stored on a very large hard drive, but when flipping through photos it is surprising to remember the days when I took 36 pictures of an event and not 100. On the long-range to-do list is culling through and simply throwing out the photos that are out of focus or not worth saving, and selecting the best of the rest to have scanned by a scanning service the next time I see a groupon. But in the meantime, I need a storage solution that isn't a banker's box. I have one of these archival type boxes, but it doesn't even have a lid.

While these are a nice looking idea, I don't see myself putting 50+ sleeves of envelopes into them.

 Something like these are probably a better plan, because they will look nice on the bookshelf in the living room, and the lid is attached to it so I won't lose it. The price of $22 each seems a bit steep, because I know I will need at least three.

These are a cheaper alternative, but the colors don't match our décor as well. 

Turning to Ikea, purveyor of cheap storage solutions, yielded these boxes which are nice looking, or these, which are larger than necessary and ugly:

 There are also always the Cassett boxes, which would also store some of our CD jewel cases that we refuse to get rid of.

It's so interesting to have been a child of older technology and it's so amazing how much the world has changed.  I know my parents feel this even more, because they talk about typewriters and punch cards and carbon paper.  When I was a child, there was no way to imagine that photos would ever not be stored in boxes on a bookshelf.  Even once scanners existed, physical photos were still going to need to exist.  Once I saw the very first digital camera that my mother brought home (the Sony one which took a...floppy disk...), it was still so hard to imagine not having physical photos to flip through.  But within five years, the idea of film just seemed so old fashioned.  The same goes for music.  We keep our CD covers and I used to flip through them and read the lyrics, but now if I need to write a song lyric in a sappy card, I just google it.  Yet we are hanging on to our jewel cases.  We just get to the line between nostalgic and hoarder so much faster since we live in a small house. 

To Do List

So here was our to-do list a couple months ago, and I wanted to update it so you can see how much progress we have made. I've also added new items in blue.

 Outside:

• Paint front and rear door
• Replace side door
• Replace door knobs and re-key
• Install doorbell Technically we did, it just didn't work properly and so now we need to:
• Add a door knocker 
• Weed front sidewalk/steps
• Add something decorative to the left of the steps
• Add window boxes
• Add corner protectors to cement wall by parking pad
• Clear excess plant pots, etc. from parking pad
• Powerwash cement in side alley
• Remove concrete post and wall (phase 2)

Kitchen:

• Rearrange food storage
• Hang hanging fruit basket
• Add some kind of pull out or lazy susan to deep corner cabinets to make more usable
• Buy new kitchen floor mats

Dining Room:

• Buy new rug
• Buy new dining room table
• Get rid of old dining room table
• Set up dining room table
• Empty of everything that should be in the laundry room
• Hang artwork
• Hang curtain holdbacks

Living Room

• Hang artwork
• Find a home for and hook up printer
• Get rid of extra bookcase
• Add fireplace mantle
• Get fireplace cover
• Get new rug(s)
• Get new remote for TV

Stairs:

• Hang photos

Bedroom:

• Build vanity
• Get nightstands
• Hang artwork
• Hang mirror
• Hang jewelry box
• Add second set of curtains
• Find pegs for bookcase

Guest Room

• Organize bookshelf
• Hang artwork
• Hang mirror
• Get office boxes out  

Closet

• Add better shoe storage
• Figure out where to store purses
• Organize and purge clothing

Office

• Unpack boxes
• Put everything away
• Figure out paper/office supply storage
• Figure out scrapbook paper storage
• Touch up paint
• Move cubes back from bathroom once we renovate bathroom

Master Bathroom

• Renovate to add double sinks, narrow door, large medicine cabinet, heated tile
• Better towel storage
• Build cubby into wall behind shower
• Replace radiator with exhaust fan
• Hang curtains

Downstairs Bathroom

• Paint
• Hang curtain
• Add mirror to storage
• Paint storage cabinets (we decided not to do this but installed a medicine cabinet instead)
• Better organize laundry storage
• Add shower curtain, bathmat
• Add shelving
• Hang over-the-toilet storage cabinet

Shelves

We hung some shelves Sunday.  Finally we have a place for some of our knickknacks and other various items. M. also fixed my desk so both arms extend when you open the top.  Unlike some secretary desks, this one is an automatic one.

And I went through a giant bag of pens, tested, and sorted them. 

I'm just not sure what to do with those two cups of highlighters from the first picture.  I also have a lot of extra markers and stuff, but I'm hoping I can donate those along with some books to the Baltimore Book Project.   

 

These pictures are really awful. I think I'll be breaking out my DSLR for some good pictures this weekend before our housewarming party so that I can do a full-on house tour of our almost done house!