Catch Up Post

December 1st! It's been a while since my last post, so here's what's going on in sunny Montclair:

We are both working at Titmouse, hence the slack in posts and free time in general. I am managing to play a fair amount of Assassin's Creed IV: Black Flag, per week, so rest assured. Now that it's almost winter, I'm starting my annual playthrough of Twilight Princess, where I am mostly running off cliffs as I re-teach my brain to play on inverted controls.

Yesterday we went to a post-Thanksgiving potluck at a new friend's house. We met them the day before on the way home from Long Island, and they started talking to us by showing us the new Faulex one of them had bought behind a minivan near Canal Street earlier that day.

Our apartment is still quite messy, but all of the rooms have finally been repainted, and most of the wall decor has been put up. Therefore, I present to you a Before and After gallery:

Bathroom before

Bathroom after

Kitchen before

Kitchen after

Kitchen before

Kitchen after

Living room before

Living room after

Dining room/office before

Dining room/office before

Dining room/office after

Foyer before

Foyer after

~Extra pictures~

There is this useless little wall near the window in the kitchen, so I put up a couple small shelves for extra storage.

I love me some hanging baskets, and I painted/installed this pegboard to store my pots and pans.

I put our supply drawers here in front of the window thinking that Fred would enjoy the perch.

Food pictures by dining table

Used my new circle punch to make a paper decor for the wall near my desk

Put this mirror with a shelf in the living room

Bought this nightstand/end table at the Goodwill near BU right before moving. Had to clean the spilled oil/lube out of the drawer and replace the knob, but now it's perfect as a remote holder.

This fairly-new lampshade was damaged in the move, and despite my best efforts (duct tape) would not stay up on the shade frame. Finally, I sewed it to the hoop.

Altair, Ezio, and Ezio in position to strike.

Never thought I'd own coasters, but bought a couple of these on a whim from Anthropologie before moving. Thought they would look nice on the new coffee table I'd just acquired.

Bought this for I think $15 from a girl in Brighton.

Made this succulent pillowcase.

And this dual-sided pillowcase (which Fred loves to lay on because it's long and just his size).

The real challenge with selecting paint color was working with our open floor plan - all the colors had to go together. I saw these two colors together in a picture online and loved them right away. They look better in person, but of course the camera can't capture the true color. The reddish-orange is called "Clay" and the green is called "Leaf". The gray in the kitchen is called "Stone." Very crazy here.

This rolly cart is awesome and we're going to store more stuff on it.

Sometimes Fred needs a breather from his fast-paced lifestyle

While painting, this is how Fred helped out

~Halloween Pictures~

I bought a bag of bones from Target and made this Diablo-item wreath for the front door.

When it comes to candy selection, I don't fuck around. No filler, throwaway candy like Dum-Dums and Tootsie Rolls.

Because I like to be crafty whenever I can, I made little treat baggies for the kids to take instead of loose candy. Because they'll really care. So I stamped the images on the white paper, punched that lacy design on the top, and stuffed each baggie full of 3 fun sizers.

This bowl of baggies was a few layers deep, and by the end of the night was completely empty!

Since I wasn't working at Titmouse yet on Halloween, I handled all the trick-or-treaters, which was fun because I got to praise all their cool costumes. Fred watched them through the front window or sat nicely in my arms as the kids pet him. I played spooky old music, and when Tim got home from work we watched Beetlejuice together. Halloween is my favorite.

~Obligatory Fred Being Cute Pictures~

Fred fell asleep in my lap so we played with his lips.

Breakfast with Fred

As you know by now, we have a kitten. He's curious and rambunctious, if rambunctious means "a klutzy spaz and a pain in the ass." It makes working from home, or other household projects, somewhat of a challenge. For example, last night as I was sweeping up the bathroom debris, Fred decided to attack first the broom bristles, and then dive head-first into the broom receptacle.

Fred's favorite toy is his little blue mouse. It came in a 3-pack with a pink and yellow one, but the blue one's his absolute favorite. He carries it around in his mouth and batters it around at all hours.

time to retrieve it from under the dishwasher

 Last night as I was getting ready for bed, I head the unmistakable whump that indicated Fred pouncing headfirst into the bedroom door. There is at least a 1 inch gap between the floor and the bottom of the door, and I saw the little blue mouse laying there in the room. I then saw Fred's white paw slowly reach out, set down on its tail, and pull it back under the door.

Fred basking in the just-cleaned windowsill moments before stretching, flipping onto his back, confusing himself, getting scared, and running off the window, knocking those glass hanging orbs over.

Fred was being particularly bad yesterday. Here is what happened in a ten-minute window:

1) Fred eats from Tim's bowl of milk and cereal that he left out on his desk, we discovered after the fact.
2) I feed Fred his wet food as scheduled.
3) I hear a strange noise, pop my head into the kitchen, and see that Fred has thrown up maybe a pound of stuff onto the fringes of the rug we washed the day before.
4) 30 seconds later: Fred goes to throw up again, this time directly onto the rug. I move him in time and it gets on the tiled floor that we hate anyway.
5) We clean up the puke and Tim mops the floor.
6) We get something from the bathroom, and Fred dashes in and runs directly into the wet paint tray.
7) We hold Fred to quickly clean his paws, and he thrashes around.
8) Fred throws up on the floor.
9) Fred takes a big dump in the litterbox.

Lastly, a 2-minute video entitled, "Why I Can't Get Work Done," taken this morning.

Weekend Activities

Ah, Ikea. The unanimous relationship-tester. Tons of screaming kids, confused tiny people with giant carts, and aggressive New Jersey natives vying for the attention of the overworked, overmeatballed Ikea employee. 

Ours was no exception, and we very nearly murdered each other after spending hours wandering Ikea and Home Depot. Rest assured that I would have written here about murdering Tim or being dead. 

Can't start my day without a wholesome box of Dryck Flader, which I believe is Swedish for "gross flower juice." I blame this juice for our bad day.

I had a carefully-planned list for each store and each item I needed for our projects. The problem is, Ikea and Home Depot are roughly the size of airports, meaning that accompanying parts are thousands of miles apart. Tim, who already didn't want to be there, gets cranky when we have to wander around in search of help. I get frazzled in stores very easily, so my body kind of does me a favor and lapses me into this zombie-like trance. My friend tailed behind me in Target for ten minutes before I noticed. I think I was somewhere between dishwasher liquid and lightbulbs.

Yesterday, I painted the bathroom. I figured half-walls would be a good way to start. I took all of the hardware down, spackled all of the gaping holes in the crumbling drywall, and peeled away a bunch of paint before wondering whether or not I should be doing that.

Before

After 

The pictures aren't that great, but basically I installed 3 shallow glass shelves, and replaced the rattly, coming-out-of-the-wall plastic towel rack with 2 brushed nickel hooks to save space. The new wall color is a nice desaturated ocean-y blue that matches the tiles and looks better in more light (I'll post a better picture later). I re-installed the big wall mirror that was here when we moved, and took down that ridiculous desk lamp. The mirror weighs more than 10 pounds and it was fun to see that the nailed-in hanger hook fell right out of the wall when I took down the mirror.

We are in talks with our landlady about replacing the overhead light fixture for something that lets in bright white light. I have yet to install our big circle mirror behind the door (so we can see the backs of our heads for hair trims, very important...) and a couple pictures on the walls above the toilet. 

I've spent a lot of time online looking at moms' DIY blogs to see where they got their inexpensive shelving/lights, because if you just search "storage solutions for small bathrooms," you're going to get some unrealistic bullshit. Why? Because first of all, the articles are written by HouseBeautiful, Better Homes and Gardens, or Martha Stewart's Commode or something, and their "problematic bathrooms" are always bigger than my entire house. These assholes looking for a spot to store their monogrammed washcloths could probably just buy another bathroom and solve their problem.

Man, look at this tiny bathroom! It's so dark!

My god! Is it night or day? I can't even tell!

I bet this green paint looks better in the daylight!

Lol this underwater bathroom is sooooo cramped!

I bet the door's against their knees when they're sitting on the toilet!

LOOK AT THIS PORT-A-POTTY