Grow A Little Garden

I've decided to give SC a little time to move in and unpack before I show the world her apartment. (But the wait will be worth it, trust me.)

So in the meantime, a little something else... Gardening. :)

I love sunflowers and every summer when I was little my mom and I would plant sunflowers outside my window and cross our fingers they would grow. They usually did, but I think it had more to do with luck and the hardiness of the flowers than our gardening skill. I tried other flowers later, but my attention span was too short and their growing time too long. Usually I'd forget I even planted something after a few days and mom would have to deal with the mess I left.

So understandably when I told her last summer that I wanted to garden, she was skeptical. But I was determined. I wanted a vegetable garden.

I started with jalapenos, and they did so well and I saw growth so quickly that I HAD to grow more.

So my garden grew to include cherry tomatoes, regular tomatoes, bell peppers and cucumbers.

They grew better than I had ever dreamed. I felt like a real gardener.

I was so proud of my first tomato! But unfortunately I only got a handful of tomatoes and never got bell peppers or cucumbers. They grew, they just never matured.

I got a million jalapenos though! By the end of summer, my family was sick of eating Mexican food. (And that's saying something for us.)


I wanted to garden again this summer, but I wanted to give flowers a try. (A few weeks later and they aren't doing so great, but let's pretend you don't know that.)

I started with all the basics. A planter with a thick row of rocks at the bottom for drainage then good soil, a watering can, a shovel and a hoe, and a set of gloves. Notice they all match. All encouragment purchases from my mom. She knows me well. Haha.

I knew that my balcony gets a lot of sun, more than 6 hours a day, so when I went to pick out flowers I made sure to get full sun flowers. While some of the shady flowers were pretty, I knew they'd never last in the hot sun. That'd be like getting a Husky and moving to Ecuador. It's just not gonna work out. Flowers have to match the sunlight levels.
I decided on Dahlias because I just love them, Marigolds for color and Salvia for height.

Leaving them in their containers, I set them in the planter and moved them around until I liked the arrangement. It's way easier to try it out this way than after the containers have been removed.

Once I liked the placement, I marked where they were in the dirt, shoveled it out to make space, planted the flowers and then filled in with the extra dirt.

And then I sat back and enjoyed the beauty of the flowers. :)

Now if only I can keep them alive....

SC's Apartment: Part 1

This weekend marked the beginning of a big journey for my dear friend, SC... she's moving into her very own apartment! She got the keys earlier this week and we spent part of Friday, most of Saturday and a good chunk of Sunday cleaning and painting. And while she has a lot of moving and decorating to do, she's got a good start on a perfect little place.

I made her pick something to get us started on a design direction and this is what we decided on. We call it Vintage Americana. So this would be the inspiration for her kitchen and living room, while her bedroom is gonna be what we call Vintage Romantic. (Fun fact: Giving your spaces descriptive names like 'vintage americana' helps to make decisions. While looking at something, you can always ask yourself, is this vintage americana, or do I just think it's pretty but it would be better suited elsewhere?)

Welcome to the most adorable building in all of Atlanta.

Her kitchen. We knew (aka: I knew and told her) almost immediately that those shelves would have to go. While she is short on storage space, those shelves are ugly, not very usable, and potentially hazardous to anyone above 5'8". Luckily SC agreed with me and we took them down.

Her dining room. It's the other end of her kitchen and it's a great size for a little table. There's a light, a fan and a beautiful big window. Not much else you can ask for.

One corner of her living room. That door opens on to a little balcony. It's not big enough for furniture, but it's cute. And again big windows. The place has great light. And don't miss the hardwood floors. Lucky, lucky.

Corner of the bedroom. More windows. Lucky girl. These pictures will be way more interesting once there's furniture in the place.

Other fun little facts that I didn't get good pictures of: All the door knobs are the old crystal knobs. So gorgeous. And the place is from like the 1920's, so there are odd things like compartments where the iceman used to leave ice blocks. Just adorable.

(This is SC!)
We started by taking down everything we knew we wouldn't want, like those awful shelves in the kitchen, and cleaned and spackled. When I first told SC to get spackle, she was like, "wait, what? I have to spackle?" Haha. I'm so grateful now for the experience of having renovated my grandparents' home and the knowledge of minor home repairs I gained there. I got to share some with SC this weekend.

I went through and did most of the edging. (SC did some and did fabulously!)  Edging is NOT easy and takes a lot of practice to get good at. I have a few pointers though.

EDGING POINTERS!
- Don't use blue painter's tape unless you have to! Painter's tape is a great invention, but too many times it fails to give that crisp line I'm looking for. Bleeding under the tape is hard to avoid especially with textured walls and it's just not worth the hassle to fix afterwards.
- Go slowly and steadily. Crisp edges are what give walls the finished look and speeding through the edging is not going to achieve it.
- Use a good quality brush. Cheap brushes give cheap results. My mom and I both swear by Purdy's brushes. This is not a place to to try to save a few bucks.
- When edging, wipe the paint off the side of the brush that will be against the unpainted wall, leaving it only on the painted side. Place the brush into the corner, or against the edge, then slowly slide the brush down the wall. With practice this process will become easier and quicker.
In case that was confusing, I drew a Paint picture. Lucky you.

Isn't that just the clearest explanation you've ever seen? Blogs are always better with drawings. (Shameless plug to the GREATEST BLOG ON THE INTERNET... not mine, unfortunately, but my drawings are clearly just as good, if not better.)

Back to SC's apartment..

Since we had decided the kitchen would be Vintage Americana, we found the perfect shade of red... Sherwin Williams' Antique Red. It just sounds patriotic, doesn't it? Well, on the walls, it looked like "Mid-life Crisis, I'm buying a Porsche, Red" -verbatim from our new apartment-owner. Not exactly what we were going for. Sometimes, even with all the planning in the world, the color just isn't what you'd hoped and you have to start over. We started over with Sherwin Williams' Stolen Kiss. Not quite as patriotic of a name, but more the look we were going for.

We agreed almost immediately that the new color was way better. SC was a little hesitant at first, understandably, cause look at that color, but by the time we were done painting, she loved it as much as I did.

I am loving this so very much. We have plans for wall decor, so some of that red will be covered up and will leave the perfect amount of the perfect shade of America Red. And look how much more open it looks without all the ugly shelving!

AMERICAAAA! (Check out those ceiling heights! SC's a good 5'7".)
This little white cupboard was already in the kitchen, but turned so the back was to the side of the stove, dividing the kitchen from the dining room. SC didn't like that setup as much as this one and I wholeheartedly agree. It opened the place up so much. And when she filled it with her cream and navy dishes, I could've swooned. Just precious. We're debating a lot over what should go on the walls, but we both loved this star. God Bless the USA.

Moving on to the bedroom...

(My roommate helped us paint.) SC decided she wanted her bedroom to have a vintage romantic feel, so we chose this beautiful color, SW's Veiled Violet. It's a gray-purple that comes across more adult-chic than little-girl-princess.

I wish this photo was a video. I've never seen a picture more perfectly capture SC. Roommate and I were TRYING to be productive and SC was having a spin your shirt like a helicopter dance party. Hilarious.

This room is going to be beautiful when it's done. Elegant and mature. (Please disregard the previous photo when trying to envision this...)

And the living room!

I didn't get any in-process pictures of the living room because SC and my roommate painted it before I got there, but it's a great color, SW's Sleepy Blue. I think the word Sleepy is wrong though. It's very refreshing. It brightens the room up and really makes the woodwork pop.

Peeking into the kitchen from the living room, you can see the right amount of Americana Red. The dining room table will go right where SC is standing.

Next weekend we're gonna try to tackle a few small improvement jobs like cleaning up the wood under the window in the kitchen and start moving some furniture in.
Stay tuned for that. :)

Ruffled Racerback and S'mores Turnovers

Even though I've been the biggest blog slacker ever, I have not been a life slacker.
I recently started a new job! One significantly closer to my chosen career path. I'm very excited about it. :)
But with change comes the inevitable blog slacking. I apologize.

As an apology, I offer TWO posts in one!
What a deal.

First up: the Ruffled Racerback.

I got the idea for this top from another awesome blog. Her refashions are simply amazing to me.

Start with a racerback tank (Mine was 3.50 from F21), a spool of grosgrain ribbon (you only need about 7 feet), and a small amount of sewing knowledge.

Take the ribbon and sew a loose stitch straight down the middle. Break it up into three segments and leave long ends to help create the ruffle.
I made a Paint drawing to explain. Lucky you.

But don't use different colors... you get it. Moving on...

Ruffling ribbon is an incredibly satisfying act. I have no idea why.
The best way to do it is to insert a pin in one end of the ribbon and wrap the long thread tails you left around it to secure the threads. Then take the tail at the other end and slowly start pulling it and pushing the ribbon down and back towards the stationary pin. If you sewed it by hand, you'll only have one thread to pull. If you sewed it on a machine, you should have two threads, but you'll only pull one. If you try to pull both, nothing will happen, but when you pull just one, it will ruffle like magic.

Ruffle the whole ribbon as rufflely (is that a word?) as you'd like.

Starting at the back of the neck, pin the ribbon to the tank so that the center ribbon stitch is on the edge of the neckline. Fold the raw edge of the ribbon under twice to hide it. The sewing will keep it in place.

Pin it all the way around. Once you get to the back of the neck again, fold the raw edge under and pin it just like the first edge. If you overlap the two ends, it will never be noticable.
See all those long white threads hanging down? Those are my tails that grew longer and longer as I ruffled my ribbon. Leave them alone for now. Once the ribbon is sewn to the tank, we can snip all those off without worrying about unruffling.

Then sew the ribbon to the tank. Try to sew right over top of the original ruffling stitch so it will be hidden. Don't worry about the ruffles being perfect. That's not the point. Half of mine are smashed and I love the way it looks.
Now go back and snip off all those long tails and you've got yourself a pretty little tank.

Pin a ridiculously large flower (leftover from your high school colorguard days) to the tank and call it a day.

Next up: S'mores Turnovers!
I love s'mores. I love them so much this is my second, and surely not last, s'mores post.
They give me warm fuzzies inside. They always remind me of camp... (Shout out to my Lake Aurora readers!) ...but not for the reasons you'd think. The camp I went to didn't give out s'mores at campfire during the summer. But every fall there was a mother/daughter retreat and there were always s'mores at campfire during the retreats. The retreat was geared at younger children and their mothers and my mom and I went for about 12 years, so eventually we outgrew a lot of the planned activities. There are only so many times you can do a blindfolded trust walk... But every year we went to campfire and ate s'mores. You never outgrow campfires or s'mores.

I'm gonna slack off a LOT here and just redirect you to the actual recipe from Recipegirl.com, but to prove I made them, I'll add a picture.
Peanut Butter S'mores Turnovers

I made that, I promise. How great does it look? So delicious. So simple. Go make them. Right now.

Pup Treats

When I got Watson, one of the first things my mother said to me was, "You're gonna blog about him, aren't you?" He's made appearances, but he has yet to get an entire post to himself. So here it is.

Watson's Blog Post... aka Pup Treats

I love this little guy and he loves treats, so I decided to try my hand at making my own for him. A little homemade love.

A slightly more unique ingredient list than usual: whole wheat flour, nonfat dry milk powder, an egg, vegetable oil, beef bouillion cubes, boiling water and brown sugar.

But a typically simple recipe: Put all ingredients in a bowl, mix, cut and bake.

(Okay, maybe it's not THAT simple, but almost.)

Melt the beef bouillion cubes in the boiling water, creating beef broth, and let cool. I don't have a picture of this because melting bouillion cubes look gross. You can figure it out.

In a large bowl, mix all the dry ingredients together.

Then add all the wet ingredients, including the new beef broth.

Knead the mixture until a dough forms. ...this will be messy, but fun.

THOROUGHLY clean your countertop. (This isn't actually in the recipe, but a vital step nonetheless.)

Lightly flour the countertop and roll out the dough until about 1/4" thick. This is also probably a good time to start preheating your oven to 300 degrees, if you haven't already.

Cut your dough into bite size pieces. If I were a good little Martha-wannabe, I'd have cute bone or fire hydrant shaped cookie cutters, or really any shape cookie cutters, but seeing as I clearly don't have it together as well as she does, Watson will have to live with squareish shaped treats. Somehow I think he'll survive.

Place the treats on a cookie sheet (or in a pan, if that's all you've got) and bake at 300 for 30 minutes.

Watson got very tired of waiting for the treats.

When the treats are done, let them cool and then let your favorite little guy devour.

 This is a very happy dog.

Pup Treats

2 1/2 cups whole wheat flour

3/4 cup nonfat dry milk powder

1 egg, beaten

1/2 cup vegetable oil

2 cubes of beef bouillion

3/4 cup boiling water

2 tbsp brown sugar

1. Preheat oven to 300 degrees and lightly grease a cookie sheet.

2. Dissolve the bouillion cubes in the boiling water and let cool.

3.Combine the flour, dry milk, and brown sugar. Add in the egg, vegetable oil and beef broth. Mix well.

4. On a floured surface, roll out dough to 1/4" thickness. Cut out shapes and place on cookie sheet.

5. Bake for 30 minutes and allow to cool.

6. Watch pup inhale treats. :)

Selecting a Paint Color

Today one of my girlfriends showed me an apartment she's looking to move into. It's a charming, older building with great architecture and a lot of character. It will be perfect for her. While we were there, we were talking about what color she should paint the walls.

One of the most paralyzing decisions to be made while decorating is the wall paint color, when in fact, it should be one of the easiest. Looking at the paint chip wall at your local Home Depot can be overwhelming but remember, paint is available in practically an infinite array of colors and is the least expensive thing to change in a room. I believe that paint should not be the first decision made, but one of the last.

When it comes time to choose a paint color, find your inspiration from something you truly love. Maybe it's a bedding set already in the room and you're simply updating the walls, or maybe it's a new piece of artwork that you're completely redesigning the room around.  Whatever it is, don't let it be the paint color itself. It's much easier to find a bedding set or shower curtain that you love and then find a paint color to match than it is to find a paint color you love and then have to hunt for the rest.

For an example, let's say you found this rug and absolutely love it. (Just go with me on this one.) You want to base your entire living room around this rug. Your color choices are endless. A matching blue shade, a crisp white, a moody gray, or something completely opposite, like a sunny yellow or vibrant orange. We've now eliminated all the colors in the brown, purple, red and green spectrums. Congratulations! There goes half the paint chip wall. We've even eliminated a lot of the blues, since you'd want something close to the rug color. You wouldn't want a greenish blue or a purpley blue. Even if you wanted to go lighter or darker, you would essentially be moving up or down the paint chip, not left or right.
I'm sure that was confusing. Pictures may help?

Let's say you decided the outmost shade of blue inside the white boxy shape is the color of the rug. You'd usually only want to move in towards the center in the same line, not move left into the green shades or right into the purple shades. This seems obvious enough, but when you're overwhelmed by the options, it helps to remember this.
But now let's say you love the rug, but don't want blue walls, you want gray. Neutrals are some of the hardest colors to choose because they all have an underlying color to them. It may look harmless enough on a paint chip, but when you get it up on the wall you realize it has a tint of green or brown and clashes horribly with your beautiful blue rug.

These are just three grays I chose from my Sherwin Williams color specifier. Individually, they all look perfectly gray, but when you line them up next to each other, you can see just how different they are. The best way I've found to avoid being surprised with an unwanted shade is to gather every paint chip you can get your hands on in the color you want and start eliminating them. When you line all the grays up together, the underlying shades become more obvious and it's easier to weed out the brown grays and the green grays. Granted this won't work all the time, but it's a good starting place.

Another important decision when choosing color is the sheen. In this picture, the walls are black, a traditional painting no-no, but the high gloss finish allows light to reflect off the walls, creating a much brighter room.

Paints typically range from flat/matte, to satin/eggshell, or semi-gloss and finally to high gloss. Each paint sheen has pros and cons and suggested uses.

Flat/matte- Flat paint is essentially nonreflective and is great at hiding imperfections like dents, nailheads and patches. It's a very soft paint though and scrubbing can actually remove the paint. Many ceilings are painted in flat paint and homebuilders may paint walls with flat paint to disguise less-than-perfect finishing.

Satin/Eggshell- This is the most commonly used paint in bedrooms and hallways. It has a little shine to it and is much more durable than flat paint. It doesn't show imperfections as easily as higher gloss paints will, but it gives a nice depth to the color.

Semi-Gloss- Semi-Gloss is more durable than satin, but still not as durable as high gloss paint. It can begin to show imperfections, but its durability makes it great for higher traffic, frequently cleaned areas like bathrooms, kitchens and utility rooms.

High Gloss- This paint has a very shiny finish and hard, scrubbable surface. It's perfect for wood trims, furniture, cabinets, and any place that would need vigorous cleaning. Due to its highly reflective nature, high gloss paints show imperfections much more clearly.

Paints can absolutely be used outside of their suggested uses. I painted a small, narrow bathroom a dark, charcoal gray which completely worried my mother, but I painted it a very high gloss, and the reflective finish actually brightened the room up. I wouldn't suggest moving down in gloss, like using a flat paint in a kitchen, because durability is important. A paint finish can always be too durable, but not durable enough would be a problem.

With all the new small paint samples that retailers are offering these days, don't hesitate to grab a few samples and test out your final color options. You may spend a few more dollars on the samples, but it's worth it to not have to repaint an entire living room.