House of Babs

Weepies and other items

2012-02-09T17:41:00.000-08:00

Listening to The Weepies on Spotify. I am loving Spotify. I have found so much music that is new to me that I really like. It's a wonderful thing for us listeners....not so sure about the music makers.... I may never, ever buy new music again. Try a listen to The World Spins Madly On and Please Speak Well of Me. Love it.

So today, I made my daughter a stuffed Manatee. I bought a great book when I was up in Vermont two weeks ago. It's a book with 30 patterns for simple projects that require a yard of fabric each. One of these is a cute little manatee. It says to use fleece, but you KNOW I just had to buy the freaking cuddle fabric instead..... Yeah, it's amazingly soft and cuddly, but it's also a son of a bitch to sew!!! Especially when you have only made curtains before.... The next stuffed monster will be made of fleece like the flippin' instructions say!! Anyway, it did not come out perfect, yet it still looks cute and my daughter loves it!!

Next sewing project is a ruffle skirt made from awesome white ruffly fabric I found online. I'm also working on a decoupage night table for daughter, but the first paper came all ripply, the second layer came out amazing, but when I went to put a layer of Mod Podge on top, I had forgotten to seal the flocked paper and it smeared all over. Sad Babs. So I pulled that paper off too. I'm going to Target tomorrow to see if they have any more. Otherwise, it's curtains. Well, not it's not, but I'll be pissed. The last one looked soooooo good, didn't it?

Go Pro!

2012-02-06T14:32:00.000-08:00

Skiing in PA this past weekend - great fun had by all. It was Larry's birthday and we gave him a Go Pro camera. These little things are bossanova. They are high def cameras that pack a punch. You can attach it to almost anything, it goes to 200 feet below the surface and it takes wide angle video and pics. Our friend flies it from a kite atop his sailboat mast. Pretty damn cool. Here's our first video - Laurence cruising around on his Razor E300 with the GoPro mounted on the back:

Something old, something new. Both wonderful!

2012-01-13T09:35:00.000-08:00

So I stopped in to show you my frames and another teeny project on my Cameo. And before I got started I found a profoundly wonderful comment from my soul sistah, KK. Thanks Kristen, you made my day.

The something(s) new: The frames in my bathroom were not cutting it. I used BM's Sea Life. I love the color, but it didn't work (although it doesn't look bad in this pic).

SIL Susie and I decided red was the way to go. I think we were right!

Tonight, tonight the strip's just right
I wanna blow 'em all out of their seats
Calling out around the world, we're going racin' in the street

Loving Spotify and LOVING my man Bruce's Racing in the Street all over again. Sorry for the digression....back to crafty shit.

Been reading the Silhouette blog and saw a super easy, cutie pie project I did yesterday. The Silhouette comes with 50 or so preloaded images for cutting. I never realized that one of them was to decorate the ma-cheen itself! I saw this on the blog and got right on it:

It's the little things my friends. ;)

Reflection

2012-01-11T13:26:00.000-08:00

Yesterday I woke up, went downstairs to let the dog out and make some coffee. The children dressed and came down for breakfast. It's kind of nice now that Grace is in middle school as we all get up earlier and actually have a few minutes together with Larry before he leaves for work. After the kids were off, I began my usual morning clean up before a 10:30 meeting with Bryan, the new Chair of Regatta for the BYC. I am Regatta Co-Chair this year and it's a job I'm excited for. A new challenge, new committee, etc. Anyhoo, I started to feel terrible around 9:45 and things just progressed from there. I ended up in bed with the P & P virus. You can figure that one out on your own. My body ached, my head ached and I was just immobile. Fortunately, a friend tipped me off to the wonderful PBS series Downton Abbey. The first season is available on Netflix. So this largely filled my day. I was able to pick the kids up from school and then it was order Chinese food and back to bed. I surfed a little on my Ipad and came across a working mom writing about stay at home moms. Basically mocking them and saying that their lives are mundane, unimportant and annoying. I thought, oh boy, here we go again. The fight between moms who work and moms who don't. Although, I don't fight that. I believe moms who want or have to work, work. Moms who don't have to work and don't want to work don't. I worked for twenty years in finance. I worked at Lehman Brothers with the Big Boys of the 80's, I worked at a Swiss Bank and a French bank. That was when I lived in NYC, met my husband and had tons of fun. I had a great career that I really liked. I can totally see why some women want to work and keep going. But seriously, for me (and I stress "for me") the best part of my life has been my family and children. I absolutely LOVE staying home and consider it my life's biggest luxury! So, I can prepare the CEO's yearly gangbuster financial presentation and I can also help my kids with their homework, paint my house, plant my garden, decoupage a file cabinet, pick my kids up from school and hear everything about their amazing little days. Which would I rather do? No contest. I've done both. I'll take my house and kids any day of the week and six ways to Sunday. I felt lucky that on a day I felt horrible, I had the luxury of staying home in my beautiful room watching Downton Abbey and knowing that tomorrow I got to back to my wonderful life. Wonderful to me. Isn't that it's really all about? Your life being wonderful to you? People shouldn't worry so much about others. It's really about making yourself the best you can be. Everything else takes care of itself.

Three! Three! Three posts in one!

2012-01-05T15:53:00.000-08:00

Okay, lots has been happening here. I finished painting the disgusting downstairs closet:
Before (Eeewww!!!!!)

After!!!

Okay, the floor isn't done yet - soon. Sometime in March, all the floors in the House will be refinished. But for now, my hideous aqua closet is GONE!

Moving on. Wine rack from my sister's honeymoon NYC apt. gets a makeover. I know this is a terrible photo, but.... it is what it is. See the wine rack all the way on the right?

Blond wood hiding in laundry room to black fabulous front and center in Dining Room!

The Laundry Room/Office Redo continues. The room has been cleaned out, the carpet installed and "new" (old, but new to the room) furniture has been brought in. Additionally, I gave the old, yellow file cabinets a badly needed makeover. Also my first attempt at decoupage. First, I painted the file cabinets........yes! Black! Perhaps I should change the title of my blog to "everything looks better with a coat of black glossy paint!" The paper I used to decoupage was flocked wrapping paper from Target! Fibers from the flocking smeared a bit, but the outcome is just fine. I cut the paper out to fit and then smeared some Mod Podge on the drawer, let it dry a bit and then laid the paper on. You have to smear the bubbles out and mine did NOT come perfect, but I still like it and it totally works in the space. After this has dried, you put two more coats of Mod Podge on top of the paper. You can glom these coats on. Let it dry overnight and then polyurethane the whole thing. I surely need practice decoupaging paper. I hear that this is the hardest thing - fabric is much easier. I hope my skills improve with practice.

Best part? I did it all myself and the total cost was about $10.00. Can't beat that with a stick. Oh! And I just installed the blinds today. See the old one in the middle? Which do you think is better????

Here are the other two pieces of furniture we added. I bought these at an estate sale two years ago and I'm thrilled to finally be using them. The hutch will remain as is, but the chest of drawers is up for discussion. Plain white? Plain black? Something funky? Stripes? Hmmmmmmm. The table will definitely get redone down the road as well. Not sure there either.

Uhhhh.......yes. New garbage pale is on the list. So, all in all, this room has come a looooooong way from my previous post. When the painter comes in the Spring, this room will get a coat of Benjamin Moore's Dior Gray. Aaaaahhhhh. Oasis.

Place Cards

2012-01-01T12:35:00.000-08:00

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year to all! I hope you enjoyed everything and wish everyone peace, health and happiness in 2012.

I had my book club babes for our annual Christmas Dinner the other night. It was the perfect chance to use my Silhouette again! I made place cards for all my girlies:

I just love this machine. Time will tell what other fun and beautiful things there are to be done with it! I painted an old blonde wood wine rack yesterday and am just realizing I don't think I took a before photo. I am always amazed at what a difference one little coat of paint can make. This 90's style rack took on a whole second life now. Photo to come! Running out now to do some errands, and later today I am going to begin the redo of my old shitty file cabinets. Before and after photos to come. Be well my friends!

Gift Bag Dress-Up

2011-12-23T09:43:00.000-08:00

I FINALLY GOT MY SILHOUETTE CAMEO!!!!! To be succinct? It's LOVE. More on this down the page.....

Back to the topic of gift bags. I don't like paying for gift bags. I rarely find ones that I like and on that rare occasion I do, I hate paying for them. They're expensive! This year, I decided to create my own (with the help of my Cameo). I went to Michaels and bought a package of natural colored gift bags which I really like. They come in bundles of 13 bags for $5.99. Tons of savings right there. I also bought a roll of red ribbon with white stitching at the edges. Simple, bright and Christmas-ey! You don't need a lot of this to dress up a bag:

I like the bag just like this, but since I just got my Silhouette Cameo, I decided to add a little "sumpn sumpn". Nothing crazy, just one decoration per bag. I decided on a Christmas ornament that seems to dangle from the ribbon and set off center. I bought 3 sheets of cardstock at $0.59 each. I used red, green and pale green cardstock to cut these on the Silhouette. The homemade appeal of this bag is huge for me. It says, "I care about you and want you to feel special when you get it." Since I used the natural color bag (and forgot to buy tissue paper - another expense I don't like), I decided to re-purpose newspaper and use it as tissue. More savings. So all in all, I spent $5.99 on bags, $2.00 on ribbon (not even since I barely used 2 of the 5 yards) and $1.80 on cardstock. I now have 13 custom gift bags for a total of $9.00, instead of the $30 plus these would have cost had I bought them already made. They took about 1/2 hour to make total. They are filled with Stonewall Kitchen's Red Pepper Jelly and Sea Salt Crackers. I don't believe in filling teacher's homes up with chachki's. Let them eat, drink and be merry. Here are some pics of my cameo and the bags underway and finished. Oh! Am I going to have fun with this machine!!!! Merry! Merry!

BTW - YES that is our new wall to wall carpet in the "new" laundry/office! This room is still in process, but already, it's so much more usable....but that's another post. Do you love the bags??? Thoughts??? Please share with me!!

Rosie little picture frame!

2011-12-20T05:42:00.000-08:00

I've seen bunches of folks making these paper roses and curiosity finally got the best of me. Well, they're a bit addicting! I decided to try my hand at covering one of my frames in them. So yesterday, while the kiddies were doing their homework, I took 4 pieces of computer paper, some scissors and glue and started flowering away! This is what I ended up with:

I just love it. It's really very easy. I watched a tutorial on YouTube, only she used a glass to make a circle and then drew a corkscrew line. I just cut out circles and began cutting. I added a few large flowers and then began filling in with tiny ones. The beautiful thing about these are that you really and truly can't make a mistake. Gracie even made a giant flower to put on top of one of her pens.

Today I have a few errands and then I will paint an ugly old wine rack black. It will be moved to our dining room to hold all the bottles of wine currently sitting on the floor! Pics to follow.

Over served.

2011-12-10T19:26:00.000-08:00

So my cookie party was a great success. We had so much fun! Everyone really got into it and made some fabulous cookies. Everyone went home with lots and we all decided to freeze them for Christmas Day.

Last night was a friend's 50th birthday party....and umm.....didn't really eat all day....had double espresso vodka.....oops. Suffice it to say, I made the old Irish Exit at 9:45.....and I got away with it!!!! Love when that happens. It's the only thing I got away with....woke up with amazing headache at 4am.....three advils and 90 minutes later I finally fell asleep!

Today was spent cleaning, laundering and lounging. Nice! We even had a fire tonight. Tomorrow, I hope to get outside. :)

Cookie Monster

2011-12-08T07:30:00.000-08:00

I do like my cookies. So much so I am having a cookie exchange partay this evening! I make two kinds of cookies that are particularly excellent. One is a vanilla chip cookie that reminds me of Linden's Butter Crunch cookies that I used to get in High School. The other is my Toffee Crunch Cookie. I have to give props where props are due. The vanilla chip cookie is from the Toll House white chip bag, except that I don't love chocolate cookies, so I ditched the cocoa and the result was amazing. The second cookie began from a recipe from I got from Janice's site. Fantastic cook, fantastic photographer and party thrower extraordinaire. Check her site out. She's one fabulous babe. Anyhoo, I have made the cookie brittle many times. I even won a cooking contest with it! But I was tired of the non uniform shape of these. I wanted a regular old round cookie. So, I added a cup of coconut to the party and then took large rounded teaspoonfuls and compacted them like a meatball and baked them for 13 minutes. Oh, and me likes pecans a whole lot more than walnuts, so I switched 'em. AWESOME. Here are the directions to the chewy, crunchy, buttery party:

Toffee Crunch Cookies
1 1/2 sticks melted butter
1/2 cup brown sugar (I like dark)
1/2 cup white sugar
1 teaspoon vanilla
1 1/2 cups flour
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
4 crushed Heath Bars
1 cup chopped pecans
1/2 cup flaked coconut

Melt butter, add all sugar and vanilla and stir until glossy. Add flour, salt and baking soda and mix well. Then add pecans, coconut and Heath Bars. Mix well. Take large round teaspoonfuls of mix and compact into a ball, much like a meatball. Bake for 13 minutes in a preheated 350 oven. Makes 26 amazingly delicious cookies. Enjoy!

Looking like Christmas

2011-12-05T16:41:00.000-08:00

Christmas time is here.

2011-12-04T06:49:00.000-08:00

Today is decorating day! I've said it before, but Christmas is my favorite and Christmas looks great on the House of Babs. I had to rethink the front of the house this year. We changed the landscaping a bit, so the decorations had to change too. We used to have six boxwoods across the front, three on each side. We used to put clear lights on these and they looked very formal and English - like little pom poms. This year, I'll light the window boxes and a rope of greens swagged across the molding on the top of the first floor. My son has also requested colored lights. These will go on the Juniper tree next to the garage.

I'm also adding something new to our tree this year. My niece, Kristin, posted this photo of her tree to FB last night and I'm in love with the big lights on her tree! I'm totally copying her genius and adding them to ours.

Don't the big lights add something really special? I love them. Thanks Kristin!! Photos of our tree to follow later. Final note: Email received this morning stating my Silhoutte Cameo has been shipped! OMG. Cannot wait to get this!

You HAVE to see this!

2011-12-03T13:57:00.000-08:00

Because I am no genius and I love getting GREAT information from the Internet, I'm sharing this with you. Make It and Love It is one of my favorite things. Great ideas and she does so much research for you! You just get all the good and FUN stuff! Thank you Ashley! I will be fashioning these for all of us. No more wires everywhere!

Bathroom Redo....COMPLETE!

2011-12-02T07:19:00.000-08:00

I have rarely been this excited about something I've done/painted/created. I am just loving this paint job. So. Let's get down to business.

I believe last time I was here, I had taped off and painted two stripes. Thank the sweet Lord that I only did two of them. When I peeled the tape away, the edges were a bloody mess! Oh my goodness, it was terrible. So I went back to the internet and searched for how to get clean edges. Here's how: Tape off your stripes. Then, take your background wall color paint and paint along the tape brushing down on the tape. Putting this little layer on creates a seal between the white paint and the blue tape. It worked like a flippin' charm!!!! I needed to do two coats of the black, but it went very quickly. Are you ready for a little photo essay with results? Here it is.

First, I decided how many stripes I was going to paint. I divided this into the height of the area to be painted. It came out to 4.975858583093 for each stripe. I just measured about 4.9 inches and the last stripe made up the difference. No one is going to look at your stripes and see a fraction of an inch difference anywhere. Promise.

Once I did this, I got out my level and started drawing the border lines with a pencil. This is a must. When you start taping, you'll be so glad you did this!

Here are the RE-TAPED stripes (aye yi yi) and newly taped stripes with my white paint "sealer". This is imperative for a clean, crisp edge.

Okay. Ready for final result????????? WABAM!!!!!

Isn't it gorgeous?!?!?!? I'm so excited. I love it. Larry likes it but thinks he "may have an epileptic seizure" if he stays in there too long. Not me. Loving it. Here are "Before" and "After" pics:

Bathroom Redo - Part III

2011-11-26T18:00:00.000-08:00

I think it's Part III....??? Anyhoo, I primed today. It took about 20 minutes. My back was out all day yesterday and today the muscle spasm has released, but my back was still very sore. But I couldn't wait. I want to put on two coats of White Dove tomorrow, so that Monday or Tuesday I can tape and paint the black stripes. I also need to get back to work on my front hall closet. I think I'm going to need to do a little more spackling there....but time will tell. Just a short note. TTFN ;)

A bit of comic perfection.

2011-11-23T07:14:00.000-08:00

Happy Thanksgiving to all. Enjoy Marcel!

I can spackle! Downstairs Closet - Part I

2011-11-22T14:35:00.000-08:00

So the manic fix it mode continues. I realized I couldn't prime the bathroom until I spackled a bit. After I finished, I thought, why not tackle my HIDEOUS front closet? Our house has wood and lathe plaster walls. We live on the water and at one time or another, our chimney sank a bit causing lots of cracks here and there! One of these places was our front closet. Isn't the color lovely? This was the color of the living room and dining room when we moved in! With brown shag wall to wall carpet! And ivy wallpaper above the chair rail in the dining room! And cowboy wallpaper going up the front stairs! Okay. I'm dizzy too. Enough. Somehow, this closet has survived the 13 years we've lived here without ever getting painted. I think I was just too scare to really go in here..... What a mess. Been in my house? Never noticed it? Probably because we don't let anyone hang up their own coat! Partly from good manners and bigger part we don't want you to look at our cracked, aqua closet! Well, there's no time like the present so I spackled away! The closet will take quite a bit longer to dry since I had to really load the spackle on in a few spots. Anyway, it feels good and I can imagine my freshly painted closet in my near future. Before:

EEEEEEEEWWWWWW!!
After spackling:

It doesn't need to be smooth as silk, just not full of cracks and holes! I will have to do a light sanding and then paint. After pics to come. Floor will be sanded and refinished this spring when we have all the floors redone. Yippee!

Downstairs bathroom - Part II

2011-11-21T12:45:00.000-08:00

Today was the day. I cleaned the tile yesterday using trisodiumphosphate. I gave it a day to dry. I taped off the stripe with painter's tape.

I thought I still needed protection from the epoxy spray paint. I didn't have any of those rolls of brown paper. I did have wrapping paper I don't like, so I used that on the top and bottom of the blue tape using scotch tape to put it up.

Oooooooo. Pretty! Well, the pretty paper wasn't enough. Little sprays did get here and there....and all over the floor. Thankfully, I remained calm and it came up with Swiffer Wet cloths. Pretty easy really. So if I had to do it over? I might throw a tarp over stuff. Or not! It's a messy job - not ridiculous, but there's a bit of cleaning involved after the paint has been sprayed. Ha ha.

Here it is after the tape has been removed and I've cleaned up some messy edges.

Not bad, right? I'm happy. I'm going to give this until Wednesday to dry and then I'm going to give it a quick coat of polyurethane (freestyle). Then I can paint next week. Unfortunately, I'm going to have to prime the walls. I HATE priming. I have no patience. I want to get right to the good stuff. But this job requires paitence. A coat of primer. One, maybe two of Benjamin Moore's White Dove. Then the black stripes. Love it.

Downstairs Bathroom - Part I

2011-11-19T15:21:00.000-08:00

Thinking about my latest project. Our downstairs poweder room. It's about 5 x 5 with a simple white tile floor (that I would love to replace). The white toilet is fine and so is the white sink. I'd love to replace the sink with a pedestal sink, but that is a future venture. The rub is the weird colored border tile all around the top. It's not a color I can even name. I've tried to "go with it" for years now and am sick of it! I tired of my old paint job as well and am in a crazy, adventurous mode. Here are the now/before pics of my cute little powdy room.

Yes, I know, we need toilet paper!!! 10 year old boys....

A new soap dish where the one that is broken was, a new shaggy black bathroom carpet and perhaps a new light fixture and away we go. The plan is to paint the baby poop stripe of tile black. I'm going to use Ace Hardware's spray epoxy enamel. I've applied two coats to an extra glass tile from the kids bathroom as a test and it looks pretty good.

In order for this to cure properly, the tile must be amazingly clean! I bought some trisodium phosphate to clean them with. Then you spray the paint on. Let it cure, let it cure, let it cure....three days. Then you can apply some polyurethane to protect.

After tile job is completed, I'm going to paint horizontal black and white stripes on the wall. Something like this, but I am only going to paint 9 stripes, each approximately 6.6 inches high each. The crown molding will be incorporated into the top black stripe.

Sooooooo wish I had a bathroom this size!!! I think it's going to have a real "wow!" impact. More pics to come as we roll merrily along! Happy Saturday night. My honey and I are going OUT tonight!! Yippee.

Wreaths Part II - All done

2011-11-18T12:25:00.000-08:00

These were fun and simple and the end result is as good as I thought it would be. I wasn't so sure as they were being put together. They were very empty and sad looking until I just about neared the end. Then I started to get happy! I think these would work best with 2 sided fabric or ribbon, meaning a weave of some sort. However, I like mine anyway. Here are the finished products - KK I hope you get my drift now! This one was made from a giant roll of red snowflake wired grosgrain ribbon I got at the Costco last year.

And my personal favorite:

I like the full, crazy yet delicate look of this one. Who'd have thought that the lighter one would end up being my fave since it was so SAD to start (see previous post). I'm glad they both worked out. Give it a try and see what you come up with. I'm going to try this again with some white frayed fabric and hot gluing some shells to it. I think it will be pretty for summer.

BTW - I thought I had ordered my Silhouette Cameo.....and I didn't!!!! Horror! I ordered it last night. I have time to get my new "studio" (aka Laundry Room of Doom) ready before it comes. Also - very good news: my mother has decided to give me her sewing machine! (Very, very long story that you certainly don't need or want to hear.) So, the sun is shining and things are happening. Have a very good weekend all!

Wreaths Part I - Sleigh Bells Ring....

2011-11-17T09:24:00.000-08:00

Yes. Christmas is on my mind! It's really my favorite time of year!!!! I've been blog surfing for homemade decorating ideas and saw a neat one that put my tons of red snowflake ribbon to good use. A simple wreath made out of ribbon. You cut the ribbons into equal lengths. I used 14 inch strips on a 12 inch wooden wreath. Then you just keep tying knots. You need about 50- 60 pieces to make it nice and tight. Took me one afternoon and the end product is quite nice!

The frayed edges are super annoying. They say you can burn them, but that has disaster written all over it. I've also seen some stuff on line that is a liquid edger. May have to try that. As soon as I trim the frays....they all start coming right back!

Originally I had ordered some fabric that I thought would be brilliant for this project. But, umm...not so much. It's flaccid. 'Nuff said there, huh? So I had to order more and it hasn't arrived yet. When it does, I'll add more and see what happens, but right now, it's rather sad! Oh, yes, those tiny silver ornaments will eventually embellish one or both of these. More photos to come.

My favorite cakes!

2011-11-10T07:16:00.000-08:00

Thought I would share some of my best cakes with you since I'm in a bit of a holding pattern on my next project:

This is a rosette cake I made this summer for my Sandralee's birthday. She's my BFF.

It was super simple to make! I swear! I followed the tutorial at I Am Baker.

Sleepover cake for my daughter's birthday. Marshmallows for pillows, Nilla Wafers for faces, Twinkies for bodies! YUM and soooooo fun! She loved it.

This was for daughter's 3rd grade birthday. I used the edible prints to side the cake with. I also put them on the fondant bow that I finally made successfully! This was almost too pretty to eat, but we did eat it and it was good!

Daughter's kindergarten birthday cake. This one was super fun too. Although too much fondant for my tastes! I don't like fondant messing with my buttercream.

This was for Mother's Day. I copied my bridal shower cake. I used premade flowers from Sugar Craft.

The top of the cake was obviously my daughter's idea!!! She loved this! Cake was lavender and white.

This was my first attempt ever at a fancy cake. It looks good, except for the sad bow!!! Sooooo flat!

Great paper!

2011-11-07T18:28:00.000-08:00

You just have to LOVE Target!!! Sincerely, I find some of my greatest treasures there! While purchasing the new shredder, I had to wander a bit. It's kind of impossible to go to Target and not wander the aisles because you always find something you "need". Gracie and I wandered through the Christmas stuff (really? BEFORE Thanksgiving????) and there it was. Black damask wrapping paper. It's even flocked!!!! It's going to be perfect for decoupaging my file cabinets. They also have the sweetest little lamp with a black damask lampshade. Why in the hell didn't I buy that???? Now I have to go back!! My black and white theme has begun. May need a second roll of wrapping paper. That hutch I was speaking of? The paper would look amazing on the back wall of the shelves. Hmmmm??? I know!!!

Where else can you buy a shredder, find a treasure AND buy groceries??? Okay, yes, Walmart. But still! Tomorrow is being devoted to getting the rest of the shit out of the laundry room. I need to start the art! I guess I'll be needing mod podge too! So much fun.

Monday, Monday....

2011-11-07T05:05:00.000-08:00

Larry's gone, Gracie's gone, Laurence is waking/dressing. All returns to quiet Monday mornings. I do like them. I'm going for a walk with Karen right after I drop Laurence. I will buy a new shredder on the way home and then it's back to the LROD for more purging. We're making headway. Just a little more and then the fun stuff will begin to happen! Yay! Not much accomplished this weekend due to Supermarket Bingo, Soccer Game, party Saturday night, play and dinner yesterday. We were supposed to go to brunch also, but thankfully that got cancelled and we used that time to haul some things to my mom's basement. Oh! And we managed to get in a nice little sail with just Larry and me on Saturday afternoon:

Beef Bourguignon for din din tonight! Mmmmm.

Indiana Babs and the Laundry Room of Doom - Part I

2011-11-05T04:35:00.000-07:00

In my menopausal ADD stage, I (shame) forgot to take "before" photos. Real "before" photos. While no real decorating has been done, the room looks SO much better already that it doesn't really give you an idea of what was going on before. I spent a good deal of yesterday getting rid of a lot of shit and making a pile of stuff that will go to my mother's basement since we do not have one. Here is the most current stage and I'll share my ideas of what will be done.

Wow! This is one crappy picture! But you'll get the idea. These windows face our backyard/boats/canal. After clearing the room, I'm going to install grey carpet tiles. No need for pricey wall to wall in here - it's a laundry room/office for God's sake. Then the file cabinets will be painted black with some fun decoupage on them for some oomph! Table will be painted black semigloss. It will also be cleared of shit and probably hold my printer and a lamp and some cutesy office supplies. Chairs/stepstool to the left will go in one of our new bulkhead closets (we live in a story & 1/2 cape and there was lots of unused space on the outside of the dormers, so we put in closets and they're wonderful - photos to follow at a later date. Wow, I've done a lot more with this house than I thought....). All file cabinets will go on wall to the right of the table/desk.

Chair will be recovered (b&w fabric, natch) and used at desk. All shit will find a new home or be thrown/given away. Daughter's bass will rest to the right of the desk in the corner of the room where it is not too affected by the sun. It's a small house and this is a BIG instrument. Not sure about the windows. I'm toying with stage coach blinds (in a black and white print), or faux wood plantation blinds with black and white upholstered cornice above. Thoughts? Suggestions? Please.

To the right of the bass is one of the first pieces of furniture Larry and I purchased together. A shelf/drawer unit from Ikea.

It was darling in our tiny, one bedroom, groovy NYC apartment....when it was new 20 years ago..... Not so much here in the House of Babs. It's going. To replace it will be a beautiful antique cupboard with hutch. I bought it at an estate sale and have been dying to find a place for it here. Kind of Vermont country with slide out drawers in the cupboard and pretty blue paint on the back wall of the shelves. Yes, this will be changed too - to a B&W design of some sort.....I may paint the whole piece. I'm not one to keep things the same just because it's old. Unless of course it's a true antique like something that George III sat on or put his pantaloons in. IT'S A PIECE OF FURNITURE. Make it the piece of your dreams. So I shall.

On the next wall are the two things I hate most in this world (well, maybe next to a bathroom used by a 10 year old boy):

Eeeww. Makes my tummy hurt just to look at. I'm going to put in a shelf or two above these to hold the rarely used laundry soap, etc. I'm also toying with installing an L-shaped shower curtain rod around these and putting up some kind of luxurious curtain - tongue in cheek like. Like....they're not there???? Ha ha ha.

So imagine if you will, gray carpet, sleek, glossy black desk. Some nice lighting and cool windows and no junk lying around. Nice, right?