Memorializing a Town of Memorials?

So I've been a bit flummoxed about what to do with my bathroom. I moved in with all white bathroom towels, shower curtain and rug (remember the pink bathroom?), and was planning on doing a sort of chic french sort of look, bringing in some black accessories, including a black wire mannequin earring holder thing I got for Christmas. That all changed when I went to Bed, Bath, and Beyond and was forced to buy the DC Metro system map shower curtain. I know the typical way to decorate around that would be to pull out the primary colors and go crazy. The bathroom is the one space you can really do that, but for some reason, I just can't get a good picture in my head of what it should look like. It also doesn't help matters that the tiles on the floor and in the shower are white with the occasional brown tile. If it weren't for that stupid brown tile, it would be a different story. But anyways, I digress. My idea was to try and make it transportation themed of some sort, and so I made a basket out of extra maps I've had lying around, with the intention of making more, but that has yet to be seen. And I still couldn't picture how to pull it all together.

Enter this month's edition of Real Simple/a random blog where I saw the same thing. I love graphic posters, and the travel posters for state capitals by The Heads of State are fantastic. I like them all, but I thought, why not go all out and DCify my bathroom? I'm thinking this:

and this:

I've been wanting to get the Ork poster for a while now, and this just gives me an excuse. :) So my question is, does this constitute an overly kitschy-themey bathroom?

(photo 1: The Heads of State, photo 2: Ork)

Lewis' New Home

So I realized that I had forgotten to post a very momentous occasion that occurred a week ago - Lewis moved into his completed terrarium! He's very happy having extra room to leap around in and explore. He was a little confused by the waterfall at first though, as he had never seen running water before. He stared intently at it for several minutes and then tried to eat it - apparently everything that moves is food, in his head.

Now that this is done, boyfriend has massive plans to make a Cambodian temple terrarium for Troy and Hines, his two original dart frogs.

Dress for the Part

I'm a transportation geek, I fully admit it. My shower curtain is the DC metro system:


So I was really excited when I came across this dress via Humble Ablog, but unfortunately it's no longer available. :( Hmm...having interesting thoughts now about converting my shower curtain into a dress....


(photo 1: Izola Shower, photo 2: Nordstrom)

Life To Do List

So awhile ago I decided to start a "Things to accomplish before I die" sort of list. This kind of petered out as I haven't added to it since. But I was reading Martha's blog today (gotta love Martha), and she will be making pierogi with her nieces on her show next week.

Being "of polish heritage" myself (Martha's politically correct way of saying that), I have also grown up with this polish staple at holiday dinners, although mine are usually of the Mrs. T variety.

So anyways, I've been wanting to learn how to make them from scratch for a while now, so that is a good addition to my Life To Do list.

To Do:

1. Travel around southern Europe for one month (accomplish by mid-forties).
2. Make pierogis from scratch.

(photos courtesy of: 1: the Martha blog, 2: Mrs. T's)

Getting Things Done

So, in an effort to finally pull my apartment together, I'm doing the Apartment Therapy Spring Cure. This week was focused on the kitchen, and so it got a deep clean and organizational frenzy, as the cupboards weren't quite arranged the way I wanted. Side note - who knew an oven could get dusty? I mean, I know I don't use it that much, but still, there was an actual layer of dust on the bottom inside my oven.

I can't get too creative with the design, as the wall below is literally the only available wall space in the whole kitchen. I tried to tie in the yellow of the living room with my tea kettle and paper towel holder, and then I pulled these three platters out of a box where they've lived for several years and hung them on the wall.

One of the things to do weekly in the Cure is to buy fresh flowers - this week was daffodils!

And onto one of my projects that's been hanging over my head - the gallery wall. After much debate, my orderly engineer side won out and I went with a geometric layout. I was planning on getting some of my photos printed for this, but I had some of my mural photos printed that I had never framed, so I went with those instead. These have a bit of a long history for me, and it's only taken about 3 years for me to decide I wanted them on my wall to get them up there. :)

The feature piece, my Christmas present from boyfriend, is a photo collage that has yet to be framed (it's the large square one on the floor), but the rest of them are hung up and look good (if I do say so myself). I'm anticipating it will grow, but these are just all the random frames/photos/artwork I had laying around.

Update on other random apartment projects - we actually managed to get a little bit of work done on the loft bed last weekend, that is, until the circular saw battery ran out and we realized the extra battery and charger were at boyfriend's house. I have high hopes of getting stuff done this weekend, but we'll see. :) The gorgeous weather we've been having means we can actually work outside, so that is a definite plus. Stay tuned for more updates!

Feeling a Little Square

Seeing as how I have as yet to finish up my gallery wall, I figured I might as well add to my inspiration file. This one doesn't fit with the artwork I currently have, but is a possibility for another location, perhaps. I really like the skinny white frames against the white wall.

Photo courtesy of Apartment Therapy)

Fly Through the Air...

So I've committed the cardinal sin of blogging - I've been terrible about posting lately. Hopefully this will get better soon, but rest assured, I'm still alive, just my life is very boring lately and full of work. But there have been a few bright spots, mainly, my mini-vacation last weekend with some co-workers to the Bahamas. It mostly involved eating, sleeping, and eating and sleeping on the beach. When we finally got tired of relaxing, we had fun learning the trapeze, which was so amazing! I think I've found my new calling...