Moving on over...

Ok kids, it's been a good run, but I've decided it's just too annoying to keep up two blogs, and since this one no longer has a geographically accurate title, it's getting the boot.  I mean, it's still here and everything, but going forward all my posts are going to be on my new blog:

http://laurasdailylookbook.blogspot.com/

See you over there!

Someday...

The electric company for our cabin in rural Pennsylvania is a co-op, and they send out a newsletter every now and then, which I love, primarily for the classifieds section where any member is allowed to place an ad.  Seriously, where else can you get an alpaca AND baby miniature donkeys at the same place???? Unfortunately, John checked, and we aren't allowed to have either in Collingswood.  I briefly contemplated moving to the cabin permanently so I could have them, but that didn't seem wise, given the whole no plumbing situation.

Shed a Little Light on the Subject

When we moved, we left our dining room chairs behind, and have plans on buying a table, chairs, a buffet, light fixture, and a piano.  Currently the dining room holds our old table (which is a piece of crap), one folding chair, a stool, and a side table with all our frogs on it.  We've been searching for all of these things since we've moved, and haven't hit upon anything that's a complete slam dunk.  It's tricky, because I don't want everything to be all matchy-matchy, John and I have very different tastes, and those things all add up to a decent chunk of change.

When we looked at the house, I immediately knew the dining room light fixture had to change.  I don't have a picture, but it's a generic boob light, you know the kind of flush-mount fixture that looks like a boob and is in every rental ever.  I want some kind of chandelier or pendant, but haven't really narrowed it down much yet, that is, until I looked on Craigslist today and found an amazing light fixture:

My awesome paint rendition of what it would look like in the dining room.

It's a little out of our price range, but it's just so unique and the art-deco-ness of it would fit really well with our house I think.  Now I just have to convince John that he likes it too, which may be a bit of a challenge.  What do you think, is it amazing, or just too much?

Welcome to my New Home!

So since it's taking a while to get our house all set up, I figured I would give a tour using the listing photos.  These were taken why the previous owners lived there, so it will look different when I'm done, don't you worry.

The yard is just waiting for my new dog. :)

Moving inside, this is the living room, and the first of our three stained glass windows.  In the little nook by the stairs is the coat closet, and across from the stairs is the front door.

I love the columns going into the dining room.  The woodwork in the house is beautiful.

View from the dining room back into the living room.

The previous owners redid the kitchen about 10 years ago.  It's not the colors I would have picked and it's a bit smaller than I would like, but it's workable.  

We haven't figured out yet what we want to do with the breakfast nook yet - I want to figure out how to make it into a more working space for the kitchen.

The mudroom.

The upstairs hallway, looking into the back bedroom (John's office).

The back bedroom, which is John's office / frog room.

The middle bedroom, which is our bedroom.  I'm not a fan of the carpet, but it's in good shape, so we're leaving it alone for now.

Front bedroom, aka guest bedroom, aka Laura's closet/dressing room.  Picture it without any furniture and the floor covered in my clothes and that's about what it looks like right now.

Our only bathroom.  It's really awkwardly laid out (literally no horizontal surfaces except for the window ledge) and the tub plumbing is not in good shape, so we might redo it at some point in the nearish future.  Also, stained glass window #2.

And the final room, the attic which will be my sewing studio!  A lot of work needs to be done here, though, so it will be a while.

 And there you have it - my new home!  What do you think?  Any suggestions for me?

Taking a snooze...

So we've been in our new house for about a month now, and things are slowly starting to look a little settled downstairs, but upstairs is a wreck.  I really want to get our bedroom set up, but there are a few problems in the way.  One, we have these big white cupboards from our old house that I want to retrofit into a wardrobe system, but it will take a bit of work and John has been having back problems off and on since we've moved, so they are literally sitting in pieces around our room.  The second big problem is our bed.  Unfortunately, our stairs are super steep, and the box spring just never made it upstairs, despite removing trim and gouging holes in the plaster (oops!).  That means we have been sleeping on our mattress on the floor in the middle of our room for a month.  Not exactly my cup of tea.

I've been thinking about what I want the room to look like overall, and ran across these photos on Apartment 34 today, and now I want a low simple white bed, but we'll see if I can convince John on that one. :)  What do think, soothing or too simple?

Random Tidbits

So by now you may have noticed I've actually started a new blog:

LaurasDailyLookbook.blogspot.com

I wanted to have a more focused place to keep track of my style and daily outfits and sewing and stuff, so that's what that is all about.  I'm still debating what to do about this one, considering I never really liked the URL (I was mostly just annoyed that there is another LMcWethy in the world), and I will no longer be rambling around DC, since I'm moving to New Jersey in 2.5 weeks!  I think I might as well keep it up though, for all my random thoughts that don't fit in with the theme of my new blog, but who knows.  I'll let you know what I decide. :)

And since I titled this post tidbits, I figure I have to include more than one tidbit, so here is my story of the day.  I've had a bit of a love/hate relationship with my phone for a little while now.  It's about 1.5 years old, and I paid full price for it (ouch) because I didn't want to sign a new contract with Verizon, so I want it to last as long as possible.  Unfortunately, it's been showing signs that that is not going to happen.  Twice in the past month it has factory reset itself.  Twice.  Yeah, not cool, Motorola Razr M.  Anyway, I've successfully demonstrated that it isn't the end of the world, despite the fact I lost about a years worth of progress on Mystery Manor (level 104!!!!).  Anyway, this morning my alarm goes off on my phone like it does every morning.  Unlike every morning, the lock screen is frozen and I'm unable to turn off the alarm.  And, oh yeah, my phone is the one phone that happens to not have an external battery.  Not cool, Motorola Razr M.  So it goes off for 20 minutes or so, and it's really loud.  Due to my amorous neighbors, I happen to know the walls are not really soundproof, so I hid the phone in my workout clothes drawer.  When it had finally decided to stop, I was like, ok, I will take it to work with me I guess and see if it ever fixes itself (still frozen at this point).  That is, until the alarm starts going off a second time.  Back into the workout clothes drawer it goes.  When I left for work it had just started it's third cycle of the alarm.  My hope is that it will eventually use up the battery (battery life is not great anymore, another indicator it's on its way out), and will magically be all better when I start it back up.  Here's hoping!

Time for a change?

When the lady at Corner Bakery asks me if I've changed my hair, that means one of two things:

A) I change my hair too often

B) I drink too much coffee

Sewing Away...

So last summer I ordered some fabric to make a dress to wear to my friend's wedding.  Unfortunately, it arrived too late, and I didn't even attempt to make the dress, so it's been sitting in my stash for a year now.  Since I had a Saturday to myself last weekend and another wedding coming up next weekend, I decided to give it a go.  Per usual, I decided to make things hard on myself and come up with the pattern on my own, despite spending two hours at JoAnn's looking at patterns (and buying the lining fabric).  After spending about 12 or 13 hours straight on Saturday, it is definitely starting to look like a dress, surprisingly, but I still have to finish putting in the zipper and hem a flowy silk chiffon skirt.  It may or may not be done by Friday, we'll see.  Anyways, here's a sneak peak at the fabric:

It's a little psychedelic and I'm not sure how much I like it anymore, but I'm bound and determined to finish this bad boy up.  Also, I really want to wear my 5" heels, and they will look fabulous with the dress, don't you think?  :)

Stay tuned for the full reveal next week!

Signs of Spring

Our trip to the cabin this past weekend was a success - it is still there and standing, and I even did a bit of work, raking up the leaves in the yard.  One of the things I love about going out the cabin in the springtime is the beautiful little blue flowers that pop up around the front door.  I have no idea what they are called but they are so pretty.

Walking on air...or laminate flooring, depending on your perspective

So as I mentioned last time, John and I spontaneously purchased 400 sq. ft of laminate flooring for the cabin back in 2010, and it was probably the second best purchase we've made, in my opinion.  Prior to this, I never removed my shoes in the cabin, because in the kitchen, "bathroom" (aka room with a mirror and a sink hooked up to nothing), and the bedroom the flooring was cracked and dirty tile, and in the living room it was an assortment of various carpets nailed down that looked as though they hadn't been cleaned in several decades.

After removing everything except the carpets - all masked up and ready to go.

Moving the wood stove which was hooked up to that chimney pipe was an amazing feat.

After ripping up the carpet, John caulked all the cracks in the plywood subfloor, in an attempt to keep nature out.

Unfortunately, I don't have any in-progress shots, but it was super easy to install.  While obviously a cheap laminate, it works perfectly for the cabin and is a breeze to keep clean.

The wood stove ready to be moved back into place.  A little ottoman on wheels was definitely our friend, as it weighs a bazillion pounds, approximately.  Unfortunately the kitchen is still to this day covered in stick-on tiles, but eventually that will get taken care of as well.

Feeling Spotty

I've never been big on animal prints, but lately I've been coming around.  Last year I got these leopard loafers, which I've actually worn a decent amount.

I try to think of them as a neutral, but I'm not going to lie, I mostly wear them with black and camel.  I am thinking about working my way up to larger doses, but in a more abstract way, perhaps.  I love how this skirt is like a polka dot with a nod to leopard.

What do you think - is animal print too intense?  Should I stick to my loafers, or are you like my husband, who thinks even they are way too much? :)

New Fridge!

One of the first projects we undertook at the cabin, aside from just cleaning and cleaning and cleaning, was to replace the fridge, because the original fridge was old and gross and dead.  Because the electricity was all shut off in between visits, mice found the fridge to be a lovely home and ate through a lot of the external bits which caused lots of problems.  So back in 2010, we headed off to Lowes to find the cheapest small fridge we could find, that wasn't a dorm fridge.  We found a great deal on a fridge, but we also found an amazing deal on laminate flooring.  We weren't intending to do anything about the floor any time soon, but it was too good to pass up.  We loaded up the explorer (there literally wasn't a square inch left over) with our new fridge and 400 sq. ft. of flooring and away we went.

After removing the fridge, this was the grossness that remained.  I won't show the close-up shot, but trust me, it was not fun cleaning that out.  

 The old fridge just barely fit out the front door.

John proudly showing off the new fridge.  We now leave the fridge breaker on when we leave, to avoid having more mice colonizing the fridge.  The $2/month electric bill is worth it.

Next up - a beautiful new floor!

Off to the Woods

This weekend we are heading out to our cabin the middle of nowhere Pennsylvania for the first time this year, which is always a bit of a nervous time, as who knows when the cabin may eventually fall down the mountain.  I've realized I've only discussed the cabin tangentially on the blog here, so I figured I would give a bit of a background.

What the cabin looked like the first time I visited, back in 2008

John's Grandpop built the cabin about 40 years ago, and he grew up going out to the cabin for family vacations.  The owners of the adjoining 160 acres use the cabin during hunting season as well, and we have free range of their property when we go out, so it is a good relationship.  Family members stopped going out there regularly about 15 years ago or so, and the neighbors only went out a couple of times a year, so the cabin slowly was going downhill (both literally and physically).  While Grandpop did a good job building the cabin, he was a minister, not a carpenter, and it was built slowly out of scraps over time, so it was not in the best shape when John and I started going out regularly about 5 or 6 years ago.  After Grandpop passed away, Grandmom gave the cabin to John, since he was trying to fix it up.  We've been slowly trying to get it back in shape, and it's doing much better these days.

A few of the specifics - it is situated on a very small mountain, and we have about 4.5 acres of land, which is pretty secluded.  The cabin has electricity, but no running water (stay tuned for massive improvements in that department this year), and is about 20' x 20', with a loft over half of the first floor.  I've also realized I haven't been great about documenting everything, so I don't have any good pictures of what the inside looked like before we got started, but trust me, it was a little scary.  Because it's at the bottom of a hill which requires 4wd, and no one in the family had a 4wd vehicle until Hubby, everything that came and left the cabin had to be hauled by hand up and down a very steep hill (including all water).  Needless to say, not a lot has left the cabin in the past 40 years, so it was a bit full, both of stuff and wildlife.  Regular trips to both the cabin and the dump have been taking care of that, so it's much better these days.  Over the next few days I will get you all caught up to where we are now!

Tetherball Bear

I've been obsessed with bears for some reason lately (finger monkeys, move over), but Hubby won't let me get one for some reason. :)  So I guess I just have get my kicks via youtube.

Spring has sprung!