May I walk all over you?

Pretty rugs of the day.

Angela Adams Rug in Nectar/Dandelion, via Black.White.Yellow


Unidentified beautiful rug via Apartment Therapy

The Great Divide

So boyfriend is starting a new job in a week and a half, which is awesome, except for one little thing. It's in Virginia. And not just like, across the river Virginia like where he currently works. It's out there. I'll fully admit it - I'm a city snob. I refuse to ever live in Virginia and pretend that I'm from "DC". But I'm trying really hard to be supportive and encouraging, because that's what girlfriends do. He currently has no plans to move, but that could change once he tests out the commute, but hopefully he wouldn't move all the way out there, just into the across the river territory. But I was doing a little google-mapping for work, and I came across a road that I fully support him living on, because it's awesome. Who can resist living on Frying Pan Road? And no, I won't even make him buy an alpaca, which is the current requirement for him moving to Fairfax County.

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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...

New Life Goal...

So after reading this article, I have turned my life around. I will devote my life to raising the world's tallest dogs.

(photo courtesy of Daily Mail via i suwannee)

New Additions to the Family

So I'm sure you are all wondering how my Saturday spent with frogs was, and as you've probably guessed, we came home with a few new additions. We now have four Allobates femoralis froglets, which are a kind of dart frogs from Peru. I've learned the difference between people who keep dart frogs and people who keep tree frogs this weekend, which was interesting. Dart froggers (that's the actual term, interestingly enough), keep frogs as a hobby, and so they don't usually get common names, only scientific names, let alone actually have the owner give them an individual name. I guess when you keep 450 frogs, it's difficult to come up with enough names. But tree froggers tend to keep frogs more as pets and give them names, which is why I like them better. But without further ado, I introduce you to one of the new babies (we're not naming them until we see how their characters are).

Frogtime!

So I haven't done a post on my frog baby in a while, and seeing as how boyfriend has talked me into going to a meeting of the mid-Atlantic dendrobate society tomorrow, I figured it was applicable. I'm totally making fun of it now - it's being held in someone's basement, who has 81 terrariums down there - but I know as soon as I get there I will immediately get really excited. Dendrobates are dart frogs, which I'm not as fond of, but boyfriend loves them, so hopefully I won't be too tempted to come home with some new friends, but we'll see. Anyways, here are some pictures of Lewis, chilling on his rock.

Live Off Groupon for a Year?

I love Groupon - a novel concept where enough people buy into a deal for a business to give a discount. I had heard something about some sort of contest thing they were having, but hadn't read the details until today, which actually turns out to be a really neat idea. They are offering $100,000 to someone who will give up everything they currently have (put their stuff in storage, close their bank account, end their lease, etc), and commit to live solely on Groupons for a year, traveling around to the 30 different cities that have groupons. Tempting...but could I actually do it?

The Bold and the Beautiful

I've always wished I could pull off bold red lips, but unfortunately, I just look ridiculous. Apparently it's all the rage now though.



(photos courtesy of the Sartorialist)

New Career Path - Pogonologist, Student of Facial Hair

It's amazing what you can learn from the newspaper. Who knew there was such a thing as studying facial hair? (Interesting article from the Post by the way, you should take a look).

In other news, I have indeed survived snowpocolypse, but I think I worked even more than normal from home, so I've been lazy in doing things like blogging and keeping people up on my life. :)