breakinglight11, posts by tag: housing - LiveJournal

This weekend I came up to Alexandria, Virginia to help Bernie move into his new apartment. He got a place just a five-minute walk from the patent office where he works, a small but very nice one-bedroom place in a fancy apartment building. I like it very much; it's a real grownup place, and a real change of pace from everything in Boston that all tends to be a bit older and more run down. This is all so nice and new, with amenities like a gym and a swimming pool. I'm spending the beginning of the week in Maryland to help him unpack and be together a little. I hope we can make it nice for him, and I may get to miss the worst of the snowstorm, as the DC area probably won't get it as bad.

I have a lot of work while I'm up here. Bernie's got to work of course during the day, so I guess it's not the biggest problem. But before I get back, I need to grade a ton of papers, put together the very first week of my online class and post it to the website, and prepare for the new round of Vivat Regina and Base Instruments rehearsals. So I can't entirely treat this like a vacation.

I finally got around to getting a new warm weather bedspread for my room.



I've needed one for a while now, not just because the weather's finally nice again, but because the one I'd been using was old enough that the wear and tear was starting to show, particularly on the pillow shams. I'd really liked the old one, it was white with a pale blue seashell design, but it was so threadbare it just wasn't presentable any longer. I wanted another one in the white and blue color scheme, as it matches my room. I won't live in this room forever, I know, but I will for at least another year, and I've always been partial to pale blue and white in decor. There was nothing that I liked that had both colors, but this style came in a version of each, so I mixed the spread and the pillow covers. I really liked the white/ivory version, but white is so hard to keep nice. I'm actually a little worried that I should have gotten blue on the shams, as that's what wore out worst on the old one, but I like how this combination looks best. 

So we did end up losing power yesterday. It was strange, though. Around 6PM, mostly everything went out, except that some of our overhead lights were on kind of dimly, and one outlet had enough juice to let us plug in a cell phone. Eventually everything went dark, but I've never experienced a blackout with that weird half-power before. It was only annoying because I couldn't see well enough to do much of anything. I would have been happy to while away the rest of the evening with a book, but it was too dark to read. Fortunately we have a gas stove at Illyria, so I was able to do a little cooking with a firestick to light the burner and a flashlight to look into the pot. I made a soup for the week out of the leftover ham bone with some odds and ends in the fridge, and a pumpkin soup for Jared and I to eat for dinner. We ended up going to bed pretty early, and it was nice to get the extra sleep. All in all it wasn't so bad, especially given how much people suffered in other parts of the country. I said a prayer for them as I fell asleep, and one again this morning. The power came back on around 7AM, almost exactly thirteen hours later. I hope everyone is safe and warm wherever you are, and I'll keep thinking of everyone the storm hit worse than us.

My parents are leaving today after a very nice, short-but-sweet visit. We walked through the city and went out for some delicious meals. They also brought me tasty things.

Tomatoes from the garden. There were tiny cherry tomatoes, but they were so small and delicious I ate them like candy and now they're all gone. I shall have to cook something tasty from the rest.


Assorted hot peppers, which I put in my copper bowl. Don't they look pretty? I'm not too big into spicy foods, so I'd love to give these to people who will enjoy them. Residents of Gloucester, you are going to get a bunch.


And glass milk bottles! Aren't they charming? I got a bee in my bonnet recently about how much I'd like to keep milk in bottles rather than the plastic jugs, so Mom brought me a couple!


I'm such a vessel-and-crockery dork. If the copper molds on the walls didn't make me official an old lady, that has got to clinch it.

Bad night yesterday. Went to the urgent care center to get my unhappy belly and chest pain checked out, and basically just got told to watch for signs of it worsening and was sent on my way. But I've been having heartburn-like pain in my solar plexus setting in in the evening for the last four days, pain that doesn't respond to the typical heartburn measures of Tums or Pepto or even ibuprofen. I wake up pretty much fine in the morning, but it's bad enough that it makes it hard to get to sleep. The doctor doesn't think there's anything really wrong with me that isn't just going to have to run its course, but because I felt okay when I was getting examined, like an idiot it didn't occur to me to ask what to do about the pain. So last night was spent tossing and turning because it hurt too much to relax enough to fall asleep.

Anyway. On a more positive note, I fitted my pink checked dress muslin and sewed up the side seams. Now, if I'd been doing this right from the start, I would have had a good way to transfer markings from the pattern onto my material, and then made minor adjustments to the basic pattern suggestions based on my own body measurements. I plan to do better in the future, as I have requested the tracing wheel and transfer paper that lisefrac suggested for Christmas gifts. For now, I decided to kludge it. I held the dress up to myself and pinned it along my sides to make it conform to my shape. Then I unzipped it, took it off, rezipped it, and faintly connected the pins with a line of pen. I took the whole thing to the machine and sewed the sides, using those marks as my seamline.

Once sewn, I tried the thing back on. Damn if it didn't fit half bad! My kludgey method actually did make it conform pretty well to my shape, keeping all the darts and things in the right places. I made the skirt a little too narrow on the right side, making it impossible to pull it over my legs, but I just ripped it out to the hip, repinned it, and sewed it more carefully. Turned out fine. Imperfect, especially since the fabric is so thin it sometimes clings to the outline of my bellybutton (tacky, tacky, tacky) but overall not that bad. Much better than my first disaster of a dress attempt, which was so rushed and stupid that I can't believe myself.

I wasn't sure how to take a picture of this, since I don't want a shot of me wearing it until it's finished, but I couldn't think of any good way to display how it's sewn up. So I just draped it over a chair and took an oddly angled shot of it just for illustrative effect. You'll have to trust me that it makes sense until it's done.


Next step is to put in the facings and sew up the shoulders. That is seeming to be trickier than it first appeared.

Also, on another fabric-related note, what do we think of this?


On a whim I draped my sheer white striped curtain that I got at the thrift store over the empty curtain rod holders on my office window. It's just thrown up there, so I'd have to figure out how to arrange it more carefully, but do we like the idea? Does it work in that place? I do find myself wanting to put curtains up where the windows are bare...

My grownup corner is no longer in quite the same state it used to be. My beloved butcher block is under the window now, while my collection of copper pots hangs on another wall. But it sure does look lovely against the blue wallpaper, and the adorable little spice rack that blendedchaitea made is a charming companion for it. And doesn't the newest addition to our little copper family look nice? :-D

I'm beginning to think my journal needs a "home decor" tag, given how often I write about it lately.

I just had to post a close up of how lovely it turned out. The varnish just makes it glow. I am so pleased.

I wasn't planning to post about this again twice in one day, but I'm just so pleased!

I hung the mirror on the wall with monkey hooks and a length of 18-gauge mirror wire. Monkey hooks are cool, they're meant to be hand-pressed into drywall and slide up behind so that a tiny little hooked tail sticks out of the wall for hanging supported by a long, upward-curving top. I placed the hooks just a smidge lower than I meant to, meaning the table has to go just a little bit in front of it, but it still looks very nice. Even, too! The wire allowed for fine adjustment.

What pleases me most of all is how the table came out. A while ago morethings5 very thoughtfully gave me a bag of various wood stains and sealants. This was just the nicest thing for me, as I have a deep love for the look of stained wood and have used them for a number of projects since, like the coffee table in my living room. For this one, I compared the samples on the labels of each color of stain to the wood of my bedroom set, but found none of them really matched. So I decided to try combining them by layers to see if two together might work. I first used a ruddy color called Sedona Red and allowed that to dry. Then I layered over it with a much darker shade of Walnut. I had to bring it back upstairs to compare it with the frame of the mirror, and look at the result! It's a damn near match! How about that? :-D

I am ridiculously pleased. All that remains now is to seal it with a nice protective polyurethane finish. There's a couple of those to choose from in my lovely gift from Jonathan. Then I will have a perfect bedroom vanity! I love house decorating stuff.

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I got my new little table!

It fits perfectly, the right width to use the space without crowding it and just deep enough to be useful without blocking the doorway into the office. Right now the mirror is just sitting on top of it and looks to be all right, but I'm a little nervous of it just perching up there unsecured. If the table got knocked, it could come crashing down. So I should probably attach it to the wall anyway. I think I will try to do that today. Wish me luck that I don't damage the wall.

Also, I mentioned I wanted to stain this table. It's totally unfinished so I think I'll try to make it match the wood of my bedroom furniture, which you can see here in the frame of the mirror. It's actually a nicer piece than I thought from the seller's photo, so if I take a little care it might actually come out quite nice.

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