Before and After: the Kitchen

As promised, kitchen pictures! Unfortunately I don't have any "before" shots for you because my computer is off in Apple never-never land, where computers go to wrack up ridiculous and obscene repair charges that their owners can't afford.

Anyway. The upshot of sending my computer out for repairs is that I have very very little to do. Except paint! Here is my beautiful new kitchen:


Well, beautiful except for all the crap on the counter, but let's be realistic, that's just part of my kitchen. Look at the pretty red!


Oooooooh, ahhhhhhh.

I'm very pleased with it. It took way longer and way more coats than I expected, though. I kept doing one more coat, thinking, "well, surely this will do it". But no, 2 days and 4 1/2 coats later, I'm finally done. I think it was worth it, though!

All of my painting made me work up an appetite. And plus now I have this lovely background for food porn. So here is what I had for lunch just now:


(Are you reading this, George? That one's for you.)

I think my next painting project may be the entryway, but I don't quite feel like starting in on it yet. That's going to take the longest of all, and I kind of need a break from the painting for now.

So, this morning kind of sucked. Well, first, some background. I took my computer in to the Apple store on Monday to have it "diagnosed", because the screen recently started doing this weird flashy thing. Not a huge deal, but somewhat annoying. The guy there said he couldn't tell if it was the graphics card itself or the connector between the graphics card and the screen that was acting up, so he'd have it sent in and replaced and I should get it back within the week. And it would all be covered by my warranty!

So great, excellent news. No computer for a few days, but the flashing would be gone. Fast forward to this morning, when I check my email and get this little gem from Apple saying they found "evidence of liquid damage" on the inside of the computer, which is not covered by my warranty, and which will cost no less than $755 to fix.

Excellent.

I begged, I pleaded, I cried a little, all to no avail. I told him to send it back unrepaired because I don't have $755 to spend on a problem that's only moderately annoying.

But jeez! I was so mad!! Mostly because I KNOW there has NEVER been any liquid anywhere NEAR my computer, unless it is carefully and entirely stored within a container.

Except then I remembered that one day when I got caught in a light rain without an umbrella. :( I guess that's got to be it, right? Gah, I don't know. So I was already bummed about that, and then I moved on to our heating bill...

I will spare you the gory details, but let's just say I had to go for a long run this morning. I wasn't planning on it, either. I was planning on taking the day off from running, because my legs were feeling kind of tired. But I realized I had some stress issues to work out, and absolutely nothing to do today anyway.

And you know what? It ended up great. I went up into the hills, and the ground was wet from the rain last night, and the sun was peeking through the trees, and it just smelled fresh and new. I was looking down at the Bay, and I ran down this road I've never been on before, and there was this amazing canopy of twisting branches with a backdrop of clean winter light, and I just thought, "okay, life is good". I mean really? Life is pretty darn good. So I have to wait a little longer to get my computer back in tip-top shape, and our heating bill was higher this month. I still have a perfectly fine computer, and a roof over my head and a heater to keep me warm, even if our insulation is pretty worthless. No, I don't like spending money, but really, it's just money. Just. Money. And I have a family and friends who love me, and two crazy dogs that get me out the door every morning, and a month off of school, and a bright red kitchen. So what's not to like?

I also was reading this book yesterday that my friend Michelle got me for Christmas, called "Zen and the Art of Running". It talks a lot about how the only thing that is responsible for your emotions is your mind. There is nothing inherently frustrating about having to pay $755 to repair a computer. That is simply a fact, a state of affairs. And I can choose to act with frustration, or I can choose to be kinda bummed out and move on. My reaction to the situation does not in and of itself change anything; the only outcome of me being frustrated is... uh... me being frustrated. So why not stop being frustrated?

I know all of these things, but I think it's handy that I happened to read part of that book last night, before I got the Apple email. It can be hard to be zen-like in the moment, when you're getting yourself all worked up. I'm not saying there aren't things that are worth getting upset over. But most of the time they're not. Life is way too short.

On that note, I shall sign off. A belated Merry Christmas and Happy New Year to everyone! Check back in a few days for more crazy paint colors!

Before and After: Bathroom Edition

I guess there are lots of things I could tell you, but the only thing I really want to say right now is, look at this! The Before and After Bathroom Edition!

Before:

After:

I love having bright colors around me, and I've been gathering painting ideas for our house since we moved in. I finally got the okay from our landlady this past week, and my mom got us a gift card to Home Depot, so I picked up some awesome paint yesterday and started in!

So far I've only done the bathroom. But I bought the colors I want for the kitchen and entryway, and I finally decided what I want for our bedroom. So, good thing I've still got some money on that gift card and another few weeks to burn. :)

Merry Christmas to all!

Before and After

I've been a busy bee around these parts! Let me show you what I've been up to over the past few days!

First, Roger's uncle Steve gave us this bench when we first moved out here last year. He had a bunch of furniture and stuff to get rid of, and we had literally nothing, so we took it and have been stowing it for over a year. It's mostly been used as a surface for holding boxes up until now.

Basically I decided that I would start making our house into a home over break. The problem is that we still don't have a bunch of money to go out and buy furniture. We're doing okay, don't get me wrong, but when you move across the country with nothing but a mattress, it costs a lot of money and takes some time to re-accumulate the amount of stuff you take for granted when you've been somewhere for a while.

Anyway, I decided to reupholster the bench. I was intimidated by the idea at first, but it's really not hard at all. You just need a staple gun, fabric, and something to pry out old staples with. And some time. It takes a while.

I found some nice, slightly funky but classy fabric. To complete the look, I decided to also paint the legs, put on some cutesy trim, and use mismatched buttons for the top. The buttons are what's taking forever. I'm almost done threading them through the fabric and cushioning, but each one takes a few minutes. After I get them all threaded, I'll have to secure the cords underneath to get that nice dimpled look on top, but you can see how it's going to turn out:

So yay for that!

Even better, though, is that I decided to finally do something with the front entry way of our house. Until today, it's just been a coat rack with some boxes that we didn't know what to do with. We still don't really have anywhere to put the boxes, since we don't have any cabinets or shelves to store things in/on, but I hid them somewhere else and went to town on the front room. Here it is in its "before" state:

I guess I should note that we moved that big table and chairs in from outside for Thanksgiving. It's really more of an "outside" table, and we've used it for grilling up until now, but we needed more seating/serving space for guests, so we brought it in and it hasn't made it back outside yet. Anyway, here, look at the after shot:

I haven't decided what to put on the wall above the chairs yet, but it's sure crying out for something. I might be adding more snowflakes to the ceiling as time goes on, but what I really want to do is paint. I have all these really great ideas for painting, but I haven't gotten the go-ahead from our land lady yet. I think she'll be okay with it... I hope so! I'm getting really excited about it, so I hope it works out!

Well, I'm tired, for some reason. I think I'm going to sit in my new sitting area and watch TV on my computer or something.

Happy Holidays to everyone!