a little office update

Budget: $45 for paint and supplies.

Before:

The “thus far” photos are below.  It’s definitely not an “after”, but it’ll be staying this way until I get the guts to start nailing holes into the plaster for the pictures…that one really high picture is just placed on a pre existing nail.  I haven’t bought anything new for this room, since I’m trying to spend as little as possible.

 

a new project

I’ve decided to try to start doing a little creative work on the weekends.  I’ll most likely try to sell a few things on etsy.  The attempt will be chronicled on a new blog:

www.muddywatersdesign.wordpress.com

There’s not much yet, but I appreciate any visitors. 

one of the best commutes home

I have an amazing commute.  Five minutes.  Two stop lights. No parking fees, no metro outages, no back ups.

Our house is located on what is called a minimal maintenance/ rural road.  As far as I can tell, this means it will be the last to get plowed, and even at that, the plowing does not result in visible pavement.  For instance, here is our road’s current state (and I just realized this is a horrible example, as one can see only about 2 feet of roadway.  Oh well.  You get the picture.  There’s a lot of snow):

Tonight was a first.  I had to pull over to let a two horse open sleigh pass.

Coolest drive home ever.  Though the horse poop does not do much for the pristine white road…

my $1.25 tree topper

I love Christmas trees.  I’m really not into holiday decorating — more so out of laziness than any scrooge-like tendencies.  I’ve always made sure to have some sort of tree.  Years ago, when I had a 400-square foot apartment right outside DC next to the Key Bridge, I had a very special Christmas bush; a cheap Ikea evergreen plant decorated with ornaments.

We picked ours up from the local Knights of Columbus on St. Nicholas Day, the one holiday that rivaled Christmas in my childhood days (growing up in Germany tends to do that!).  I’ve been searching for a proper tree topper for a few years, but I haven’t found anything that I’ve really liked.  Ideally I’d want something similar to what my parents used growing up — a Nuremburg angel.

Perhaps someday I’ll have $100 to spend on Christmas decorations!

Until then, I think I’ve found a stand in.  I bought a 25 cent poinsettia at Lowes last weekend.  I then went to a florist today and bought 20 cent water tubes for flower stems.  After a little snipping and some jamming (those water tubes are not designed for poinsettias thick stems…), I attempted my first flower topper.

Not to shabby!  Especially for that price point.  Last year I had bought a tin tub from Lowes (they get quite a bit of business from me…) to use as our tree stand.  This year I picked up a bunch of pinecones on clearance at Michaels.  So, my one Christmas decoration in its entirety…

curtains!

Nick did an amazing job, not only hanging a curtain rod in the dining, but dealing patiently with me as I had him adjust the height.

And on another note, it’s still snowing.  The view from the living room a few minutes ago:

This doesn’t bode well for the spring flood outlook…

blizzard

Our 100-lb lap dog braving the winds.

And the trickle of a watefall has turned into an impressive showing of ice:

self-indulgent curtain shopping

After yet another weekend without power, subsequent minor flooding of the basement, lack of hot water until this afternoon, and an early afternoon off from work after becoming sick from lunch — I became weak.  I bought new curtains for the dining room.  Anthropologie has these on sale for $49 per panel online:

I’m hoping to install a 7-8 foot curtain rod in front of the little alcove in the dining room, shown here (two year ago right after the first round of priming):

I can’t find a current photo from than angle, but the current look is better illustrated here:

I’m fairly confidant they’ll look great — but if not, I can always put them in my office upstairs.

hiding messes

The chilly weather has lead me back indoors, and a somewhat regular 45 hour work week has me a bit bored.  With new free time on my hands, I decided to try my hand with sewing again.  I began with an extremely easy project – hiding the messy open shelving in the bathroom.  With a budget of $0, I found an adjustable tension rod I had previously bought for upstairs and a set of cheap IKEA dishtowels that were purchased a year ago.  Since I used pre-hemmed dishtowels, I merely needed to sew one side to make the rod pocket.  A nice little ten minute project (as opposed for the half dozen other projects I have going on – each nearing the 6 month mark…ouch…). So here’s the finished project, complete with non-ironed dishtowels, the As-Is section IKEA throw rug covering the exposed subflooring, and plastic mirror frame. And, it you look verrry carefully at the light switch, you can see one of the hundreds of asian beetles that invaded the house this Fall. Lovely, eh? Nothing like living in a work-in-progress.

A $17 improvement

We ironically finally had the ceiling fan installed…just in time for 30 degree weather…without a furnace.  Oh well.  At least that ugly, dead-bug-catching light fixture is no longer.

 

The fixture before:

proof washing machines float

Our basement four weeks ago: