Fireplace

Regarding my DIY projects this past year I'm most proud of my mantel. A vestigial architectural detail (former murphy bed alcove) that most of my neighbors use as a closet, I turned into the focal point of my main room. The shelf was a cheap craigslist find and the rest evolved from there.

 I adored a filigree fireplace screen that I saw at Ten Thousand Villages but, alas, it was over $100 so I gathered and painted white some twigs to try to capture the general idea. As mentioned before in the blog, the swag lights were crafted from materials found at HD for less than $20.

 

The carved wooden snake was a Playa del Carmen souvenir, the sword a Viking replica harvested in Sweden, and the crystal was from a) parent's wedding gifts or b) a Czech Waterford 'outlet'.

The spider plants were reaped from my grandmother's 50 year old blossoming mother plant. 

In the mirror reflection are the 3 masks that collected from India (Ganesh), Italy (Carnival) and South Korea (burial), a (pretty lame) interpretation of Lascaux that I did in high school and the Civil War discharge certificates of a # great grand father.

The rug was painted courtly check ala Mackenzie Childs by a dear friend who shares my love of the whimsy.

Overview: 

 EDIT: after I posted these photographs, I added shelves & lowered the paintings.

Bathroom Update

I rearrange plants a lot. They're lighter than furniture and picky about their location. Sometimes the plant disagrees with the light, humidity or hungry cat where I originally placed it. This is why all of the spider plants are elevated out of kitty-reach. Toulouse loves the pretty yummy leaves.   Likewise, the dwarf palm planter that had been in the bathroom did NOT like the diffuse light there. So, a few weeks ago, out she came to the much more pleasant direct sun of the south windows.  She is much happier on the desk:

So to maintain the mini spa ambiance in the bathroom, I substituted what had been originally planned: lucky bamboo.  Several months ago, I had gone with the dwarf palm because I couldn't find any reasonably priced bamboo plants but a few weeks ago, I stumbled across these stalks for 99 cents/each at a small gardening shop and went crazy! (well.. $18 crazy....) I'm thrilled with the result. It seems much cleaner to me.

I also finished an ongoing de-uglify the medicine cabinet project.  Frustratingly, I didn't think to take any 'before' photos: it was a typical rusty beige blight in the room.  I used wood-flavored contact paper (it'll peel off pretty easily) and bright pink duct tape.  It took awhile to figure out how to apply the contact paper so that it didn't bubble and crease. I ended up cutting it in strips and applying it to mimic the wood floors in the rest of the unit. It gives me a thrill to open up the cabinet to see bright pink: my little secret.

 

Final Evolution Post: North View Living Room & Sunroom

Here's the last evolution post...  I decided not to include the kitchen because, other than a couple of plant exchanges & added baskets, it hasn't really changed since move in.

I've thought about combining current photos of all the rooms (including kitchen & bathroom) into another post but I won't if people aren't interested. I'm thinking that I've exhausted the reader's indulgence in my nesting endeavors. Oh well.  I must say (write) that it's given me an immense satisfaction to chronicle the result of my weekly projects this past year.
 

Anyhoo.... 

North View Living Room

Current:

SUNROOM:

 CURRENT: 

Evolution posts:

south living room
west living room
east living room
east bedroom
west bedroom 

I Live in a Forest

I had a meeting on Friday with a Dean about my summer remediation of anatomy. I'm not worried about the big test; I know that my struggles in the fall were mostly due to depression/loneliness/dislike of the course director. I'm much more focused now than I was then.

It sucks that I failed but to bastardize Cressida "Things failed are finished, joy's soul lies in the doing".  In all honesty, though it's really embarrassing and a pain that I'm going through this (I still haven't told a soul- besides you lovely blog readers), I could care less, maybe because I've experienced real loss and real regret (parents dying, words that can't be unspoken etc). I've gotten into the habit of looking at something and, if it'll stick to my soul twenty years into the future, then I'll give a shit. But having a P* instead of a P on my transcript, bullocks.

I won't fail another class if only to avoid the endless meetings with people who want to advise me, both my faculty mentors, a Dean of student affairs, a Dean of the study center, the advising center, the course director.  They all want to reassure me that it's okay, that I'll do alright in the remediation and that this won't affect my overall standing, that despite this, because of my performance in other classes, I'm actually towards the top of the class.

One positive aside, throughout the endless meetings, people have told me that with my hospital experience and people skills (apparently, I have great people skills) I'm going sail through 3rd year. Huh.

Anyhow: Here's my living room evolution. I'm too lazy to break down the cost factor. If you want to know just ask. Suffice to say, most of the money went to the plants. I used a clearance shower curtain (with sequins!) in the window treatment.

Evolution of South View Living Room

Current Manifestation: 

Evolution posts:

north living room & sunroom
west living room
east living room
east bedroom
west bedroom 

Dinner Party and Etiquette Question? Living Room West View

These "evolution" posts are fun.  I'm always fiddling my apartment decor but it wasn't until a photo organizing session last week that it became apparent how significant the change of all the combined little tweaks was.  So y'all are at the mercy of at least 2 more evolution posts: North/South views of living room.

My dinner party went well. I need to start taking photographs of the food.  Last night, in homage to the heat (I really did not want to use the oven), I went with a chilled finger food theme: 2 kinds of pinwheels (roast beef/provolone & ham/brie) on long skewers arranged as bouquets (I don't have many serving dishes- so I tried to get creative),  chicken salad (cranberries, pecans, celery, onion, mayo) bites (scooped on celery cuts), Greek salad (feta, kalamata, sundried tomatoes) on cucumber slices, Caprese skewers (ciliegine mozz, grape tomatoes, fresh basil & balsamic redux).

One of my friends brought an unchilled bottle of wine wine so I set it in the fridge and opened a bottle of sparkly and made bellinis.  After everyone had left, I noticed during my clean up that they had taken the bottle back when they left.  This has happened with this group before.  It struck me as weird before and last night it bothered me a little.

We're all poor college kids and even a $10 purchase can be a hit so I know that I shouldn't be sensitive to it but it strikes me as being really rude. 

What do you all think in blog land? What is the contemporary etiquette in this situation? Is it appropriate to take back a dinner offering if it's unused?

Onward to The West View:

 I wish that I had taken a pic before I put in the mantel (Craigslist: $45).  It was such a weird spot before. My neighbor who has the mirror of my apartment layout is using it as a closet space.

The white rug (now in the bedroom) is actually 2 ($9/each @ Kmart) that I sewed together.  The mirror under the mantel was a splurge ($40 @ Bedbathbeyond).

I went wild with the white paint: gathered twigs, rocks and the wooden box under the candles. The curtain behind the mantel was on clearance (Bedbathbeyond $12.99). It's actually a really pretty green in real life. I haven't been able to capture the true color yet (sea foam). I think the satin reflects the filtered light weirdly- it's shown as much yellower in the photograph. See here for the real color. I made the hanging lights from materials from HD (about $10/each).

 
 The green rug was in the Ikea as-is clearance ( I think it was a display piece, $24). The pillows on the couch ($12/each), the hanging lamp to the left ($9), and the sheepskin ($9) were bought on the same trip. 


All in all, my goals in this room were to add strong color without painting the walls (powers-that-be forbid it).  It's amazing the difference that adding the green rug made. I'm really happy with the result.  :D

EDIT: I've since lowered the paintings & added shelves.... More New Photos

Yes... another Evolution Post; + Social and Political Ramblings.

I'm really enjoying this summer. I've become friends with my neighbor, an recent art school graduate trying to break into Big City theater scene. We shared a bottle (two actually.. Eep) of wine and bonded over Josh Whedon, the Big Bang Theory, women's rights, our mutual girl-crush on Rachel Maddow, and certain other nerdy idiosyncrasies. 

Aside: NJ has the best state political scene ever.  A few years ago, when I was couch surfing in Cherry Hill (mom, hospital, Phillie, long story), I was introduced to one of the few Republicans I actually like (Christie).  Now.. it's looking like he's going to appoint my reigning boy-crush, Cory Booker, (sorry Hrithik, you've been usurped) to the newly opened Senator seat (RIP Lautenberg- you were a great force). Maddow mentioned in a recent episode that this would be a nightmare to the Dems facing the 2016 election season because it would portray Christie, GOP, as a bipartisan awesome person.  Even though I'm quite liberal (and so staunchly democratic- b/c of the current political environment), I'd love to see a electoral fight between two candidates (Clinton/Christie?) who actually represent coherent and practical political ideologies- something that hasn't really existed in the last couple decades.

I'm having another dinner party tomorrow night. I've been hosting these every couple of weeks or so (sans exam weeks). It's awesome. My school friends don't have a lot of gastronomic experience so they've been really impressed with my efforts so far. I'm so cool. (laugh)

Here's my living room evolution, east view:

 I regret buying this extendable table. It was $99 @Ikea. I use it now as a corner console to hold books/plants. It does come out occasionally when I have sit-down dinners for > 6 people.

New table.  I liked the cherry top but the industrial-cheap base bothered me. See this post to see how I 'doctored' it up. The dracaena and pot were $15 at HD. I made the chair runners from 2 yds of burgundy satin ($8 walmart).



 Current manifestation:

 

The mirrors on the wall (5 sets @ $9each) really brightened the room up. The old dracaena had become infested with mealybugs and I hadn't noticed until all the blades weren't salvageable. (aside: I stripped them, treated with soap/water and the plant is making a remarkable recovery outside on my doorstep). The new one was $18 @HD. The dracaena on the table was $6. The paper lanterns were on clearance at Pier1 for about $12 total. The ribbon tacked to the wall was another Walmart find ($4.00).

Caveat: I don't have a camera so all my photographs are taken with my 5 MP Ipad camera. I'm thinking to get a new camera when my financial aid disperses this August. 

Cheers.

Evolution of a Bedroom, East View

I realized that I never mentioned how final exams went. A.W.E.S.O.M.E.  Both the (cumulative-ugh) physiology and immuno finals were insanely challenging. I wanted to cry when I finished because I was certain that I failed but I ended up doing really well. Huh.

Now that the semester is over, I can actually reflect on how I like the type of material that has complicated convoluted interconnections (immuno, metabolism, endocrine etc).  It's more interesting to learn and it's actually fun to apply- kind of like in Orgo when 'making' a certain molecule- being able to choose different paths to get to the same place.   I can't wait until patho next year when it gets really interesting.

As for the promised bedroom photos:

Here ya go.  Again, mostly rearrangements of my already owned stuff. I'll mark the cost of new things (mostly plants) in the photo captions.  I put the curtain up on the one side because I only had the one curtain rod left (& I was too cheap to buy another..) and I wanted to hide the ugly little AC unit.

Moving day. You can see that there's absolutely no privacy without the blinds. I hate blinds.

I switched the chairs out for the bench when I rearranged the bed.  The laundry basket is new: It was the cheapest wicker @ Bed Bath & Beyond. I don't remember how much it cost... under $20, I think.

The window film (and applicator) was apprx $15 at Home Depot. I didn't want to spend the $30+ on the decorative films so I got the cheap stuff and carved waves at the top to make it more interesting. I found a piece of scrap wood in the basement and the shelf brackets were about a dollar each at HD. Plants: orchids $8.99, aloe $3.99  at Trader Joes. The Ponytail Palm was $7.99 and the jade (RIP) was $5.99 @ HD. The jade was my first final exam fatality.

 FINAL (for now) result....

I love how glowy the room looks with all the mirrors (see west view). I really tried to position them to maximize light and minimize people reflection. I do NOT want to stare at my own sorry self all the time. I actually have to bend and crane to see myself in any of the mirrors. Phew. 
 

I picked up the shelf ($5) and the Sheepskin ($9) from Ikea. The Dracaena was $6 @HD.

The shelf & brackets were about $7.00 at HD.

So all in all, I spent less than $25/month deuglifying my bedroom (east/west). I've convinced myself that that's okay because I'm saving 3x that by not having cable TV.