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Tagged: white

oh, the life of a cat: diy outdoor lounge for a spoiled beast

  • June 11th, 2012
  • 0

How about this weather, Midwest? It’s been gorgeous, although the drought has put a damper on things a bit (fortunately it gave us a nice big storm today). Our garden has been soaking up the summer sun and giving us outrageous amounts of zucchini, a few handfuls of edamame, a nice crop of watermelon radishes, countless herbs, and around 20 not-yet-ripe-but-starting-to-look-delicious tomatoes. Between the garden’s generous production and our Bounty Box subscription (a local grocer, the Root Cellar, provides us with a big box of local and seasonal produce every week), we haven’t needed much else in the way of [...]

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room inspiration: bright breakfast nook on a budget

  • April 17th, 2012
  • 2

Way back in January, I asked whether you all would prefer the kind of inspiration boards I’d been putting together–without regards to cost–or if it’d be more helpful for you to see some boards done on a tight budget. The budget boards got the most votes, and so I’ve been hard at work putting some together for you. They definitely take more effort; pretty stuff is everywhere, but pretty and cheap stuff is a little more hidden. It totally exists, though! If you can, scour your local thrift stores and garage sales–you can find an incredible number of gems–and if [...]

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christmas footprint (bootprint?)

  • November 9th, 2011
  • 1

So I try not to even think about Christmas until after Thanksgiving, because I really like Thanksgiving–lots of food, you hang out with your family, but no pressure to give/receive gifts and not many songs (which are festive and exciting for like a week and then just aggravating). The thing is, due to limited financial resources and a tendency to obsess about things, I usually make most of the presents we give away. Sometimes this backfires (Dad, I PROMISE you I will finish that damn scarf–enjoy it because I’m never making another one), but normally I feel like it lets [...]

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room inspiration: future bedroom

  • November 5th, 2011
  • 0

Jimmy and I are kinda-sorta house hunting. By “kinda-sorta,” I mean we don’t have a lot of money, we have a lease that isn’t up until July and it’s probably not really time to be looking for a house, but we’ve pretty much decided on moving next year and I’m determined to have a) a “real” house and b) a place we can renovate/do things to without fear of losing a security deposit. Half the fun of getting a new place is daydreaming about how you’ll decorate it (probably more than half, really–signing papers and moving and updating contact info [...]

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before & after: new old filing cabinet

  • September 19th, 2011
  • 11

After Jimmy and I remodeled our office earlier this year, things were looking pretty good…except our storage situation. All the important stuff we had to keep track of (tax papers, medical records, ideas for bestselling novels written on bar napkins) was sort of scattered around: some in an accordion file, some in a really cute Liberty of London file box, and some in a horrible plastic box from Wal-Mart. Something clearly had to be done, but I dragged my feet for months because the prospects were so grim. We wanted 4 drawers and didn’t have much money to spend, which [...]

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operation awesome office

  • September 18th, 2011
  • 4

This happened a while back (the weekend before Valentine’s Day this year–I think the aftermath of a blizzard had just melted and I was itching to do something), but I thought I’d share it with you in preparation for a smallish before-and-after project I’ll be writing about later this week. Our office, when we moved in, was a dark little room (fun fact: there are no windows in our condo–only doors, one in each room) with dark green paint and a big closet. Other than putting up a bright yellow pegboard, we basically ignored the place, throwing stuff in there [...]

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