decorative garland

Got crafty over my Thanksgiving holiday break and made a little garland/lights that should work for the entire holiday season.  Christmas is coming!

xoxo Susannah

Happy Thanksgiving!

Scenes from a marriage:

Husband: You should wear the fuzzy pants today
Me: *Blank Stare* (This is pre-coffee)
Husband: If you're going to stuff yourself, you should be comfortable!
Me: Awwww.

Happy Thanksgiving from us! We are holed up in our tiny studio cooking too much food for two people, with a cat who thinks we are terribly cruel for not feeding her every hour.


*Please note: The "fuzzy pants" are my husband's flannel pajama pants and they are insanely comfortable.

date!

Two weeks ago, hubby and I went on a new adventure date.  Do any of you other newlyweds try and find creative date ideas?  Well, I do.  I enjoy going on new adventures, and so does the mister.  It only makes sense to go on adventures together.

The most recent adventure was to a colonial farm! 

I wrote a little more about it here.

Have any other creative adventure date idea?

xoxo Susannah

using buttermilk

Remember that time I tried making butter?

Yes, well, I made some more, then decided how I was going to use the runoff milk.  Buttermilk pancakes!

mmmm... 

They were so delicious!

Especially with some of my accidental blackberry syrup on top!

she's famous!

The other redhead (Sarah) of this red-haired duo recently had an article published in the Huffington Post!  How awesome is that?!

Take a look and let us know what you think.  I'm sure she would enjoy some feedback, and we always love to hear the thoughts of readers!

Find it here.



xoxo Susannah

On loving a mad scientist.

I married a mad scientist.

I mean, I knew this when we got married.

But certain nights it hits home more than others.

Father Octavian [about the Doctor]: Dr. Song, I've lost good clerics today. You trust this man?

River: I absolutely trust him.

Father Octavian: He's not some kind of madman, then?

River: [pause] I absolutely trust him.

Leonard Hofstadter: Penny, you don't want to get into it with Sheldon. The guy is one lab accident away from being a supervillain. 

I mean, in my husband's case, he's one lab accident/discovery away from being Iron Man not The Joker, but the point remains.

Oh my mad scientist. How I love you.

Lazy girl DIY

So remember the last post when I said I wasn't a DIYer? That not *strictly* speaking true.

I do like to make cute things and spruce up my apartment with little touches.

I just don't want to spend more than about an hour (30 minutes is ideal) doing it.

Basically, I have your classic case of lazy DIY. Where you want to make cute things, you just don't want to devote your life to it.

But I'm guessing there's more then one of you out there who is like that to, so I introduce to you: Lazy girl DIY! Where I will show you my quick, cute projects. All of which can be done with minimal skill and minimal time.

Lazy Girl DIY 1st Edition: Ugly wall-->Pretty Wall!

I love contact paper. A lot.
It's pretty, it's removable, it wipes up easily  And the new contact paper has really pretty and trendy designs. When we moved in, I bought a roll for the kitchen shelves, but I had a ton left over and wasn't sure what to do with it.  Enter: The brown wall of dooooooom.

When you live in a studio, you make "walls" out of some crazy things to separate the spaces. For my husband and I, we made a bedroom wall with a dresser, a bookshelf and a wardrobe. It borders the study/eating area of our apartment.

Exhbit A. Functional? Yes. Pretty? No.

So armed with a roll of contact paper I decided to cover the back of the dresser (the one in the middle). The wardrobe and the book shelf have porous backs so I decided to do a "spot" test (you can kind of see it in the photo) to see if the contact paper would stick or fall off.

I forgot to take photos during the process (lazy DIY remember) but essentially:

1. Measure Contact paper on dresser.
           I taped a section in the middle and then rolled it down and cut it off at the bottom. I then did the same thing for the left and right side.
2. Stick Contact paper on dresser.
          For this, I suggest help, but you could absolutely do it alone if you wanted to. Peel off the top bit of the contact paper and stick it to the top of the dresser. Press down to smooth and stick it to the dresser and keep peeling the backing off bit by bit until you reach the bottom. Repeat for the other two sides.

At this point my dresser looked like:

 Pretty good right? But I didn't like the top bits that were blank and there were some spots on the side where  the contact paper didn't quite meet up. Mainly because I can't cut in a straight line to save my life. So I decided to use some scrap contact paper cut into strips to cover up the blank spots. Like so:

Please notice all the care I took into cutting these strips. (You have to read that in a deadpan voice) After cover up all the blank spots, this is what I had:

 Yay for pretty dressers and non-ugly walls to look at! And because I believe in showing the goof ups of DIY, I present the below:

 Yeah. The edges of this dresser are porous and the contact paper doesn't stick terribly well to it. So I used tape to stick the loose edges to the side of the dresser. Will it win me any awards? Nope. But it's functional and I think you can hardly notice it. :)

Happy Sunday!

A home tour for all the messy people!

A thought about home tours.

I don't know about you, but I read *a lot* of blogs. And they all seem so shiny and happy and their houses are so clean. 

And while I have wanted to show off my cute little studio since we moved in, I was waiting.

"I don't want to do a tour until it looks pretty."

"I'll wait until everything is unpacked"

"Oh I'll wait until the desk gets here"

Well the desk is here* (accompanied by three more boxes of dear husband's stuff. Joy.) and I STILL don't want to do a tour.

Because here's the dirty little secret about this blog.

Looking for cute decorating ideas/housekeeping/diying?  I'm not the red head you want.

I am just not one of those cute diyers. My apartments look...messy most of the time.

And you know what? That's ok.

So for all of the messy people out there...this tour is for you!

*Actually it was here about three weeks ago. I've been a neglectful blogger guys sorry. 

Welcome to our lobby! To the left you can sort of see the built in bike racks, and that door in the left corner is our front door. 

Welcome to our messy studio!

This is our "pass through" kitchen (I think that's the fancy name for it) Please note our gas stove (We are THRILLED :) ) and in the corner you can just see our knife rack. Better picture here: http://www.thinkgeek.com/product/86dd/ .We call ours Fred :)

This is our lovely built in island with heater underneath. My computer live here much of the time because I like to watch tv while I cook/do the dishes. :)

This is our other island, next to the built in.
Please note the Tardis Cookie Jar. :)

Our Kitchen Guardian

Immediately after our kitchen you enter the living room! (With crazy tv system mounted to the wall)

                           

Our "Dinning Room" which is conveniently located about a foot away from....

The Study! Also, a little lesson in being a messy person. This desk is a sectary desk. When open, it adds more mess to the room. However....

Once shut you look a (teeny) bit cleaner! Yay!

This is the "nothing" corner (admit it, you have one too). The chair is where laundry gets thrown, or  one of us sits when we want to work alone. (The chair back faces the sofa table you can kind of see in the living room picture :) )

Our lovely bedroom. (Yes, we are fond of Ikea)

And one of my favorite features of the apartment, the built in shelves. These border the left wall of our bed and are GREAT for storage, as you can see

Ok  this is probably my most favorite part of the apartment. Our deck. It's lovely to be able to step outside and sit in the sun with a book, or have a glass of wine out there. We had dinner out there a few weeks ago, and it was amazing. :)

And now: Some Studio Vignettes/Tips

Short on bookshelves, but have lots of windows? Make one of them a bookshelf window. This one stores my library books.

WIndow sills are also great for storing knick knacks If you're like me and want to be able to open the window though, make sure you only store things you don't mind getting a little damp if it starts to rain.

Cats always warm up an apartment. :)

And our time's up folks! Thanks for stopping by!

fall decorating: one at a time

I love fall. No, seriously. Best season ever.

But how in the world does a crafty girl decorate a studio apartment for fall without buying any more stuff or overwhelming her husband (and herself) with so many things just "sitting around not picked up"?

By gathering ideas and working one step at a time.

Last week, I decided I simply must have some fall decor in my teensy apartment.  I don't care if it means I have to rotate my knicknacks or dust more frequently.

So, after checking out some adorable and easy ideas in BHG, I knew the perfect place to start.

Like every girl obsessed with mason jars, I've made my own beeswax candles in mason jars.  (We'll save the details on creating these candles for another post.)  I took leftover orange scrapbook/craft paper, cut it in half, cut out pumpkin faces, and taped it into a cylinder just large enough to fit around the candle with a little breathing room.

Easy peasy.  And it's one tiny bit of halloween decoration.  Since we have such a small apartment, there's no way we could do real pumpkins this year. But these cute little candles are enough for me for this year!

disaster!

So... I realized today that I hadn't given you all a proper post in a while.  Last night, I thought I would make a delightful snack, take pictures, and tell you how to make it. 

Unfortunately, I failed. Miserably.

See?

Fail.

It was such an epic fail that I set off the smoke alarm at 10:15 at night and almost forced the entire apartment building to evacuate. It was...exciting.  Quite an adrenaline rush, I must say. For about 45 seconds, I ran around opening the windows and turning up fans and opening doors while envisioning hundreds of people standing outside our apartment building blaming me for setting off the smoke alarm.

I shall attempt said lovely snack again soon. I've made it before, so I don't know why it was difficult this time.

C'est la vie, I suppose.