Ch-ch-ch-ch-changes!

We have had a busy and productive past few weeks. My husband is on fire! He resolved for this new year to be more productive, and so far he's installed a mirrored jewelry cabinet (he bought as a gift), taken down the track spotlights in the kitchen and installed a new light- I can see now!

Here is the hubby in the kitchen with the original spotlights. Note that they do not light up the area well.

And here is the new and improved, bright and evenly lit kitchen! Note how much more lived in the house looks now as opposed to the previous pic, where we hadn't moved in yet. Jorge also hung the frames on the left recently, which deserve a post of their own. I cross-stitched a massive Save the Date and Wedding invitation. On the right is a double sided clock, imitating a vintage Parisian train station clock. We also finally got our wedding photo framed, and Jorge put that baby up!

Finally, Jorge is helping me plot that garden. I know, it's something we have been talking about since June! Since then, I've lost all my tomatoes and peppers to whitefly, but replanted a few weeks ago. So far, these are doing much better in the cooler weather. I think that the high humidity was a lucrative environment for pests.

This is what the "garden" plot looked like last time I posted about it. Now, here's what it looks like:

We got cedar instead of pine even though it's a bajillion times more expensive (and is very fragrant) because cedar is rot resistant. Those frames are going to house lots and lots of garden soil, and it will look great. Note in the upper left hand corner of the yard, the banana plants have flourished!

When I decided to start planting, I wanted to immediately dig up all the rocks in my little plot and fill it up with soil. I went and borrowed a dozen books from the library on the subject. A few months ago, all we just had were a tremendous pile of rocks that no one wants, and it was either too hot or too wet to plant anyway. The thing about a sudden urge to do something is that it doesn't work well with having to wait. I haven't been taking pictures of our compost bin, but it's actually broken down quite a bit as it is teeming with grubs! Timon and Pumba would love it in there. It's not really enough to amend let's say 200 lbs of topsoil, but I plan on adding some cheap cow manure compost (don't worry it doesn't smell) and using my compost as an organic side-dressing. Hold on, I can't help myself.

Manure. I hate manure.

I still have some plants that are somehow alive. This is the second batch, the first (as you saw in past posts) did not survive the whiteflies and blight. Well, the oregano and succulents did.

Here's my Oregano and sprouts of Sweet Basil. As you can see, the Oregano is doing well.

Here we have the new tomatoes and bell peppers, and a tray of butterfly flowers.

So, the weather is nice and our one week cold snap is over. This weekend we are going to fill that baby with soil and transplant my garden- or bust. The good thing is that with all the work that we (Jorge) put into it, it will last years to come, and there's always next October...

Blog ain't dead (and stuff about furniture)

On the contrary, there are ideas that have yet to be realized, and topics that have barely been touched. I've lost considerable steam here, yes. This can possibly be attributed to several things: One, I've been reading a ton-load of books. Two, I am trying to acquire pictures of things that I both promised to blog about and I very much want to post on. Three, my obsessive nature leads me to do one thing very intensively, and then forget about it for a time while I obsess about something else. Four, I realized that I actually have other things I've been neglecting to do, mostly stuff around the house. I mean,  not just some things, more like a list of about 30 things I've been neglecting. Lucky for you, I've got some useless banter to fill the void today, including a trip we made to Ikea yesterday. We brought home some beautiful white furniture for our bedroom that looks something like this:

I really love this style of bed frame. It's simple and classic; I doubt that this is going to look tacky and outdated ten years from now. It almost looks vintage, and I liked vintage before it was cool to like vintage (Uh oh, I sound like a hipster!) I found this image on a google image search and would attribute the source if it was known to me:

Isn't it gorgeous? I love it. Unfortunately, I married a man who loves sleek and modern decor (which utterly clashes with my love of classic) so we had quite a time trying to compromise on decorating the house. We both liked the Ikea Hemnes series. It looked simple and vaguely "country" style to me, but sleek enough to satisfy Jorge's tastes. Either that or I'm just rubbing off on him. Anyway, our dressers look like this:

So, white bedroom furniture. I like the look of wood furniture, but the floors of our bedroom are some kind of wood laminate that looks somewhat like this:

I thought that the wood finishes we liked best would clash with this color floor, so we went with white. It's not only a pretty color, but it's safe and it matches with things. Now we are asking ourselves what we are going to do about the paint job. The previous owners didn't do a very good job, but they left the can of paint at the house. I like the color, but am not sure that it would work with everything else we've got going on. I mean, it looks good (and would look better as a contrast against the white) but I spent years of my life making this quilt and want it to look really nice with the quilt as the focal point of the room, without compromising the beautiful contrast of the headboard against the wall. Our walls are currently this color:

It feels a little darker than it looks in the picture. I know that it would contrast against the headboard on the bed, and made that stand out... but I feel like maybe going a little lighter or maybe in the neutral range. Here's what the quilt I'm talking about looks like: 

So, what do you think? Leave it like that? Maybe go a little lighter and match the green on the quilt? Go neutral? Darker? Blue? Purple? All I know is from reading blogs like Design*Sponge. I don't claim to be good at this, but I'm pretty sure I know what I like (more or less). Now that I'm shifting gears back into house decorating, I think I'm going to follow up with the things we have already did back in April and May.



Garden on the brain

Three weeks ago I cut open a tomato and the seeds were sprouting inside. So of course, I planted them outside. They appeared to die as they were growing mold, but lo & behold! They live on! Then on Sunday, I found out that a certain succulent called Echeveria Amoena survived a trip from St. Augustine. I put them down and forgot about them and they grew! Ever since, I thought "I'm a farmer!" With this face:

Here are what I have so far of the tomatoes:

We have a plot that would be perfect for a garden but is now some sort of southwest style desert themed garden. There are tons of rocks and there was a cluster of aloe, which is a succulent plant with medicinal characteristics- the juice inside the leaves are a sort of burn salve!

 

I didn't realize that aloe reproduce the way they do. What I thought was maybe 5 was more like 40. I wanted to put the aloe plants in a pot, but when I started pulling them out of the ground, I felt like the midwife to Perdita in 101 Dalmatians. The end result looked like I was pulling bodies out of a burning building...

I read that this is okay for them, because the roots will grow callous and resistant to disease. I'm trying to give as many as I can away and I will try to find a place to plant some here... but I have a feeling they all won't survive. Knowing how they apparently reproduce, I can't imagine they are in short supply anywhere. I wonder how long that cluster was there... we only moved in March of this year!

Meanwhile, I've got 11 books on hold that I have to pick up from the library on gardening and the like. More on composting, succulents, herbs, and seedlings later.