Greyed out.

Every so often, I discover something about myself that makes me stop and realize that I'm becoming my parents. I'm not talking about another weird-looking, potentially-cancerous mole, though one of them bestowed me with that lovely gene. Thankfully, they haven't been cancerous yet. I'm talking about the neuroses that can't be explained by anything other than a personality trait.

I have my mother's obsession for clean sheets and bedspreads.  This means that I've bought three bedspreads in three years.  As I write this, I have tabs open for new bedspreads. I show no signs of slowing down.

In just as much time, I've realized that none of these bedspreads has been what I actually wanted. On a very regular annual cycle, I would decide that my bedspread was the solution to my bedroom decor problems. Nevermind the hole in my heart for the perfect headboard, my desire to paint the walls, the lack of bedside tables or lamps, to name a few. Clearly the bedspread has never been the pivotal problem. I would spend a few months researching, waiting for perfect prices, and then anticipating the arrival of the bedspread (because I usually order them). 

This was the exact situation I found myself in before I left for England for two months. With the impending trip, however, I showed some restraint and didn't make a purchase. The very day I landed in the states, however, I did. Dad's plane was delayed, so Veronica and I took a trip to nearby Ikea to kill time, and I bought a duvet cover. Honestly, I was in America for three hours and I bought a duvet. This is why Rhonda thinks I'm seventy years old. 

I thought it was the duvet to solve all problems. My former duvet, from West Elm, had proven to not withstand much pressure on its pintucks, so I would occasionally hear a rip when I flopped down on my bed after work. I know there are other solutions to this problem, such as not flopping on the bed in utter exhaustion after work, but it's absolutely the best feeling in the world to take off you pants and flop on your bed after work and the walk home in the oppressive DC humidity. The duvet wasn't having that, though.


The IKEA duvet was plain and without any frills. I wouldn't rip it. I thought the grey would be a nice compliment to my various colors of pillows, and hide any potential spills very well. Somehow the West Elm duvet completely hid a Kool-Aid spill. 

The result was very 'meh'. Instead of making the pillows pop, it seemed to pull them into it's blasé abyss. Note that not all of these pillows live on the bed at the same time - I was just trying to see who would compliment the new bedding best. It's a real life Survivor: Pillows up in here. That, and the comforter within doesn't want to lay flat, so there's persistent lumps. And I need a headboard and side tables.

I thought maybe the problem was the euro sham textures being too matchy-matchy with the standard shams, so a quick trick of the fabric, and I had two new pillows. Or fake pillows, as this is just fabric thrown over them. I'm sorry, that was insulting. Of course you knew that.

 
Turns out, that wasn't it. It's not working, and I have to face the fact that I might need more of that blue damask fabric. I think, however, that I'll crush this duvet problem with a white bedspread. All white, with subtle texture, and that's big and voluminous. The pillows will pop, my future door-turned headboard will be a neutral, non-completing background to add some masculine to the fluffy, feminine bedding, and it will just be the perfect yin and yang. Funny thing is, I thought I wanted that in January. I held off on that though, and then three months of pent-up duvet-postponed led me to jump on the first neutral in Ikea (because there wasn't a white). I fully regret these decisions.

A lot of this is pending a house and a wedding and other monetary-demanding things. 

As if my six-months of deciding and really feeling that this could be it, fate stepped in with this post on a blog I follow today:

That's Erin's bedroom from House of Earnest and she just so happened to post a new white bedspread today, complete with a narrative about how she's been pining for one, talked herself out of it because it'd be hard to clean, realized that all hotels have white bedspreads and there's a magical thing known as bleach, and then went for it. If that's not a sign, I don't know what is.

Sorry for so much bedspread talk. I'll try to liven it up.

Picture This: Week 24.

I started a picture-a-day project this year. My intent is to try and appreciate every day, the good and the bad. That, and it's a fun way to see the year compiled into a bunch of snapshots. I'm posting weekly recaps of the past seven days. It's a fun way to recap the week and to keep me motivated to try new things and live it up every day. It's rarely ground-breaking, but I couldn't handle that anyway. Does anyone else do this? I'd love for you to share! You can start anytime, too - a new year doesn't have to start on January 1. I'd love to nose around your life and live vicariously. In the least creepy way possible. And PS - my sister does this as well, but I'm losing faith in her ever updating her blog. Check out my past weeks through the "picture-a-day" topic link on the right.

June 10, 2013

I had a meeting Monday afternoon that required me to brave the sudden opening of the heavens. That water rushing down the street was almost overflowing onto the curb!


June 11, 2013

There was no sign of the storm on Tuesday, just a beautiful walk to work. My walk from Chinatown to Mass Ave takes about six blocks, and the character of those areas changes just as quickly. I discover new pretty buildings every day.


June 12, 2013

I'm lucky to have a family that understands my obsession to this instant dough. I haven't been able to find it easily in DC, so my mum makes sure to stock me up.
 

June 13, 2013

The threat of storms and a derecho lurked most of the week. Unfortunately, we didn't even get a good thunderstorm out of these ominous clouds.


June 14, 2013

I got a new work computer on Friday. It's lid snaps close! Major upgrade.


June 15, 2013

I'll miss the brick sidewalks and tree-lined streets of Alexandria.


June 16, 2013 
 

There are days when I wake up and my bed-head is better than I can hope for my hair to look that day. I'm jealous of my bed-head volume.

Pack it up, pack it in.

Every time's a good time for a House of Pain reference. 

As I gradually pack for my two moves this year, the first coming in a few weeks, I've been trying to organize and sort everything I've gathered in the past two years of not moving. It's like these two moves are to make up for my celebration of a lack of move last year. Karma. Anyway, the goal is to make it as seamless as possible, or as close to that as I can get with boxes and possessions in storage across three states. 

The closet is under specific scrutiny and my fix victim was my ribbon hanger.

I originally got the idea from Pinterest. Take a pants hanger and use it to stock your spools of ribbon. This was a revelation made in my early days of Pinterest, when every pin made me scream YES! THAT'S SO SMART. My enthusiasm was that strong. Now, most intimidate me. That's neither here, nor there.

It turns out that the ribbon spools on the pants hanger was not a smart idea. Rather, ribbon spools on a hanger in my closet might not have been a smart idea, because the ribbons twisted and twirled around my clothes. The real solution would be a craft room, but that's an out-of-reach luxury in DC.  I also had the unfortunate luck of buying ribbon spools without an actual spool piece on each side, so the ribbons wobbled.

I had initially thrown the ribbons in a bag and resigned myself to a life of ribbons stored in a bag. Okay, maybe that's a little dramatic. Pinterest, the sneaky site that it is, came in to save me when I didn't know I needed saving and presented this: the ribbon box.

The pin doesn't link to anywhere useful, but the concept is clear. 

I set off to make a box to hold it all. By make a box, I mean that I used a shoebox.

Even the size 11 box couldn't fit my small array of ribbon.

I used an exacto knife to carefully cut some holes along the side. 

I fed the ribbon through the holes, but realized it wasn't right.  The holes were too big and the ribbon still wobbled. It was more manageable, because it twisted back into the box instead of around my closet, but still. That wasn't the goal.  I had planned to recover the box, but scrapped it when it failed. So that bottom box of the Pinterest pin is a hoax. Truth hurts.

I retried with a bigger shoebox. This one had sold shoes, not just sandals. I started by spraying the sides with spray adhesive and using leftover curtain linen to smooth around the sides.  I finished the present-wrapping method by hot gluing the fabric on the inside of the box.

It turned out quite nice, if I do say so myself. I may have just tried this out in different sparse displays in my house because I packed every knick knacky thing up.

I then measured out where I wanted my holes. I chose to space them 3/4" apart, so I went along the box and marked the spots in pen.

I had originally planned on punching the holes where I marked the pens, but my eyelet-puncher/hole-puncher only has two depths, so I deferred to the 3/16" setting. The pen marks did help line up my punches, though, so it wasn't a total lost cause.

Using the eyelet punch piece, I then went down the line of holes and popped in the eyelets. It was super easy - I pushed the eyelet through then used the punch to flatten their posts and secure them in place.

Just like that, my ribbon was moving in and staying put. 

The mistaken bonus is that the lid slides down over the eyelets, holding the ribbon tails in place. It also means that if my need for hoards of ribbon ever dies, I can re-purpose the box and not have to worry about the strange sight lines that a row of eyelets on one side.

Man, I should've made this box eons ago. I'm a bit disappointed in myself, and I packed away all my little decorations so I can't even style this guy up on my desk. Karma.

Rainbow Cake Bake.

Veronica's 24th birthday was a couple of weeks ago.  She's big on life presents (presents spontaneously presented to her throughout the year when the desire strikes the presenter), so she's always tossing out options for us. Off-hand, a few months ago, she mentioned that all she and Dinah, her older cat that turned five this year, wanted for their shared birthday was a rainbow cake.

I was up for the challenge.

I started with two boxes of white angel cake, a pack of food coloring, and the ingredients to make our favorite homemade icing. I wanted to just link up the icing because I was sure I had made it before on here, but it seems that is false. So here's the icing interlude:

Icing, makes 3 cups:

•  1 cup vegetable shortening
• 4 cups powdered sugar
• 2 tablespoons of water
• 1 teaspoon of vanilla or almond extract (I usually do a half teaspoon of each if there's no nut allergies celebrating)

Mix the shortening, water, and extract in a mixer. Add in the powdered sugar slowly and increase the blending speed. Mix until all is well blended. This recipe makes stiff consistency icing. For thin consistency, add two tablespoons of water for each cup of icing. For those that don't want to do the math, that was six tablespoons in addition to the ingredients above for thin icing.
 ...do do do. We're back to rainbow cake making. I mixed one box of white cake per the instructions on the box. I then divided the mix into three bowls by scooping 1/3 cup to each until I was out of mix. Then, I added in drops of food coloring until the mixes were looking like their respective colors.

I baked the mix according to the box, let them cool, and started icing. The layers stacked from purple up to red.

Greg bought some sparkler candles to top off the cake.

We sang, she smiled, and blew out the candles a few times.

Then we cut the cake for the big surprise.  Veronica was really excited.

Happy 24th, pretty girl! You have a very exciting year ahead of you, and I can't wait to celebrate along the way with you. I love you!

Picture This: Week 23.

I started a picture-a-day project this year. My intent is to try and appreciate every day, the good and the bad. That, and it's a fun way to see the year compiled into a bunch of snapshots. I'm posting weekly recaps of the past seven days. It's a fun way to recap the week and to keep me motivated to try new things and live it up every day. It's rarely ground-breaking, but I couldn't handle that anyway. Does anyone else do this? I'd love for you to share! You can start anytime, too - a new year doesn't have to start on January 1. I'd love to nose around your life and live vicariously. In the least creepy way possible. And PS - my sister does this as well, but I'm losing faith in her ever updating her blog. Check out my past weeks through the "picture-a-day" topic link on the right.

June 3, 2013

I arrived for my first day of work on a new client and was greeted with a sign: You're ready for this. I sure hope so.

June 4, 2013

I took the mile and a half walk to another client on Tuesday, passing the Government Accountability Office and a file of unattended papers. Yet, we still wonder how government secrets get published.

June 5, 2013

...that seems a bit harsh.

June 6, 2013

I fixed my sister's birthday present on Thursday with a new clock attachment. I'm so proud of this. Details to come.

June 7, 2013

Nero's a pretty, pretty princess! Poor boy puts up with a lot, being raised with two aunts. 

June 8, 2013

I went dress shopping on Saturday with my two aunts that were in town, my future mother-in-law, my two sisters and bridesmaids, and my mum. I was prepared for the worst, but after a marathon four-hour session, I found a dress (spoiler alert: it's not the one pictured) and it was a great afternoon. I must remember to bring snacks for the next marathon wedding-planning session.

June 9, 2013 

 

On Sunday, Veronica, Stephanie, and I ran the Color Me Rad 5K in Pittsburgh. Veronica and I ran it last year and loved it. This year's verdict: the race wasn't as good, but it was better with Steph. The race was at a new location this year (an outdoor concert venue), but that meant running in a gravel parking lot (read: skidding and sliding around turns for us). There weren't as many color stations, and the people at the color stations weren't as pumped as last year. It was a little disappointing (and sucked some motivation), but we still had fun, and are trying to preserve out shirts.

Chop it up.

I started cutting up all of my running t-shirts a year ago. It was spurred by my embarrassment of the underarm discoloring and sweating that would happen when I would run.  That, and I was too cheap to purchase actual running tanks made of the fancy material that wicks away sweat. One day.

With the color run coming up, Steph asked for a tutorial on my t-shirt tanks. She's joining Veronica and me for the run this year.  The color run's got the makings of a sister tradition, as it's a feat in itself for all three of us to be in the same place at the same time. That'll be even more rare if Veronica hops the pond. I digress. 

I meant for this to be an in-person tutorial, but since that didn't happen and I'm back on the blogging game, I figured I'd write a post because she's probably not the only one wondering. Even if you didn't know you were wondering. I've got measurements and all for my engineering sister.

Start by laying your t-shirt flat and smooth. Any folds can cause a problem. I like to lay it out on the carpet for this reason - it seems to sort of stick and cling, allowing me to straighten things out.

Measure two inches below the sleeve and two inches from the sleeves. It's always better to start with a smaller cut and expand later. Make a little snip to mark your spot. Connect the two cuts with sloped line, like so:

You can cut the other side in the same way, or you can fold the shirt in half and trace the cut, as I do. I don't actually draw a line and cut. I carefully cut the other sleeve along the line of the first. 

If you folded your shirt to cut the second sleeve, you're set up for the next step: cutting the neck. If not, fold the shirt in half. Measure four inches from the bottom seam of the neck and make a cut. Slope up from this cut to the shoulder. I aim to cut the neck hem out, so I stay as close to that hem as I can. Remember that the shirt is folded and you'll have to consider the slope of the neck and the hem as you cut. The front of the shirt has a more curved neck hole. It usually means I cut about half and inch from the neck on the shoulder.

I feel like that last piece sounded much more confusing than the process really entails. Let me know if I need to try harder. 

Next, cut the hem off the sleeves, as close to the stitch-line as possible.

Use that sleeve hem to bunch and tie the shoulders. Trim and tuck the ends into the rolls of the shoulder. 

 
You're done! Easy peasy. You can make adjustments to fit your preference, trimming and stretching the jersey until you're comfortable and hiding all the sweat.

This shirt was a large to start, so I'll be hemming it up from the bottom. I could wear it as a dress right now. I prefer to sew the hem - I find that it tends to rolls up from the bottom and make things awkward. Trim up your shirt, Steph! Only a few days until race day!
 

It's all in the presentation.

I think this is going to be my last travel sabbatical-related post. I'm 90% sure on that, and it better be, coming three months after I've landed back in the States. I'm having a really hard time closing the chapter on that two months of travel bliss. I've documented the trips and the treasures, but something was missing. I realized it was my two favorite eateries: La Belle Ronde in Paris and Pancake! Amsterdam in Amsterdam. The atmosphere of these two cafes fit the food so perfectly that I had to share.

We'll start with La Belle Ronde, a creperie in Paris on Rue Daguerre that was recommended to us by my dear friend Kate. Zach and I first tried to enjoy this spot after we landed in the country. Unfortunately, the outside gates were closed on this picturesque scene, and we were scared we weren't going to be able to make it back.

Luckily, we had some time the next day and had yet to have a crepe, so we returned. It was raining, but no less beautiful and quaint. Kate says they usually add twinkling lights to the trees, but must've skipped that step in the relentless downpour that day.

I almost died once inside. Ceramic animals. Ceramic siamese cats. If that restaurant had been more crowded, I might have lunged for one.

The yellow and pink layered in on the toile accent wall, the paper lanterns, the wall of glass looking out to the patio with trees and tables, and mismatched chairs made the cafe feel cozy. That, and the length of the wall opposite the glass patio windows looked like this:

 Perfectly spaced circles of fabric dotted the wall and I did my very best not to rub my face on it. I did dare touch it with my pinky, just as the waiter came to take our order, right under the sign that asked for you not to touch. I made eye-contact while I did it. Rebel.
 

It didn't hurt that our crepes were awesome and the orange juice freshly squeezed. You saw that here though.

Our next favorite spot was Pancake! Amsterdam. We came upon this place after I persevered through Zach's complaints and offers to settle for any restaurant on the corner because I wanted genuine Dutch pancakes, again at the insistence of Kate. This shows how much I trust Kate, because I don't like pancakes (I'll always pick waffles) and this was after the overnight bus ride. The girl's food recommendations carry weight. Literally. Still working it off.

The menu was huge, but we decided, placed our orders with the nicest and most mild-mannered waiter, and took in the very small restaurant. With only five tables split across a loft, it would be easy to make this place look cramped. They avoided that by keeping everything light and simple. There was a lot of straight lines, mimicked in the bench, wall, simple tables and chairs.

I love the chandelier of spatulas and serving ware. It was perfect for a pancake shop that called itself Pancake! Amsterdam, obviously not taking itself too seriously.

The storage on the entry level (these pictures are from the loft), maximized storage with cabinets to the ceiling. This helped to open the place, as did the front wall of windows. That's our waiter, making our coffees. The kitchen a couple steps away, and below the loft.

The food was awesome. So awesome that we went twice, ordering different things each time and from each other so we could have four times the food. We eat seriously.

Outside, there was construction, but still a cute little spot for an outdoor table. I don't know what the jar fillers are, but I love the complementary orange and blue paired with the Dutch tulips.

This place was super personal, too. The waiter gave us each a wooden shoe keychain when we left, twice. It was love.

Okay, I think I'm done with travel recaps for a little bit. It was getting a little monotonous for me, so I don't know how you put up with it, but I appreciate it. I remember telling my college roommate, Kay, about how sick of the travel posts I was growing, and she assured me that I didn't have to write them. I knew that, but I didn't journal at all during my trip, which upset me, because I was focused on blogging it all. I wouldn't have been able to let it rest for myself. This is all to say thank you for reading, for commenting, and for sticking around when I go on strange hiatuses. I love you all, I love this blog, and I'm happy to be back.