Bathroom Decor

In a fit of vacuuming, I broke the first plant that ever graced my home. Now its bald, disjointed body is still sitting atop a bookcase while I am desperately trying to revive its fallen brethren stalk. I heard you can propagate house plants if they stay warm enough and don't get a ton of direct light, so we'll see what happens.

For now, to make the most of my murderous ways, I took it upon myself to get rid of my dusty old bathroom candle and seaglass display and give it some new life. I took a few shot glasses and put Planty in one, and some of my finer seaglass collections in the other two. Nice and modern now, and best of luck for the plant to grow some roots!

Decked out!

Much like cat ladies collect cats and Sarah Palin collects guns, I am forever thinking of ways to add more plant life to my apartment deck. Thanks to some garage sale rejects, we scored some old patina'd bird cages for FREE on their way to the goodwill, and then they proceeded to sit in our storage shed for a few months. With a spark of inspiration, we found small pots and planted trailing type flowers to spring through the bars. I didn't even need to repaint them to match the apartment stucco walls, that is just pure luck.

We did some well-paced hooks in the awning of our building, then suspended on a lightweight chain bought for under $1 at the hardware store. The bottom of the cage popped out, so just took a little bit of juggling to get the plant pot to stay put when we put the bottom back on. Hopefully the lovely licorice plant will start reaching for the sun and trailing its greenery through the bars quite soon!

Real Estate Rant: Dream House, or Keep Dreaming?

The California real estate market has been my obsession and my plague for the past five years I've been contemplating home ownership. Noticing apartment prices were exceptionally low years ago, I started actually coming to realize that it would only take a little planning and saving on my part. Dutifully putting away a nice chunk of Benjamins every month, my happy go luckyyet ignorant little early-20s mind had no idea the roller coaster ride of emotions that was in store for me. 

Now, 5 years later, my dream has switched from cozy bachelorette pad near the beach to a cozy love nest in the woods that could possibly fit dogs and children along with my hand me down furniture. Far from having delusions of grandeur about the type of residence I could afford, I saw my bank account grow larger and the possibility of actually owning a home grow smaller. Not that I didn't have a steady job, a knack for money hoarding, or unrealistic ideas that a 2,000 square foot downtown Los Gatos bungalow was NOT in my budget, but simply for the fact that when I finally had a down payment, I was years too late and it once again became a sellers market. So instead of wide-eyed, hopefully first time homeowners snatching up respectably priced dwellings under $400K, it was investors with pure cash that wanted to ad another rental house under their belt. All my friends looking for houses can attest to this. 

I can afford you, but I can't get you!

So now at a crossroads, I can wait to either have a larger down payment and wait for the market to settle down, or jump in headfirst within the next year and be outbid time and again by people more well off than me. People that want to whitewash the walls and refill time and again with tenants that don't give a crap about decorating and gardening lovingly to increase the property values of the neighborhood. I'll take my bitterness and put it to good use, never giving up hope that some day I'll have my own little nest to rest my weary real-estate obsessed head. 

Ultra Baby Room

Now I'm nowhere close to having kids (or fathoming), but the birth of my niece via best friend fo' life has inspired my latent decorating for the neonatal persuasion. Inspired by my bestie's no-frilly girl stuff approach to life, I was thinking of ways to create a more modern yet still fun child's room that you don't have to repaint a year after the pink walls make you want to re-enact scenes from The Shining. Perfect for either a boy or girl, I wanted a bold striped accent wall, the soft dove and silver grey to act as a backdrop for accented pops of turquoise and orange (or even lime green, magenta, anything really). Complete with framed quotes in painted frames and crisp white curtains, some nice modern white furniture and plants in fun vases could complete this baby nook. I could easily envision my friend (or even myself) comfortably changing diapers, rocking, and reading to the young ones...but let's not get ahead of ourselves just yet.

(Dream scenery out the window only possible if I moved to Montana)

Urban Composting: My First Attempt at Going Greener

My apartment deck, though surrounded by concrete walls and within earshot of cars and rumbling motorcycle traffic, is my first attempt at greening up my thumb and learning the ways of gardening. I have big dreams of one day having a huge vegetable garden amidst a quiet backdrop of trees, and ambling landscapes that I myself designed and built to my heart's content. I can sit and sip on my gin and tonics and relax all the more, knowing that my hard labor has paid off to build a thing of comfort and beauty.

For now, my hand-build redwood planters and the few plants that have not died from lack of knowledge is what I have to go by. Apparently getting a bag of soil and some plants from Home Depot is simply not enough to keep them living (and watering of course). I have always wanted to try composting after learning that 1. It doesn't smell bad, and 2. You don't need to use worms. All that healthy fruit and veggie material I cook with is just going to waste in a landfill and creating those lovely methane smells that deplete property values in New Jersey.

My starting point is a spacious storage shed (now that it's organized), some heavy duty plastic buckets from Home Depot, and a lot of Googling and Pintresting.

Homer's Bucket 5 gallons and lid, $6 Home Depot

Thanks to a good find from my masculine counterpart, we scored some durable plastic "Homer's Buckets" from Home Depot. Homer, as in the Simpsons? I'm sold :) We actually bought two of these 5-gallon buckets ($5 each) and one lid ($1 each).  In retrospect I would like to have another lid without holes for the aerating step of composting, so back I shall go.

For composting you need a lot of oxygen flow, but I figured on such a small scale and the fact I could easily shake some air into it whenever I want, I would reduce the mess factor and only drill holes in the top and the bottom. The second bucket was for the sake of the first bucket leaking lovely garbage water into it, and figured it wouldn't hurt to have an extra one around. I was a bit wary to start out with such a small bucket, but 5 gallons holds a deceptive amount of waste.

View my refuse.

I stuffed the bottom with balled up newspaper to keep it fluffy and with good air circulation. I had a bucket of used up potting soil, so figured it couldn't hurt to give it a little head start. I had plenty of veggie scraps from dinner, along with coffee filters and ground, and more newspaper on top of that. A good compost bin should have a similar amount of both 'brown' and 'green' materials (think paper vs. food scraps) so I'm trying to keep the ratio as level as I can. I sprinkled some water on it to soak in overnight, and gave it a good shake the next evening after the hot September sun warmed our shed to a lovely 90 degrees.

So literally time will tell if I've got this right, or if I can contain myself enough to not want to compost everything I get my hands on. For now, on my small scale, I'm aiming for the following composting items:

Food Items: Veggie scraps, rotten fruit, coffee grounds, and tea bags
Brown Items: Shredded newspaper, coffee filters, clippings from dead plants in my garden

Happy composting!

Make a Splash! Fake Apartment Backsplash

Living in an apartment has its obvious disadvantages...noisy neighbors, shared laundry, the awkwardness when you can't remember someone's name who shares a mailbox with you. But for the domestic diehard in all of us with tons of projects itching at the tips of their fingers, the worst by far has to be the lack of being able to personalize and decorate your home (and thus create equity into your living space). For awhile now I've been wanting to try my luck at tiling, especially after seeing countless episodes of 'I Hate My Kitchen' and having a brother just getting into a tile work apprenticeship. How card can it really be, will the suffering be worth the rewards?

Unfortunately one of the stipulations of our complex is no hole-drilling past tiny nail heads (drats!). My original plan was to tile an entire piece of plywood then affix it to the wall behind our bland sink area, but my ever practical better half advised against it since it would be too heavy to be held up by traditional nails. Moving forward with my idea, I decided the best way to go would be a small accent piece using a cheap frame from Goodwill (which just so happened to be new in the wrapping!).

The basic plan was to affix mosaic tile onto the picture cardboard with a strong glue (hint, don't use Gorilla Glue as it expands!), then grouting, then hanging. Simple! And it only caused me some grief when I had chosen the wrong glue and it started seeping out the edges.

Grouting was simple as buying a cheap ready made tube and following the directions, then realizing that traverteen tiles are super annoying once the grout dries on them, and I should have been wiping it up more as I went along (on those DIY shows they always just let it dry first, which seems like way more work). No problems at all with the cardboard backing feeling too heavy or soggy during the process. Beware the grout tube has gross watery stuff that comes out at first, much like a bottle of ketchup.

The finished product was a small, lightweight, hanging 'backsplash' made from cool glass and stone mosaic tiles with my amateur grouting job an only two tiny nail holes. I can't wait to tackle a bigger project next time to practice more!

2 x Mosaic Tiles - $15
1 x Grout Tube - $4
1 x Frame - $4
Total Cost: $24 bucks

Then it looked so nice over there I decided to buy an $8 sink caddy from Target to get everything off the counter.

Hold the Pickles, and Make Your Own Instead

I"m a huge fan of bread and butter pickles...the sweet yet sour crunchiness fresh from the jar, as I guiltlessly eat 5 in one sitting without blinking an eye. My ever-knowing grandmother decided to  not let me in on the fact she made fantastic homemade pickles for decades, but at the last family function they were out and I had downed several slices within my first glimpse of them. In true Danish fashion they were soaked in a sweet concoction of sugar and vinegar, so I decided it couldn't be that hard and decided to make it myself using some vague measurements I wheedled out of her. With some personal touches of course since no fake Top Chef follows a recipe to the tee.

I used English cucumbers for this recipe, since they look fancier. Was pretty easy as I boiled a cup of sugar in a small pot of water, then poured into a reused marinara sauce jar about halfway. The other half i filled with plain white vinegar, then shook in a couple splashes of dill (my favorite herb), and even some Mrs. Dash's lemon pepper. Being my typical health-conscious self I only put in a few turns of sea salt (I'll just ignore the fact I just poured in a cup of sugar to a jar of cucumbers!). After waiting impatiently for a week I did my first taste test and they were phenomenal. Ahhh the sweet sensation...

Sweet and sour dill pickles are your friend!