3rd time's a????

Charm? Curse? I guess we'll have to wait and see. Case you're wondering, I'm yapping about the bloody third browser I've tried in the last month. Yeah... I was on IE read about Firefox and really liked it... for several months, and then... Crash. Crash. Crash. Crash. Yeah, it was great. So, out of desperation I went back to IE, and was pleasantly surprised to see many of the features I liked with Firefox had been incorporated, BUT TONS of my images and features wouldn't load, including on my OWN blog, and it was slower than molasses in January... I had gotten a tip to try out Google Chrome, and, again out of desperation, hit download. So far so good! Fingers crossed! It downloaded and setup SUPER fast, doesn't have an arseload of crap crowding my window (NO, I do NOT need seventy bajillion useless buttons, thankyou) and has pretty skins. What are you guys using? Is there anything I should be worried about with Chrome? Oh, and yeah, I'm a sucker for pretty (in case you didn't already know) so when my browser looks like this, I'm pretty stoked (yup, that's a print screen, kids. Cute, right? Maybe a little too Avril, but who's gotta know? Well, I guess the intawebs do now, but meh.)

saving this.

I am totally thinking of doing a play on this, for, oh I don't know, every event I've got coming up in the near future. SO cute! (First up: cookie exchange!) Image found here.

yip yip! I figured it out!

So, here's the thing with been uber-cheap, but unwilling to just allow things to continue to suck due to said cheapness: it's takes a LOT of thinking to figure stuff out. You can't just run out to the store to BUY the table that would look perfect in that space. You need to somehow either MAKE it, or FAKE it. In general, I have a $40 maximum budget for any given project, and that has to include EVERYTHING needed for said project, regardless of size or involvement. So when I figure out a few ideas along the way (like buying paint that can be used for EVERYTHING, thus making it worth having a $25 bucket around at all times. Or like having yummy vanilla icing by the tub, that can easily be tinted any colour to suit, instead of making whole batches at a time. Or like the fact that a package of co-ordinating scrapbook paper can be a miracle when it comes to crafting (everything will GO but not match, and you'll look like a co-ordinating freaking genius). Or that Modge Podge came straight from heaven.) I get pretty excited.
So, after upcycling the kitchen table and chairs, and with snow on the ground inspiring future project-dom, I've turned my eye to the large cedar chest currently taking up residence at the end of our bed. While awesome, and the PERFECT size, this chest USED to be in my daughter's room, which is where it received it's FIRST redo... in hot pink felt (it's from the late seventies and was previously covered in ripped up, nasty brown leather. Not exactly princess friendly.) Yeah, oddly that glaring pink doesn't exactly GO with our champagne, pewter, and grey/blue bedroom (shocking, I know).But with the cost of fabric being, you know, stupid, not to mention (believe it or not) we're down to just ONE fabric store in the city which makes it HARD to get to, I've been trying to think of more cost-effective ways to recover the poor thing.... At first I thought "Aha! Ikea!" But the only fabric that was suitable was, obviously, the most expensive... So then I moved on to "Hey! I'll just use a cheap curtain panel!" But the "cheap" panels only came in either brown or taupe NEVER JUST EFFING GRAY (ok, ok. the no gray thing kind of frustrated me...)
But now, with the help of post over here I've got a think! I already have a fleece blanket that we're not using that'll match our bedroom suite perfectly! Yay! So off to the garage I go to wrangle up a staple gun and a screwdriver! Wish me luck! Image from aforementioned post.

because hopefully I'll only do this once

So, I had to make a big girl decision recently: should I sell my house? It might seem crazy, but we are a couple of the lucky few that bought low enough that we could hopefully still make a little profit, and then, let's face it, it's a buyer's market. We could get a LOT for our money right now. Financially, it's the exact right decision.

But... We're getting married. In less than two months. And part of me want to say "After all the opportunities that we had to let pass us by, why would we let that happen again." But the fact of the matter is, I can still sell my house next year. I can go through the stress of showings, and trying to market it, and negotiating, and then hopefully trying to find another home if this one sold... next year. What I can NOT just do next year is get married. I'm doing that right quick here. And it's important to me. I don't want to look back on this time (because it is a "time", not just one day, thankyouverymuch) and think, "Wow, if only I hadn't been freaking out over the house, it would've been great". So for now, that project's on the back burner.
The fun thing, though, is that that means that the home renos that we've been planning can go ahead, which go a long way towards keeping my brain off of constant wedding-alert. So a little non-wedding inspiration... I love this pic more than words, and it's given me the sudden inspiration for exactly what colour to paint my kitchen... Now the feel and the style are quite different from what I've got, but it's the sandstoney colour of those cabinets, with the bright red of the geraniums... loves it. Can't wait to post pics of me whipping up our wedding cupcakes (see? the big W word is never far away!) in my newly painted kitchen! Watch for it! Image from Annika Vannerus.