Hey in other vaguely incoherent babbling, what do you guys think of putting an area rug over your wall to wall carpet?  I have boring, beige, awful wall to wall we want to get rid of eventually, but we are keeping it in place until we are done with all the deconstructing and reconstructing, in hopes that we can salvage the hardwood underneath by refinishing.

I am only asking because I am madly in love with the mood board the Rambling Renovators people made.

rambling renovators blog

I LOVE this carpet!  It's so pretty!  It would bring so much character to my fairly boring dining room!  But over wall to wall?  I don't know.

You guys, sometimes I like to search the internet for curtains I will almost definitely never buy because I am basically a complete masochist.  I am like completely incapable of spending $100 on curtains.  I can basically never bring myself to do it.

I tried to make an exception and went to Home Depot last year to buy roman shades for my living room, but we ended up getting some roman shades on clearance for $10 each.  Thirty bucks total for my whole living room!

seriously, i got them for $30 total.  go go gadget clearance!

I typed all this babbly stuff about iphones and cameras but them my husband told me how to get my picture somewhere useful.  Publishing to mobile me!  Which is apparently going away, so I do still need a picasa solution.
(I tried to take some phone pics and upload them to picasa to use on my blog, but none of my google friends are around to tell me what magic iphone app works for that.  If you know, clue me in!  Also if you have one of those online "how to take good pics for your blog" courses to recommend, let me know.  I think I need a refresher course.  I even have a nice enough camera.  *sigh*)

A Detailed View

In any case, they are red, which I love for winter, but for summer/fall I'd like to do something in a green blue palette.  Also since then we got some free furniture that is more steel blue/beige/green, so red is not really on the menu.  I can't find anything for $30, though, so I'm totally spoiled and haven't been able to take down my roman shades.

Target and JC Penney are favorite places to fantasy shop in the realm of "might actually buy", but Pottery Barn and Restoration Hardware are where I look when I want to pretend like I have a zillion dollars to spend.  I should actually check out if Garnet Hill has window stuff, because MAN Garnet Hill is full of pretty.

jcp.com

These from JC Penney are really pretty nice.  And on Clearance!  Even on clearance, they are $59 a piece.  That's like $175!  Man, I am so spoiled from my $10 roman shades.

I normally prefer JCP to Target for curtain shopping online + added self loathing.  JCP seems to have easier categories to work with, but Target recently changed their website, so it's better.

target.com

These are pretty cute, and in my size they're only $44.  That's not too bad!  Still over a hundred bucks, but I am starting to believe my magic $30 roman shades were a freak of shopping.  (I mean, guys, they had a damask roman shade with a sheer roman shade all together!  lovely!  i should have bought them in every color.)

Restoration Hardware

Restoration Hardware has some fabulous sheers, especially.  But at $99 a sheer, maybe out of my $30 range.  Still lovely, and I like the idea of sheers in the living room, as long as they are pretty.  I wonder if there's a DIY way of dressing up some plain white sheers.  Maybe ribbon trim along the sides?  Hrm.

Also, it turns out that Garnet Hill does have a small selection of curtains.  Which are fabulous, of course, because it's Garnet Hill.

Garnet Hill

Lovely, and I love the colors, too.  But!  $158 a piece, so no thanks.

Someday when we are no longer under construction and have disposable income for expensive curtains...... I still won't pay $158 a piece on account of how I am super cheap.  Oh well, I will have to head back to JCP to find something more reasonable.

Why are curtains so much money, anyway?  Am I missing some magical cheap place to shop for curtains?

You guys, I have to tell you something: I am much MUCH crazier in real life than I appear on my blog.

I have been trying my best to appear like a nice suburban mom who's remodeling her adorable house, but in reality I am a slightly crazy suburban mom whose job is awesome but makes her a little nuts and who's husband probably could use a wife who is slightly less ... impulsive?

Recently, he told me that when I started being crazy, he was just going to not engage me in my craziness in any way.  I forget why, but it was certainly something crazy I was doing.

So today, when I asked him if we could have a baby goat, he said "no" and nothing else.  And when I told him that I was suffering from a series of potentially fatal mini-comas, he told me to let him know if they ended up being fatal.  You guys, HOW can I do that?  I will be dead, if they are fatal!  (Also, The Bloggess is hilarious.)  In his defense, he did hand me a bottle of wine when I got home from work today, and he married me even after I bought a house while he was out of town.

How could you NOT want a baby goat?

I feel like I post less on my blog than I would if I were being more honest about who I am.  And who I am is a little bit nuts, you guys.   So fair warning, I am going to try to post more often, but that may involve less home remodeling content and more craziness and recipes.

Really, though, who doesn't need more craziness and recipes in their life?  Offensively normal people, that's who!

edit:
I should point out that the last time he tried to engage me on my craziness is when I asked him "hey do you think you could use a baseball bat to hit a grenade launched from a grenade launcher back to the guy who launched it at you?".  I think we were watching NCIS or something.  We argued about it on the couch until I put it on my facebook, where like two dozen people chimed in with various opinions.  Finally one of our friends who was in the army for 10 years popped in to explain that it wouldn't work because the grenade goes off really quickly.  LOGIC why do people bring that logic stuff to my party?  So, if nothing else, today you learned not to carry a baseball bat for protection from launched grenades.

I made this one.

You guys!  I changed up the design of my blog!  I decided that I loved the lobster font I used for the yum, and I was also kinda tired of the birds.

Man, I would love to do this to the presumably white, original to the house, from 1924 subway tile in my bathroom.

Hot vinegar and a cloth.  Who knew?  I wonder if it is worth trying.

So, cutting boards.
I hear the plastic ones, even though they can go in the dishwasher, can't get as clean as the wooden ones for some reason I don't entirely get involving wood being kinda self healing and plastic having little knicks that absorb bacteria.  Also, little bits of plastic in your food.  No thanks!

At one point, at a county fair a way way long time ago, we bought a big huge board.  24X18 or thereabouts!  From a cabinet maker.  It was nice, but it had these ~ 1inch ball feet that made it too high for me to cut on without standing on my tippy toes.  No thanks.

So I took off the feet, but still, tippy toes.  I decided just to suck it up, and eventually (due to the lack of feet, i'm sure) it warped.  But even before that, I totally ruined the top of it by letting one of my cast iron pans dry on there.

friends don't let friends jack up their huge boards

So, I could sand it, but it's still warped.  I could try soaking it for a few days and then rigging something up to straighten it, but that seems like kind of a pain in the neck.  Plus it's still a little too tall (I think it's like 2" thick) plus I think I would like it to be bigger.

BIGGER?  yes, bigger.  The new kitchen is huge.  Therefore, having an enormous big cutting board that never leaves your counter is awesome.  So cool.  But even the 24X18 ones can cost over $100.  DO NOT WANT.

Then, I had an idea.  I love butcherblock.  It looks so warm and pretty!  If I were going to remodel the kitchen that we had, instead of building on, I would totally have done it on the cheap by painting the cabinets and putting in a butcherblock countertop.

Butcherblock is basically cuttingboard, right?  And IKEA will sell you some butcherblock countertop that's huge for like $40.

lagan, by ikea