delight in life

backyards and string lights

White string lights, the kind with big round bulbs, have long been a favorite of mine. They were the best detail of my wedding reception, the part that was most perfectly translated from the picture in my brain to real life. This is the picture of my parents' backyard a few weeks before the wedding, the picture that had me practically levitating with excitement:

Last weekend, we got to put them up in our own backyard. As I've mentioned about a million times, our backyard is a long way from good-looking, but these lights make everything so much better. We had a party on Sunday and with the lights up, I wasn't embarrassed about the state of the rest of the yard. I just need a few more years and some careful planning and then maybe ours will look just as rad as my parents'. Maybe.

around the yard

Every night after Joey goes to sleep there's about 30 minutes of good outside light left, and lately I've been spending those 30 minutes in my yard. Armed with my shears, a pair of gloves, and a pretty clippings bin, I'm slowly tackling nearly a year of neglect and overgrowth.

I'm cutting back dead things, trimming up overgrown alive things, and pulling up endless weeds. It is fun.

I'm marveling at the surprises popping out of the ground constantly. I hardly know what anything is, but luckily I've got practically an army of experienced plant identifiers in my family, so I'm slowly learning, one text message at a time.

There's so much to do before this yard starts to look even vaguely impressive, which some days is really overwhelming to me. But during those thirty minutes every evening, I'm only excited and inspired. When I'm out there, I'm forced to focus on only one small section of the yard at a time, and making that spot look gorgeous feels totally doable.

Going around the yard with my camera and looking for the pretty bits that are already here helps, too.

(ps: that gorgeous, humongous azalea in the first picture? my neighbor's. so not mine. but I'm so happy to share the view with her!)

basement facelift: carpet

A few weeks ago Chris and I went to an open house on our street. It was a house that had recently been flipped, and we wanted to see what they'd done. The house originally had an identical floorplan to ours so we thought it'd be helpful to kickstart some ideas for our place. And boy, was it! They made some drastic changes—like removing a bedroom to enlarge the kitchen and add an en suite master bath—which we liked but won't be doing. I'd love an en suite bath and a bigger kitchen, but we need that bedroom! When I went down into the basement, though, I immediately thought, "we have to do this." It's so simple: their basement was carpeted and drywalled.

You see, our basement is a massive space. It's great. There is a bathroom and a guest bedroom down there, a laundry room, a workbench, and an enormous living-room-esque space. But it's kind of terrible. The flooring is vinyl over concrete, the walls are wood paneling, and it feels very cold and basement-y. We bought a big comfy sectional to go down there soon after we moved in, but we rarely use it because it's just not a great place to hang out. Last summer we painted the wood paneling white, which helped a ton, but it still feels like a basement. But standing in this other house, I realized we could do more to make our basement feel like part of the house.

Fate agreed, I suppose, because Home Depot was having a sale on carpet installation. We went from "we should do this someday" to "the carpet guys are coming on Thursday!" in about two weeks. Which was awesome. Even more awesome was Thursday afternoon when the carpet guys were gone. When I went downstairs for the first time, I couldn't believe how awesome it looked. Or how soft it felt. Or how much warmer it was.

(I have no before pictures, only carpeted afters!) We still plan to make a lot more changes. We'll be closing off the utility/laundry room by adding a door and walling over the extra doorway and cut-out, and we'll be drywalling the whole room eventually, along with a million more things. But this is such an awesome start. We've used this space more times in the last few weeks than in the whole time we've lived here.

a blank slate

One of the few disappointments about our new house is the backyard. Before we began house hunting, I had grand dreams of a big, sunny backyard where I would grow bushels of veggies every summer. This house does not have that. It had a weedy, overgrown, shady mess of a yard (below a fantastic deck) and I knew my veggies were not going to be coming from there.

But I do love having so many mature trees, and the house is so great in every other way. You can't have everything, right? But still. I am determined to turn that mess into something beautiful. We started by hiring a guy to clean. it. up. He came out and worked some major lawn magic. It's by no means a beautiful back yard, but it's a fresh start. Where before all I could see was a jungle, now we have a blank slate and ideas and possiblities are starting to creep into my head.

(ps: if you live in the area and are want our (handy, affordable) lawn guy's info, let me know!)

four favorite things

We love our house. Have I mentioned that? Bit by bit we're getting settled in and I love it more every time we get another box unpacked. I love big things, like the pretty wood floors and the kitchen counter space and having a finished basement, but I'm really excited about some little things too.

1. MY QUILT WALL. Something I've wanted since about the third time I laid quilt blocks out on the carpet, only to have one cat decide they were a superfun toy and the other decide they were a perfect napping spot. I tacked a big piece of batting to the wall and now I can lay out all my blocks and spend as long as I want deliberating over the perfect arrangement. This one's been on my wall for two weeks and gone through two complete re-designs.

2. MY ROLLY CHAIR. For the last two years my desk chair has been this rickety, ugly, uncomfortable wooden chair. A few weeks ago we went to Ikea and I got a bonafide desk chair, complete with spinning seat and wheels. Sitting at the desk is so much better!

3. THE CATS GET ALONG BETTER. I never would have guessed this would happen, but it has. They've never liked each other all that much, and would spend their evenings chasing each other around the apartment, with every lap involving somebody tearing across the coffee table—where our dinner usually sat. Really annoying. But we have lived here for three weeks now and there has only been one incident like that. Seriously. It's a miracle. My guess at the reason for the change is that we have so much more space they're not competing for territory anymore. 100% fine by me.

4. THE LITTERBOX IS NOWHERE NEAR HUMANS ANYMORE. Seriously, I think this is my favorite. The cats have shared our bathroom for two years now, which was unpleasant for quite a few reasons. Now their box is in the basement corner, far away from anywhere I am showering. So, so, so good.

ten days down

We've lived here for ten days now! In that time, we've: bought a sectional, baked a cake, had a sleepover, bought a roll-y chair for my desk, installed a thermostat, survived massive thunderstorms with not even a power flicker, and stopped living completely out of boxes.

You may have heard that huge storms rocked through the metro-DC area last weekend, leaving a lot of people without power. (Some are still without power!) Amazingly, we were totally fine. The worst thing that happened to us and our house was our neighbor's tree coming down and blocking the street for 3 days. Our friends did lose power for a bit, so they came and spent a day and night with us. We had a fun slumber party! With cake.

We're slowly, slowly putting the house together and getting rid of boxes. We've bought a few pieces of furniture, but we're trying to take our time and make sure we buy things that we really like and fit our needs. I keep having to remind myself that it's better to have a semi-empty house for a while than have a bunch of furniture we don't like in six months.

Also, I installed a thermostat last night, so I feel super handy. I realize it's not actually a very complicated process, but that doesn't change my sense of accomplishment. There were wires! I could have electrocuted myself! (Don't worry, I cut the power first.) I used to feel accomplished after assembing IKEA furniture; now I just feel annoyed at how many screws there are. Now I need electrical wiring and preferably the use of a power drill to feel awesome about my fix-it skills.

we're moved!

Saturday was a very long day, but thanks to our wonderful and generous friends, we got 95% of our stuff moved in and got to sleep in our house for the first time. We love it.

It all started a few weeks ago, when our boxes of...boxes showed up from U-Haul. They just sat there for a while and I tried to pretend I didn't have to pack up our whole apartment.

Then it looked like this on Saturday morning:

And now, Monday evening, our shiny new living room looks like this:

We still have sooo much to do (and we have way more unpacked boxes left than appear in this picture) but in the last few days we've still made a ton of progress. And today we got internet set up, so it feels more like a place where we live than a large, messy hotel room.

I miss the little deli in our apartment building, but last night we saw deer in our backyard and the fireflies twinkle in our bushes, so that kind of makes up for it.

 

curtains!

We finally hung our curtains! We're pretty happy with them. The morning after we put them up might have been the first time either of us slept through sunrise since we've moved here. We have blinds too, but they are ugly and we can't put them all the way down at night because the cats like to sit in the windowsill. Happy cats = soundly sleeping people. Curtains are definitely superior to blinds: they're attractive, they block out the whole window, and the cats can climb behind them easily!

These pretties are from West Elm. They had a curtains and drapes sale a few weeks ago so I grabbed these for the same price I would have paid for something way less cute at Target. Turns out tall, wide windows can be pretty expensive to cover up!

I like how when the drapes are closed, it sort of looks like a headboard.

But mostly I like how our neighbors across the street can't peek in anymore.

this one's a little boring.

One of my resolutions was to take on the Tupperware cabinet, so I finally did that last weekend. It was certainly not the most exciting project I've ever done, but I'm really happy with the results. I was focused on two cabinets, a top and a bottom, and then I was on a roll and did the pantry too.

This is the bottom cabinet, before: (but not totally before; I actually had neatened it up a bit before I started)

And the top cabinet, before:

First I went through all the tupperware and threw out pieces with a missing lid, or lids that didn't close, or that we just don't use. That left me a much more manageable pile. Then I took a little trip to The Container Store and stocked up on their cheapest cabinet organizing supplies. The bottom cabinet, after:

And the top, after. I was able to bring in a lot of things that were stored elsewhere into this cabinet where it all makes a lot more sense.

All the white plastic isn't the most attractive thing, but it's much better than the before. So glad to have that done!

apartment tour

A few particular friends, mothers and sisters have been waiting for this post for months now. I just needed a particularly quiet and homebodyish weekend to make it happen! So, voila: pictures of our apartment!

First, the kitchen. To the right is the front door.

I really love our pot rack. We got sick of digging around in random cabinets, and we didn't really have the space in the cabinets anyway, so we picked up this $15 shelf at Ikea. I love how much more accessible all of our pots are now!

And this is looking out of the kitchen into my office/craft area:

I've been working from home since we moved, so I spend a lot of time in this little area.

That huge, amazing desk was a lucky, lucky find at The Container Store. We went in looking for shelving and found this $1000+ desk/shelf combo that they were apparently desperate to get rid of. There was a sale price listed, but we offered even less, and they agreed! I think we paid $325 for it. We kept my old desk and put it on the left. I made the legs as tall as they'd go, and while it looks a little awkward, it makes a perfect fabric cutting table.

 The office and living room are one big space. Stand in the office and turn around, ta-daaa, our living room! The paint color is Heavy Goose from Martha Stewart Living. We tried 5 different swatches and this one was the clear winner. I love how much it warms up this big space while still being pretty subtle.

The door next to the brown bookshelf is the bathroom, and the door in the corner is the bedroom. 

The furniture in this room is such a hodge-podge! Brown bookshelf, grey-brown coffee table, blue end table, light wood + white chairs, dark brown couch... what a mess! Making it all cohesive will surely be a slow process, but it'll get there someday. We did buy a new, beautiful couch earlier this month! But it's not here yet. (ps: the Rose Tyler Forever banner is a silly little thing I made while watching Doctor Who the other night - she's a character on the show. Probably not a permanent fixture, once Chris gets back in town!)
 
Heading into the bedroom...

There's really not much to see in here. It's a pretty small room. There's a tiny, awful closet just outside the right edge of the photo. The window is huge and wide, and I love that. 

The art in here is pretty random.

And, two final views of the main area.