Taking Care of Bizness

Still on a crazy fabric shopping binge. I'm currently in the market for some cheap cantilevered chairs that I can reupholster like these:

Perennials' City Kitty ought to do. Plus it will repel milk and jelly. I'm hoping to have wood or cane backs and fabric seats only to do it myself and cut down on yardage... maybe 3 yardsish? I can do that.

It's going to be awesome with my million dollar marble table, which I FINALLY ORDERED.

 It's supposed to be here Thursday (!!!!!!!).

Also arriving Thursday is the newly hired cleaning lady, which I'm hoping will change my life. Sadly right now I'm just suffering from panic attacks about the Katrina like state of disaster in our house, and how much work it's going to take to pick up before she can even clean.

I have seven weeks before my due date to get this house whipped into shape. Must solve curtain conundrum (blue velvet was not a winner), paint master bedroom (peach is not going well), wallpaper the nursery and the foyer, finish the front room and dinette areas.

So, you know, not much.

Also, I should probably wash some onesies or whatever.

Meanwhile, Ike's room is done. Finished. Completeasaurus Rex.

Reveal coming this week... Stay tuned.

The Trouble With Photography (and My Curtains)

In a nutshell, the trouble is photographs lie. You aren't really that fat (promise), the perfect gray paint color that looked amazing in a magazine looks like shit on your walls, and those pink curtains I lusted after weren't even pink.

Remember this room? I was all, Oooh ahh magic! over it and how such a sophisticated room could pull off those pink curtains. Well get a load of this:

Same room. Not exactly pink pink, more of a rose...

Huh. Well I might consider that to be more of a clay red -- something with a fair amount of brown in it.

Not pink at all.

So, you see, I was doomed from the start.

Witness:

Oh me. Oh my.

The other trouble with photography is that it's awfully labor intensive. I almost turned around to shoot the back of the room so you could see my secret piles of toys and laundry drifts, but I wanted propagate the myth that I keep a semi clean house. Still, why didn't I move the speakers? Or restyle the fireplace? Or hang those curtains higher and replace my chesterfield and find a new place for the tv?

I have a lot of work to do. Focus.

Yet another problem with photography is that some of you are probably thinking, Those pink curtains are bananas, dawg!

Well, I hope your brain doesn't think in those words, because that may be the trouble with you.

Anyway, those pink curtains were like eight year old sparkly bubblegum pink unicorns riding rainbows to My Little Pony land.

Hell. No.

It's not like the flax curtains fared much better. Once again -- they may look ok in the picture, but they were green in real life. Not pretty with my peachy pink walls.

So I took that crap back and now I have two totally different curtains up. Plus I just ordered two more.

And I'm trying to stop myself from ordering sandy beige... I think I'll save super neutral for the double height curtains I might get around to someday.

The trouble with me is I am so used to taking photographs that I expect my house to look like one.

Also I am extremely overwhelmed and indecisive.

Will report later on the ever expanding curtain conundrum.

In the meantime, let me tell you why you aren't as fat as you look in pictures. It's because humans see with two eyes, and we can sort of see around objects to the background behind. Cameras only see with one eye and they flatten everything onto one big fat plane.

So there you go. You are 10 pounds thinner.

That's something, right?

TGIFF

I'll let you ascertain what exactly the extra "F" stands for. On Wednesday I woke up sure that it must be Saturday, but no -- just another day in the longest week in the history of the world. So I apologize for not being the postess with the mostest, but when you're trying to type with Pitbull's "I Know You Want Me" cranked up to the max on a xbox dance game, you can't really expect much.

I will say that Ike is a very talented dancer. And yes, I am awaiting my parent of the year award. I hear it's coming any minute.

Anyhow, I'm having an internal debate about the wallpaper I had chosen for the front entry:

I'm looking for something that can play second fiddle, because Wallpaper X will be holding court next to the dark front room and I don't want the paper to get any melodramaculus ideas about stealing the show.

So this is Neisha Crosland's Zebra in stone, and it's a two roll minimum. From England with mega shipping rates. So that makes it well over $200 for this order alone. Now that's not a ton of $$$, but when I have a zillion things to buy it's about $100 more than I had intended to spend. Remind me again of why I'm not rich and famous?

Anyway I find myself shopping for wallpaper. Again. So far this is the best I've found:

I like most of Harlequin's Deco inspired Arkona collection, actually. Otto is a pretty pattern, but not quite as light and bright as the NC's Zebra.

Cole and Son's Malachite in silver on beige is also a contender. It's super hard to photograph, but I think this picture shows the color and texture well. You can also see a picture I took of it here.

So, I'm open to suggestions for interesting tone on tone wallpaper. Hit me with your best shot.

Or maybe I should just go with this mural:

It is pretty tempting... but I think I better stick with my original plan.

Happy TGIMFF, y'all.