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.

Fabricadabra

Thanks for all the comments about my curtain conundrum -- especially the ones that said nice things about our house. It's not where I want it to be, but hopefully it's better than where it started. I mean, how could it possibly be worse than green carpet, khaki paint, and overstuffed mushroom farts furniture? I really had nowhere to go but up.

Anyhow, I ordered some more curtains that are going to blow your minds... maybe in a bad way. Or maybe not. That's the problem with choosing fabric -- it's crazy hard unless you have tons of experience. Personally I'm hoping the brute force of trial and error builds experience, because there's really no other excuse for my OCD behavioral tics.

Speaking of fabric, have you seen this?

I'm pretty sure Jesus flew down on a chariot driven by angels just so he could deposit this on my doorstep.

I'm really important like that.

So this handy chart tells me lots of things, things like I can't afford to swath this chair:

In any of Perennials' gorgeously soft and luxurious OUTDOOR fabrics, like this blue velvet that would be perfect in the nursery:

Or this slubby chenille faux bois that I'm kind of in love with... it's not nearly as busy in real life.

But $80/yd (to the trade price) x 5 yards (according to my new chart) = $400 just for fabric. Not including overage. Not including upholstery labor. Sooooooo, no.

However maybe I could afford to use fancy fabric on this chair:

Because it only requires 2.5 yards.

Small pattern if I keep the buttons.

Bigger pattern if I don't.

See how handy the chart is?

I'm kind of obsessed with finding furniture in my house and calculating the yardage.

I feel so empowered, even though I don't know anything about sewing and fabrics and upholstery.

But I'm learning.

Happy Friday, y'alluns.

Verily I say unto thee, go forth and reupholster the world!

[Perennials Fabrics]

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?