Archive for December, 2007
Friday “Flare” For Ya
And now for one of many posts about fun & fabulous holiday gifts. Here’s what we got at a local gift shop (Mongrel) for our cousin who loves to camp: a ceramic campfire that you can really set ablaze with a tea-light. Bring on the mini-marshmallows!
Ironically it was also for sale on Fred Flare, along with a bunch of other quirky gifts like these:
Who doesn’t want a throwback boombox with an updated twist (it blasts tunes from your iPod), some fabulous garland in 2-D (it’s tape with a sparkly tinsel pattern) and a make-any-bottle-a-menorah (it’s a cork with the candles attached). Brilliant. And you gotta love how affordable stuff on that website is. If you haven’t been yet, check out all the after Christmas sale stuff, like, right now.
But there’s also another item on this post that doesn’t hail from Fred Flare… a homemade starfish Santa. We actually made three for John’s parents’ new beach house after seeing a bunch at a few beach shops for something like $15 a pop. Making them yourself is a heckova lot cheaper, all ya need are some starfish (we got ours from Michael’s) and some acrylic paint. You can also turn ‘em into ornaments by gluing ribbon to the back. Ho- ho-holy moley that’s easy.
Blast From The Past: Part 3
We’ve returned from our Christmas in West Virginia just in time to grace you with the third and final part of our “Places We Used to Live” video series. This time it’s a new city (Richmond, VA) and a new arrangement (cohabitation). Ooh la la.
Our First Apartment Together in Richmond was a pretty cookie-cutter one-bedroom in a pretty cookie-cutter suburban apartment complex. That didn’t stop us from being over the moon about finally sharing a home together AND getting way more space for less than half of our combined rent in NYC.
Here are the goodies to watch for this time:
- The giddiness in Sherry’s voice as she excitedly points out features we’d probably yawn about these days
- Our rag-tag collection of free / donated furniture (give us a break – we moved from NYC in a minivan)
- The high ceilings (the reason we opted for the 3rd floor)
- A much more fully stocked kitchen than in Sherry’s NYC apartment
- More album cover artwork thanks to the band OK Go
- Our DIY version of bird wall decals from blik (we cut birds out of blue manila folders and taped them to the wall).
Click HERE to enjoy the tour on YouTube.
Ok, we now promise to return our attention to the present day. Some fun posts to look forward to: gifts we gave each other, booty we received from others, and stuff we scored during all those fabulous post-holiday sales.
Blast From The Past: Part 2
Is it painfully obvious that we’re trying to keep everyone entertained while holiday celebrations are distracting us from working on the house? We thought so.
Now that you’ve seen my little space in the big city, it’s time to show John’s Apartment on New York City’s Upper West Side. It’s second in the series of videos I shot for Kitty, my BFF who lived in Iowa at the time.
John actually edited this one down a little bit so you don’t get to see the living room. That’s because it was only a living room for a few days before they had walls built to create a third bedroom in order to accommodate a third roommate – a classic NYC trick for lowering your rent. It also doesn’t show the five flights of stairs you had to walk up to get there. We don’t miss them.
Here are some of the fun things you will get to see:
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More free or cheap furniture finds
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Another small kitchen that we were very proud of at the time
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A lot of brown and blue (I finally made him tone down the masculine color scheme when we moved in together)
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A cool, accent wall mural that we painted together based on our favorite album cover by The Shins
Now enjoy the tour HERE on YouTube.
