Where was I?

This is Roxanne's dresser (it's now finished and looks slightly different). It has a long history with Justin's family, but I don't think the paint job had changed in about 30 years or more, and it was looking pretty icky. I used an ivory high gloss spray paint for the dresser (which I now wish I had just used regular paint, since the spray paint looks messy in spots and I'm a perfectionist). The trim is done in two shades of pink that I bought solely because they had cute names. One was watermelon and the other was flamingo. Those Glidden sample size bottles are perfect for these kinds of projects.

Um, sorry. After extensive googling, I cannot figure out an efficient way of getting this photo to be oriented correctly. So you'll just have to turn your head. This is Roxanne sitting in the "puppy dog chair" I pulled out of someone's trash. As you can see, it's just sitting right on the floor for now, since I have to rig it up with legs somehow. But I think it's totally cute. And Roxanne loves it. Oh, and I cloroxed it VERY extensively.
This the closet in the living room. We took down the really bad louvered doors that were there and painted the inside to match the living room wall color. We plan to turn it into a "bar" type of space. We moved our old dining room table into it with the drop sides, and we are using it as the "bar" for now. I got the idea from watching Vertigo because Jimmy Stewart has the same table in his bachelor pad serving the same purpose. I'll post a photo of what that closet looks like soon. The only problem we have with the space for now is that the dining room table sort of repeats the shape of the credenza on the wall next to the closet, and it looks a little weird. In a perfect world, we'd love a two-tiered bar/shelf/bookcase, like this one at City Issue. But for now, this is totally fine. And it doesn't cost $750, which is always a plus. But holy cow, is that "cocktail cabinet" fabulous, or what?
I'm trying to rein in my insane impulses to thrift store shop every day after work and fill our house with knick knacks, but I did pick up these three guys for the "bar." The dish on the left was not thrifted, but came from a local antique shop, and was still only $10. It's lovely and shiny and has a teak stand, and it's Danish. The bowl in the middle was under $2 at the local Last Chance. I'm fairly certain it's mid-century Italian, and I think it's silver-plated. I have cocktail napkins and vintage beverage umbrellas in it now. The far right is an ice bucket my mom and me found in the Goodwill in Roswell. Why are the thrift stores up there so much better? Argh!

Here's a peek at Roxanne's room. My sister did those adorable paintings for her. She LOVES them and always talks about what the birdies and elephants are doing. The chandaleir is from IKEA and I think it adds some nice girliness to Roxanne's room. I'm working on a collage for over her dresser using lots of darling vintage postcards and a big clunky frame. I'll finish it someday... Oh, and I do realize that the chandaleir would photograph better if it was off, but oh well. Some day my house blog photos won't look like they came from a seedy polaroid camera. But don't count on it being any time soon. We is broke.

I have a myriad of excuses for my lapse in postings. But it's boring to list them, and more boring to read them, so whatevs. We have been stalled out on the house decorating stuff a little. We've actually started having company over, and we're hosting a baby shower here on Saturday. It's also tough because by the time we get home, it's dark, so a lot of the electrical work is not doable. The weird wiring in our house makes it so that the fuse to shut off power to the hall light also shuts off power in the kitchen and dining room. The hall light and me are not on good terms right now. It almost burned our house down (not really, but still) and it has made me scared to try other electrical projects. The light fixture that was up there didn't work when we moved in, and when I put a new bulb in, it blew it out immediately. When I took down the old fixture, it looked like it had been wired together in a really really bad way. So I took it apart and put a new fixture up, but because there were a total of four wires in the box, I kind of guestimated when I put the new fixture in. Oops. It actually worked, but when I tried the wall switch, it made a loud pop, and black smoke came out of it. So my dad gave me lots of diy wiring books, a new switch, and a pep talk, and I've been stalling about starting over. I recently found a fantastic website called DIY Chatroom though, and someone actually drew me a diagram of how to correctly install the light and prevent the next homeowner from going through what I did. So thanks for the kindness of strangers. These photos are also not super recent, and there have been some updates since they were taken but that's OK. I'll catch up some day...