Lyin' Eyes

Being that it's summer, there's not a lot of really good, non-reality TV on (except for Mad Men and, of course, guilty pleasure True Blood).  Imagine my excitement when I learned that ABC Family was going to start airing a new teen drama series called Pretty Little Liars.  I immediately set the dvr to record it.  ON THE BIG SCREEN.  Yes, this was going to be a serious relationship. 

I didn't have time to watch it until 2 episodes were already recorded and L happened to be home that night.  While I have no problem getting him on board to watch Mad Men and True Blood, I figured he'd roll his eyes and go do something else while I watched PLL, like he normally does during my Gossip Girl and Greek viewings (yes, I just said it.  I watch Greek).  However, what I neglected to factor in was how pretty the main characters all are.  I can only asstume that's what hooked him, because make no mistake about it- he's been keeping an eye on the TV each week since then and somehow managed to end up on a blog last Monday night discussing how similar Pretty Little Liars and Gossip Girl are, which is strange because he doesn't read blogs and he claims he doesn't like either show.  He had a quasi-logical explanation for how that happened but I don't remember what it was. 

Hot Child in the City

There are some things I feel compelled to share.  L is all about nesting this weekend or something.  He hasn't left the house since we got home from Movies in the Park on Friday night, which is fine.  He spent yesterday helping me with laundry and chores while I made brownies (from scratch!!) for a JL event that was last night. 

1) L is using his smoker today to make some ribs for dinner tonight.

2) Today L is also rearranging his t-shirt drawer.  He opted to model one particular shirt for me.  I think it's quite fitting for today since he's going to be in the backyard working with meat (he's smoking ribs; please note that I purchased the meat this time so we'll only be making enough for the two of us as opposed to the whole neighborhood). 

Just your average Sunday morning cup of coffee with your bad-ass husband who's not afraid to show how bad-ass he is by wearing sleeveless t-shirts.  If only he had some short jorts to wear with it. 

I know, I know- I'm so lucky.  Men like this don't come along very often.  Ladies, try to contain your jealousy.


PS- Sorry for the poor picture quality.  Dealing with the bad camera phone here, people, which means no flash.  I feel like I'm back using my mom's old Polariod or my FisherPrice My First Camera.  Neither of them had flashes and you better believe that not many of my first photography attempts turned out well.

Mad World

Season 4 of Mad Men starts tonight.  If you're not watching this show, you're doing something wrong.  You need to watch this show!!  L and I decided to start watching it via Netflix and we're all caught up now.  I love the detail of all of the sets, costumes, etc.  The writing is fantastic; the metaphors are incredible, the foreshadowing is superb, the character development is intriguing, and the way it all plays together in the end makes for some of the best TV (like, seriously good, not like guilty pleasure viewing, a la all of my belvoed teen dramas) I've seen in... actually maybe my whole life. 

Here's a little teaser for you, although if you haven't watched, forego the teaser and find a place to rent season 1:


Happy viewing for those of you who watch!!

You Were Always On My Mind

Random musings from today:

I really hate it when bloggers discuss some form of competition reality TV, specifically who was kicked off the show the night before, and don't give you a spoiler alert before stating who that person was.  I watch So You Think You Can Dance and I've totally had the rug pulled out from under me a couple weeks in a row.  I get it- I don't watch it live (I hate the commercials and L has no desire to watch, but I refuse to watch it on any TV but the big one because THAT'S WHY WE HAVE HD), so there's going to be a risk and it's a free country so of course everyone should feel free to discuss whatever they want on their own blogs, but do a friend or stranger a favor and just say SPOILER ALERT before you tell me who got kicked off!!  Thank you.

There is BAD music on the radio.  Some specific selections I heard on the way home from work:
- some new Enrique Iglesias song with Pitbull, who might be one of my most hated singers EVER
- Travie McCoy, and while I don't love the song, what I dislike more is his name.  Who goes by Travie??
- Usher & Will.i.am.  I know I'm probably in the minority, but I really can't stand their collaboration, which is disappointing because I usually love Usher.  On the other hand, I'm not at all sad that the Peas are breaking up.
- Katy Perry.  She just annoys 99% of the time.  California Gurls and her recent collaborations are no exception.
- Werewolves of London is such a ridiculous song.
- It's weird to hear songs from Glee on the radio.  I love the original songs and the cast is talented, but I think- I'm not sure but I think-  I prefer to see them sing on TV and not on the radio.  It's like listening to good karaoke on the radio.  I'm just not sure how I feel about it.
- Whatever happened to Everclear?
- Ke$ha and 30/H- I don't care about your first kisses.  That song is wretched.
- I am somewhat surprised to say I think I might like Eminem's new contributions.  Never was a big fan before.  Maybe it's due in part to the fact that I love Rihanna and Paramour/Hayley Williams.  Also I'm a little embarrassed to tell you that I love singing along to Airplanes.  The lyrics are stupid but I love her voice.

Also I turned on the TV and Bethenny Getting Married? was on.  1) Why the question mark at the end?  2) Her face really freaks me out.  I think it's the excessively large lower jaw.  I can't handle it.  Had to change the channel after about 30 seconds.  Definitely don't love her.

I recently discovered a love for Say Yes to the Dress.  I don't know why I didn't find this sooner.  Like when I was engaged and looking for a dress.  Except really I always knew about it and didn't want to be that girl who was obsessed with weddings.  I love seeing the different styles but man- I have to take a break sometimes because for as much as I love the dresses, I sometimes think the show shows the worst parts of our society.  Some of the girls and some of the people the bring with them to their appointments are just so horrible- either so materialistic (people with astronomical price ranges and the parents whose motto is, "Whatever my daughter wants, she gets," OR the entourages that ignore their bride's price points and start pulling dresses way out of the original range OR the dumb girls who try on a dress that's so out of their range and then they cry when they can't buy it because of course they fell in love with the expensive dress) or not there for the bride or something else.  I don't know.  I really just want to strangle everyone that's mean to their bride, though.  A lot of the time I think it's jealousy that fuels the mean friends because they wish they were the ones trying on dresses, but sometimes it's the moms, which would be the case in the episode I'm watching right now.  This mom is just not at all supportive of her daughter's choice to purchase her dress from this boutique, and the poor bride just wants to see any kind of response from her mom, no matter what the reaction is.  Right now the mom is just completely indifferent.  Sadness.  It's easier to write off a friend's comments when they make you feel uncomfortable... I received a couple of pieces of awkward/uncomfortable advice about some things that literally would have no affect on the advice givers, but after the initial sting wore off, I was able to let the comments go because I'm pretty sure there were some other underlying feelings involved.  However, if it was my mom that was being Debbie Downer, I just don't think I could get over it so fast.  Especially since I assume that most of these moms on the show have had their own wedding days!!  I just want to hug the brides and tell them to get the dress that makes each of them feel the prettiest.  Especially the girl in this episode with the indifferent mom because she is really pretty and looks great in every dress she's tried on so far.

GOOD NEWS OF THE WEEK: 1) My father-in-law was able to rehab my computer and he was able to save EVERYTHING!!  Apparently my hard drive was bad so he got put a new one in.  Hooray for handy fathers-in-law!  2) L is making dinner tonight from scratch, which is a first in a long time.  Hooray for husbands who can cook!

Finally, happy birthday to Pink Slip Gourmet!!  Hope it's been a fab day for you!!!

Oh and PS- sorry for the lack of pictures.  That's what happens when you don't have your computer so you can't upload any pictures from your camera.  I'll try to do better and take pics with my phone moving forward.

This is Why I'm Hot

Last Thursday I wore a dress to work with a pair of heels that I sometimes consider questionable.  I bought them specifically to go with Thursday's dress, with my mom's encouragement.  Obviously Mom wasn't going to let me buy some kind of sloob shoes, and these are not dowdy or matronly.  However, I still really don't wear them with anything else.  I think I've worn them with a black knit dress once and jeans and a low-key tops once or twice.  Why?  Well, these are the shoes in question:

Platform.  Stiletto.  Leopard-print.  My concern is that they sometimes they seem... shall we say, street walker, but according to Mom, they aren't since they aren't red (according to mom, only ladies of the night wear red shoes and she did not approve when I purchased a super cute pair of red shoes last year, even though she thought the style of the shoes was super cute).  And yet oddly enough, I wear them to work, of all places.  Anyway, Thursday I was standing in the doorway to my boss's office while she reviewed some of my work and I heard loud-whispering somewhere out in the hall.  I didn't really pay attention.  Lots of people work in my building on my floor and talk in hushed tones as they walk down the halls.  Except it got louder.  So I listened.  And that's when I realized a male voice was whisper-shouting, "YOUR SHOES ARE HOT!"  I turned around to see who it was and who they were talking to but all I saw was a white shirt duck into the kitchen.  So random.  For the record, I did whisper a thanks to him.  I firmly believe that good manners never go out of style, regardless of how random and mysterious the compliment.

Oh, I love a rainy night

Wow, what a day it's been.  It started raining last night around 10 and it rained hard.  I love sleeping in hard rain, so needless to say, I promptly fell asleep on the couch while watching ABC Family's second night of their 4-day Harry Potter weekend.  Yes, that means you can still catch it for the rest of the day today AND tomorrow if you've missed it so far.  Try to contain yourself. 

Obviously that means I woke up completely rested this morning around 8:45.  L was still sleeping soundly, so I decided to take my book and finish it from one of my favorite spots: the armchair in our study.  Down the hall I trekked, climbed into the chair, covered myself up with the blanket, and tried to turn on the TV for a little background noise (I'm that girl who needs background noise to read).  The remote wouldn't turn on the TV, so I looked at the cable box and of course it had some kind of weird error message.  "No worries," I thought, figuring the cable got knocked out with the storm and I simply turned on the DVD player.  New Moon happened to be in there, so you know, a little eye candy in case the book got boring in the last 30 pages.  I opened my book and moments later, I heard a weird noise.  Almost like a drop of water hitting hard plastic.  I looked up and sure enough, a drop of water was rolling down Edward Cullen's face.  And not in the movie.  This was on the TV.  My focus shifted up and saw that apparently we have a leak in our roof that happened to be causing water to drip directly down on to the TV and the cable box it sits on.  SUPER.  I jumped up to get paper towels to wipe up the water (luckily it looked like the leak hadn't been going for too long) and move the TV and cable box to a dry area.  Then I took off to find some kind of make-shift buckets.  Several towels, an ice bucket, a big vase, and two jug coolers did the trick.  The clean-up actually took a lot longer than you'd think because I thought it was just one spot dripping and then I kept finding more and more (water is basically coming in where the crown molding meets the top of some built-in bookshelves and as the water came in, it either rolled straight down or off to either side and then down the sides of the bookcase- whatever, use your imagination) and therefore having to get more towels and continually find more containers to collect the accumulating water. 

After that, I took a picture with my camera of everything so we could show our landlord what was going on and went to upload it to my computer.  I opened it up and saw the dreaded Blue Screen of Death.  This is sort of a recurring thing with my computer; it loves to go through phases where it won't start up and it needs to run diagnostics for like an hour to reset itself and then it works just fine for a couple of weeks before needing to rinse and repeat.  After like 4 rounds of this, it usually simmers down for a few months before the cycle starts again.  So far it's run diagnostics three times today, all with no avail.  I'm sure it didn't help that while it was running them the first time, I didn't realize the power cord had come unplugged and that it was just running on the battery, which wasn't fully charged, so of course it shut down mid-run. 

During all of this, I also decided to try and reset the cable box to no avail.  Just kept getting weird error messages. Since I obviously couldn't upload the pictures from my camera to my computer, I decided to take pictures with my phone.  That worked as far as sending them to our landlord, but I'm on L's desktop computer right now and even though I downloaded the pics from my email, his stupid computer won't let me upload them for Show and Tell for you.  Grrr. 

All of this was before I'd been awake for an hour.  Fun way to start a Saturday, no?  Also fun to explain all of that to your husband literally as soon as he opens his eyes.  At least the leak was under control.  He'll work on my computer at some point over the weekend.  I'm just hoping I didn't potentially lose like 6 years' worth of pictures... fingers crossed that I can get it to work long enough to recover them and save them to a back-up disc or jump drive!  I've already been lucky once this week and gotten a camera to come back from the dead, so here's hoping I can repeat it with my computer, too.

The good news of the day:  the rain has stopped and so has the leak has.  L just got up in the attic to see if he could spot where the leak in the roof was and everything is totally dry.  No idea what's going on there.  L and I had a late breakfast and ran a couple of errands and left the cable box unplugged so it could dry out for a while.  Good news: the cable box is working again, so everyone can relax knowing that I can watch Harry Potter's adventures all weekend from my favorite chair. 

On a side note, L was introduced to Sur La Table during our errand-running and is now a big fan, but that's another story.

God Bless the U.S.A.

Got the camera to work.  Thank you, magic hands.  As such, here are the pics that went with the Wednesday post about my craftiness.

Here are the fruits of my Martha Stewart-y labor:

That's the aforementioned table runner and in the back of the pic amidst the almost-cleared set up from our little 4th of July BBQ, you'll see some of the tastiest homemade, iced sugar cookies ever.  Also, let's note the hydrangeas in the vase.  Totally found an enormous hydrangea plant (bush?  How is that classified?) growing on the side of my house the other day.  No idea that it was there.  Also you can't see them really, but I had some super cute red and white gingham napkins and blue plates.  The patriotic straws were coincidental.  Already had 'em on hand.

This would be one of the walls in the hallway that prompted the do-over paint job:

Classy.  Rest assured that it's all uniformly painted and is the darker shade. 

And that's that.  Off to bed to prep for Day 6 of the new job!

Sangria Wine

Had a little 4th of July shindig at the house.  I was super excited because it gave me an excuse to make something I hadn't had since my bachelorette party last fall: sangria. 

It might be the best sangria I've ever had.  Also I got to use my green pitcher that we got as a wedding gift and that I've been waiting to use just for sangria.  I'm now going to share the recipe with you because I'm a giver:

Scrumptious Sangria

1/4 Cup lemon juice
1/3 Cup frozen lemonade concentrate
1/3 Cup orange juice
1/4 Cup white sugar
1/2 Cup triple sec
1/2 Cup brandy
1 bottle of dry red wine
1 orange
1 lemon
1 lime
maraschino cherries

Mix brandy, lemon juice, lemonade concentrate, orange juice, red wine, triple sec, and sugar in a large pitcher.  Float slices of lemon, orange, lime, and cherries in the mixture.  For best results, refridgerate overnight to give the fruit flavors time to soak in.

So easy.  So delicious.  Also it's definitely a sneaky drink.

She's Crafty

Well, hello there.  So sorry for the semi-extended absence. 

One of the things I did in the last week and a half was make a new table runner for my dining room table.  I can never find 4th of July decorations that I like and this year was no exception, so I looked up some DIY ones online and found one for a table runner that looked easy enough.  The directions call for making it out of paper, but I opted for felt instead.  The final result:





If you're wondering where the picture is, well, my camera may have just officially died.  Use this as a mental inspiration until I can figure out what the deuce is going on with the cam.  Or you can use the pic below.  If you're trying to pretend it's my table, imagine a round table with a white cloth and that my runner is red felt stars (2 rows).

After the whole homesickness bit on the day of my last post, I decided to keep myself busy the following Sunday while I waited for L to get home from Houston.  The paint job that the prior tenants did in our house was not quite what I'd refer to as professional-grade.  Lots of spots needed to be touched up, mostly on all the general wall areas but especially around the ceilings, particularly in our bedroom.  We got painter's tape a couple of weeks ago and I got an edger brush when I got all of my paint and supplies for the desk, but we are not the couple from Young House Love.  We are somewhat lazy about chores like this and painting is not something most people I know decide to just knock out after randomly after work on a weekday because of all the work it takes to just get to the point where you can START painting.  Yet, in an effort to keep myself busy, I decided last Sunday that that day would be Paint Touch-Up Day.  I did the usual prep and took everything off the walls, moved the furniture away from the walls, taped off the areas I planned to work on, and brought in the bar stool I keep in my kitchen (no ladder on hand that wouldn't take 2 people to move inside to our bedroom).  When I finished the bedroom, I was feeling bold and decided I should go ahead and take care of the hallway, too, since it's the same color as the bedroom.  I went through and touched up the hall all over the place and then stood back and admired my handiwork.  Results: the bedroom looked great.  Bonus points: now I could hang the full-length mirror I got in January that I've been waiting to hang because of the paint issues.  AWESOME.  I knew L would be so thrilled.  Then I stepped back into the hallway and noticed how weird it was that the paint seemed to take so much longer to dry.  Whatever.  I left to go pick up L from the airport and was so proud of myself when we walked back in the front door.  He was definitely pleased that I'd taken care of the paint.  Then I pointed out that it had been like an hour and a half at that point and the spots in the hall still hadn't dried.  Except upon closer inspection, they actually had.  Turns out they dried darker, even though that's the paint that was used in the hall.  I have no idea what or how this happened.  Seriously.  The previous tenants left us 3 cans of paint for the 3 different colors they painted in the house.  There's a darker can for the living room and a lighter can for the hall and our bedroom.  Then there's a pale aqua can for the bathroom that doesn't matter.  Obviously I used the lighter can of paint to go in the rooms with the lighter shade of paint (which L seems to think is green but is definitely BEIGE).  In some spots, my hallway touch-ups blended right in with the original paint.  In other spots, it looked like this:





Oh wait, yet again, no pic available.  Super annoying.  Instead, I've drawn you a rendering of what it looked like.  The colors are not accurate, but I only had 16 options with which to work:

So yeah, that wasn't gonna work for me.  Especially since we knew we were having friends over for the 4th.  That meant we were going to have to repaint THE WHOLE THING.  Is it a huge hallway?  No, but it does span the length of our house.  Bonus problem: I wasn't sure if there was going to be enough paint to re-paint the whole hallway.  That meant purchasing more paint.  Note: if you have Ralph Lauren paint in your home and need more of it, Home Depot has quit stocking it so you need to hurry and go buy it if it's important to you to have the same base.  We ran into this problem.  They were out of the RL base that the prior tenants had used, so I went with Glidden.  They matched the paint, but on the wall it's slightly darker than the previous color.  I don't know if that's just because now there's a second coat on or if it's because of the different base or a combo of both.  At any rate, the hallway is now finished.  Part of me wants to touch up the living room, but I also don't want to risk having to paint the ENTIRE thing if the touched up areas dry darker. 

The biggest lesson I learned from all of the painting: L cannot tell the difference between the darker and lighter paint colors that are in our house.  They are definitely close and clearly part of the same family of colors, but there's a definite difference between them.  Here's a shot of a corner where the colors meet:


BURN!  Once again, the pic I took is being held hostage on my camera.  Just imagine one of those paint chips with like a family of 4-5 colors on it, so they all coordinate but they are various hues of the same color.  Well, it's like comparing paint chips #2 and #5.  You can tell they are similar, but there's a clear difference.

Another important note: as I've previously mentioned, I went to summer camp for years and years as a kid and worked there on staff for another 5 years.  For 3 of those years, I was the Head of the Crafts.  (Jealous???)  The bane of my existence every summer was when kids would decide they wanted to paint and then leave their paint brushes in the sink, most of the time without washing them out (a similar problem was running them under the sink for like 5 seconds and putting them on the drying rack... that doesn't sufficiently get the paint out).  L had to help with the hall repainting, specifically with the corners, baseboards, and along the ceiling.  Imagine my fury when I found an unwashed paintbrush in the kitchen sink a mere 3 hours after we'd stopped painting.  To be fair, L has no idea how much I hate finding unwashed paint brushes in the sink because he wasn't around back in the day.  Also I know it wasn't intentional.  Lucky for us, we don't do a lot of painting so hopefully this won't be a continual problem.