2010-04-25

The Poor Girls Answer to Anthropologie:










Rainy Sundays are the absolute worst. I mean, this is the last day before everyone has to get back into the swing of all things crap. This fact alone always renders me lethargic and gloomy, but throw some overcast sky into the mix and I can barely find the motivation to brush my teeth. Screw rainy Sundays.

I spent half of the day in my pajamas lacking the will to do anything but troll around anthropologie.com while eating cheerios and feeling poorly about myself for not being rich enough to afford anything/everything on their site. Also insert more self-loathing for not being talented/well-connected enough to be designing things for them.

Anthropologie.com is so beautiful and untouchable that it makes me feel inadequate. Most girls experience this by flipping through the Victoria's Secret catalogue. Same idea, I suppose.

Anyway, by 2 o'clock or so I decided enough was enough. There is still a ton of crap that we need in order to make the apartment habitable, and I was wasting an entire day off dreaming about things out of my reach. Not to mention the flea market is open on Sunday, as well as a 40% off home goods sale at my local TJ Maxx.

My finds? Astronomically wonderful. Thank god I left the house today.

TJ Maxx finds:
Apron for $7.79. There was only one left. Granted, this wasn't an item of extreme need. I consider this my one luxury moving-in item for the time being. I spent the entire morning drooling over similar ones on Anthro that go for $32.
I love to picture myself waking up responsibly early and preparing french toast with fruit for Policecop while wearing one of these. The only problem is that I want one for every day of the week.
Fish sponge/soap holder for $2.99. Rather similar to this one on Anthro for $18. Plus it came with the scrubbie. And I like the salmon color.

Flea Market Finds:
8 piece set of china with turquoise and gold detail for $5. I saw it. My heart sang. Turandot Moscow. There is some wear on the larger dishes, but holy god...these are beautiful.

2 Random Plates from I. Godinger & Co. For $2 each I couldn't turn the cuteness down. There are two more of a different design that I'm going to go back for next week. I don't know why I didn't grab them today, I guess I was just in ultra-frugal mode.

So in the end, my Sunday wasn't all that bad. Especially since it ended with pasta. With tomato sauce, fresh garlic, mozzarella, prosciutto, and green onions. God I can not wait to have my own magical kitchen lab!






2010-04-24

Phase One: Complete.







It's only 1:33 and I've moved/unpacked my first round of stuff.
Which didn't even make a dent. The apartment still looks entirely cavernous. Except for the kitchen, which I think is coming together rather nicely with minimal effort. This is because A: We have no real kitchen tools/food yet, and B: It's the size of a small closet, doesn't take much decorating.

So now I'm back in Carver trying to figure out what to do with myself until Policecop gets out of work. Restless and wishing I could go furniture shopping. But I can not. So I ate cookies instead, and they weren't even that good.


2010-04-22

Whatever happened to MTV?





Do you ever look back on the days when you could come home from school and flip on the tv in hot pursuit of the most recent, most stylin' music? Before MTV was taken over by trashtastic reality shows, with VH1 in hot pursuit...before Total Request Live ruined everything by drowning the world with Britney Spears and the Back Street Boys...
What ever happened to really good music videos?
Did the general public just stop wanting them? In my opinion, that's kind of like throwing away a genre of art.
Granted, Lady Gaga's recent video for Telephone is pretty fucking sweet. If you can ignore the shameless promotional ads for Polaroid and Virgin Mobile that are woven into it.

Anyway, I wanted to share with you what I consider to be a mind-blowing-ly awesome video, but youtube won't let me embed it. So here is the link to
Fischerspooner's Sweetness

Enjoy!



2010-04-20

24 Hours:

Monday Night Dinner: Salad with avocado, shredded carrot, tomato and orange miso dressing. Panini on kalamata olive bread with Italian seasoned chicken, mozzarella, baby spinach, prosciutto, tomato and avocado again...because you can never have too much avocado, I think. I'm entirely inspired by the prospect of moving into a place with a kitchen to call my own, and have decided to start working my culinary muscle in preparation.

Tuesday workday: Spent preparing for giant gluten-free buffet dinner. Which was chaotic and everything came down to the last minute regardless of how much work we had done in advance, as always. After five hours spent bent over a counter decorating 120 mini cupcakes, mini brownies, mini eclairs, mini cream puffs, mini-god-damn-everything, my neck is KILLING ME. As soon as I complete this post I'm hitting the icy hot HARD.


Tuesday Evening: Enjoyed myself some beautiful sky and cherry blossoms on the way home. I stopped at Savers to see if they still had the golden-yellow colored tea kettle I spotted last week but held off on. Alas, it was gone...I suppose it wasn't meant to be. I did find an old Afga rangefinder camera...but being as committed as I am to becoming the fiscally responsible adult I need to be in order to pay rent, I passed. I consider this a bittersweet victory.

Tonight: PIANTEDOSI'S CHICKEN SOUP. I made it to the shop just in time to get the very last jar. This stuff is all the warm comfort you will ever need.

Also, as of today my pc is feeling under the weather due to limited hard drive availability. Turns out my billions of pictures are becoming too much for it to handle. So in an attempt to save space, I'm switching to flickr as my blog image host. In any case, the picture quality is better, so win-win. And goodnight!

2010-04-17

A clean slate, Beets, Lobster and Bearnaise.











This weekend was kicked off with a special gourmet dinner shared by myself, my sister "Dupree", my father and Policecop. In my book, anything involving bearnaise sauce marks an extra special occasion. Even if it leaves my tummy in chaos for 24 hours after, it's like heaven in my mouth. I don't even care what it does to my thighs. It's just that good. Also enjoyed: lobster. And beets. I love them so much I could probably have great success on an all-beet diet. Something to think about...

This morning we all took advantage of the rainy weather, oversleeping and lethargically slugging about until noon. Policecop went to work, Dupree and I went to the future palace/apartment to take window measurements and pictures.
So here it is, my great vast empty canvas....I can not even explain how excited I am to decorate the shit out of this place. The toughest thing is knowing that in reality, it is going to take a while...if only I had loads of money and about four consecutive days off...
Sigh...
The moving process begins this coming Friday, so I'll be pretty busy this week packing stuff up and whatnot. Although I still plan to photograph the entire ordeal from beginning to end. Excitement-a-go-go!!!!






2010-04-15

All things Russian:




This past Tuesday my Peanut and I officially found the castle in the sky of our dreams!!!
With no thanks to our ever-absent real estate agent Brenda, by the way.
I took it upon myself to scour every relevant corner of the internet, scheduled multiple viewings, and officially earned myself $100 from rent.com for signing a lease through them, as opposed to paying Brenda for being the scatterbrained piece of uselessness that she was.
WIN!

As it turns out, I'll be moving back to my original home town of Marshfield. It is the perfect center-point between my job and Policecop's. Not to mention close to the beach, all utilities except electricity included, pool, gym, grilling area....

It kind of blows my mind that I am about to return to the town I grew up in after all these years of living in Japan back and forth, a stint at Umass Amherst, Taunton, Carver...but I can't say that I'm disappointed. I did my time living in the city and found it rather exhausting...also living on the edge of nowhere (Carver) has been entirely depressing, to say the least.

From the moment I laid eyes on our chosen apartment, my mind has switched into hardcore interior decoration-inspiration mode. Every color I see in the world becomes a a starting point in a never ending race of ideas...
My main theme of choice?
RUSSIA.
I'm thinking Provincial meets clean-cut Ikea, with a dusting of the ornate.

And in my mad google search of all things to do with Russian interior design, I came upon the "Personal Moon". Which I think everybody should have, but only after I get one of my own.















2010-04-11

Rod Har Successka!




TADA!
I finally freaking did it. Red hair.
Now excuse me while I go soak my entire head in a bucket of keratin.

In other news, I'm finally feeling better. Decided to break out the final bag of summer clothes and to my surprise, everything still fits. Which kind of baffled me, so I gathered up a little bit of courage and stepped on the scale for the first time since December.
Somehow by sitting on my ass, avoiding the gym entirely and enjoying copious amounts of steak and cookies, I have lost about 7lbs. WTF?
Clearly, I have a tapeworm.
That, and I have lost about every ounce of muscle mass that ever belonged to me. I'm thinking that this is more the case. Time to hit the gym again, starting tomorrow! Probably.

2010-04-10

In Hot Pursuit of the Ginge...



For about two months and counting I've been trying to figure out a way to get my hair to the perfect shade of red...not dark cherry, not fire truck red, not orange...
In a perfect world I would be able to pull off a Christina Hendricks-type look. However, I am not quite blessed enough in the aesthetics department to run around with flaming orange hair and still look like the sex. I know this. I am at least that much in touch with reality.

After several botched attempts, I decided that this kind of project was out of my hands and went to a salon for professional coloring for the first time in my life.
Long story short, I left the salon with hair as dark as ever, but with beautiful red tones that only showed in the sun. Which was nice enough, but not what I wanted and definitely not what I forked over my hard earned cash for.

So today I decided to take another stab at it. I'm still pretty much house-bound due to this nasty cold/allergy/virus/bullshit. I needed a good time-consuming, indoor, non-exhausting activity. As it turns out, I made a good choice, although after a few hours of inhaling peroxide and whatnot, I was sure I could feel my brain cells slipping away.

Anyway, here is what I did:

1: Colorfix. This stuff is miraculous, but you have to use it the right way. It basically removes all of the built up dye in your hair without bleaching it. This was the third time I've used it and while I recommend it with five shining stars, it works in mysterious ways that you need to know about beforehand. For extensive reviews, read this page. I did two applications, plus the third step processing lotion which I had always tossed out before. Turns out if you're coloring your hair directly after using Colorfix, you should definitely go through step 3.
2: A shit-ton of protein conditioner.
3: Wella Color Charm dye, as opposed to boxed colors.
4: Another shit-ton of protein conditioner.

The results?
I will post them tomorrow. The pictures above show my hair before any of these shenanigans, and then after the Colorfix, but before the processing lotion and dye. This stage was kind of exciting for me because for a few fleeting moments, at certain angles while squinting and strategically hiding my dark eyebrows, I found myself to resemble Tori Amos. I tried to capture this likeness on the camera but quit after a while, coming to terms with the fact that it was mostly all in my head.





2010-04-08

All your histamines are belong to us.






According to news sources, all of the recent messed up weather has caused the pollen count to explode. Blame it on the rain, global warming, whatever, JUST MAKE IT STOP.

I've never had an issue with allergies before...maybe a few sneezes here and there, nothing that even made me consider taking medicine, never mind taking a day off work like I had to today. All of this bullshit started late Tuesday afternoon, reaching the zenith of misery yesterday in the heat, and again today when my eyes decided to join the party...watering like crazy, bright red, itchy....I look like something that would stumble out of a hostel at 11:00 am in Amsterdam and puke in a flowerbed. No amount of makeup can fix this fuckery. And as it turns out, no amount of OTC medicine can either...

So far I have taken:
Sudafed
Claritin
Benadryl
Zyrtec
Antihistamine eye drops
4-way fast acting nasal spray....
Airborne tablets...

AND NOTHING....
I'm talking ZERO IMPROVEMENT here. What the fuck am I dealing with? Space pollen? Or are my histamine-warriors just entirely immune to all applicable medicines? And if so, WHY?

All I want in this world right now is for this to stop. I even broke out the surgical masks my mum had stored away for the bird flu, or some other biological disaster that would surely be the end of mankind (she loves that stuff...). The problem is that they look entirely impractical in public. In Japan at this time of year, they are the norm...I used to wonder how bad it could possibly be that the general public would go around wearing these ridiculous things...now I understand. It's just too bad that Michael Jackson wasn't exactly a trend-setter. If I wear one of these out and about, people are going to think I have diphtheria or something.

The only productive things I have done today were making my bed and getting my Pop-9 prints developed. I am truly excited about tomorrow's rainy forecast, hoping and praying that it will help wash away some of the death particles floating about and ruining my quality of life, even if only for one day...

And oh yeah, one good thing:
I scored this Jean Paul Gaultier for Target dress this past week. I was equal parts devastated and relieved when I found out that the collection would not be available at any stores in my area.
Lack of access to coveted goods = Saved money.

But this past week while passing by the womens section I saw the piece of my dreams...a telnyashka-like dress. There was only one, and it was in my size...and just so happened to be from the JPG collection. My favorite part is the random drape-like fabric attached at the front and back of the collar...you can wear it in all sorts of ways.

So thank you to the kind soul who bought this dress at some far away store and returned it at my little Wareham Target. I am going to wear the hell out of this one.










2010-04-06

Plymouth: You are cute, but not that cute.











The search has officially started for a sweet new apartment for my Peanut and I.
We zeroed in on Plymouth and chose the most scatterbrained, unavailable real estate agent in the area, as it turns out. She works part time as a dental hygienist and basically never returns our calls. I understand that you've got to do what it takes to make ends meet in this crazy economy, but Brenda sucks at doing two things at once.

Today we went to our first open-house deal, our lovely agent showing up in primary blue scrubs, without a proper key.

None the less, we were very excited having found this crazy massive old house converted into apartments during our photographic expedition the day before (as seen above). The rent: $800/month with all utilities included...right across from the harbor, beach views, parking...
It sounded perfect until we actually saw the room. Which was basically the size of my current tiny bedroom with no real closet, no bathtub, no kitchen area...
So apparently for $800/month in Plymouth one is forced to make the tough decision of having a bed or an oven. Because having both would surely result in a terrible house fire. Unless they sell under-bed oven units at Ikea. I think not. And oh yeah...dishes? You have to do them in the bathroom sink.

It boggles my mind that I had a studio of nearly the same exact size only with the plus of a huge bath tub, massive storage closet, kitchenette area and a balcony for approximately $275/month...in one of the most crowded countries in the world...in the middle of the city...five minutes walking distance from the train station...
DOES NOT COMPUTE.

So in conclusion, I have decided to take the reins from our dental hygienist/real estate agent and broaden our search to other towns, in order to find the apartment palace of our wildest dreams. In the end, we may not have an ocean view, but with the money saved we will probably be able to buy a 20x20 foot extremely realistic oil painting of the most beautiful sunset anyone has ever seen in the Maldives, done by Vermeer. Compromise is key.

I am determined beyond all reason to find a place and transform it into Selby worthy material. I don't need much to do this but the place we saw today screamed of sad stories in the style of Angela's Ashes...two people could not live together in that space without turning against each other in two days.

So the search is on for practicality, bang for buck and potential.
Wish me luck.