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!

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.

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!

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!

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!!!!

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.

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.