Happy Birthday to Me!

Today is a milestone in my life - surviving to a quarter of a century!  To celebrate, I treated myself to the Clarisonic Mia.  After some research, I purchased mine at Skinstore.com because they seemed to have the best discounts.  


I've been using it twice a day since last Friday.  That being said, I don't think that's enough time to clear up my face in time for my birthday (skin - didn't you get the memo I'm not a teenager anymore?), but I do feel like it does an excellent job of cleansing my skin.  My face feels much softer after I use it and my serum and moisturizer soak in quickly.  Here's hoping my pesky little zits and clogged pores get zapped in no time with the supposedly amazing Clarisonic!

Oh Snap!

I came upon a great surprise while waiting for my bimonthly Starbucks treat today.  While perusing the shelves of coffee paraphernalia, I discovered my favorite part of Starbucks is available in a bottle for my personal use - the caramel sauce!!  

My drink of choice is a tall iced caramel macchiato, nonfat of course.  And now, for the seemingly reasonable price of $4.95 (just for the sauce), I can bring the caramel home with me!? Incredible!  This has to go on my birthday and/or Christmas list.  

If you don't care for coffee drinks, my cousin came up with a tasty tea concoction at Starbucks.  She orders an iced Passion Tea flavored with raspberry syrup.  It's very refreshing on a smoking hot day.  It's also pretty cheap!

Oh my, another give away!

All Things Vintage Sheets, a lovely blog I found a few months ago, is hosting a give away with fabulous prizes including items from Moda's vintage sheet inspired line, Dream On, that will debut in October.  Go check it out!  Open until Sept 8.

Give Away Time!

Just a quick note that a la mode fabric is hosting a give away featuring the AccuQuilt Go, which is a nifty item that cuts fabric pieces out by the handful!  Go check it out, and good luck!  You have until Fri. Aug 27 at 9pm to enter.

Did You Know?

I recently stumbled into the local Pottery Barn pretending that I could actually afford the furniture.  While browsing and silently praying that the floor models were going to be on sale, I started talking to one of the employees about a sectional couch that had a price that seemed too good to be true.  It was – the price was for the slipcover only (which made that go from a great deal to OMG outrageous really quickly!). 

Long story short, I told her I had just moved into town from another state and was in the market for a couch.  She says, “Oh that’s great!  We have a just-moved-into-the-area discount of 10%!”  Say what?  PB has a we’re glad you moved close to us from who cares how far away discount that I can use on anything online as long as I get it through the store?  This is too much for me to handle!  Of course, the furniture prices are still way out of my budget, but I thought I’d let you know in case you’re interested.  The discount usually only negates the shipping/handling fee on the furniture, but at least that’s something.  In my opinion, if you buy a $1500 couch it should be shipped to you for free.  I guess I’m still in cheap college student mode :D 

I’ll probably have to stick to craigslist furniture for the next year, but after that when I can actually afford PB, I can get the couch I always dreamed of!

French memo board in, you guessed it, houndstooth!

I have this French memo board that I made a long time ago when I was in the zebra print fabric phase.  It's not really my taste now for my new apartment, so I decided to jazz it up with that green houndstooth fabric that kind of reminds me of the temple oil lamps that never ran out of oil - I may never use it all up!  


Sorry I forgot to take a before picture, but here's the after.  Same technique as the necklace holder, but I crisscrossed and stapled ivory grosgrain ribbon across the front to hold stuff.  The ribbon was on sale at Hobby Lobby for $1 for 15 yards - awesome!  To keep the ribbons crisscrossed just so, I screwed in those little plastic and metal Dritz Twist Pins.  

I hung it up in the kitchen. Don't mind the mess!

Can I get some more houndstooth please?

It's been a busy weekend for me working on a bunch of different projects.  Ideas just flew into my head as I was planning the things I needed to do!  

So I'd been having trouble keeping my necklaces orderly and out of an untangled monster blob in my jewelry box and I'd been keeping my eye out for tutorials on making something to keep them in line.  I contemplated a picture frame with window screen mesh, but that stuff is wicked expensive for how little I wanted.  I thought about ribbons and snaps and that just sounded way too complicated.  

Before

Ultimately I went with what I know...fabric!  I bought a picture frame with a decent design at the thrift store for $1.62.  BTW, I chose a paint color for the desk project and thought, hmm, I should paint this picture frame to match.  So I did.  I removed the glass and was left with a few pieces of cardboard.  I didn't have batting, but I do have some polar fleece that I saved from the trash (don't ask) that I stapled to the cardboard.  Then I stapled another piece of beautiful preppy green houndstooth over it.  Popped it all back in the frame and thought, now what?  Well I wanted it to be an effective but simple solution, so I used those pearly glass topped pins stuck into the fabric to hold the necklaces.  Heavy pieces like the one in the middle needed a couple pins.  I alternated white and green pins, because I have a type A personality.  So far it seems to be a good project, and it didn't come crashing down in the middle of the night like other things I've hung.  Now if I could only get Carlton to stop jumping up at it to play with the pretty chains...

After!  Sorry you can't tell the size of this, but I think it's about 10x14...

Nobody puts Carlton in the corner!