prettying things

i haven't been blogging because i don't know what to write about. normally, when i feel artistic, i have trouble finding an outlet for it. and sometimes, i don't feel particularly overflowing with creativity, but somehow i will create something with which i am quite pleased. it's complicated. to find an outlet for my creativity, i will often sink myself into an over-sized starbucks chair, with my grande cinnamon iced breve coffee beside me and a blank notebook and pen in my lap. for some reason, i always think buying new pens and notebooks will magically give me the inspiration i need, but this is rarely the case. [usually, it's the worn, loved book that has been my companion for years that receives many of my coffee shop/laundromat/two-in-the-morning musing.] and i don't even finish my coffee. i should stop buying grandes.

i gave up trying to pretend to be poetic and i rarely have the patience to finish and perfect a drawing, so i directed this energy toward our apartment. we moved in nearly two years ago, and i have had a difficult time loving the place. decorating an entire home is completely different than decorating one bedroom, which is all i've ever had to work with. plus, we don't just have money floating around to put towards making our apartment look pretty, so it's been a slow process. and because i can't really buy stuff, i end up completely moving furniture around just about every six months or so. john has been ever so patient.

so, instead of trying to write and draw and what-not, i decided to sew. i took a visit to joanne fabrics to see if they had any cute fabric for sale that i could use to make my plain blue curtains prettier. i figured this would be a cheap, easy way to add some color and style to our living room. unfortunately, they had tons of cute fabric squares. this is unfortunate only because i ended up buying way more than i needed. but it was very exciting.

my curtains before their makeover.

my curtains after.

sure, they look cute, but don’t look too close. i literally did the least amount of work possible to put this together. john asked if i tucked in the fabric so it wouldn’t fray, and i said no way, why should i? it won’t fray that much. i even considered hand-sewing the strips on to keep from having to sew around bunches of fabric with my machine, but i figured that would end up being more of a headache and too time-consuming.

river approves. it's his favorite spot.

he likes to people-watch.

while on my trip just to buy fabric, i stopped and picked up some paint to paint my desk-turned-dresser. i have had this desk for about five years. i bought it at a neighborhood yard sale for ten bucks. then, for some bizarre reason i will perhaps never be able to explain, i painted it black and teal. uum, what? yeah. i don't know. i thought it would be cute. it wasn't. i wish i had pictures of it in all its black-and-tealness, but alas, i do not. so you'll just have to picture it that way.

the desk in my old, comfortably cluttered room

with its cheery red walls.

it's been an eyesore since that very confusing paint job of mine, so it was hiding out in our artmusicjunk room that used to be river's nursery. john recently made two simple wooden desks for himself and we were going to toss the ugly thing, but then, my genius husband sawed the desk in half. i was impressed. who knew a gross-looking piece of furniture could start making its way to becoming such a pretty little thing? poor john. he was going to use it as a nightstand, but then i stole it and sanded and painted it and now it is in our living room.

"but you wanted to get rid of it!"

"well, it's mine anwyay, and now i want it."

that’s exactly how it went. i love him. i still have to get some knobs for it and paint some more details on the sides, but so far i am loving the way it looks. 

by the way, sanding? a new, fun experience for me. for the first two minutes.

if that.