31 Cent Scoops of Ice Cream!

It has been super hot in Drew’s apartment the last few evenings, so to get a little break from the heat, Drew suggested we go have some ice cream. We decided to go to the Baskin Robbins that is just a few blocks away. To our surprise when we arrived, we learned that it was 31 cent scoop night! Awesome! I got two scoops in a sugar cone, one Butter Pecan and the other Creole Cream Cheese (my two favorites!) and Drew got two scoops in a cup, one Butter Pecan and one Icing on the Cake! How fitting! (although he said it wasn’t as good as the name suggested) Our total for a sugar cone and 4 scoops of ice cream: $1.36. What a perfect little outing!

Completely disregard the fact that this is in no way a flattering picture of myself. It was like 10:00 at night and I hadn’t felt that great all day. Plus I have no trace of make-up on. But whatever, there are bigger things to worry about and Drew looks cute. (although he really needs a haircut!)

You should definitely look into seeing if your local Baskin Robbins has a 31 cent night! It was pretty tasty and it is to honor America’s firefighters. More info on it here.

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Lime and White Gingham Decor

I know, I know, it is after Easter and I’m still going on and on about my Easter tablecloth. As if I hadn’t already talked about it too much in this post. But it just makes me so happy! Every time I glance into the kitchen or walk past it (which is a lot when you are in a studio apartment) I get a big smile across my face. Beyond cheesy, I know. But it is just so bright and cheery, I can’t help myself. It was most definitely worth the grueling hunt for the perfect Easter tablecloth and the $12.99 we paid for it. And in fact, I just so happen to be sitting at the table with said tablecloth on it as I write this post. 🙂

So imagine how delighted I was looking through the current issue of 100 Ideas, Flea Market Style, a Better Homes and Gardens Special Interest Publication that I picked up when we were in Lowe’s last week and I saw several occurrences of lime and white gingham just like my tablecloth! (I’m a sucker for Better Homes and Gardens Special Interest Publications, they are totally amazing and have so many great ideas! I figured this issue would be great since we were just flea market shopping for furniture for the new house!) Anyway, here are some pictures from the magazine of said lime and white gingham and other lime/chartreuse colored rooms:

Of course, I photographed it on the tablecloth, where else?

Love the green color with the camel colored burlap tablecloth and the honey colored wood! 🙂

See, lime and white gingham covered chair!

Just a few pages later, a different house had lime and white gingham pillows! I LOVE that coffee table! That is what I want for our living room in front of our new couch! Love the color of the wood and the simple design!

The rest of these pictures don’t have gingham, but they are other patterns of lime and white:

I absolutely LOVE that French style couch and chair!! So pretty! I love the green glass/ceramic bottles on the table too.

Lime and White Mattelasse and Shams!

Love the almost rose window pattern on these pillows! 🙂

I would also like to wish Trang, over at The Aquamarine Magnolia, a wonderfully delightful 21st birthday today! 🙂

 

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Happy Easter!

I hope everyone is having a fabulous Easter! Church, dinner, families, whatever your Easter entails. Drew and I went to church this morning and came home and cooked a fabulous lunch! We’ve spent the rest of the day relaxing and working on schoolwork. It has been a nice day though. Here are some snapshots of our lunch:

Beef Roast with Celery, Carrots and Fresh Green Beans, Fresh Corn on the Cob, Homemade Gravy, Twice Baked Potatoes and Rolls! YUMMY! 🙂

I wanted to make a homemade chocolate cake for dessert, but I knew that the two of us wouldn’t be able to eat an entire cake. I figured I’d wait to make that until we are home sometime with more people to help devour it. We already had a ton of food leftover from lunch. So we went to the Kupcake Factory instead and had gourmet cupcakes for dessert:

Double Chocolate and Banana Nut Cupcakes 🙂

Rejoice in the Lord! 🙂

 

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Bathroom Vanity DIY

Have you ever needed to wax your eyebrows but the only mirror in the entire house was in the bathroom? Said bathroom being only big enough for one human being, let alone a table or other flat surface to set the wax machine on. Well if you’ve ever been in this situation and have been yearning for a solution to this problem, I have it for you.

All you’ll need is a cookie sheet, some aluminum foil, clear packing tape and a few paper towels.

First– line the cookie sheet with aluminum foil.

Second– place the cookie sheet so that it sits directly on top of the sink, with the lip of the cookie sheet behind the faucets.

Third– use packing tape to secure the cookie sheet to the sink top, so that there are no wax machine slipping/tipping related accidents.

Fourth– fold a couple paper towels so that they sit below the faucets and absorb any random droplets of water that may drip to avoid getting water on any electrical appliances such as wax machine.

Fifth– Set wax machine on newly made table top and plug it in. I think you know what to do from here.

Good thing about this whole set up is that it is easily dis-mountable and the objects can again part and go their separate ways.

In case you didn’t follow the written directions, I’ve created a visual so you can get a better sense of how to create your very own wax machine stand. Just do as shown:

*By choosing to engage in this stated venture, you do hereby take full responsibility for the repercussions regarding the stability of your structure and all other wax related encounters that may occur from said venture. Icing on the Cake cannot be held responsible for any related accidents nor do we advocate this method as being foul fool proof.*

Happy Waxing!

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Much Ado over an Easter Tablecloth

When I realized that Drew and I were going to be making/spending Easter lunch/dinner by ourselves in New Orleans this year, my mind immediately starting racing to think of how I could make it special and at least a little different than every other lunch/dinner that we eat here. Thinking of big family meals for holidays at my house, I instantly remembered how we always change the tablecloth/plates/flowers and everything on the dining room table to something very springy and Eastery. The current tablecloth that Drew and I have is a neutral camel color that screams everyday or Thanksgiving before it says Easter. I knew we would need something different. Little did I know how hard of a task that would be.

On Thursday after I got out of class, we had to run some errands and stopped by Target. I found a tablecloth I really, really liked there, but they only had it in a long rectangle and not a round one. 🙁 We then went to Bed, Bath and Beyond to continue our search, where we only found more bland Thanksgiving color tablecloths. We also tried Sears home store. They didn’t have any tablecloths at all. 🙁 We were tired by then and decided to continue our search later.

Yesterday we were back on the search again. We tried T.J. Maxx, but all I found were table runners. We tried World Market, but they only had long rectangle ones. I also tried Pier One, but again they only had table runners and rectangular tablecloths! What is it with these people! Does no one carry ROUND tablecloths! I know we are not the only people in the entire New Orleans area that has a round table! I was quite frustrated. Plus, even if we had a rectangular table, not a one of the tablecloths we had seen were anywhere near springy/Eastery. Apparently everyone has their seasons mixed up around here. Or they don’t care to decorate their tables with an Easter appropriate table-scape.

Finally we decided to look at Macy’s. It wasn’t that I doubted that they would have tablecloths earlier on in our search, but Macy’s is farther away and I figured that they would be more expensive there. By then I was hungry, exhausted and ready to go home. We looked in the tablecloth section, saw they actually had tablecloths and round ones at that, (although really only 2 that could pass for Springy and they were really more on the Summery side) saw that they were on sale from $49 to $24, grabbed the one we liked better, checked out and got out of there.

This is what we ended up with:

But the story doesn’t stop here. We got home and put it on the table. It was bright and said Easter more than our current one did, but I still wasn’t crazy about it. It looked fine in the package, but in person, there was too much of a  harsh black/white contrast for a pastel colored holiday and a lot of blues that we don’t otherwise have in our kitchen color scheme. It also said VERA in black in random places all over it. I thought that was tacky. Overall, it was just too busy. We lived with it until today to see what we thought about it later, but I still didn’t overly love it. It isn’t that it was horrible or anything, but it was just one of those impulse purchases of something you don’t really have to have and you aren’t overly pleased with. I thought about it and decided that for the $27 we ended up spending on it, there were other things I would rather have than this tablecloth, even if that meant that we had our plain old boring tablecloth for Easter dinner.

I really couldn’t get the Target tablecloth out of my head. It was a lime green and white check, which actually reminded me of one of my favorite Easter dresses as a kid. It was one that Mamaw bought on one of the years that my mom didn’t make our Easter dresses and it was lime green and white checked with little flowers and ladybugs all over it. Looking back, it probably wasn’t the classiest for Easter, but I loved it and wore it to church all the time. I wish I had a picture of it here so I could show you.

I thought about it all morning, packed up the first one, and decided that even though Target only had a long one in the lime green check, I could cut it into a round shape and sew up the edges. I was determined. I convinced Drew to go tablecloth shopping again, mainly only because if we got the Target one that was $12 and took the $27 one back, we would save some money as well. 🙂

I was nervous all the way to Target. I just knew they would all be gone. I bolted in the front door and down the aisle. I was almost there. I could see them! You can imagine my utter delightment when this is what I saw:

Did you read that closely? That says 70″ ROUND TABLECLOTH!!!!!!!! Not only did they have the one I wanted, but I wasn’t going to have to cut it up and sew it either!!! I danced and spun around and jumped up and down all the way through the store and to the check-out. (Drew can verify that) I was so ecstatic! I love when you find things that you are looking for and they are perfect and they aren’t breaking the bank. $12.99 for a tablecloth is not bad. Plus, the check-out lady randomly gave me a $5 Target gift card. Plus it is actually something I would like to have on the table for more days than one, unlike the first one we brought home. I love that it is pretty, but also simple. I don’t have to worry as much about it clashing with anything else I would want to decorate the table with.

In addition to all that, I just think it is perfect that we went on this search to find a tablecloth for Easter and this one reminds me of one of my childhood Easter dresses! It doesn’t get better than that!

And if any of you New Orleanians out there have already started your hunt for a Thanksgiving tablecloth, there are quite a few options out there, even though it is only April.

 

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The Earth and Packing Up

I hope you all did your best to celebrate Earth Day yesterday (and Good Friday). We didn’t do anything earthy, but it was a productive day. Drew was off work and school because of Good Friday/Spring Break for most schools and Easter Weekend break for his school. We had a nice lunch together (Well sort-of, La Madeleine’s forgot to make our sandwiches and we waited for 30 minutes for them and then they admitted they forgot about them and we just ended up with them to go because I needed to work on stuff at school, but that was another 15 minutes for them to cook and box them up–it was somewhat irritating.) I went to school and worked on my final painting project for a bit and then spent the majority of the day working on packing up my dorm room.

As I stated in a previous post, it is only Drew and I moving things, so we are trying to do it a little at a time since I live on the second story of a building with no elevator and I have a lot of stuff to move in one day. Now that school is out, except for finals, I know what school stuff I need for the next two weeks, and the majority of everything else I will be okay with being boxed up for a couple weeks. It is amazing how quickly a room that looks like this:

can go to looking like this:

I’m happy though that we got some stuff moved out. It feels good to know that at least a little more than half of it is out and that is closer to being one less thing I have to worry about. Many of you know about my obsession with glass bottles. Well to show you an insight into this, I snapped this picture as I was getting ready to wrap up all my pretty little glass into bubble wrap:

Quite a few for just one room, huh? I think they are so pretty though. 🙂

Thinking back on Earth Day, I wish we would have done more for it. I wish there was more we could do for the environment than we do. I wish everyone did more for the environment. God created an amazingly wonderful place on Earth for us and we haven’t even yet been able to understand all its wonderful capabilities. The grandeur of it fascinates me. It makes me incredibly angry when people act careless and do all kinds of things that help to destroy it. How stupid can people be? Hello, we have to live here! Our children have to live here! By adding to the destruction of the Earth, it only hurts ourselves  and our future and gets rid of more and more of the beauty that we get to see of it. I can’t believe that people think that they have the power and authority to make everyone else’s lives worse, both physically and aesthetically.

I won’t rant on about it forever, and there are many people that do as much as they can for the earth. I will admit, your options for helping the earth are so limited when you live in a big city. At home in the country, we can grow our own food in our garden, plant as many trees as we like, throw all our food scraps outside or to the chickens or put them in the compost pile, conserve and reduce, and take care of our little piece of the world. In the city I can’t do hardly any of that, except for try to conserve and reduce as much waste as possible and recycle all our plastic/paper/glass. We did get a special bin for recycling from the trash company (they just started a recycling program in New Orleans) and we make sure to put every single piece of plastic that passes through our hands in there. We aren’t as good about paper, but at least paper is decomposable. Glass I usually keep, but if not, it goes to Tulane for the glassblowing students. I encourage you all to try your best to do the same in your area.

On a lighter note, Happy Easter Weekend everyone! I have been so wrapped up in getting everything finished for school that I completely forgot that Easter was this weekend until a couple days ago. It is weird and kind-of sad that we aren’t going to be home with our families this year (it is the first Easter I haven’t been at home for Easter) and brings up lots of good memories of me and the girls dressed up in our Easter dresses and Easter baskets and church and Easter dinner. I know I can’t re-create being at home, but hopefully we can have a nice Easter dinner to focus on making ourselves. Plus, that isn’t the reason for the season anyway.

Happy Easter!

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Rose Windows

Today was my last day of my art history class. I’m really going to miss it. I’ve really developed a love for ancient art history, especially the architecture. I’m fascinated by the amazing things that people were able to build without any kind of fancy modern technology or huge machinery to aid them. The intricacy and detail is astounding. I particularly like the patterns and little embellishments that they use. I could go on and on about art history and all that amazes me for days, so I’ll stop here.

The last time period that we discussed in this class was Gothic Art and Architecture. Lately I have really been in love with the Gothic rose window patterns that adorn almost every Gothic cathedral. If you don’t know what I’m talking about, here is an example of the Notre Dame in Paris (with my 17 year old self in front of it):

See the really pretty round window in the middle? I’m in love with these. They are on all kinds of ancient buildings, but this is just one that I happen to already have pictures of. They are even prettier on the inside, because they are completely filled in with stained glass:

Sorry, I had a crappy camera at the time, so these pictures aren’t the best. Here is another one on the other side of the Notre Dame:

In one of my inspiration posts a while back, I wrote about an Etsy Shop that sold these rose window prints. I really, really want one, but there aren’t any in their shop. I e-mailed to ask if I could get one, but I still haven’t heard back from them. This is what I’m talking about:

The other day Drew and I were in Restoration Hardware and I saw this matelasse/quilt/coverlet in AMAZING Belgian Linen in the most perfect brownish grey color with a rose window pattern on it:

I fell in love. Immediately. I pondered and looked and touched and had the salesman get out the packages and almost went to the sales counter with them. They were even on sale. But they were still WAY expensive for my budget. 🙁

I can’t get them out of my head though. I know I can find other, less expensive bedding for the bedroom in the new house, but I really, really love the rose window pattern on this! (and the color and the texture and the grain lines of the linen…Ahhh!)

So there you have it. My obsession with rose window patterns.

 

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Filling out the House

Now that we’ve picked out a new apartment (we don’t move in until May 15th) it is time for us to pick out some stuff to go in it! We don’t have the funds to buy a bunch of stuff just yet, but we do need a few things considering currently we don’t really have any furniture. The new house is a lot bigger, so we’ll need quite a bit more to fill it out. We are good about saving money and using it to buy quality and also budget friendly pieces. Luckily, we’ve also sold several websites lately, so we had the money to do a little bit of shopping. We plan on filling out the house slowly though, and buying things only that we really, really like and think would work in our house for a long time. We also have a few building projects up our sleeves that hopefully we can tackle sometime soon. 🙂

I’m so excited about getting to design and decorate the house!! Plus I’m going to be working all summer, so I’ll finally have a little extra money to tackle small design projects! I already have several pieces of art just from my painting class and I’ve got ideas for other ones as well! I can’t wait!

Anyway, back to the point. Since Drew currently has a studio apartment, he doesn’t really have a living room area. Therefore he really doesn’t have any living room furniture. So one of the highest priorities for big furniture purchases for the new house was a couch for the living room. We also eventually need to invest in a nice chair, a coffee table, a t.v. stand and maybe an ottoman, but those all can wait. We really need somewhere to sit in there. So today was deemed go-compare-couch-prices-at-furniture-stores day.

We had a list of furniture places with us, but once we got to the first place, the people were really nice, they had a lot to choose from, and the quality and prices were great too. We had a feeling that we weren’t going to have to look anywhere else. Plus, they happened to be having a no tax sale this weekend. We found several things in our price range that would have worked, but we were unsure of little things. We didn’t like the texture of the fabric on a couple of the couches, one had only pillows for the back, two were too white and I was afraid they would get dirty too easily, and so on. After several hours of roaming the store and comparing and re-comparing and sitting and laying and contemplating and calling our families to see what they thought, we finally made our choice. This is what we bought:

We liked the fabric better than most of the other ones we saw, we liked the simple classy lines and the cushions on the back (rather than just pillows for the back), and the size seemed to be perfect–not too big, not too small. It was comfortable–not too hard, but not too soft. Some that we looked at were too squishy and Drew sank into them too far and some others were hard as a rock. We wanted something a little firmer, but not hard or too stiff.

The only problem we had at first sight with this couch was the color. It is hard to tell in the picture, but it really is a pale spring green. We wanted something more neutral so it would go with whatever we decided to put in there, but the more we thought about how much we liked everything else about it, the color seemed like less of an issue. Plus, the more I looked at it, the more sandy/neutral it looked. With all tan/creme/beige/taupe neutral walls of apartment life, we figured it wouldn’t be so bad to have a little color in a couch. Plus, since we’ve never had a living room before, we are starting from scratch, so we can make it fit into whatever decor we choose. Or make whatever decor fit around it. You get the idea.

Here is a picture with the pillows it comes with:

Have you ever walked around a furniture store and noticed how hideously ugly the majority of patterned couch pillows are? I sure noticed. The ones on ours weren’t so bad, but I’m definitely not crazy about the diamond pattern on those two. They look better in this picture actually than they did in real life. It real life, they are bright red and yellow and black and remind me of the circus. The brown ones don’t bother me so much. I can easily sew covers for the diamond ones though, and that saves me from having to buy pillow forms. As I was sitting there testing out the couch and contemplating the pillows, I remembered the fabric that I bought a couple weeks ago to make pillows for Drew’s ugly (and dis-functional) current loveseat (which we will not be keeping). I blogged about them, here. If you don’t remember, here they are:

How perfect! I first thought that the grey and green one would be perfect because the greens are pretty close, but now that I’m thinking about it and seeing the pictures next to each other, I think I might recover the diamond pillows in the creme and brown patterned fabric and then the smaller brown pillows will match as well! Plus we have a creme colored rug for that room already and it would look great with a darker stained wood coffee table! I can then bring in some color through some paintings or artwork above the couch. I’m excited about it! I’ll have to see how they look together in person! Too bad we won’t get to see the couch for another month! (We wanted them to deliver it directly to the new house so we didn’t have to move it up the stairs!) The bad part is that I forgot how much fabric I bought and I don’t remember how big those diamond pillows are. I might need to go get a little more fabric. I hope they still have it then!

If you’ve forgotten from the house tour, here is a picture of the living room where the couch will go:

Yay for house decorating! I only wish we didn’t have to wait a month to get to see it all together!

 

 

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Plein Air Painting (Project #5)

Today I turned in my 5th project in my painting class. This assignment was different from the others, in that we didn’t spend weeks working on one larger painting, but instead we completed 8 smaller paintings. These were done in the impressionist style, painted only in natural lighting, we were only allowed to spend 4 hours on each painting and each needed to be done all in one sitting. We completed 4 indoor paintings and 4 outdoor paintings. “En plein air” painting is the term used for outdoor painting, generally in the impressionist style.

I’m really glad we did this project. It was refreshing and didn’t get boring because we could paint outside the studio and the paintings were quick enough that you didn’t get bored with the subject. It also required that you make quick decisions and determine what aspects of your set-up you could relate in the painting in the time frame and which aspects were left to be handled economically. It was really enjoyable, is something that I would totally do often outside of painting for a class, and I really feel like I improved significantly throughout the project. Just compare my first ones to my last ones!

These are in the order that I did them by category. I definitely think the last one of each is way better than previous ones! I actually did both of the last ones yesterday. Way to go procrastination.

I definitely need to still keep improving. I’m happy with my progress, but I still need lots of practice with painting glass! It’s been hard to try to master so far.

I could improve a lot on my outdoor ones as well. I definitely like the last outdoor one best out of all of them. 🙂

I thought it was really nice and relaxing to paint in Audubon Park. It is peaceful and is nice just to get to enjoy the wonderful weather. It was also really interesting to sit there and observe everything going on around the park and hear random bits of everyone’s conversations. I would definitely recommend you do it sometime.

Here are all of our paintings spread out in class for critique, pretty, huh?

Click to see painting project #1, #2, #3, & #4.

 

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A Lovely Afternoon

Usually on Wednesdays, I’m scrambling all day long to get my art history assignment done. It is always due by Wednesday at 5 pm, and I never have enough time to work on it earlier in the week (or I’m just a procrastinator). Either way, it typically means that my Wednesdays are relatively stressful and rushed. Today however, we don’t have an assignment due! We turned our last one in last week and so we are done with assignments for the semester! (We just have a week and a half left of school)

Therefore, today has been much more relaxing than most Wednesdays, even though I still had other work to do. Tomorrow, my 8 smaller paintings that we’ve been working on lately are due. I had two that I needed to finish today (there is that procrastinating again) so I spent the morning/afternoon at the park painting.

It is funny what all you see and hear while sitting in the park for several hours. I brought my iPod with me, but I totally forgot that I had it, and I’m glad I didn’t turn it on. It was much more interesting to hear what all was going on around me. Wind blowing, leaves shaking, twigs falling out of the trees, birds, ducks, squirrels, people walking, biking, taking on the phone. Since I was there during the daytime, when most people are at work and most kids were at school, it made for an interesting combination of people. College students from Tulane and Loyola, older people, parents with their young children, moms with strollers, people walking dogs, people running/walking/biking, a girl that sung along with her iPod like she was on stage with a pop star, a teacher with her first grade class (whom she lectured for 10 minutes on not jumping off the bridge while they crossed it), another teacher yelling at her kids not to walk on the bike path, a guy from in a cowboy hat talking on the phone about Cowboys for Christ, and the list goes on and on.

It was a perfect day outside, I got my painting done (and I’m very pleased with how it turned out!), and it was nice to just sit and listen for a while. It seems like all too often I forget all about the world around me and get too caught up in my own little world.

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