Beauty of public transit

Now, the SF Muni system has its share of woes. But let's take a moment to look past the budget shortfalls, schedule delays, rising prices, stinky riders, and the overall petri-dish-of-bacteria feeling you get when you step onboard. I take public transit everywhere, commute on it every day to work, and rarely ever drive my car. It's pretty convenient actually. And the monthly passes are so pretty--too pretty to toss out--so I used them to decoupage a cheap table off of craigslist. Then I went to a glass place and had them cut and finish off a 16"-square piece of glass to go on top. I had enough passes to do the top tier of the table with a few left over. Who knows, maybe in another two years I'll have enough to do the bottom tier.


1. craigslist table, painted light gray; 2. Laying out four years of passes; 3. Good ol' Mod Podge! 4. Pretty colors.

Bedroom makeover

The BF and I decided we needed to spice things up in the bedroom. Ok before you go there, I'm talking about our bedroom wall decor obviously! I found these fun vinyl wall decals that are removable, but not reuseable. So once they're up, they're up. The application process is a little tricky, but once you have a system down, it gets easier. Luckily with the vinyl, you've got a little bit of wiggle room to get your placement just right, so mistakes are easily corrected. Which was good for us because these suckers were 8 feet tall!

It took us about two evenings after work to finish this project. I'll admit that most of our time was spent because I was getting OCD about the placement of the branches, getting the overlapping just so, etc. Yep, the BF is a patient man.




1. Meh. The "before" shot; 2. Getting the placement of the trees perfect; 3. We made one branch turn the corner; 4. Placement is good. Jess is finally satisfied; 5. Time to transfer the decal and strip off the blue backing; 6. All done and ready to sleep under a canopy of trees. That's my kind of camping!

Two months off!? and a birthday!!

OK, I've been lazy and set this blog on the back burner. But I've also been having memory/hard drive/space issues, so haven't been able to get the pictures off my camera and onto this blog. I know, enough excuses already. On to pigs!!

We celebrated Oliver's 4th birthday a little belatedly this year. Right around his bday, he wasn't doing too well with his teeth. He was off-food a bit...but luckily with another toothtrim and lots of TLC, he perked back up and is doing fine now. And he looked fine, too! Seems he couldn't decide between his party hat and his tiara.

1. A tasty bell pepper tower treat; 2. Brothers share; 3. He's the prettiest birthday boy! 4. Still calm and enjoying food; 5. And then a feeding frenzy tug-of-war! 6. Don't worry, they made up and had a nice cuddle.

Man oh mantel

It took a lot of hard work and elbow grease, but we finally got the mantel restored. We managed to clean out all the nasty crusties (as best we could, considering all the fancy woodwork) with some skinny chisels and screwdrivers. The mantel has actually been completed for a while now. I'm just behind on this blog, go figure. Here are the After pictures. We did several coats using Formby's Tung Oil, which makes for a nice finish, as it turns out! Super easy to use, too. Just put some on a rag, rub it into the wood, and let dry.

1. Ahh, so much nicer! 2. Crusties be gone. 3. No more wine glass stain, yay. 4. Even Horse seems happy about his new home.

Say it ain't so

Meet Gray Hair #3. I woke up one morning in late June 2009 and found this little guy. It's my third gray (and the second one I've found since becoming a homeowner), but it is the first one documented and snapped in the wild. My very first gray came shortly after I turned 30. During that time, I guess the stress of being unemployed, living rent-free at my brother and sister-in-law's house, eating all their food, and making a me-sized dent in their couch while I caught up on 6 years of CSI: reruns in 3 months finally took its toll on me.

They say if you pluck a gray hair, three friends will come to its funeral. Oh well.

PS. It is not easy taking a picture of a gray hair up against a gray wall.

Home Improvement, Episode 1

I'm living in a Victorian that dates back to the mid-1880s. I wish I knew the stories behind this place. Who used to live here way back then? What were they like? How many different events, eras, styles has this ol' lady seen over the past 120+ years? "Ohhh if these walls could talk!" (Please envision campy early morning basic cable tv anchor now.)

[Editor's note: There used to be a hilarious rant here about the previous owners, but the BF thought it was too harsh. So I deleted it to be nice. Awww. Back to being Serious Me.]

One outstanding architectural detail is the fireplace mantel, which is beautifully crafted and original to the house. Unfortunately it's seen better days. A lot of the finish has been worn away, there are some bad stains and scratches and gouges, and I think someone painted it white at one time (egad). It's just sad to see. However, it's structurally solid and the wood is in good condition (as in, not rotting away!). So the BF and I set out to restore it to its original luster over Memorial Day weekend. What I thought was going to be a 2-day project turned into an ongoing one. We sanded and sanded and sanded some more. We suited up with some SARS masks and eye goggles but still managed to inhale about 2lbs of sawdust and stain our eyes a nice shade of bloodshot. As Mom so eloquently put it: We'll appreciate it all the more when it's done.

Check out the Before pix below. Stay tuned for the After.

(1. Ye olde mantel; 2. Grosso wine stain (for once not by me!) that is still there and a real pain to get out; 3. Nasty 120-year old crud; 4. Lingering white paint and more crud.)

The BF did get a new toy out of this project!

I joked that he should sup it up with a car battery like Tim the Tool Man Taylor, then realized I made a family-show-from-the-90s reference and felt stodgy and uncool. Happy Memorial Day Weekend!! (to be continued...)

2009 Open Studios show

Over Mother's Day weekend, I had my 2nd successful (and fun!) Open Studios jewelry show, hosted again by the BF's family at their home/backyard. The weather was gorgeous and perfect and so many old friends, family, and neighbors stopped by. There were also a lot of new faces, people in the area checking out the other Open Studios going on. SugarCube Jewelry was a hit! I surpassed my sales from last year, even tho I slashed my prices. And my "not in this economy" cheapie earring rack was really hot. I was all about clearing out inventory this year and making room for the new. Isabelle did really well too, selling more paintings this year than last. Safe to say we'll be doing this again!

The only thing that could have gone better this weekend was if I had not been sleep-deprived. It's my own fault of course. I had this great idea to give each piece of jewelry a code on the back of the price tag, then match up the code with the file name of the jewelry's photo. That way, when a piece was sold, I simply would have to write down the code and could reference exactly which piece it was later. Sounds pretty straight-forward, right? Well, I'm an admitted neat-freak and I do love order, but as much as I adore Martha Stewart, my digital photos are a complete mess. Nothing is organized or sorted in any logical way. So this great idea turned into an even bigger nightmare--if you can have a nightmare without sleep. The BF and I were up til 6AM tying price tags and tagging photo file names. (Now that is love, folks.) We had just enough time for a one and a half hour "power nap" before packing up and being down in the South Bay by 9AM. (The show went from 11AM to 5PM.) By the end of the day, I was running on 100% caffeine fumes, but still managed to visit a friend's newborn baby after dinner that night before hitting up a backyard BBQ birthday party. Got into bed by 2AM to do it all over again on Sunday. Who says I'm old? I did less in my 20s!



Above are photos of my "shop". I changed up some of my displays. The handy BF made more frames. (He got a new set of power tools out of this project!) And to cover the tables, I used some free fabric from work that I actually like in that Miss-Marple's-living-room sort of way.

Some close-up shots of my work: