We finally got our old, wood, crappy door replaced with a fiberglass door and storm/screen. We are so excited. Now we just have to stain it!
Old door (old photo, obviously):
No storm/screen and the lock only worked with a key, even from the inside. Very hazardous.
Our new door:
Name dropping.
Snickering.
Lying.
Saying lots of Russian words in a row like a show-off.
Using terms like “Miss Congeniality” and “lousy.”
Smirking.
Cracking bad jokes.
Using bad grammar.
Dramatization.
Insulting other countries like it’s in fashion.
Matt and I decided to experiment with fall decorating on a basically non-existant budget. Here are some of our ideas!
We had some old wine crates (these are also covering a broken baseboard!) and filled them with some of our empty wine bottles. The flowers are from our hydrangea bush and the vase was a gift from Matt’s Dad. The orange/brown glass candle holder was a gift from Anita.
I loved dried flowers, so I decided to hang some of our herbs from the garden on our buffet to dry. I think they look rustic and pretty–and they smell good. These are bunches of lavendar, purple basil, and sage.
On our side table, all of these vases and glassware are from our grandmothers. The flowers are all from our gardens.
We put these flowers in various locations around the house. The pitcher is very old from a market I got in London many years ago and it is filled with basil from the herb garden. The other “vase” is actually a decanter that Andrew and Chad gave to us one year and it is filled with cut-offs from our bean vines that flower.
These are the only items that we recently (a few months ago) spent money on. Vintage copper pots from a store called Material Culture. These were extremely inexpensive–I think all three may have cost $15. Matt hung these in our kitchen.
The other ideas we had were putting some herbs in a vase in the bathrooms and putting up some of our old framed photos/pictures in the bathrooms to spruce them up a bit.
We’re becoming much more creative! Let me know if you have any other cheap decorating ideas!
I bought liquid dish-washer soap and I do not like it. It has a twist-off cap that is very difficult to use, and yesterday it actually sliced my finger open! I usually get the old-fashioned powder but it’s been clumping in the dish washer lately so I thought I’d try the liquid. Do you think I should sue or am I just a klutz? It still hurts 24 hours later.
All from our garden: striped heirloom tomato salad (with a cucumber, also grown by the Palmers) and my attempt at sun-drying cherry tomatoes in the oven!
This is the story of the yellow box.
Once upon a time, there was a yellow box that was sitting empty in a university. One day, a faculty member decided to fill the box with computers and video equipment and asked Erin to mail it all the way to London for her to use with some students. Erin had never sent a yellow box in the mail to London before, so she said OK, and called the UPS man.
When the yellow box made it safely to London, the officials there said it would cost a lot of extra money to get it into the country, and Erin reluctantly said OK, since it was already there and the students would need the things that the yellow box was carrying. Erin then told the faculty member about the trials and tribulations of the yellow box and said she would have to figure out a cheaper and easier way to get it back to its home at the end of the summer.
The yellow box sat in London for 6 weeks and hopefully enjoyed itself, because it deserved the break. At the end of the summer, Erin was wondering how the yellow box was doing, and then forgot about it for a little while until she went to London herself. To her surprise and dismay, the yellow box was still in London! It had never been taken or sent home! Erin wondered how the yellow box and all of its contents were going to get home and she finally decided that she would take care of it herself, since the yellow box really needed to get home.
Erin took very good care of the yellow box on her way back from London. She checked it in a special place at Heathrow airport and then made sure that it would get picked up and taken safely to her home. The yellow box kept all of its contents safe through the entire journey, and now it is sitting in Erin’s basement, resting from its long and tiring trip.
The saga continues when the yellow box tries to get from Erin’s home to its home at the university. To be continued….
Well, I can tell that the summer is coming to an end. My once lush marigolds are dying, we are eating the last of the tomatoes, and I am trying to make as much pesto as I can before the basil goes completely to seed. We are getting a few fun striped tomatoes and some of my plants that seemed dormant all summer are now growing like wildflowers. Nature is so unpredictable!
Dead heads! So many of my marigolds are brown and moldy.
I planted these little pink and green guys in May and they are just now growing like vines.
Still life with tomato and clippers:
Someone gave me these bean seed pods and I planted them in June. Now they are producing their own seed pods–anyone want some?
Matt made breakfast this morning. I love breakfast–all of the foods are my favorites. I could eat breakfast three times a day. I had been eying this recipe for months in my Cuisine at home magazine and Matt decided that this morning he would make it (with my help) and it was delicious! It also makes enough food for about 6 people so we have lots of leftovers, and a great dish to make when we have a brunch party some day. These are the before and after photos of the breakfast strudel:
It was so good–if you want the recipe let me know.
I’ve been home for a couple of days and I’ve had a nagging thought that won’t go away unless I get it out. On my flight home, I was sitting in the bulk head (lots of leg room, but right by the bathrooms). I saw basically every person come and go from the bathrooms. And I was shocked and disgusted by the number of people who went in with just socks or, even worse, barefoot! It was so nauseating and I still don’t understand what would possess people to subject their own flesh to the nasty germ-covered floors of public plane bathrooms. I also noticed that people don’t seem to know how to use public restrooms anymore. No regard for others who may be using it, no neatness. It makes me wonder what their private bathrooms look like at home. I shudder at the thought. I feel better. But the thought still grosses me out.
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