(Not so) Temporary Insanity

I am borderline obsessed with books. I probably spend the greatest part of my salary (besides the mortgage) on reading materials. Borders is closing numerous stores in our area and my bestie and I hit one of them up to see what the dealio was. Their sale prices are unfortunately still higher than most Amazon prices... which may explain their need to shut down some stores. I still picked up a few books while we were there:

I did not need seven more books, but what can you do? lol

I LOVE Mary Janice Davidson. Her characters are goofy, fun, ditsy, and never too full of themselves. The books are never super-serious and they always end well. Until now. Dum dum dum. To my knowledge I have read all of her books and I have enjoyed every last one. But I had to force myself to keep reading this one. The lead character has multiple personalities and they are all extreme: 1. superduperridiculously nice, 2. bitchy and controlling to the max, and 3. insane. They know about each other, each one takes over when her particular "style" is called for, and she calls them her "sisters". It just seemed to go on and on and on and it just got stranger and stranger. Personally I felt the ending was anticlimactic and contained gratuitous unnecessary violence. I actually would return it, if all the books weren't final sale.

I haven't read Holly McQueen or Jill Mansell yet, but they both have, what sounds to be, a good plotline.

I really like Jennifer Weiner's writing style and story telling abilities. She writes characters who feel like they could be your best friend, complete with 20 extra pounds and neurosis. With the addition of these three I have all of her books and have never not enjoyed one. I'm currently halfway through The Guy Not Taken and it is cute, fun, and not too light.

Christopher Moore is hit and miss for me. He has a series of three contemporary vampire books that I really enjoyed, but I couldn't get into Lamb or Coyote Blue. So we shall see about The Stupidest Angel. 

Have you bought any books lately? What are you reading now? Next? How do you choose what books to buy?

Good Luck and Goodwill

Everyone always says you need to be patient when thrifting and that's definitely true. Frankly I have never found anything just so absofreakinfantastically amazing that I had to have it right then and there - couldn't live without it... For sure nothing like Joi's latest fantastic find!
 But I do find cute smalls occasionally, like these milkglass goblets:

$6.00/each - pricey? I thought so.

They aren't marked, but they are nice and heavy, and I thought the design was cute.

I also found these little silver votive holders:

2 @ $1 each

I didn't notice the huge sticker on them right away:

Anybody know what these sold for originally? Couldn't be more than a few dollars each... They should look good with my mercury glass pieces.


Have you been thrifting lately? Found anything good? Maybe a horror story, instead? Spill...

Monkey Love

Help

I ran out of space on Picasa. I didn't even realize Picasa was connected to Gmail. Anybody know how to get around the Picasa/Gmail marriage?

Flower FYI

You all know that when the Paperwhites / Narcissus begin to shoot up they fall over and need to be tamed. If you plant them in a small container or you plant a lot of them, tying them up in a bundle is fine. But, when you don't plant them right on top of each other it may look weird to gather them all together. My large container only has 4 bulbs in it, so they are nowhere near each other.

I thought tying them all together would look ridiculous and detract from the beauty of the flowers. So... I "borrowed" two small dowels from the Mr., cut them in half and used some kitchen twine to secure each sprout to a separate dowel.

Half of a dowel is not quite long enough once the plant grow to their height potential, but it works fairly well. Occasionally I will come out in the morning to find one lying on the tabletop because it grew out of it's plant prison.

I love that I actually found a use for this pretty twine that I bought.

Oh, the Mr. has taken to calling these "Butt Flowers" since they smell so bad. But now that they've fully bloomed the smell has dissipated. 

What do you use to keep tall plant stabilized?

Before and After: 50's Side Tables

I think I may have mentioned that the Mr.'s mom runs a yard sale every April to raise money for their volunteer firefighters. We always get first pick and we have scored some awesome stuff. Everything at the sale is $1.00, except the furniture, which is priced by piece. Last year Mister got an authentic vintage Navy peacoat  and I got a 60's cashmere coat with a fur collar! Items like that are rare though, usually it's a firehouse full of country bumkin junk.

Last year, after the sale, someone brought over a pair of 50's side tables, wood with marble tops. She thought we would like them, so rather than store them for a year she brought them to us (for a small donation of course). They lived in our walk-out finished basement when we had the couch down there.

They were nice enough, but they weren't really our style. Plus, our basement has a major humidity problem is the Spring due to the hundreds of gallons of cold water in the cisterns butting up against the warmer house. We didn't realize the humidity in the basement was reaking havoc on the furniture for a few months. By that time everything had grown mold! Disgusting.

The veneer was starting to buckle in pace as well. We got a dehumidifier and that solved the mold problem, but these guys were still on their last legs. So we wood glued them back together and I slapped some paint on 'em!

Ahh... Much better, no? Let's get a closer look at that pull.

The Mr. made these for me! They used to live on a file cabinet we refinished for our old house, but I snagged them because I want to trash the file cabinet. As soon as I figure out what to do with all our files...

How about a proper Before and After:

BEFORE

AFTER

And some more pics just because remembered to take multiples:

What do you think? What have you made over lately?

January's Goals

 At the beginning of the month I set some January goals.

January Goals:

Hang the gallery wall.  Nope. In fact this is what the television wall looks like right now. 

We hooked up the surround sound system upstairs so we could have the PS2 and the Wii hooked up at the same time and now the optical cable isn't flexible enough to remount the t.v. flush to the wall. Um.... Boo.

Hang art in the bedroom. It's been sitting on the dresser for 4 months now...  Yay!

Do Jenny's "111 things in 1/11" challenge.  Another Yay! I managed to clear out 147 items!

Make a new coffee table/ottoman for the living room. Um, no. Not even close.

Make the leopard pillows I talked about last month. Nope.

 Eh, I didn't do so great.

 Oh and it only took me three weeks to kill our new plant friend.

 It doesn't look as bad in these pics as in real life, but it's totally and completely dead and I have no idea how. I followed the directions exactly. Meh.

On the positive side, our Paperwhites bloomed.

And boy, are they lovely.

BUT, they smell like ass. Seriously. The Mr. says they smell like manure, but manure smells like cookies compared to these. I would rather my entire house smelled like a farm in the heat of summer than these flowers...  Ugh. They are disgusting. Repugnant. Blech.

How are your 2011 goals coming along so far?