Ooh La La!

Remember this little lady?

Here you can see her from different angles...

Well, she's had quite the makeover and is ready to make her grand entrance. Drumroll please...

Isn't she great!? I am totally in love with the way the unpainted wood contrasts with the painted stuff, and I'm amazed at how well the original gold-tone hardware looks. I thought I was going to have to replace it all, so that was a nice surprise. I also must say that I am totally feeling the plate racks I added on the top shelves. The best part about them are that they are just tension mounted and fully adjustable so I can display different sized plates if I wish. I may still go over the whole thing with another coat of poly, but for now I'm pretty thrilled. It matches the new dining room set so well!

The Hutch and Frosted Gardner

So it's no secret that I've been in a major design mood lately. I am seriously loving what's going on over at Frosted Gardner right now. You should check them out if you haven't, especially since they have a killer giveaway right now.
The hutch I inherited from my grandma's estate is almost finished, and it is looking fab. Now if I could just find a way to heat my garage up enough to finish painting. Stupid cold Utah weather.

Black Friday?... Kinda

Wanna guess what I was doing on Black Friday instead of standing in line at the store?

I'll give you a hint. It involves

this

and this...

Hope you had a fantastic Thanksgiving!

Color Update

So we've settled on a color scheme. I layed out all the color combos I'd been thinking for the boy and let him pick... luckily he picked the colors I was leaning towards anyway.
The walls are going to be a warm shade of sunny yellow. Probably not as dark as this, but you get the idea:

As far as the furniture goes, for now we're leaving it white, although I switched the hardward out to oil rubbed bronze. I may paint it espresso in the future. For the time being, I've painted the side table a turquoise laquer. You can get some idea of how the colors all go together from the photos below. 

So there you go. It's a work in progress, but I'm aiming to have it finished by next weekend. Woot!

Seriously Awesome

So I've been trolling all over the internet for ideas to inspire me in my kid's room overhaul and I saw the coolest thing of all time... a wall-mounted library display.

I so seriously want to do something like this in the boy's room, but how? Where? How large?

Sigh. I wish his room wasn't exactly the size of a closet. Seriously. It's more or less the size of my mom's walk-in. I get so sick of this stupid house with it's postage stamp-sized bedrooms sometimes. But I will make this happen. The dream of a wall-mounted library will come to fruition, one way or another.

Huzzah!

To Paint or not to Paint...

That is the question on my mind currently.
I am in some sort of crazy nesting fever, which is weird because I have no reason whatsoever to nest currently, or any time in the foreseeable future. I think it started with my impulsive dining room overhaul, though, and is now spilling over into other rooms in the house.
First on the chopping block is the boy's room.
I hate it so much. We've been in the "new" house for 3 years now, and it never, ever has felt right to me. I think I pinpointed why, the other day. Most of my house is painted neutral beige, tan, or taupe, but the boy's room is dark crayola blue. Not really navy, but not bright or cheery at all. It feels downright oppressive, actually. I think I've been trying to compensate for that for years by tacking up bright colors on the walls- vinyl decals, pictures, shelves filled with bright things. It doesn't work. I still have a dark blue room and now it's covered with kitschy crap.
Exhibit A:

Here's the new plan: paint the room, and take down the crap.
Should I go gray? Yellow? Light blue? Green? White? Beige?
I'm just so tired of dark, dark blue because it matches exactly nothing in my house, except for the comforter that Luis uses as his "blankie" left over from our newlywed days.
While I'm at it, the bedroom set needs a makeover, too. I bought some cute new knobs for the dresser/desk, and now I've caught painting fever from frostedgardner.blogspot.com and I'm feeling inclined to repaint the entire bedroom. If so, what color should I paint the furniture? Gray? Yellow? Light blue? Green? White? Ivory?
The color palate I'm using is based off of the quilts I made for his room this summer. This is the major fabric used in the quilt:

Also, how can I cozy up the room without turning into a themed room? I'm not a humongous fan of themed kids rooms, and I don't want to feel like I'm walking into Disneyland every time I put the laundry away.
Right now I'm leaning towards dove gray with saffron and robin's egg accents. How can I pair those colors together with my current room/furniture and make it look age appropriate for an 8 year old boy?
Here's some inspiration photos to get us started:

home design by media and blogs Chez Larsson

Help, please!
email inspiration photos, color schemes, and ideas to camille.farias@gmail.com .

She Works Hard for the Money...

I've been really caught up in work lately, so there's not much to post about. We have a big state audit coming up in December, which is kind of haunting me day and night these days. I can't sleep because I keep having dreams with file cabinets that are trying to eat me, or scary men in black capes asking for stacks of paperwork. Okay. Not really, but kinda.
I guess that personally my life has kind of taken a back seat to work and the only real news I have is that I've started training 2-3 days a week again for a 5 k and/or half marathon I want to run in June. I've never had the courage to do that before, but I've always wanted to, so I'm trying to be diligent and get an early start in order to have plenty of time to get really ready AND to try and stave off the inevitable holiday weight gain. Sick.
My mom is coming this Saturday to help clean out my Grandma's house and get it ready to sell. My aunts have been going through all of Grandma's stuff and cataloging it so that we can claim it if we want before it gets donated, sold, or tossed. Looking at her stuff makes me so sad, because I can't see her chairs without picturing her sitting in them, and I can't see the pictures on her wall etc., without remembering all the times I spent with her throughout my life going to visit Grandma's house. Nobody is claiming anything, which makes me wonder- do they just not want it, or can they just not find a way to get it, or what? I can't imagine just throwing away so many beautiful things if they can have a good home, even if Grandma's style was outdated and, well, a little grandma-ish.
I've been looking at websites lately that really blow my mind, as far as ideas what to do with Grandma's furniture if I end up getting any of it. The best ones are centsationalgirl.blogspot.com and frostedgardner.blogspot.com.  If I were to end up with the china hutch, kitchen table set, any tables or chairs, etc., I would totally give them a fabulous makeover and put them in my house. I have a fantasy of turning the big bedroom downstairs into my girl-cave when Brendan goes on his mission. It's going to be so, So, SO girly that no male is ever going to want to enter. Kind of like this.
All the time I've spent with Grandma, Mom, my sisters, and nieces the past few months has really made me realize I need a little more girl time, and a little more pink-flower-print wallpaper in my life.
Wouldn't you agree?

New Favorite Seed Company

So I recently found this seed sight: www.reneesgarden.com.
It's my new favorite, because of the selection, prices, and diversity. Right now I'm drooling over possible sweet pea varieties. I'm torn between garden orchids, jewels of albion, queen of hearts, north shore, cupiani's original, regal robe, and zinfandel. Honestly, have you ever seen such beautiful flowers in your life? Whenever I look at those Regal Robe Sweet Peas, I practically break into tears. I'm sap for flowers, though... especially ones that smell as good as they look.

If you could plant anything, what would you plant?

Announcing... my Cooking Blog

The recipe blog is up and running. It's nothing fancy- just hundreds of recipes, categorized by genres, subgenres, and main ingredients (dessert, cake, chocolate).
I sorted through my recipe box and took out the non-awesome recipes, and in my opinion what is left over is pure gold. If I haven't emailed you an invite and you want one, leave me a comment with your email address. Right now it's a closed blog, and I'm not sure if I'll ever make it public.

Coming Soon...

So last night I was wrangling with the idea of creating an online recipe box. Nothing fancy- just typing up all my recipes.
This was inspired by the fact that I got a new recipe box from the NEW Hobby Lobby down the street from my house (OMG! How have I lived this long without having a Hobby Lobby nearby!?!?!?). I've needed a new recipe box for some time because my hobby of recipe collecting has kind of gotten out of control. The problem is that the new box is approximately 3/4 inch thinner than my old recipe box and old cards, so now I'm stuck with the task of either cutting down all the old cards or typing them up and printing them out.
I figure while I'm at it, I might as well catalog the recipes for future reference, digital preservation, and for general enjoyment. It will probably be a private blog because a lot of these recipes are my own invention or they are oooooooold family recipes handed down over generations and I'd like to preserve the intellectual property. Some of these are so good that I could totally see someone stealing them off of the internet and publishing them. Seriously good food.
So if you want an invitation, send me an email at my gmail account: camille.farias@gmail.com.

On a side note... this is my 400th blog post!!!

Forget Halloween monsters... This is the scariest thing you'll see all year!

So I'm kind of a crazy hippie. If you didn't know that about me, you've probably never been to my house. I use this as a preface because there is something going on with the world food market that you should be aware of, even if you are not a crazy hippie like I am. However, whenever I bring this sort of thing up in conversation, people just assume that I'm a crazy hippie (which is true) and that they should just ignore the details of the situation (which is false). Seriously. It frightens me how few people,  know that their food is being messed around with. It also double scares me how few of the people who do know actually care.
You should read this article about Monsanto, GMO foods, and what you can do to help. Or watch this video. But be prepared. The first time I heard about this I couldn't sleep at night for a week because it made me sick every time I thought about it.
On a personal note, I think that one of the best things we can do as consumers, parents, and citizens to combat the problem of GMO foods is to grow a garden in the summer months. No matter where you live, how big your home is, how much land you have attached to it, you can grow food. Even if you have kids, you can involve them. I have similarly like-minded friends and family members who garden throughout the duration of their pregnancies, and who take their babies with them out into the garden while they tend to their plants. Pulling weeds builds character, and children who play outside regularly have increased resistance to disease.  If you don't know how to get started, go to this website. Her specialty is container gardening for small apartment spaces, or just check out her book. You can find it here.
I'm bringing this up now, because it is actually the perfect time of year to start. It' the off season and you can buy supplies hecka cheap at any and all garden centers. Seed catalogues offer huge discounts this time of year, and will have extra time to start planning what you want to grow where. Two of my favorite seed companies are Baker Creek Heirloom Seeds and Victory Seeds .* I got my tomato seeds from Bakers and I haven't had to buy tomatoes at the grocery store since June. I even found a recipe for Green Tomato bread (like zucchini bread) which I'm going to be using to take advantage of the few little guys I've got left on the vine before I clear it out for winter.
I'm bringing this to your attention, because this is one battle you can get involved in. You can make a difference.

* I just found a new seed site that I'll be trying this year: www.reneesgarden.com . Not sure what the quality of her stock is, or what shipping/customer service are like, but her selection looks good and I like that she's included photos of the finished product.

Before and After

I bought this dining table 3 years ago.

I love it. It's large enough to seat 8 comfortably and still cram all the dinner dishes on to the table. The chairs are large enough to comfortably seat my oversized family, and the whole thing is a sturdy, classic style.
I also hate it because the dining nook in my house is too small to really fit it. I guess if we're hating, I hate the dining nook in my house and not actually the table, but I digress.
Hubby and I mutually came to the conclusion this weekend that after 3 years it has to go. We've used it as an actual dinner table literally only a couple dozen times. We always just eat at the bar because the nook was so crammed full of table you couldn't get into and out of the seating area without crawling over garbage cans, dog food bowls, and kids.
We put the whole thing up for sale on the local classifieds- ksl.com, where we originally found and purchased it. We listed it for $400, just $25 less than we purchased it for. Then as we were browsing around we found this little gem:

It's a Pier One Dining Set Circa 2005. It's in excellent condition and even comes with a glass top to protect the wood table. It comes with 6 chairs and 3 barstools, which is pretty cool because one of my major hesitations about replacing our old table was losing much needed seating for entertaining. We're actually plus one seat now.

We decided to buy the Pier One set, despite the fact we hadn't sold the old table and chairs because it was pretty much exactly what we were looking for. So last night we drove out to Roy (about an hour and a half from Provo) and we picked it up. Final sales price: $270.

On the way home, we sold our current set via phone to a woman from Herriman who picked it up this morning.

We got home around 10 p.m. and spent an hour cleaning and moving furniture because we're huge dorks. Today after church I snapped some pictures of the refurnished "nook."

I love how much bigger the room looks now, and I love how we all four sat down for a dinner together at the dining room table for the first time pretty much ever. I'm also a big fan of circular shape because it makes it much easier to navigate around.

All in all I say it was a success. After all, we completely redecorated the dining room and earned $110 in the process. Win!

Hit head against wall now...

So hubby and I have been ACTIVELY hunting for a house since February. Everything we like is either just out of our price range, already under contract, mired behind years of bank red-tape, structurally unsound, across the street from a Meth house, with a 10% chance of miscellaneous. I really wish we could find a house we both like that is available to be purchased... In fact, since we're wishing, I wish that we could buy this house. I was browsing around MLS for fun for my friend Natalie who is moving here next year and came across the most amazing house of all time, which happens to be close by and in my price range. Here is the link, but don't click it unless you're prepared to be overwhelmed by majesty.

House of Destiny

Argh. This house is so epic and amazing that I'm sure that there is no way I could ever talk hubby into seriously considering it. Too bad. It's kind of the greatest thing I've ever seen.

Hilarious

I overheard this conversation in class today while the students were creating an illustrated dictionary of homophones:
"Dude! They're not glasses! It's a wig!"
I'm not really sure what this was referring to, but it made me laugh.

Superhero Project

When I was a tween and teen, I had a mammoth collection of comic books and comic book paraphernalia. My secret fantasy was to one day wake up and realize that over night I had developed some sort of awesome power (preferably teleportation and/or telekinesis) and that all this time I wasn't really just a loser and social misfit, but actually a super hero. Crazy, I know, but it helped me cope with the fact that I reached my full adult height and weight at age 12 and that I was the only girl in school rockin' a Jew Fro (everyone else had that awesome Rachel haircut).

Well, I came one step closer to achieving my childhood dream on Friday with my epic costume. I took some photos on my laptop in order to illustrate my 1960's Housewife costume, and as I was flipping through them to find one suitable for my previous post about Halloween I realized that based on the pictures I could have easily ditched the apron and pearls and passed for a caped avenger.

Exhibit A:

Here I look like I'm studying some video footage of my arch nemesis in order to better ascertain his weaknesses in combat and thus exploit them. 

Exhibit B:

In this one I look like I'm taking a dramatic pause in the middle of a  monologue about Truth, Justice, and the American Way.

I think we should get something going here: If you're up for it, send me your best superhero photo of yourself, your powers, and your alias and I'll post any pictures that I get. No need to get fancy- just slap on some outrageous makeup, slick your hair back, put on a turtleneck, and ham it up for the camera. Perhaps we can create some sort of Super Hero Squadron of Glory (official name pending).