they call me crafty pants...

let me give you a little insight on our house. we are renting this old lake house just about a block away from the home i grew up in. it's 4 bedrooms, an office and it has an AMAZING 3 seasons room with a view of the lake. when you live in an old lake house on the island here are some things to expect...
1. Your house will have a TERRIBLE foundation. Unless your house has been built in the last 8 years on the island...your foundation will be AWFUL. My parent's house is so bad that a part of their wall is falling away. NOT KIDDING. Our house isn't losing a wall but our entire house leans downhill to the right.
2. Your house will have very OLD windows. Some of our windows have been replaced BUT the outsides are all original and ALL bluish green...and i'm fairly sure...laced with lead.
3. Your house will have random cracks in the walls. Oh yes, applicable to us and definitely has to do with the foundation.
4. At least one of your doors will not shut properly...actually...one of our doors shut properly...OH and that's it.
5. Your house will have inexplicable charm...which ours TOTALLY does.

Now, since we're in a rental property I can't bring myself to paint. I DO want to paint our kitchen cabinets but that will have to wait until April...and i think that's all I'll be able to do UNLESS we get a bundle of joy between now and when we move... I'll paint the babays room:). So needless to say... I try and spruce things up here and there cheaply. What I'm about to tell you isn't to brag, but only to encourage you that IT CAN BE DONE!:) Our living room is almost COMPLETELY decorated and I've only spent 20 bucks...are you ready to have your mind blown...When we moved into this house the only thing we had for our living room was a shelf for our DVD's and...a chair. That's it. We now have... a coffee table, a console table, a love seat, a couch, a tv, a tv stand, 7 picture frames, and 3 posters. Holy. Moses. The only things I purchased were a few picture frames and 2 posters (which amounted to 19 bucks)...everything else was given to us. I keep trying to spruce things up in little ways and tonight I made a valentine's bunting and I'm in the process of making a few birds for our dining room. I LOVE finding new little crafts to try out. Oh man, i have to go to bed... I'm EXHAUSTED. Hope you enjoy the pic:)

hello, i'm a liberal.

just took a quiz online to find out what i would be classified as if i actually cared about being politically active (since I'm politically apathetic) and low and behold.
I'm a liberal...and not just a little bit of a liberal...like...a SUPER liberal. is it terrible to say I'm not shocked at all??

I guess all my SUPER conservative friends would be shocked to find that out.

i get to see these 2 in 11 days...ELEVEN!! I may be the most excited ever... so excited in fact that i FORGOT my birthday was a week from today. Holy crap... I'm going to be 26.

ICE DAY!!:)

I was so thankful to be off work today. I mean I'm not 100% for sure and feeling like my insides want to be on my outsides today makes me even MORE excited I could lay around for 45 minutes. I was able to do SO much which was awe-some.

I took down the christmas decorations. ANNNnnddd...it's the 20th of January...I think that's a new record for me. BUT everything is down and put away. After all the decorations were down and all the furniture and lighting was rearranged i started to realize that...ummmm...i need to do some work. Seeing as steve and I moved in here at the beginning of December and I made sure to unpack Christmas stuff I think the 3rd day we were in I hadn't seen the house WITHOUT the decorations and here's my conclusion.
1. Something HAS to happen with our staircase. It's really narrow and the railing slats are all uneven (the house is SUPER old and the banister is rather umm...loose?) so I have to figure out what to do there. We did have garland wrapped around it and some ribbon. I think I might put flowers along there or...paint it?
2. I need a few more things to hang in the house...I can see 4 areas that need something hung on them right now. I think I have an idea for one of them but I need a few other things and I can't figure out what else to put up on the walls.
3. I want to paint the cabinets in the kitchen...white. With black antique looking hardware. We could actually just keep the hardware we have on them now but I do want to paint them white. Steve says he think we'll have to sand them and then primer and THEN paint them. I think we MIGHT be able to get away without sanding them. I want to paint a LOT in the house but since we're just renting I've told myself no I may not.
4. I need some better throw pillows. I think I'm going to make some. I would LOVE to have cute ones that i could just buy at the store but with Cash being shedy mcshederson i don't think I can justify it. So I'm looking for cute fun pillows I can make. Now that the sewing machine is working again (THANKS GRANDMA WANDA!!!) i am going to sew to my hears content.

I think that's it for the downstairs...I haven't even begun to tackle the upstairs... which I will not until we have imminent house guests.:) Alright, must go to bed.

OH, I just dyed my hair...pictures tomorrow.

Adult ADD or incredible Multi-Tasker...

I am currently...
Doing the Laundry
Writing an E-mail
Blogging
Listening to the music steve wrote tonight and writing lyrics to it in my head
Downloading the newest version of itunes
catching up on some of my favorite bloggers
thinking about the G's christmas card for NEXT YEAR
text messaging my hubs and my bestie
eating goldfish crackers
and drinking a mountain dew.

I am really doing ALL of those things. (i have the e-mail up and I'm adding to it as things pop into my head)

incredible.

they call us the planners:)

Mel (one of my BESTIES!) and I get to see one another in 17 days...that's right... 17. I haven't seen Mel face to face since her BEAUTIFUL wedding day in June (when Steve and I were on OUR honeymoon) and I MISS HER! I think it's definitely going to have to be a once every 6 months visit. It's also super convenient because she just happens to live with AND be married to one of my oldest and dearest friends who's birthday is a day after mine. To celebrate this wonderful occasion of aaron finally reaching his "late twenties"...I'm off to visit them. The ONLY bummer of the thing is that Steve isn't coming with me...we have to have someone here to run the studio and take care of our pup. He's excited for me to go but I'm going to miss the crap out of him (because i LITERALLY haven't spent more than 24 hours without SEEING him since the beginning of October of 2008...) I know...that's crazy. It will be good for us I'm sure.

Mel and I are both planners it's in our nature to make lists and plan ahead down to every detail (i think that's one of the reasons why i love her.)... here are some things on our list...

Go to "the city" and see...
The Mission
Paxton Gate
Japantown and specifically I've asked her to come see New People with me
The Filmore:)
The Legion of Honor
AND I might beg her to get some sourdough:)

Hang in Cotati and visit...
THE HUB!:) of course
the hippie bread place
in n out...all.the.time.
RYAN AND CHRIS!!!:) It's been SO long since I've seen them:)
Kunde Winery
Anywhere scenic
I'M SURE, Mel's family...yippee skipee
Bomb sushi place
Bomb burrito place

things I will do...
cook aaron and mel a meal
take a CRAP ton of pictures
buy a cool hat
find something neat for Steve
spend as MUCH time as I can with Mel and Aaron
sing happy birthday to my friend
go on a bridge

So. So. SOOOO excited...OH and i printed off numbers and addresses of things I wanted to see in Cotati, yes... I'm THAT much of a planner:)

my modeling debut...

So, when I was in highschool a few of my girlfriends and I who had a flare for the dramatic (we were THESPIANS!!) would borrow a camera and shoot a model tape where I would speak in a bored posh british voice all quiet and whispy "i'm a model" and then i would explain how fabulous my life was as a model. like many girls i've watched america's next top model and listened to the advice(model h to t and smile with your eyes! push your back out, take your chin to me) but to ACTUALLY put that into motion... not.so.easy.

When Jamie asked me to help her I was HONORED! Of course I would love to help you out. In my little naive brain I'm thinking... "it will just be normal and regular girls... not... MODELS..." i was wrong. It was me...and 2 ACTUAL models.Baha, I mean everyone says... "you should feel FLATTERED!!" I do and yet, i also feel like i was TOTALLY out of my league...I was nervous going INTO the shoot when I thought it was people like me (NOT MODELS!) I will say they were REALLY sweet and I was the only vapid narcissist:)

As promised...I'm adding the rest of the pictures from my shoot...if you'd LOVE to see the ones of me and the REAL models:) You can visit Miss Marah's page (weird fact: Marah and I met 5 years ago working together at....can you guess???... a daycare center...we taught the 3 year olds...and now she's a photographer and I'm a music guru?... obviously childcare is not our calling:) Here are the one's I took on Sarah's camera. She was so sweet to let me borrow her camera (i may have unintentionally pulled out my crappy cell phone to take pictures... i think she felt bad...) and then she went the extra mile and posted them on her facebook.

i absolutely LOVE detailed tiles, also LOVE exposed pipes... I know I'm a weirdo.



here's Jamie doing make-up:) she's precious!



Back up to the 3rd floor!
Here's another shot of the wall and the windows (yep, i'm singing that song in my head now too;).



Here's one of my favorite details...this was the crown molding...CROWN MOLDING... they don't make it like this anymore. OH, and this is tin painted to look like copper and painted over with white. Some of the white was off of the top tiles and holy amazing. I would say whoever remodels should KEEP the tiles and have them SANDBLASTED (not powerwashed as someone ELSE suggested...they would RUST...they're tin:) so they could be restored to the tin...even painted with the copper again.



Shot this from the back room to the front room...OH, all the rooms I shot through had working fireplaces in them. I wondered if I might be able to get away without anyone noticing and just secretly move in. I did have my wedding dress... I could have just acted like a scary ghost?!



So when Steve and I got married and talked about our dream houses one thing that I dream of on almost a daily basis is having my own fireplace... I DON'T EVEN CARE IF IT WORKS!! I just want a fireplace... i love them. I will take...this one.



There you have it. I became a model (something I have been practicing since high school). I am unsure if this was ever seriously on my bucket list but someday, many years from now, I can tell my children that in fact there mother was indeed a model and a rock star. Is it just me or do I sound like an AWESOME person on paper?!?;)
-k