One Cupcake Can't Hurt

That's what I kept telling myself last week.  Over and over again. It all started because I had a Groupon that was about to expire. I just HAD to get that dozen cupcakes or I would lose my $12.00! I could have taken them to work, but they looked so good. I mean if one cupcake wouldn't hurt maybe one a day wouldn't either. Then there was that cheese roll that my friend, Sabrina brought me. I couldn't say no. That would be rude! (Goodness, it was tasty.) All that licorice really couldn't hurt, either. It's fat free, right?

Needless to say I didn't lose any weight last week. I gained two pounds. I was so mad when I got off the scale. I stayed within my point range, why did I gain weight?!  I knew why, though. All one needs to do is read the first paragraph of this post to know why. I may have stayed within my points, but I did it with all the wrong things. I can't trick my body.

So, one cupcake really can't hurt, but a dozen sure can.

Stage 1 - Painting

I have decided that I am going to document our redecorating adventure since we have put so much into our house and did it so quickly. While I probably should have written during the process there was just no way I could have with so much going on. As they say, "Better late than never!"

When Joey and I first got our house absolutely nothing had been done to it in about 25 years. That means it needed a lot of work. The first thing we wanted to tackle was painting. Our entire house was this pink color. When I say pink, I really mean pink as you can see below.

See? The walls are really pink.

We wanted to get everything painted before I moved in for several reasons. The biggest reason was our birds. Painting around them or with them in the house would have been a nightmare. Not only are the fumes not good for them, but our birds are flighted. We let them fly around the house when we are home. So, painting with them there was not really an option. Second, it is much easier to paint an empty room rather than I furnished one.

Painting an entire home at once has it's plusses and minuses. On the downside, it's a bit overwhelming. It's a lot of work to paint a room and even more to painting seven of them. On the up side, it's great to start with a fresh pallet and be able to pick colors for each room that complement the others.

After looking at lots of paint samples we decided to go with Martha Stewart paint from Home Depot. The paint chips are awesome with complimentary colors for each shade listed on the back of the chip. It gave us a lot of ideas that we might not ever thought of. Upon suggestion of our handyman we decided to go with one main color for the room with an accent wall. A darker color for the doors and a very light version of the main color for the ceilings. It may sound like a lot of color, and it is, but it looks amazing.  Below you is a sample of the first color pallet we came up with for the entire house.  This became our roadmap, so to speak for our color selection.

Our pallet

Once we had decided the basic colors for each room we got samples for every color we were looking at and used a wall in our music room to test them out. I strongly urge anyone who is painting to do this. Colors that looked amazing on the chip suddenly changed when on a wall. You would also be amazed how big subtle differences between colors look when painted on a wall! We finally decided on these colors.

We tested all the samples compared and finally came up with our colors. All in all we ended up with over 30 colors.  Well, 32 to be exact.  I am listing them below just because I can!

Stairs, hall, trim:
Heavy Cream (trim, mostly around the house)
Reed (wall)
Fawn (wall)
Filing Cabinet (Ceiling)
Ganache (door)

Living Room:
Cornbread (wall)
Satchel (wall)

Downstairs:
Beach Moss (accent wall, door)
Dandelion (walls, and 1/2 power for ceiling)

Entry:
Sisal (window border, garage door)
Blue Suede (wall)
Natural Twine (accent wall)
Ice Rink (ceiling)
Wrought Iron (door)
Picket Fence (trim)

Music Room:
Raisin (accent wall)
Aegean Blue (wall, and 1/2 power for ceiling)
Geyser (door, closet)

Bedroom:
Pumpkin Seed (door, closet)
Graham Cracker Crust (accent wall)
Hemp (Ceiling)
Oolong Tea (wall)

Kitchen:
Carmel Latte (wall)
Rich Cream (trim)
Desert Tan (ceiling)
Burnt Russet (door)

Upstairs bathroom:
October Leaf (wall)
Endive (ceiling)
Toasted Marshmallow (trim)
Fennel Seed (door)

Downstairs bathroom:
Aurora Borealis (wall)
Rice Paper (door)
Picket Fence (trim)

Now all this might seem extreme, but it's really not. Oh, who am I kidding? It's totally extreme but I don't care. I love all the colors in our house and they are are basically the same color scheme we started with.  We just supplemented it a little.  Well, a lot.  It's kind of funny, Joey and I have worked with them so much that if he told me he bought a new shirt and I asked the color he could say, "October Leaf" and I would know exactly what he meant.

Now that we have our colors selected it's time to paint!

Basil Garden

I know I have arrived when I have my little Aerogarden set up. I got it for Christmas a couple years ago and it's been one of my favorite things in the kitchen. In my old kitchen I had it on the kitchen table that we only ate at once. The rest of the the time it seemed to be a place to collect paper and things we didn't know what to do with. This time my Aerogarden has it's own special place in my kitchen. It's brightening up an odd little nook that Joey and I turned into a little place of happiness. At least that's how I see it.

I love watching the little plants sprout, which they do fairly quickly. This time I have planted a basil garden. Seven different types of basil. I would have never thought there was a difference until last year when I grew lemon basil and LOVED it. I made lemon basil ice cream and it was amazing. Now with seven kinds I am excited to taste all the flavors and see what I can do with them. Basil grows really fast, so I am sure there is going to be a lot of caprase salads and pesto sauces on the menu this spring! Right now, though, I am just going to enjoy my little garden and watch new life grow. Like the new life Joey and I have created for ourselves in Daly City.

250,000 Words

Today is a special day for me.  Not because of the leap year.  It's something I have been working on for almost a year. Today I hit 250,000 words on 750words.com.  250 thousand!!!  250K!  A quarter of a million! I never thought I would reach this number.

I stumbled across 750words.com in April 2011 and have been writing every day since then.  I have passed many goals - 10 days, 30 days, 100,000 words, and now a biggie - 250,000 words. I could say I never thought I would get here, but part of me always knew I would. It was just a matter of time. It just makes me feel really good that I did it. That I could stick with something this long and reach my goal. I haven't felt that way in a long time.

I use my writing for different purposes. Most days I just write whatever is on my mind. Some days I use my time to write posts in my blog. I have been doing this a lot recently, trying to find my voice. Some days I just dread writing and it seems like it takes forever to reach 750 words. Those are usually the days that I have forgotten to write in the morning and have to write before I go to bed. I am not good at writing at night. I much prefer the morning. 

I rarely go over my words unless I am particularly inspired. The most I have written is 1,000 words.  That happened just one. Today I wrote over 900 words. I had a mission, though. I wanted to reach that magic number.

So today I am going to celebrate my achievement and then start working towards my next goal - 1 full year of writing!

If you grew up in the 70s you most likely remember the Life cereal with Mikey.  Two little boys are looking at the cereal and neither want to try it. They decide to give it to Mikey to try knowing, "he won't eat it. He hates everything." To their surprise Mikely loves the cereal and gobbles it down.  Of course, I just had to get Life cereal! Unfortunately, unlike Mikey, I didn't like it. My grandma didn't let me off the hook, though. I had to eat that cereal until the entire box was done. I learned a lesson - don't try new food.
Those days were filled with long, endless summers of playing in the sprinkler, staying out until dark and just being a kid. Being anxious to grow up I begged my grandma to let me mow the lawn. Begged, begged, begged. Obviously, my fear of new foods didn't slip over to new experiences. Finally she let me. Like Life cereal I didn't like it. Also, like Life cereal I was stuck with it. However, this wasn't just a box, it was for the rest of my childhood and teen years.
I cannot begin to tell you how much I loathed yard work. It was the most horrible thing I did during those years. Every Saturday I woke up dreading mowing the lawn and trimming those prickly hedges. When I moved away for college that was one thing I didn't miss. In fact, I have never missed it. I have been happily living in apartments my entire adult life. Until last October.
We don't have a very large yard. In fact, the front consists of seven rose bushes and an overgrown bougainvillea. (We do have a backyard, but one thing at a time.) While this yard isn't large it was overgrown. Way, overgrown.  The bougainvillea was at least 12 high and equally as wide.  The rose bushes were also totally overgrown and surrounded by weeds. Joey and I have been very adept at ignoring this mess in the front.  The bougainvillea was a great landmark for friends looking for our house and the rose bushes each had one, yes one, flower on them so we couldn't trim them. We both toyed with the idea of doing yard work, but didn't get much further than ordering a lot of gardening tools and a few paris of really cute gardening gloves on Amazon. Once the items arrived we displayed them decoratively in our office and eventually hid them away in the garage.  Maybe if we just waited long enough the bougainvillea would bloom again and we could put this off until next year.  Well, we couldn't.
Yesterday I decided that I was going to tackle this hideous project. I took the day off and had it all planned out. When I woke up I was not very thrilled at the task ahead of me. However, I was excited to try on those cute gloves, so I had some motivation.  Downstairs I went and set up my tools. Well, it wasn't that easy, I had to find them and they were hidden behind other Amazon purchases we had made. Ah! There they are! I set up all my tools neatly in a row and tried on the gloves.  They're elbow length and quite glamorous. I stood there admiring myself for a moment. "This isn't so bad." I thought. "In fact, it's quite manly and fashionable all at once!" Armed in my glamour I went out to tackle those bushes.
They yard work was typical pruning, pulling, sweeping and cleaning up. Not much different than when I was a kid. Something was different, though. I found myself actually enjoying this. With each clip I liked it more and more and before I knew it I was finished. I didn't wasn't to be finished, though. I wanted to do more. I liked it!
At that moment I realized that you're never too old to try discover things, even for the second time. We are constantly changing and growing and something that we didn't like before might just be something we love now. I wonder what else is out there for me to rediscover? I'll think about that over my bowl of Life cereal.

TGIF

Today marks a turning point for us.  We no longer need contractors!  Our kitchen is complete.  Well, the contractors job is complete.  We still need to move in. I can't begin to tell you how excited we both are for this. We have had our kitchen in our dining room for about two months.  While that is not an overly long time, it's been a bit of a nuisance. We both have felt like we were living under these huge projects and now they are finally done.  

I was looking back over the pictures of this place and am really impressed with all Joey  and I have done in a short amount of time.  Repainting, refinishing the floors, completely new kitchen.  It doesn't even look like the same place. I wish I would have blogged about it, but thankfully we did take pictures. Lots of them. I decided that I am going to blog about the process now that it's slowed down a bit. If I would have been blogging while it was going on, it would have been super whiney. We don't want that.

So, here's to a great productive long weekend. Moving into the kitchen and a special anniversary dinner at Michael Minna.  It's going to be a very, very good weekend.

Sunrise in Daly City

Today when I opened the curtains in the music room (our fancy name for our office) the sun was just beginning to rise and the moon still hadn't decided to go to bed yet.  Once again it was a beautiful day in Daly City and I was loving it. I was so afraid to move here and now I can't think of living anywhere else. It's beautiful.

It seems silly to think I got myself so worked up about the move from San Francisco to Daly City. Honestly, we only live 15 minutes from my old place and about three minutes from the city. I was scared to death. I was so busy fearing change that I didn't see anything, let alone a beautiful sunset. All I saw was a house that needed a lot of work.

It seems to me that when we let the fear get the best of us we only see the negative. We justify our fears with it. Then we let it consume us. When we finally step back and let go of the fear, whether out of wisdom or shear exhaustion, we see things for what they are.  We see things like a beautiful sunrise on a Thursday morning.