The Lovely Side

I have a mild severe infatuation with old houses.  Stately brick mansions.  Old farmhouses.  And my most favorite: elaborate Victorians.  I'm obsessed to the point of often asking, "Do you think they'd mind if I knocked on the door and asked to look around?"  Okay, okay... so usually I only think that in my head.  And I'm not so bold as to ever do that.  But nothing's better than driving around and looking for beautiful old houses.  I love seeing the ones that have been lovingly maintained and/or restored.  And while it saddens me to see the abandoned, dilapidated, forgotten beauties... I can't help but get a little excited and romantic.  Because all I can see is the potential.  The potential of what the rundown place could be if I were given unlimited time, lotsa money, and a construction crew to order around. ;)

Some more snap shots of the progress in my attic bedroom!

A girl does not discover her true strength until there are no men around to help get her new vintage dresser out of her SUV, through the parking lot, up two flights of steep stairs to the second floor apartment of an old Victorian house, and up two more flights of steeper stairs to her attic bedroom.

So I found my dream house.  Seriously. I. Am. Swooning.

Word of warning.  You may think less of me after reading this post. So if you're faint of heart or judgmental, I suggest you depart quietly from the blog.
But for the rest of you who don't mind a little (almost) raunchy decor-porn...

Time for an update on how my attic apartment is coming along.  This is my bed nook---hands down my favorite part of the room.  I can't even describe how wonderful it is to sleep in this nook.  The windows are my headboard. At night, I can gaze up at the starry sky through tree branches. In the morning, amazing sunlight pours in.  And I can lay there and admire the big tree in our front yard as I procrastinate getting out of bed.  It's a perfect place to sit with my laptop and write or blog.  And its even better for curling up with a good book.  I've always wanted a bed nook, so I consider myself sooo lucky to have this one! :)

Silly me... I don't think I ever got around to posting photos of one of my old dorms!  So there's no better time than the present, right?  This here is a single dorm I lived in back in 2010.  As far as my love of turquoise and floral patterns go... not much has changed.  But I've definitely come a long way and my style has much evolved.

"...Try as I might to organize my room... It seems like there's too much stuff. I have an obscene number of lotion and perfume bottles, along with random small things that have accumulated over the years. My room looks really cluttered and I hate it! There's a drawer in my bathroom filled with things I don't want to through away, but don't know how to organize. Do you have any tips on how to organize random small stuff like this?" -Etta

Nothing beats sleeping in on a Sunday morning after an eventful night with friends... then leisurely waking up and whipping up a delicious omelet filled with tomato basil mozzarella cheese, mushroom, tomato, green onion, onion, and cilantro with grapes, coffee, and a pageturner on the side.  I'm a big believer that no matter how busy you are---no matter how overwhelmed by work, school, past-times, social lives---you must make time to read for pleasure.  It's not about how fast you fly through the pages.  It's not about getting to the finish.  It's about sneaking in a few pages on break.  It's about putting your nose in a book on the bus ride home.  And novel reading is truly essential to my happiness.  I'm currently reading Strapless by Deborah Davis.

You should feel very special today, lovelies, because I'm sharing with you my ultra secret recipe for my all-time favorite salsa.  Okay, so truthfully... it's more like a chunky, less juicy pico de gallo.  (I suppose you could blend this together and make it more traditional salsa.)  So basically, get out your biggest knife.  Cut up three large tomatoes, one large green pepper, the biggest white onion you can find, lots of green onion, a jalepeno, and some cilantro.  Chop it all up, mix it all together, and break out the tostitos.

My life mantra pretty much.
Have a lovely holiday!

I was sooo smitten with how last night's turquoise skeleton key turned out, that I just had to do a few more today.  As much as I love turquoise and would wear it with anything, I'd love to have one of these necklaces in every color to match any outfit. ;)

A couple days ago, I came across my stash of skeleton keys that I bought at an antique for a $1 each a couple years ago.  I had some good fun trying them all out in my apartment's 100+ year old doorknob keyholes.  (Two of them worked!)  Anyway, last night I felt that a key necklace would really complete my outfit.  But just stringing a key onto a chain wasn't pretty enough.