photos [and links!] galore

its only a month into the new year and there's already a sense of accomplishment. first, some house pics. i'm finally able to say that the 1st floor is about 90% done, with the remaining 10% being only very small things we need to finish. last week i skip troweled the remaining kitchen wall and ian painted and installed the baseboard. ta da:



as for the dining room, we really just need to move all of the misc furniture out of it, and put the dining room furniture back into it. we've also been trying to decide on a shelving unit... buying one or designing a built in unit. we also managed to score a free 55 gallon aquarium and we set that up last week and now have a few small schools of fish swimming around. it adds a nice bit of relaxation to the dining room, and i'm sure the cats will love it as well.




ian did a little organizing in the laundry room and put in a cast-off corner cabinet and a counter. i'd post a photo, but its piled up with laundry at the moment, so....


in the downstairs bath, i skip-troweled the walls and now i just need to pick a paint color and get moving on that. i have the floor [black tones] and tub surround [white/grey veinish] tiles, and am thinking either a khaki or blue grey paint to go with the woodwork of the vanity and recessed shelving.




over the past few weeks ian and i have managed to do some cleaning and downsizing: ended up taking a small truckload of "junk" to goodwill, along with a few bags of clothing to avalon, therefore having more closet space to go shopping :)

our weekend was busy but relaxing. friday night we headed out to squirrel hill to hit zyng for dinner but to my horror found out that it has gone out of business :( as did pi, which was our second choice. we ended up at shady grove in shadyside and then home to relax and watch some nip tuck season 2. saturday night we finally made our way over to abay to meet some friends for dinner, and it was pretty tasty! finished off the night with a few drinks at kelly's bar. sunday we brunched at fuel + fuddle... its a great deal. our bill was under $12, as all brunch items come with free coffee :) yum. we ran a bunch of errands through out the day, and of course ended up back at mad mex for dinner.

lets see... what else is going on? i've been on a huge knitting spree lately, trying to finish up a bunch of projects and starting some new ones. i tried my hand at "felting" wool, and made this cute little bag. see how much the felting shrinks it?






i have also started work on a new sweater, out of the softest silvery grey yarn. its the hourglass sweater from last minute knitted gifts, a book i repeatedly check out of the library and should just end up buying. its coming along pretty quickly, and its an easy knit to work on while watching tv. here's my progress: [note it would be alot more if i hadn't needed to frog most of it and restart with smaller needles].




before i close, there is one thing i find very amusing. i recently looked up the search strings people are using to end up on my site. here are the top 5 search strings for january:

1. jd fortune
2. ugly dolls
3. j.d. fortune
4. inxs jd
5. ugly dog

interesting, considering i've only mentioned ugly dolls and jd fortune once on the blog :) among some of the other searches were house remodeling how-tos, many other variants of jd fortune, misc. design search strings, and of course "hot girl laying out on the beach pic". anyways... how about some searches for kick-ass designer ?

:)