A room to bathe in.

Today's tour is going to be of our bathroom, you'll find it to be extremely different from my last one but despite the lack of amazing bathtub I think I like this one bettet because it inspired a lot of projects.

The little laundry nook, complete with pinterest inspired hanging baskets, curtains that we made from a cloth shower curtain and a little lego harry potter sitting on the window. I'd also like you to notice that from out the window on the left you can see our deck, it makes for an interesting time if someone forgets to shut the curtain while we have company outside.

There is no way to take a picture of a washer/dryer that makes it look cool, but I told you about it so I knew I had to include. I absolutely love having it in the bathroom, it is beyond convenient. 

And here is the part where I can showcase our complete lack of storage space, cute pedestal sink, random free standing toilet paper holder, and the gigantic mirror. I would also like you to notice that there are only 2 bathrobes and only one of them is mine. I finally got over my need to have an obscene amount of bathrobes. 

As much as I miss having a bath tub I know that it just wouldn't fit in this bathroom so I am at peace with our stand up shower. The bright side of this is that I am not smashing my foot or calf on anything while entering and exiting the shower. Because we are without a medecine cabinet we have this super handy dandy shelving unit on the left full of all sorts of treasures, exposed for the whole world to see (if they dared to enter our bathroom that is).

Ah, another pinterest inspired creation, the magnetic make up board. . I'll admit that I did not need this, there's a basket on the back of the toilet that would have held everything just fine, but honestly, this cost about $5 to make and it adds a delightful pop of color, also, it's just freaking cool. 

Here's another idea that pinterest helped create. Because of our lack of space we needed a place to put toiletries and towels, I showed the Beef some pins and this is what he came up with because he's super handy and likes it when I smile. I took the towels off so you could actually see it. 

And last but not least, what you're seeing here is the cabinet that houses the water heater, what is actually important is the motto that everyone should live by. Your day doesn't start out right if you don't give this sign a slap on the way out the door. 

So that's my little bathroom, it's not fancy but I sure as heck like it. 

How do you feel about your bathroom?

Oh, she's crafty.

To date I currently have 143 pins on my craft ideas board on pinterest. Granted some of them are duplicates because all pins start to look the same at 3am and some of them are flat out not worth my time but I know I've got a lot really neat ideas in there. 

I've had about a month to adjust to my new schedule and it turns out I have a lot of free time. I'm lacking structure during the day so in an effort to get myself back on track I'm vowing to post about one craft project that I've done every week. If I haven't completed it I expect 50 lashings with a wet noodle. 

It's been a while since I've really done anything creative. The last thing that even comes close was painting the rooms in the cabin which probably counts more as manual labor. I've had some good ideas over the last 2 months but I've been passing them off on other people (usually my mother or the beef) to execute, so that doesn't count either.

Time to get the creative juices flowing. 

The way I see it is I've got about 6 months until Christmas, roughly 24 weeks, if I can bang out one idea per week I'll be stuffing the hell out of some stockings.

So what do you do with your free time? Any craft projects you'd like to see me tackle? 

I did it!

*stands up* Hi, my name is Button... and I'm a scardy pants.

I mentioned last week that when the Beef and I decided to move we ended up pushing the actual move in date back a week so I wouldn't have to spend my first 7 nights in the house alone. I was given 2 months to get used to the noises and quirks of the cabin before I was expected to go it alone.

Sleep for me is a tricky thing. If left up to my own devices I would do it as little as possible. It is only my need to snuggle with the Beef that finds me in bed for any decent amount of time. Not having an actual reason to go to bed combined with my over active imagination makes for an interesting senario. 

Well, I survived. (duh....)

Obviously there was no doubt to anyone except me that this would happen. For whatever reason I'm fairly certain that serial killers just hang around outside just waiting for the one in a blue moon chance that I'll be left unattended after dark. 

The Beef went off for a one night motorcycle man adventure camping trip. Sounds super fun, right? I thought so, but I am without motorcycle or male private bits so I was not invited. FYI- I am not bitter about this in the slightest, I had to work all weekend, I would rather he was off doing something super cool with his man friends. 

I will start this out by admitting that my preparation for the evening was shotty.

I worked a 3-11 shift, on my break I was rewarded with a lovely alcohol inspired phone call from my campfire side boyfriend. His intoxicated tendencies include vomited romantic mush at me, I can't complain, it melts my icy little heart.

I thought I had it all planned out, I was going to have the Beef on the phone when I got home so he would be the first person, aside from me, to know that I was about to be kidnapped by a giant ventriloquist dummy and his mutant spawn.

Don't judge me, it could happen.

However, my plans were thwarted when I got in my car and noticed a text message from the Beef. The first part of it was more super sweet romanticness, but the second was him saying good night because he just couldn't stay up anymore.

Ok, fine, no big deal, I'm a big girl, I can take care of myself. I'm also the kind of girl who will mumble that under her breath for the entire fifteen minute ride home ignoring the fact that it only gets her worked up instead of calming her down. 

I pulled up to the cabin only to find that the front porch light was out. Clearly I was about to be ambushed. Never mind the fact that I forgot to turn it only when I left that afternoon. I got out of my car and prepared to use the flashlight feature on my smartphone, only to be told that I didn't have enough battery to accommodate that.

I paused for a moment, waiting for the scary music to start playing. When I was met with silence I resigned myself to the certain doom that awaited me and approached the house. Once inside, much to my surprise, I was met with...

i don't even have a cat...

my empty living room. Yeah...

I spent a perfectly boring evening not watching TV because the lure of shitty horror films netflix has to offer is too strong, but instead doing laundry, straightening up, putzing around the internet and wondering when in the world I was going to sleep.

Eventually my natural nocturnal tendencies and absolute certainty that a gigantic rabid bunny was just waiting for me to crawl into bed before he smashed through my bedroom wall was no match for my need to sleep.

He makes his entrance kool-aid man style.

So I did just that, I went into the bedroom, got under the covers, turned out the light (and kept it off) and only laid there for about a half hour until my heart rate slowed enough for sleep to be possible. 

The funny part is, that no matter how much I make fun of myself there is nothing I can do to change my thought process when I'm home alone.

So, what about you? How are you at sleeping alone? Do you have any irrational fears?

I love rushing seasons.

So if you ever hang around me at the tail end of summer you already know that all I can focus on is fall. This is probably because I start celebrating summer way before it happens. As far as I'm concerned it's been summer for a few months now. Unseasonably warm weather in March put the nail in the coffin for me. So here you go, my 5 favorite things about summer.

1. Camping

My first camping trip of the season was on March 20th this year. I had to hunt like crazy to find a camp ground that was open but I did it and it was glorious. I've never gone camping that early but weather providing I intend to from now on. I had another camping adventure in April and then again in May. I'm working on planning something for June as well.

My parents started me out camping around the beginning of my existence and I've never stopped, it is my happy place. I completely lucked out that the Beef is more than up for any camping adventures I can think of, even though he can't build a campfire to save his life. 

2. The Lake

Lake George located in New York is my all time favorite body of water. It's a bit of a drive to get there so I have to make due with the one pictured above, I am not complaining. That's the lake where we have access to a private beach and our boat slip, so if I'm up for laying by the water, swimming, fishing or just tooling around on the boat there it is. We spent a ton of time on the other side of this lake last summer and I'm expecting this year will be no different.

3. Fire

If there is one thing we do right about here it would have to be fires. They are not just for camping anymore. They are for whenever the heck you want them. Fire is one of those amazing things that (as long as I'm not too close) rejuvenates my soul. 

4. BBQ

I think the world ends if the weather turns nice and you don't start grilling something. You can't even prove me wrong because it just does not happen. It's also pretty rare that you'll be standing out on the deck by yourself grilling something, something about sizzling meat makes folks show up and that's fine by me. If it's just the two of us or a dozen people I don't care, the sizzling symphony is good enough for me.

5. Fireflies

If you are not fortunate enough to be acquainted with these magical little buggers I feel like your summers have been incomplete. By the time I was ten years old I probably killed about a thousand of them because the jar on my bedside table didn't have any air holes. I'll never forget the magical glow in my room provided by their sacrifice. 

*moment of silence for the senseless killing of rear lighted insects*

These days I let them go about their business and don't try to turn them into lightening fixtures. Something about sitting out on the deck when it starts to get dark and seeing their little flicker makes me feel like I'm 10 again, which is pretty much perfect. 

So what about you? What are your favorite things about summer?

Dinner makes me giggle.

As I'm known to do, I decided to cook dinner last night. I put some thought into this ahead of time so I had some chicken marinating in the fridge waiting for me. I had it all mapped out in my head: honey mustard baked chicken, brown rice and steamed green beans. I was ready to cook. 

I have no idea what the hell I was thinking. The Beef hates all things mustard, this includes honey mustard, something I didn't even consider. Who would have thought that honey, the sweet nectar of the gods wasn't enough deliciousness to overpower the evil that he seems to think mustard is.

*shrug*

Ok, so how do we make this better. First of all, we need to get rid of the rice because that was supposed to be the part of dinner he wasn't thrilled with. I started making garlic mashed potatoes as an apology for the vile chicken because as much as he hates mustard balances out his obsession with garlic. In my apologetic haste I forgot what a carb monster I feel in love with and some how the words mac & cheese entered the conversation.

"With potatoes?" I asked in horror. 

"Yeah, why not?" He replied.

My inner meal planner wept at this great unbalancing but I had no choice, he probably wouldn't even eat the chicken, can I really just expect him to be ok with potatoes and green beans? I might as well give him a glass of water and crust of bread. 

One day I'll learn that nothing good comes from mumbling to myself because apparently the words "zap the mustard out of the chicken" came out of my mouth. The Beef thought this was a great idea, except for him zap apparently means roll those suckers in bread crumbs and fry the heck out of them. 

I'd been attempting something a bit more healthy but this is what happens when you soak perfectly good chicken in the one condiment your boyfriend absolutely can not stand. 60 years ago I probably would have been beaten within an inch of my life for such of sin, but thankfully we live in modern times where my punishment is being teased mercilessly. 

So dinner was "saved" and he even ate some of the chicken which apparently was delightful until he swallowed it and experienced "the after taste of doom".  The real reason I'm even mentioning this is not because I'm a terrible girlfriend who can't keep her boyfriends food preferences straight but because there is a regular theme in our house when it comes to how our plates look at dinner time. I meant to take a picture but I was rather distracted, instead I've drawn you a picture, which is probably more entertaining anyway.

It should be noted here that green beans are the only vegetables he'll eat without giving me the stink eye. 

So what do you think? Should I have suffered 50 lashes with a wet noodle for my crimes? Have you had a similar mishap in the kitchen? Do your plates at home balance the same or do they look more like ours?

Something New!

Stay tuned for a whole new cycle of invading my personal space. For a while the Beef and I were scoping out new places to live. We could afford to be picky because we weren't locked into a lease. As much as we (mostly me) were dying to move it was more important for us to be patient and end up in a place that was right for us.
So there I was, everyday, online checking out every rental listing I could get my little hands on. Nothing seemed promising. Nothing seemed to fit what we wanted and this is where I'm glad I'm stubborn. In those moments of weakness when we'd gone to check out another place and thought "well, we could live there...." I would chime in with "nah...it's not what we want."
Apparently part of growing up is not letting sheer desperation win out in important situations. Sure, those other places probably would have been fine, for a while, but we were looking to enjoy our new space, not tolerate it.
Our wishlist was not simple, and in this area, kind of insane. We wanted to keep the cost of rent down so we would still be able to save money, we didn't want share a wall with anyone (no apartments), we wanted onsite laundry and a place to keep the motorcycle indoors. The more we looked around, the more it seemed impossible.
So I did exactly what I said I wouldn't do. I gave up looking. I stopped thinking about moving, I let it just fade into the background and focused on life for a bit. A few weeks passed and I hadn't thought about moving at all. I went to work, I came home, I started the hiring process at a new job and life was alright.
Then out of the blue I decided to check out some rentals on craigslist for shits and giggle.
And wouldn't you know, there it was, a brand new posting for a little cabin up by the lake. There weren't many pictures but something told me this was worth looking into. We made an appointment and went to see the cabin the next day.
I had this to say about it to some friends after we went to look at the place:


We may have just found a new place to live....


Pros: single family house (no sharing walls with neighbors) , lots of outdoor deck space, washer and dryer, beach access (which I later found out also meant boat slip). 


Cons: in desperate need of a deep cleaning and a paint job (inside), there's an attached 3 season room we wouldn't have access to bc the owner dumps all of his shit in it, (false, the shit was from old tenants and the landlord agreed to remove whatever we didn't want from the room) and the yard is kind of a mess. 


Other: its a mile and a half from my mothers house.

All of that took place on March 22nd. Together we decided that we wanted the place and let the landlord know. The landlord, who by the way turned out to be one of the coolest guys in the world. The lease was set to start April 1st, but we were allowed in earlier to for painting and cleaning, which it really needed.

The nicest part about the move was that most of my stuff was in storage, so I could move it all into the cabin without actually missing anything from my day to day life. We did not end up officially moving in for about a week into April so all we had to do was bring over the bed, the entire place was set up and organized and we could just live there without boxes.

So since we were so desperate to move, why did we take an entire extra week? There's nothing bad about living with boxes and unpacking as you go. I wish I could tell you it was because of work or something really important. The true is I'm a scardy pants and the Beef had just started a week of over night shifts. I didn't want to spend the first week in the new place all by my lonesome at night. That's pretty true to my character but it didn't help that when we were cleaning the place up I found something creepy in the closet:

Oh, Hell No!

So be prepared, you'll get to explore our little cabin one room at a time in the up coming weeks.

Remember when I used to Blog?

Oh man, Remember when I used to blog all the time? Those were some fun times. What the hell happened? I have no idea. I got lazy. I felt bad the blog was just sitting there, I was too ashamed to come back after I'd abandoned it.

Oh well, time to right the wrongs and get back to blogging. I have so much to tell you anyway. Lots of big changes I should be updating you on in the coming days (weeks?).

I have a new job, a new house, a new outlook on live, new hobbies, new projects, etc.

NEW NEW NEW.

SUNDAY SUNDAY SUNDAY!

Oh yeah and I'm going to be another year older on Saturday. Yikes!

So I promise, that I will have updates for you. I will say things that I think are interesting and funny again. I will do this on a regular basis and all will be well.