spending the days

January has been a funkified month around these parts lately. The weather, although not miserable, is still not super outdoor-conducive. Work has not been particularly taxing. Brian has been gearing up for his show to open. All these things combined = a lot of downtime at home for me. Busy hands make for a happy heart (I made that up I think?) so I've been focusing on the 3 Cs to keep things moving...cleaning, cooking, and crafting.

Cleaning

The Office Overhaul has been my main undertaking. I was inspired after seeing how Jackie transformed their office into a totally different space, and then became angry at how disgusting our junkroom mailroom cat litter infested office had become. But hey, it's nothing a Friday night, some wine, and an Alanis Morrisette Pandora station can't handle, right?! If only I were kidding. If only that wasn't Brian's station.

The OO project is now a week underway with a decent stretch to go but I've tried to keep doing something everyday so as not to lose momentum (which is exactly how this room turned into this disaster in the first place). I had to do so much cleaning, then organizing, and now I'm in the "put stacks in the dining room so we're forced to get rid of them" phase. I've managed to get the majority of crap out, and after multiple trips to Home Goods, Bed Bath & Beyond, and Michael's, I'm starting to get somewhere. Still on the to-do list (aside from purging all the dining room crap...) is: custom framing; find 2 lampshades; buy rug; get a little more storage. Unfortunately I fell in love with some decorative storage at HG but they didn't have enough so I asked when I should come back and they said every day. Because that's totally healthy.

Cooking

I've been trying a couple of simple recipes lately to get myself eating some new veggies and fruits. This is mostly uninteresting to the reader but is good for my belly and has translated to some delicious lunches at work. I'm also trying to coach myself to be less intimidated by cooking. For example, I made some key lime bars last weekend (box recipe) and then realized we didn't have powdered sugar for garnishing, but instead of blowing it off, I thought, "Maybe I could whip up some frosting from scratch?" And I did. And it was totally goopy and weird and I mis-read an ingredient (my specialty), but the point is - I actually thought that I could take a few extra steps and make the dish better instead of letting it stay as-is. This is a great feat for me.

a little chicken, brussel sprouts, and sweet potato goodness

Also, we got this badass - and I mean badass - little blender thingamabobbie for Christmas from Brian's parents. THE NINJA is so awesome because you can blend things in the normal container OR you can blend in a cup. This is perfect for making a smoothie for one! Plus it came with a colorful cookbook, and that never hurt anything.

Crafting

My main ongoing project is to print our honeymoon blog into a book. I thought this would literally be a 5-click process on print2blog.com but I hated how unprofessional it looked so now I've gone and gotten myself addicted to Blurb. This program lets you custom design every aspect of the blog, although it populates with suggested layouts and whatnot. Perfecto. Unperfecto that I'm only on page 11 of 90 though.

I also spent one night burning my fingers making the same cute fabric flowers that Patti made for Jackie's shower! I've only worn 1 so far...no wait that's a lie. I wore one and it fell out before I even made it to the train. So you might say I haven't found the perfect hairclip for them yet. But I love them - I only wish you could wear them more often!

My last craft was making notecards for Brian to give the cast on opening night (a theatre tradition). Since the play is about Houdini, I thought these would fit the bill! I had all these materials on-hand, which is even more gratifying. I knew I'd saved all those buttons for years for something!

see it's like a card hidden in a sleeve...

and then you can write on the back!

I'm accepting any and all Pinterest suggestions if you see anything that could keep me buys in one of the Cs :)