The light and the whale

Every night when I go to bed I have a hard time falling asleep because there is a bright street light from one street over that shines right into my face thru the back French doors. Very annoying. I finally thought of a makeshift idea: why not put a piece of paper in the one pane where the light shines through? And instead of a plain piece of paper I decided to do a quick collage out of construction paper to make it a little more 'designed' and intentional. I picked a 'Moby-Dick' them to go with the room. It's just temporary, but knowing me, until I figure out a better solution it will stay up for a while! PS...getting to sleep now is SO MUCH EASIER, such a simple solution that did the trick!

A Calendar for 2020

I love posting photos to Instagram but I do miss the ability sometimes to have them as physical photos like we used to have in the last century. A website like Snapfish makes things easy, you download the pic and for just a few cents apiece you get some nice prints. I noticed on the site recently that you can not only print from your Instagram snaps but they have all kinds of photo related items like mugs, books, t-shirts, and a thing I wanted to try, calendars. There are all kinds of backgrounds and layouts for your photos. I chose a simple clean layout with 6 of my photos for each month's page. I'm very pleased with the end result, the printing quality is very good. Here is the cover and all the months pages. Nice, right?

COVER

JANUARY

FEBRUARY

MARCH

APRIL

MAY

JUNE

JULY

AUGUST

SEPTEMBER

OCTOBER

NOVEMBER

DECEMBER

Last project of the decade

When I bring all my city clothes here to the house I'm going to need a lot more space to put them. So I decided to bring the old chest of drawers that was in the upstairs guest room down to my bedroom. Problem was that the color was dated and didn't match the color scheme of my room. I still had a lot of the gray paint left over from he kitchen/dining room re-dos and I thought color would look great. So my last project of the year was to '4-step' the project: sand, prime, one coat, two coats. I think it came out great and fits perfectly in the wall next to the master bath door.

BEFORE: dated brown wood

AFTER: steel gray

Spilling the tea (towels)

As a thank you for giving him the sale of my apartment, my realtor David sent me the kindest Christmas gift today. Two embroidered tea/dish towels, one with a Hamptons theme and the other one  New York City. They're made by a company that also did a decorative pillow I keep in the craft room. So now I have a nice matched set!

The faux fire

I had a small box full of holiday decorations that I used in the apartment and I brought them to the house this week. A string of white twinkle lights and a white stocking. I put the lights over the mantle and I love the ambience of the light in the room with the other lights dimmed. Making a big fire is always such a pain, not to mention the mess. So I brought up the carved log I did a few years back that holds 7 tea lights in the top. I think this is going to be my go-to solution when I want fire but don't want to deal with the clean up!

The carved tea light log

More shades of gray

I was tired of the seafood green wall paint in my bathroom.
Sticking with the gray theme I started in the kitchen and dining room, this week's project was a paint re-do.
I love this color, it's Benjamin Moore's "Gray". I used it in the front hallway in the apartment.
I think it makes the bathroom more modern and masculine. It's like a spiffy tuxedo. I replaced the oval black mirror over the sink with the small mirror I found this past summer with my sister at a yard sale, the white trim popped more off the dark gray.

Holiday baking

It started with Thanksgiving.
It's just not complete without a pumpkin pie.
So I made my favorite recipe for the umpteenth time. It tasted especially good this time.

Once the Christmas season started I had to make gingerbread cookies. I really wanted to up the spiciness factor this year. So I googled "spiciest gingerbread cookies" and came up with this Food Network recipe that included not only black pepper but CAYENNE PEPPER as well. They had a real kick to them in the aftertaste. But I'm not sure I'd rush back to make them again. I want one with really rich Christmas spices...cinnamon, ginger, nutmeg, allspice, mace, etc...so the hunt is on. They turned out well tho.

I love this new cookbook I bought called "One Pot" from the editors of Martha Stewart Living. I made this great curry chicken pot pie with carrots and parsnips, I added mushrooms too. It was simply delicious.

Finally, I really had a hankering to try a fruitcake recipe. Fruitcakes always remind me of my grandmother, she always had one every year for Christmas, usually store bought, but sometimes she made one herself. This one had tons of stuff in it: dried pineapple, dried apricots, raisins, walnuts, and candied cherries, all soaked in rum! I baked it about 10 minutes too long, it was a little dark on the top edges but still very, very good. The recipe made two loaves, I'm taking one gift wrapped home to Texas. It will be a new holiday tradition for sure.

Macerating fruit in rum

"Slice up the fruitcake, we need a little Christmas now!"

Wrapped and ready for Texas