When I Go To The Thrift Store

A strange thing happened the last time I stopped in at my local thrift store... I didn't see that many weird, goofy things. I actually saw a few things that I wanted. But... I didn't buy anything because 1) my thrift store seems to be getting expensive for what it is, even with my 20% military discount Thursdays and 2)... I'm feeling antsy and done decorating this apartment. I know I said that I feel like my spaces should be constantly evolving, that's not what I mean. I mean I'm ready to move on! I'm ready for Washington State, baby! 


I mean, look at this:

I. Am. Psyched! I'm going to be living 30 minutes from Seattle. AND 30ish minutes from Ikea!! (Which, the new catalog is now available for online viewing or 6-10 weeks through the mail... waiting for mine and pinning from the online catalog in the meantime!)

Anyways... now onward to the thrift store!

I really loved this amazing armoire- the color, the lines, the doors. Love. But... there's absolutely no way I'd ever be able to fit this in an apartment AND what a hassle to move, right? Because of that, I didn't even check the price but it's really a cool piece. 

I guess I should've bought this but it didn't seem worthy of $10. I could've used my discount... maybe if it's there on Thursday I'll pick it up and know it was meant to be. It's a Norfolk city cross stitch that would look really awesome on a frame wall that I plan to do someday. Wouldn't it be adorable in a clean, white Ikea frame surrounded by other sentimental art? I've been meaning to pick up something art-related to keep after living here for 2+ years...

These were a pretty cheap $2.49 each but... I couldn't rationalize the purchase no matter how many times I could visualize these on a bookshelf or holding keys... I don't want to clutter my apartment so I passed these up. Still thought they were pretty cool though. 

This jewelry box was hidden behind a few things and has so much promise. Look at the lines and those handles! Behind the doors there's a row of drawers for lots of jewelry storage. I really really really wanted to get this and sand it down and make it beautiful BUT it was $35. Yes, $35! I couldn't fathom paying that at a thrift store so it got left behind... 

This was probably the only funny, goofy thing I saw while browsing. It looks like the caption should read, "Would you stop playing that thing?!"

For some reason I loved the look of this book. The colors and the scroll design look almost like it could be displayed as art. But $15? Um. Get over yourself. 

How can that book be $15 but this mirror was priced at $5.99? Weird. 

My brother is a big Titanic nut so I had to take a picture of this whisky "bottle" that was part of a large collection of whisky bottles there. 

And here's just a snippet of that collection. It was actually pretty impressive though... I always feel sad when I think of the instances of how such a collection ended up at the thrift store...

Well, that was all the notable items from my trip... looking back on this, I should've bought the Norfolk cross stitch and the Titanic! Maybe I'll head back up there to see if they're still there...?

Kitten Duty

Or as I should say, 'kitten doody.' Let's just say I've been very busy cleaning up after Miss Zelda. We've got to take her for an exam sometime this week and she's sneezing and... having rectal issues. Fun fun fun.


But I did manage to get some decent shots of her...

when she's not running around and playing like crazy.

And she does sleep a lot because she's a growing kitten... which is fine for right now. When she's sleeping she's not sneezing in our faces or spreading other things around. 

As for Mr. Ian... it's been an adjustment. He hisses and is totally curious about her at the same time. Though, he hasn't hissed today so I think we're making progress. I've just been trying to not dote too much on the kitten in his presence (which isn't that hard since she's kinda... stinky right now) and he seems to be reassured that we still love him. Feels like I'm dealing with children right now!

Aww! He's so handsome! :D

I'll be back tomorrow with an edition of "When I Go To The Thrift Store" and now that Russ' leave is over, posting will be back on schedule!

Smashbook!

I've kept a journal pretty much since the age of ten. I now have a biased record of my life from fifth grade and it is so entertaining to flip through every once and a while and read a few pages. I believe that one journal, emblazoned with a smiling picture of Winnie the Pooh, reads, "I found a dead bird today." I'm not sure why that was a noteworthy event but it is in there.

So as a avid journal-writer (usually) that kept with the blank, lined page, I was a little skeptical that I would even need this thing called a Smashbook that I saw advertised at Michael's one day. But, then one of the blogs that I read, Happy Together, had a post about the author's Smashbook and all the awesome things she collected in it.  I knew then that I had to have one because I have a bunch of miscellaneous things accumulating in a shoebox that I want to keep that doesn't fit anywhere. 

And my Smashbook is pretty much perfect for everything I want to keep. And for $12.99 it's around the same price I'd pay for regular journals at Barnes & Noble (which are usually much more than that anyway). 

There's a bunch of different themed books, I got the "doodle style" with the red spine and a few extra notepads that contain sheets of paper that give me spaces for quotes and other things.

The pen is glue on one side and a pen on the other, ingenious. 

All my trip items I tend to save like cards, postcards, tickets, maps and such fit perfectly and beautifully in my new Smashbook.

Or things I want to save out of my Psych magazines that I use for self-diagnoses... :p I hate keeping around magazines forever and now I don't have to! I can just clip out what I want to save and toss the rest. 

This is such an awesome idea, a book perfectly suited to my journal-writing self. I'm surprised I didn't hop on the bandwagon earlier!

Summertime, Kitten Time

Sorry for the Summer absence over here.... we've just been busy enjoying Russ' time off and doing... Summer lazy things like...

Staying up too late and sleeping in too late... shopping, eating, going to the beach and burning our feet on sand that feels like you're walking on hot coals. 

Going to the weekend adoption event and adopting this little girl who we get to bring home on Wednesday after she's been spayed...

Her name is Zelda... courtesy of my gamer husband.

She's a very sweet and affectionate girl that's been fostered and well taken care of. And she got cozy and fell asleep in Russ' arms while we were visiting. How sweet is that? She's really the only cat I've seen coming home with us since we've started looking. Everyone kept commenting that it would seem that she just chose us (an awesome sign when you're looking for a kitty companion). 

I'm just hoping that everything goes well with this adoption. We've been looking for another kitty pal for Ian for months after we finally recovered from having to take back Salem (who's since been adopted about a week or two after we surrendered him). 

I wasn't looking for a female as I've heard some females can be territorial and domineering (and I've had two female cats before and living with them was pretty much hell) so I was a little leery. BUT, she is a kitten and hopefully we can keep her being a lovey, sweet little girl. I'm worried about how Ian will take it so I've been dishing him out extra love, affection, and snuggles (which, he gets a lot of baby-ing already). I just want him to have a companion. I felt so bad leaving him all alone while we went on our trips at the beginning of the month and I wouldn't have felt bad leaving him with a friend. 

I also wanted to give another animal a good home. Even though things didn't work out with Salem, we gave Ian a second chance at having a good life. I wanted to offer that chance to another animal. I would adopt a dozen or more cats if I could. 

In the back of my head I was also thinking, "Will it be more difficult to take two cats to Washington than just one?" The answer is really yes and no. We'll make it though. It's just a few (hopefully not hellish) days in the car. 

Since I haven't posted a picture of Mr. Ian Pants in a while, here's a picture of our first baby:

This is actually the first picture I took of him when we met him at Petsmart for the first time. And speaking of, yesterday was our one year anniversary of being Ian's pet parents! I'm sure my sweet, orange boy will make a good big brother. 

Road Trip! Final Post

The night after we got home from Savannah and Charleston, we planned our DC trip for the following day. Since it was only a three hour drive, we decided to leave later around lunch time. Bad idea. It seems that those people who had traveled for the week of 4th of July and the following weekend were all heading home at the same time. Ultimately bumper-to-bumper traffic added two hours to our travel time to Arlington, Virginia and we got in rather late. Too late to take the metro (which appeared pretty shady after dark...) so we just settled in to leave at a decent time the following morning.

It, uh, wasn't the cleanest way to travel (carpet, really?!) but we got there quickly and without having to drive in DC which was a huge bonus. 

Our first stop: The Holocaust Museum. This is pretty much the only picture I got because we had to go through security and we weren't allowed to take pictures inside, for obvious reasons. 

I bought this postcard of a tower that extended about three levels that was filled with personal photographs of just one Jewish community that had been destroyed. Really moving.

Then it was time to walk around and view some of the memorials and monuments (we only got to a couple though, really really far to walk and we were short on time). 

Then it was time to hop on the metro and head to Ben's Chili Bowl (a DC landmark which has been frequented by Martin Luther King Jr., Duke Ellington, Ella Fitzgerald, and Nat King Cole. It's also been featured on Man VS Food and President Obama has his own booth there!). This blog has a great write-up on the place. 

Image via Wikipedia

Image via washintonpost.com

We got the chili half-smokes (just like the President) and chili fries. The chili was amazing!

So after we were sufficiently full off of Ben's we headed back to the car to drive home... through 70 miles of a craaaazy thunderstorm. Our commute to and from DC was not kind on this trip but we had a lot of fun!

And that concludes my trip updates... finally! 

Road Trip! Part III

After spending the night in Savannah, we hopped on over to Charleston. But, we were pretty exhausted so Charleston became more of a long pit stop between Savannah and home. 


We stopped for lunch at a place recommended on Design Sponge (which has awesome city guides, by the way, like the one for Savannah here and Charleston here). 

With a unique menu of Southern cuisine, it was an interesting and delicious place to try. Every table had a sheet of paper as a table covering and crayons. I think this idea should be implemented by every restaurant. What better way to keep yourself occupied while waiting for your food?!

And the food... incredible! I got chicken and sweet potato hash with scrambled eggs for brunch. Russ got fried green tomatoes, eggs, and pimento cheese grits (which were pretty much gone before I could snap a picture). 

After scouting out the town and feeling exhausted, we decided to stop at another place recommended by Design Sponge for some road trip snacks...

For calling itself a bakeshop I really expected more variety. I mean, what's with places ONLY selling cupcakes in boutique bakeries nowadays? And I'm not that huge of a cupcake fan. They don't impress me. They come across, to me, as a fad and gimmicky. 

It was a cute shop, very very tiny though (which is fine) and they had about a dozen or more varieties of cupcakes ($3 each) and about three varieties of cookies ($1 each). All and all, it wasn't anything I couldn't make at home. 

We got blackberry, blueberry vanilla, peanut butter, chocolate, and peanut butter and jelly. Sadly, the peanut butter flavors were just the "frosting" and the actual cake part was vanilla cake. Simple. 

The chocolate was just... plain old chocolate. Not rich, just... chocolate. 

I don't know... when I hear "bakeshop" I expect... baked goods. EVERYONE'S doing cupcakes and I feel like I just don't get the cupcake fascination. The only thing the treat has going for it is that it's cute which for a sugaraholic like me, isn't enough sweetheart.

But yeah, that was our Charleston experience... strictly culinary. I hope I get to go back sometime in the future and scope out the rest of the place!

Tomorrow: last part of our trip, Washington D.C!