Another book down

From Publishers Weekly: Harbison's witty, fast-paced follow-up to last year's Shoe Addicts Anonymous chronicles the foibles of four women brought together by—in this case—not shoes but debt. During a fateful trip to Las Vegas as chaperones of a school band trip, Loreen Murphy accidentally hires a male prostitute on the PTA credit card; pastor's-wife-with-a-past Abbey Walsh gets blackmailed by an ex-con ex-boyfriend; and usually restrained PTA president Tiffany Dreyer purchases thousands of dollars worth of clothes that she can't return. Enter the zaftig Sandra Vanderslice, who, before she started her shoe-importing business, made a living as a phone sex operator. She suggests her sister, Tiffany, hop on that gravy train to pay down her credit card bills. Loreen and Abbey join up, and soon the ladies are raking in dough and trying to hide their new source of income from husbands, kids and their snoopy nemesis, the cartoonishly judgmental Deb Leventer, who wants to take over the PTA. Harbison's writing is zingy and funny, and her light touch allows her to get away with the ridiculous situations in this nutty beach read.

I loved this book. It was a fun, fast, entertaining read. The way the author wrote the book made you attached to the characters and wanting to read more. I recommend it for a fun summer read.

There was apparently a prequel to this that I must also read now.

# 52 Two more books down

This is the most recent release from one of my favorite murder mystery series. It was another great book by Denise Swanson. I only wish she didn't take an entire year to release another book!

This is the current book club novel, so I won't say too much about it. The novel is a semi-true story from a period in Frank Lloyd Wright's life. I never knew he led such a poor and scandalous life. It was quite insightful and entertaining to a point. It was however a long and wordy read. I could leave it for days at a time and not miss it.
On another note, I didn't know how the book was going to end. I skimmed a Smithsonian article about Frank and totally had it ruined. That made me quite sad. :(

New music album

I love love love Regina Spektor's music. Her new album comes out this Tuesday. It is titled FAR. You can listen to the ENTIRE album for free on NPR here.

#22 Bathroom Photo UPDATE

I posted awhile back about the photos I took for our bathroom. I was not really feeling the center picture that was a heart. I didn't feel like it was enough contrast and I felt like I was settling for a pic I didn't really love. Well C & I took a picture while on vacation that was PERFECT for this spot. So after a quick photo print, I switched it out. What do you think? I think it fits us better :)

#5 Coffee Table

I was not in love with our hand me down coffee table. It was made of solid, very heavy, MDF. It was hard to move around we I needed to vacuum or if I wanted to play with the Wii. It served no additional purpose aside from being a flat surface.

We decided to make our own coffee table to fit our needs after we discovered that what we wanted didn't really exist. If it did exist it was way to pricey. It is not fully completed (is any project ever around here :P), but it is functional. The outside is made of bending birch. The top is removable and cushioned. The inside is hollow for blanket and pillow storage. There is also a flip out compartment for holding the remotes and coasters. The top can also be flipped over for a hard surface to set your food/beverages on. All in all I really love this piece. It is so light that I can scoot it with just my big toe, even when it has blankets in it. :)

#56 Fountain

This is a project we have been working on for over a year. We have had more troubles than you can even imagine making this thing. It is still not done, but I thought I would post an update. After many many different adhesive types and many many subsequent failures, we think we have found a better solution for holding it together. We still have to put on one more bamboo tier, but here it is so far:

PS - The roar you hear in the background is 3 or 4 air conditioners being on in the neigboring building. Not the fountain :P

#84 Decorate Bedroom

When we first moved into our married apartment we had no real furniture, just a mattress on a frame. We had a book shelf from college days tucked in the closet to stack my underwear on (which the cat would rearrange often). We had MDF tower bookshelves to put our lamp and alarm clock on. It was quite sad really.

*note bed skirt was hand me down, never my style ;)*

We went on to decorate other rooms in our apartment, but never got around to the bedroom. We couldn't agree on furniture (C thought the book shelf was just fine!). We really only slept in there, it wasn't like the living room or the dining room where we spend time and guests see. It got neglected.

Then we found dressers that we loved! It was the perfect blending of our styles. We hated the wood knobs, but that was fixable. And we had to stain them ourselves, which was a whole new debate. We bought them, stained them, and replaced the knobs. It was so nice to have a home for my clothes!

We didn't find bed side tables that we liked though. The ones that went with this set were super low to the ground and very clunky looking. No matter where we looked we couldn't find what we wanted. In steps my master craftsman dad and he made us "floating" ones that match the style of our dressers! They are exactly what we wanted. We had to wait until last Christmas to get them though and then we still had to stain them.

In this picture you can also see the new bedding that C bought me two birthdays ago. So much better than the down comforter we had before (not to mention that there are only a handful of days you need it in Texas!). You can also see the lamps we bought.

We still needed some frames and a couple of art pieces. C's sister gave us a coupon for a painting for our wedding. She was waiting for us to pick colors and such before she made it. We finally told her what realm of colors we wanted and she painted us this gem. I love it! Last summer my sister also helped me pick out frames and photos to go on our dressers.

That is all the changes in our room over the last two and a half years. I don't think I can cross this off until I finish painting the artwork for over the bed. We also still need a headboard, but that is something we have yet to agree on. In the meantime the body pillow works just fine! :)

#74 Print Digital Photos and Keep up on it

This task has been achieved for quite awhile now. By getting back into scrap booking and dedicating at least one day a month to Scrapmania at Archiver's, I have done really well at printing out photos. I think it is safe to call this task complete!

#12 organize photos

When I wrote this list I thought this would be an incredibly daunting task. I have several boxes of photos starting from senior year of high school that were not organized. They were all tossed in the box, making it impossible to ever find a particular photo. One day, during one of my spring cleaning bouts, I emptied all the boxes and sorted the photos into piles according to date/activity. It was way easier than I thought it would be. It was so much fun flipping through all of those old photos! It was nice to finally shred any photos that were duplicates or had damage or were really fuzzy.

Ahhh...organization. I feel really good being able to cross this one off.