Swiped

While browsing blogs, I came across BS of the Day (whom I don't know, but thanks for the fun reading!) and loved the post from Friday, June 13. I swiped it cause it is super cool.
Check this out:

Answer each of these questions and type your answer into Flickr Search. Pick an image from the first page only.

Then copy and paste the URL for each picture into fd's Mosaic Maker.

The questions:
1. What is your first name?
2. What is your favorite food?
3. What high school did you go to?
4. What is your favorite color?
5. Who is your celebrity crush?
6. Favorite drink?
7. Dream vacation?
8. Favorite dessert?
9. What do you want to be when you grow up?
10. What do you love most in life?
11. One word to describe you?
12. Your flickr name (I subbed my blogger name since I don't have a flickr account)

My answers:
1. Kim 2. Ice Cream. 3. Red Bud 4. blue 5. Rhett Miller 6. Raspberry Stoli 7. Free shopping spree 8. All of the desserts 9. Rich (to never worry about $$ again!) 10. My family 11. tired (first thing that came to mind!) 12. heaven in a paper cup

My results:
Cool huh? Three things that came to mind as I worked on this:

1) Someone shares my feelings on Starbucks. When I searched Heaven In A Paper cup, that Starbucks cup was the first image that came up!
2) I cheated in one place. There was no good photo of my dreamy Rhett Miller on the first flickr page. I refused to put a photo that did not capture some of his dreaminess into my mosaic, so I looked through a few pages (and drooled)
3) This took a really friggin long time, it's almost 10 p.m., my lovely child will be up at the crack of ass in the morning and my husband is out of town. So why the hell am I doing this?!

Do Want

Something I miss about my more happening, childless days...vintage shopping. I used to love hunting, finding and buying fun quirky pieces that fit in with my wardrobe. For example, my favorite skirt, is this...

Well, tonight I was browsing ebay and this WILL be mine:
I'm afraid I may have to pay a pretty penny for it, but HOW CUTE IS THAT?! It's so me, totally goes with the current maxi dress trend, the colors are flippin' adorable and I WANT IT. Now I just have to remember to be around ebay when it ends...

Picturetown

Picturetown has come to Chicago. Or at least to my house. I casually mentioned to Z a while ago that I might like a nicer digital camera. So he & Henry bought me a Nikon D40 for Mother's day! What can I say, I was totally swayed by the Picturetown ad campaign. And I'm totally loving it. I have no clue how to really use it to it's full extent, but I love that I can just zoom, point, shoot and the color is amazing. A couple of recent shots...


1) I don't think I've ever seen so much detail of Annie show up in a photo. Usually black dog + photo = blur of black fur. And on another note - poor girl has gotten a lot of grey hair in the last year!
2) Only photos like this can help you truly appreciate what beautiful blue eyes Henry has. Gonna break some hearts with those baby blues someday!

Fat Birdie

How cute is this Fat Birdie earring holder I scored at Urban Outfitters yesterday?! Perfect for storing all the sparkly stud earrings I've be forced to acquire since someone (whose name might start with an H), would likely yank anything dangly.

Money Tree

I keep joking that Z & I believe this house came complete with a Money Tree. Just to illustrate, a few items our Money Tree has purchased in the last month:

Dark brown "leather like" (yes, I said leather like, we've got a dog, a toddler & friends running around down there!) sofa:

50" plasma Samsung TV for the lower level: and the corresponding TV stand for gianormous TV:
Zach's pride and joy, the massive gas BBQ grill:


Another TV stand, but this one for our main level for our tiny (husband's description) old 40" TV:
A new much smaller desk for my "office" within our bedroom (mine is actually chocolate brown, but the picture was much better for the black one):

AND, I bought four of these chairs off Craigslist for just $40 and will hopefully close the deal for a corresponding table for just $100!
See what I mean about that MONEY TREE?!?!

Long overdue house update

Well, I've been meaning to post all sorts of things about our new house adventure, but needless to say sprucing up the new house and plotting to spruce up the new house have taken over lots of my time.

I think I'll start at the bottom and work my way up.

• garage - Garage, glorious garage! My lovely father built us shelves. 16 feet long x 2 feet deep. One whole wall of storage shelves! The scary thing is, they are FULL. Not packed tightly, but still full. How the heck did this stuff fit in our 1200 sqft condo?!


• backyard - Z & I fail at gardening. The previous owner apparently took master gardening classes and planted over 100 bulbs in our tiny backyard. When we closed on May 2, the yard was beautiful! I wish I had taken a photo. Now, we've got a bunch of weeds threatening to take over, over grown flowers and plants and some serious work on our hands. Sigh. Oh and I totally need to post of photo of our antique, though functional lawn mower. Was my great, great aunt's and though it's a bit heavy, it does the job.


• lower level - Coming along nicely! The guest room is all set up, complete with a double bed & a set of trundle beds. The closet down there houses our home computer desk. It fits perfectly in the space. Z's guitars will also receive top billing in the room. Hopefully we will get them mounted on the wall. In the family room, I've painted one accent wall in a gorgeous shade of blue, we have purchased a massive 50" TV, a small console to put this monster TV on, and a lovely brown couch. The TV arrived last week, but we are still waiting for the console & couch, so for now, the lower level is a giant open KID RUN!


• main floor - I think I've finally settled on a paint color. This was a major production and *many* quarts of paint latter, we'll be painting a dark taupey grey. It's not a color near and dear to my heart, but I swear it's the only color that goes with the cherry cabinets, blond floors, black appliances/counter tops & the cobalt/copper tile back splash! Whew! Also, my lovely mother scouted this gorgeous Silver Shine Mirror by Pier 1 for the perfect fit above our fireplace.


• front porch - Z planted a lovely mix of orangish/red impatiens & white geraniums in our huge built in flower box. We really need to water them more often! My grandma's old wooden bench has moved to the porch. It needs a coat of paint, but it's a great place to sit and relax in the evenings...I think. Haven't have time to try that whole "relax" thing just yet.


• upper level - Far from complete! We have some changes floating around, but nothing is set in stone. I just ordered this lovely desk (minus the hutch) from West Elm to make a small workstation for me in our bedroom. Everything else is still just a dream at this point!

WHEW! So, that's the update from new house land. I'm trying to keep my anal nature in check and just enjoy it, but I can't wait for everything to be in place & just the way I like it! I promise many more pictures and updates once I get things closer to the state I'd like them to be in!

Incredibly cheap thrifty!

Since moving to our new house, we started up on Chicago Tribune subscription and I love to clip coupons. I'm not nearly as good at using them, which sorta defeats the purpose, but I get a calm sense of accomplishment from just the clipping for some reason.

So, I was *very* excited to see a coupon for $4.00 off Natural Instincts hair color. Those of you who know me IRL know that I like to brighten up my lovely grey copper locks with semi-permanent color. So, I clipped and used my $4.00 coupon on my box of $9.00 hair color.

Caution: this post gets even nerdier from here...
So my thrifty self wondered if I could get my hands on some more of these $4.00 off coupons. I mean a 50¢ coupon is one thing, but $4.00?! That's something to get excited about. Well low and behold, there is someone who loves clipping coupons more than I:
Kuntry-Koncepts
I take issue with the goofy name and the cheesy banjo music, but good ol' Kuntry Koncepts clipped 20 of my beloved coupons and sold them to me for $2!

Addictions

Well, I've developed a new addiction and it made me think about how when I get into something, I GET INTO something. I'm not talking about booze, or crack, or anything like that, but my own vises. So I thought I'd make a list of my current addictions:

1) Craigslist. Since moving into the house, I am obsessed with selling tons of our old stuff and buying some new things for cheap. I've made $110! And I bought a fabulous, like new set of counter stools for just $20. $20!!! For two counter stools! And it just so happens they match our floors. Heading out tonight to buy 4 black chairs for $40.

2) As evidenced from the name of my blog, Chai Tea Lattes from Starbucks. I've tried just about every other chain, non-chain, from a box, from powder Chai Tea latte there is and NOTHING compares. This addiction *never* goes away.

3) Zip ties. I had a whole canister of them from Target that had never been used. I came across them in the move and now I'm a zip tying fool. I'm sure this has to do with my crazy anal nature, but whateva, they make me happy.

4) Costco. Ties into the Ramen noodle diet we are taking on with the new house. I get very excited when I find new cheap things there!

5) Roomba!!! Goes hand in hand with #4, as I purchased it at Costco. I love that I can go to bed at night and wake up in the morning to see that the whole downstairs has been freshly vacuumed and I didn't have to lift a finger.

6) Still digging Mint.com. It's a bit scary to see how much we've spent in the last two months, but it keeps it in perspective and helps me juggle if I think our balance is getting too low!

I'm sure there are many more I'm not thinking of at the moment...