Whoa, man! It's been a long couple of days/weeks here in my little bitty apartment!

We just bought our house, which is what I posted about a little bit ago, and its definitely a fixer-upper. The house is well over 100 years old, has TONS of beautiful architectural details, wood floors and space, but there is also a lot of work that comes with all of that.

The running total right now that we have to get done before the end of the month is out of control. We still need to fix the plaster on the walls in the bedroom, kitchen and living rooms. Everything still needs to be painted. And I mean EVERYTHING. There isn't a single room in this place (of which there are 9) that doesn't need at least a coat of paint. The kitchen will need many coats of paint.

My office is well on its way to getting a stamp of approval though. I have primed (almost) all of it and I put up a swatch of my robin's egg blue paint last night. I love it on the wall, and today I will paint for a bit to start to see some forward movement in this GIGANTIC undertaking.

I've been pinning like a madwoman, and I'm starting to get a feel for what I'm going to want in my place, which will sort of be a victorian-shabby-chic. I love the old feel and details of the victorian, but I also like the worn look of the shabby-chic. If I put them together I should be pretty happy with it.

My mother is going to kill me though. I've decided to paint the trim work in the house white. I know it sounds boring, but hear me out! The wood in the house is old... like 100 years old. The stuff has not been well taken care of. There are holes all of them from where previous owners have drilled into them, and all of that will have to be cleaned, wood filled, sanded, primed and painted before it will start to look pretty at all. I will have the added bonus of the house looking bright and shiny and welcoming instead of foreboding (like it does now.)

I will post some before and after photos pretty soon. I've just found the camera again, and gotten the sucker charged. Now I can get some documentation going. :)

I found a couch!

I live in an apartment complex, for just one more month. Add to that, in the world of Ann Arbor, MI this time of year means it's Hippie Christmas. This means that all of the students at the local Universities are going home to their parents' for the summer, so they are leaving all of their furniture on the curb for everyone else to take back to their abodes. I have pretty much decorated my house on Hippie Christmas finds, and it is awesome to live in a place like this where I can find everything that I want and need on the side of the road.

Today in the finds there was a very old leather reclining chair. It was rainstorming outside, but I just couldn't pass it up. The chair was completely un-salvageable, but the leather on it was in pretty good shape. I took a knife out to the trash bin and gutted all of the leather off of it.

I'm feeling pretty good about this decision.

When I got inside I took the hair dryer to a couple of smallish pieces so I could whip up a little necklace that I'd been seeing on Pinterest a lot lately before we went out for date night. It was great! Super fast to make, and I can make it in a few different color schemes to go with different outfits.

I hope I can find another couch soon in a different color! That would open up a whole new set of things for my wardrobe!

Ann Arbor DIY Festival!

So this weekend was a fun firsty! I was able to (finally) do a workshop with the Ann Arbor Free School! I met a wonderful new friend (Katy) at the Flojo Circus and we connected enough that she offered me the chance to be a guest workshop runner! It was so much fun! I was originally going to do gothic lolita top hats, but the plan fell through when they asked me to cut the workshop down to being a shortish workshop that people could just walk up to without actually planning to have joined in a workshop. I redid my plans and we (Katy and I) decided that I should do DIY paper corsages for the DIY prom that was to be held on Saturday.

In the end my 1 hour workshop turned into a 3 hour success. People kept coming over to do the craft, and they were excited to use all of my found objects and my recycled paper! It went so well that Free School has asked me back to do another workshop later in August! I'm so excited! It is my dream to be able to be an adult teacher instead of having to pull a lame 9 to 5. Below is a picture of the corsages that we made.

-Britt