Hamlet Opening Tonight

New Muses' production of Hamlet is opening tonight! It's a gritty, modern version of Shakespeare's famous play. My brother is acting as Hamlet and my mom is the queen. I designed the publicity materials.

Check it out if you're in southwestern Washington. I wish I lived close enough to see the show.

Fix a Wobbly Fan

At some point the ceiling fan in our bedroom started to wobble. My husband is so clever! He said the screws wouldn't tighten more, so today he climbed up there and wedged paper into the gap. Now the base stays perfectly still!

Yo-yos in the House

Boy am I in for trouble. My hubby received a package of ten wooden yoyos (his hobby) in the mail today. He's really excited, and he says they're great quality. Two of them will be playing a part in an upcoming decorating project.

Can you guess he's an engineer?

One yo-yo that he'd intentionally loosened came apart and hit the wall, and another broke a string and flew across the room. But it should only get better from here.

I Love Conduit

I just read this post with pictures of the Conduit Restaurant on the Sabbespot blog (one of my favorites), and found this article from Architectural Record.

The Architect created dimension in a space with a low ceiling by adding fake conduit to the existing exposed pipes. I love the result. I can see doing a removable divider wall made out of conduit in an apartment. The stuff is so cheap! We bought a piece of conduit for about two dollars to use as a curtain rod. I like the industrial look. Check out more pictures of my living room here.

Contact-Paper Kitchen Makeover

I'm excited to share my kitchen transformation today! We moved in to an apartment with dark, grimy cabinets, and I lived with them for a year. I cringed when I had to open one. I was embarrassed when guest came over. You get the idea.

The first "before" picture was taken a couple months after we moved in. The rest were taken during the project.

After some experimenting with cleaning methods (which kept removing the finish), I concluded that the cabinets are covered with a wax coating and over time oils had been clumping the wax near the handles. Disgusting. But refinishing them would take way more time than I cared to spend in a rental. Solution? Cover them in white contact paper, hoping for good results like this kitchen featured on Dollar Store Crafts. The first step was removing the handles. Mr. Kelly worked hard to make them look pretty using his Dremel.

I fully covered some panels with white contact paper, but it looked cheap and goofy on my round-edged cabinets. I took the few panels I'd already done down with no problems. Inspired by this credenza facelift, I decided to go for stripes instead.

Not only do the stripes fit more nicely on the cabinets because I could wrap the ends around the top and bottom, but they also give visual height to the room and add some fun. And they were easier to position correctly than a large sheet of contact paper.

It just so happened that my apartment managers showed up a couple days later to do their yearly inspections. And they were impressed! Yay! Our neighbor came by later and suggested we leave the handles off, too. So we did.

We also have a vinyl graphic by Blik in our kitchen.

I worked in a sign shop for a while, so I like to consider myself pretty good at applying vinyl and sticky-paper things.  But the stripes make everything really easy (although slightly more time consuming).

White contact paper is really easy to find (try your grocery store, Target, or Walmart). I also have my eye on DesignYourWall.com for lots of fun colors, but you have to order a lot so it gets expensive.

Apartment Photos: One Year

Last week a miracle happened: our apartment was completely clean. Crazy, right?! I took advantage of the situation by taking some pictures. It's already April, so we've lived here for one year already!

Wondering about the kitchen? It just had a makeover of it's own. Check back next week for before and after photos.

Happy Easter!!

I hope you've had a nice holiday. Our two-person family celebrated by taking the traditional Sunday-afternoon nap and buying a new betta fish (named Lui, short for Aleluia). Now we're enjoying a big storm from indoors.

I want to share with you some photos of the kind things people have done for us this year.

First up, our neighbor came to our door last weekend with a beautiful Easter Lily! She's such a sweet lady. And the lily smells amazing! I've been enjoying them all week.

Also, both sets of parents sent us goodies in the mail. Thanks to the moms for their love! Today I took a picture of my mom's home-molded chocolate. Very cool. When I opened up the blinds for more light, there were four people in the next apartment staring back at me, haha. What can you do but wave?