mod kat litter box is very very cool. if i ever change the current setup i want it. (though holy shit i could re-buy my current set up like 4 times for what it costs).
Category: interior design
media i’m enjoying and kitchen update
Lady Gaga, of course. All of her. Alejandro especially.
all the kitchens below on the path in our renovation :-)
All inspiration and floor plans are here
Currently I’m pricing contractors, finishes and appliances. The floorplan is basically finalized (last images in the set linked above), cabinets are most likely the shiny white abstract ikea line. Still up for debate:
countertop
appliances
tap
sink
I really love white careera marble but its freaking expensive from what I hear.
The desire for the material is awful. I want new shoes, I want to update my wardrobe to be more classic (as if I don’t have enough black in my closet), I want that knock off bag.
My camera seems to have died. Rest in peace, d70. I have no money to get a new one given how I want a new kitchen. Let’s just hope I won’t need to take any photos in the next month. (HAH).
I learned how to make some REALLY kick ass cocktails recently. @shazow and @limedaring were kind enough to let me experiment on them sunday night; then the experiments continued after the lovely dinner at colbourne lane (which apparently is probably like the fanciest restaurant in the city? who knew. SIMONA my darling coworker knew. here is simona.
she took us there as a treat, silly lady. though it was still much appreciated.), when simona came by for continuation of the party. i managed to whip up 4 different cocktails from what seemed absolutely no ingridients on hand.
one milky. (zeus’s… magic juice, let’s say, though our name is a bit more dirty)
one chocolaty (no name)
one lemony (elephaunt lips)
one sweet (a modified sweet lips or something like that)
i’m missing grenadine among other necessary ingridients
tonight i made banana bread and it again succeeded. if you ever want to try making it, this recipe can do no wrong. even with week old bananas. for serious. and it takes like 5 minutes all together of effort for a week of breakfasts. amazing.
first mac
after loving the shuffle; after becoming entirely attached-at-the-hip to the ipod touch; i have received/gotten the quad core 27 inch imac for my birthday. (Eg instead of paying off mortgage i got myself a fancy toy. This is me being a 26 year old adult. Clearly I’m learning something over the years…!)
I have never owned an apple machine before. I remember the first time I used one – it was when we came to Canada and I went to grade 8. They had the old macs and the new ones – the all in one, brightly colored ones? I don’t think I really had much real exposure after that – in high school the machines were PCs. At home, they were PCs. At university, they were PCs (by large, anyway, I can’t recall otherwise).
But despite the rarity of the Apple I always had a deep dedication, fondness and a hidden desire to own one.
So as we are DINKs (Double Income No Kids) and I have worked my butt off in form of many late nights, 11pm emails, 7am calls and 8am meetings, I feel (and kinda have) earned myself the ultimate. present. of. all. time. A new, TOP OF THE FSCKING LINE, 27 inch widescreen QUAD FSCKING CORE iMac. I wouldn’t swear but I CANT.
The entire reason for this entry is the overwhelming disbelief and joy that I have went and gotten myself the most top end thing of anything. I’m not whining – its just, I’ve always been very reasonable in my demands. iPod touch – not iPhone. Built PC – not a laptop. Nikon D70 – even if its falling apart quite literally after 5 (5!!!!) years.
But I went and gotten the computer of my dreams.
The funny thing is I didn’t even know how much I’d enjoy using it. My motivations were based in (a) esthetics – we live in a nice place, my computer is highly visible, and I wanted something that would look good – and (b) function – I sure as heck wasn’t going to get a Sony all in one or something silly like that. After the fairly recent announcements of the 21 and 27 inch macs I decided that – fsck yeah! – I’ll treat myself to top of the line.
The smell of new computer is makes me ecstatic. The hugeness of the screen …. is unbelievalbe. But every time that I look down and see THE DASHBOARD. Or everytime that I do ANYTHING AT ALL EVEN SORTING PHOTOS – I am blown away by HOW GOOD IT LOOKS. And I’m not being biased – my crazy dual core 64 bit 2gb ram 500GB raid + dedicated swap PC + 21 inch dell monitor (same manufacturer as one for apple monitors) is right by side. THEY CANNOT BE COMPARED.
2010 is the year I switched. I do not think I will ever, ever switch back. It pains me it took so long. But now – I cannot imagine it.
totd: wow i have a whole closet to myself to organize.
we now live in a condo
well, we finally moved out of the bunker. it is a good move – our new place is
a) 1 minute from subway
b) larger
c) has windows
d) has nicer floors
e) is nicely layed out
d) allowed us to ditch a lot of baggage and stuff and start very fresh.
as in, pretty much no furniture fresh. so right now, we still have no sofa, no bed (a futon substitutes temporarily), and only 4 chairs (gasp! :P ). surface wise we have the bed tables, a coffee table, and a small side table. its pretty dang awkward, but certainly means we have lots of space.
today was monday, which i got off to do move-in stuff. boy, was that a great idea… i got up at 8, and only stopped working and doing stuff at 10pm.
the move
the move went incredibly well thanks to the help of all our friends. scarf showed up first, and saved our entire schedule by leaving right away with tim to get the van. while they were gone, i continued to pack the things we didn’t pack the night before – we stayed up until 2 am packing things, and towards the end just ran out of energy. (6 hours packing!)
wait i’m jumping too much forward.
friday
somehow it all came together fairly well. tim picked up the keys; i left work 3-4, and then came back and left again at 5. meanwhile, my mom painted most of the living room, while tim (and maybe mom?) moved up all the laminate that had to adjust to the conditions of the room. just typing this makes me tired. we started off with an empty, dirty-ish, apartment, with carpet in the bedroom and yellow and blue walls. towards the end, it became magnificent.
mom and i finished laying the first coat of paint in the LR and BR (Bedroom), and we all went off to our place and had a quick dinner. parents left, and we went off packing.
okay, then…
saturday
the move day! this is where scarf comes in, and then dad, and then maha and tema and kisa and stalker and everyone just MOVING boxes non stop while i was trying to keep the conveyor line going. towards 1-2pm i started falling apart at the bunker from sheer exhaustion, and tema/scarf/stalker/dad helped me do the last push and wrap it up.
i’ll miss the apartment lots. it was a really fun, interesting, different period of my life, one that is as significant as europe to the person that i am. tim and i met while he lived there, i found my love for interio design while living there, and i found my LOVE for awkward spaces and making them work. we had our first fights, first making ups, first “i love you”, first jobs and graduations (and 2nd graduations for some). we had our Big Talks about life, and lots of silly nights watching tv or sharing funny stuff online. we got our cat/s. tim grew out his hair and cut it; i dropped a table on my toe and completely destroyed (a now regrown) nail there (biggest injury ever i ever had, i think). i left for australia while he lived there; and i moved in after we returned together.
so many happy, drunken, talking evenings with friends. a new year, several birthdays, impromptu get togethers, poker nights, (few) dinner parties, more drinking and talking, and staying up waa-ay too late and shooting the philosophical bullshit. that place lent itself so well to that kind of life – easy, student, chilled out.
i biked to school during wither; i walked to exams over harbord freaking out about databases and philosophy questions. our marriage planning, our budget planning, our life planning, our future planning, all took roots in this place.
i won’t miss the small windows. or the smallness. i forgot how much difference an extra foot ceiling height makes; and windows! are! awesome!
anyway. that place was great. i’m glad its staying in the “family” (stalker has it now, good for him. i hope he makes as many awesome memories there as we did.)
saturday continued
as people were moving boxes, mom was painting and maha cleaned the kitchen. their hard work paid off; kitchen feels CLEAN and rooms look BEAUTIFUL with the coat of “toasted marshmellow” that i really love.
eventually, around 4pm (specifically 3:20pm, 40 minutes ahead of my schedule, how good of a PM am i? :-) that’s SPI of 1.11 for those of you following. ) the move wrapped up by eating some food graciously brought by parents and drinking beer graciously bought by tim and scarf. eventually everyone left, and we went down for a quick nap. the place was a mess; chaos; boxes piled everywhere, bedroom unusable due to no floor; complete insanity.
though, but the end of the day, we went to canadian tire (7 minute walk including getting a fresh mango bubble tea), i cleaned the bathroom and it instantly felt so much better, and thus we gained 2 rooms that became nice. (kitchen and bath).
the highlight of the day, if i am allowed to pick it, was the moment tim kicked me out of the LR (i went to clean the bath) and put together my lovely, beautiful, eames lounge. it is beautiful. it became the centerpiece of elegance among a PILE of boxes; and though that may have been crazy that chair motivated me each moment to KEEP ON CLEANING so that it looks even better.
sunday
an early start by tim at 7am and laterish by me, 9am, as we rose with the city and the sun. my uncle and dad came over and tim joined them in laying down laminate. the guys did a great job, and our bedroom is probably the coolest looking room in the house. while they were doing that, i went off to ikea, with stalker, which took a while but was fairly productive.
later that day we also went to structube, and got 2 more chairs and a desk table (to be delivered) and i stopped by the apartment and got more stuff i forgot. what a stress-less move. so nice to have a friend living in the old place.
monday
and so that brings us to today. after an early start, i tried to
– return laminate (fail)
– return underfloor (win)
– return ikea tv stand thats too big but missing packaging (win)
– return other misc ikea stuff that was sealed (easy win)
– purchase a new shelf (major win; found a great one in as-is in a style that i wanted and that was sold out. and it fit in the car EASY.)
– purchase 2 office chairs in MOST! (win; and possibly found a sofa for mom – she came along for this store)
– clean up clothes (win! did all the laundry (mmmm own laundry rocks), and hung almost everything up. some minor stuff left, extra towels and stuff, but nothing critical.)
– clean up living room (win! more stuff went away as i cleaned up clothing; more stuff went away as i cleaned up and unpacked hallway and misc kitchen stuff; and even MORE stuff got unboxed as it went into the new shelves).
and thus i am at 11pm, having blogged way too much.
summary
we are exhilarated, terrifically happy, and REALLY look forward to next week – when like 90% of our furniture gets delivered.
this wednesday: office chairs
next wednesday: mattress
next week (wed?): sofa, bed, 2 easy chairs, tim’s desk
aaah, i cannot wait.
general day dreaming
i really like this table. liked it for a while, actually, but before i was too poor to buy it, and now i am too far to make the effort. so, how freaking AWESOME is it that they are opening in toronto in 2008? REALLY awesome. like, totally.
you can see this desk all over the place.
and this is how ideally the final result will look.
I CANT WAIT!!!
(and wow, a lot of people post photos of themselves putting furniture together.)
flowers make me happy
realization of the day: i am very happy when i have fresh flowers that i can cut and arrange. i had my G test this morning (passed, from the first time! wooo!), and then worked until 7, so i was pretty stressed out and tired. upon coming home to a clean apartment i decided that instead of vegetating in front of the computer/the tv/the book i should do something that would take my stress away.
turns out pruning flowers is one of the many things that work very well to make me feel calmer, happier and relieve my stress. after spending around an hour cutting and trying to arrange all the various flowers that my mom gave me (it was her birthday, and she basically gave me some she didn’t really care for, plus some pretty ones – like the sunflowers) into the vases that i had on hand. after that i decided to take photographs, and turns out that i took like 38 photographs that i liked. so, there you go! diny, enjoy the chairs.
here are my favourite ones, you can see all of them here. (i culled the vignettes into this set)
now about my g test.
well, let me tell you, i was worried. most people (as in 20 except for 2) that i asked didn’t pass it from the first time. i don’t take failure well, despite knowing that its stupid to stress out about a test that DOESNT EVEN AFFECT YOUR GPA OMG. (and you can retake endlessly for just some small amounts of money). and yet, there was, sitting in the parking lot and trying really hard to calm down. i borrowed the russian translation of dale carnegie’s book (compilation of all 3 of his most famous ones) from my parents, so i tried to read it.
the guy who was testing me (i think his name is randy – thank you, randy!) was a friendly looking young guy, unlike the person who did my g2 test. he asked me how i am, and i honestly replied “nervous as usual”. i think this confused him, as he asked “this IS the first time you’re taking this test, right?” (it already said this on my form). i replied in the affirmative.
the test itself went nicely, with some awesome happenings. i pulled out of the parking lot with no problems (went really slow as there was a young kid who i saw running around before, so i informed the guy that the reason i’m going this slowly is because there’s a kid behind us, and i’m worried about him). fast forward to driving on the highway, and no problems. (i did apparently make some errors on the way there, but all minor things). so we’re going on the highway, and he says “please change lanes left and then right whenever its safe to do so”. i check stuff, see that its safe, and change lanes. obviously i’m going 100km/hr on the dot, so is the person in front of me. and then i see in my rear view mirror a pick up truck with a flat bed trailer (like the small one) speeding toward me. my first though – “ok, change lanes to the right so that you get out of his way”. except, the crazy pick up truck swerves to the lane to the right of me, without dropping speed. at this point i’m thinking “shit, he’s gonna pass me on the right and i’m very screwed, especially if he honks or breaks badly”. what he did was worse (or better? since i passed?). he passed on me on the right alright, but he did it without dropping speed, signaling lane change, and with his flat bed trailer SWINGING WILDLY, missing my car by maybe a meter. i actually said “holy shit” outloud, because that was some horrible driving there. randy didn’t say anything, so we continued on our merry way, while i’m kinda going “oh shit did i just fail?” inside.
what was remarkable is that he didn’t ask me to do any kind of parking. at least now i’m a pro at this parallel stuff, thanks to our wonderful street. anyway, we park and right away he goes “congratulations, you’ve passed!” (let me remark, this is BAJILLIONS YEARS OF LIGHT BETTER than my g2 test, where the guy just sat there for like a minute silent and writing stuff on his paper, until i couldn’t stand the pressure and asked with a shaking voice “so did i fail?” and he was like “oh no”. turns out i had 2 mistakes out of 15. but that was g2). i’m not sure how many “points” i lost on this test – i still have the paper, but it doesn’t say which errors are more crucial.
anyway, randy, wherever he is, i’m hoping he’s having a good one, because turns out that exams/tests still make me crazy. great! :P
coconut chair and italy
when we were in italy, one of my most favourite moments was toward the end of our trip. we were in the italian rivierra, in an area called cinque terre. tim was napping, it was sunset time and happy hour on beach. a wonderful small place where we got coffees and drinks previously was serving free snacks on the bar (which i didn’t realize until i asked how much was it to try). i got a glass of prosecco, and they were so kind as to give me a small bowl of coconut. i have never thought coconut is tasty. apparently, that’s cause i never considered trying it.
i’m been jonesing for some fresh coconut since we came back. “strangely” enough its hard to find in canada, so i’m not sure when i’ll get this one sated. at least is pomegranate season…
this chair, called the coconut chair, brought the memory back. in case you’re curious, the chair costs an insane $3,700 or so. i think i’ll find my coconut faster than i’ll even get to see this one in real life.
chair poster
thanks to my loving friends and coworkers my chair addiction is steadily being fed.
first, work allowed me to take an eames chair home. they didn’t need it.
then, scarf gave me a book of modern chairs.
(while meanwhile everyone else maha patiently listened after i called say “OMG OMG I SCORED A BERTOIA FOR $20!!)
(and my dear boyfriend fiance husband tolerated my putting said bertoias in our living room – and actually thought its a good idea!)
anyway.
third, work gave me another 70s chair, and now i hooked at least 4 more people into discussing the history of chairs with me.
aside: the building i work in was built in the 50s-60s-70s. the aesthetic is late mid-century-modern. there is a lot of side eames shell chairs floating around, teak furniture, old school chairs with great lines and awesome casters. whats hilarious, is that while i’m just happy to see this design gorgeousness, the rest look at it as “old furniture”. i have never realized more clearly how big of a gap there is between what is happening in the “design world” (not the high end; but the more common ikea-target-west elm-craigslist shopping people who like to discuss design on many various blogs) and what is happening in the “real world” (the people who buy furniture without having a “visual” of what they are looking for. or alternatively, people who don’t agree with me ;p ). regardless of this gap, the fact that i own an eames chair (broken-ish and old, but totally repairable) makes me eternally grateful to our building manager.
so, one of the chairs i had in my cubicle (i had 3 which almost became 4, but they forced me to give up one. which is probably for the best.) had to be moved out to another guy’s cubicle until they throw it out (oh the pain, please let me not imagine how the machine will crush it!). out of curiousity we flipped it upside down to check year made. made in burlingont, brought to mississauga from the toronto office. and a cleaning tag. “shampooed and vacuumed in 1973”. 34 years at least. and its more solid than some of the 5-10 year old office chairs we have. that is why i love old chairs so much.
anyway, so this is to explain how interested i have become in design, and chairs in particular lately. so this is so awesome that i have no words.
the internet mocks me
about a month ago i spied a garage sale on the street parallel to my parents’ house. my mom, my dog and i stopped by to see whats what. among the hockey memorabilia there was a table.
it looked like this one:
and cost $100. (and he said he’s willing to bargain).
i had no space for it; mom didn’t like it. we left, me with a pained heart.
in that month, after never having seen that table before, i started seeing it everywhere. (and it is unlikely a selective attention as i really do obsess over the wire-frame designed furniture more than i should.)
first there was this.
after about 20 other occurrences, i research our new chairs (tempted to ebay more… sidenote: i can possibly ebay some chairs for around $250 that would cost $1.5-$700 new. i am sad.)
and find this link. i’m not sure it works for you; but for me the single, lonely recommendation is that freaking table.
which wouldn’t have fit anyway.
ARGH.