A favorite pet peeve - or "idiot parkers"

OK, I've been all nice and creative lately. Time for some griping.

I have some pet peeves. I freely admit that. Most of them involve language and spelling but there are some that exist in the real world. One of those is idiotic parking.

Let me explain.

I live on a street where most people do not have enough off-street parking to accommodate their vehicles. I also live on a street where parking is free, which is unusual for the city. I also live in a fantastic neighborhood that people want to visit.

This combination of things leads to people parking on my street with great regularity. What bothers me is when people park so that they take up so much space that another car would have easily fit, had they only parked properly.

Sitting in my living room, looking out of my windows, I just watched three people - yes THREE in a row! - park with so much room between their car and the nearest car that only a motorcycle or a Smart car would fit but no regular car. The result is that there is now only very limited parking available on my street due to these idiot parkers.

Here's a picture of a few of them. There is just as much space behind the red car and just as much space in front of that blue one at the front. REALLY? Come on!

And I'm expecting guests for dinner tonight. Where are they going to park?? I really wanted to yell down at these people to pull up! But, alas, I refrained from doing so, leaving myself to grumble to myself and be terribly vexed by the idiots I observe in the world.

I think this idiotic parking phenomenon is part of a greater pet peeve of mine: inconsiderate people. More on that another day.

window project

I actually finished this project some weeks ago but haven't posted it yet so here it is.

Back in December I had an idea. I knew I would be travelling a lot during the holidays and would not be at home and so I didn't want to go all out decorating my apartment. But I did want to have a little holiday flair. I thought it would be nice to have some sort of art or wall hanging that I could change with the seasons and/or decorate for various holidays or other events. Wouldn't that be nice?

So I thought about what that could look like and here's what I came up with. A window. An old window. Refurbished, painted, some hooks added. Hmm...

A trip to my favorite salvage yard yielded the perfect specimen. One side was this gorgeous blue (it's still that color, I only re-did the boring white side), and the other was white.



The window sat for a while in my apartment before I did anything to it, which is why I just finished it a few weeks ago, but once the work started, it was pretty quick and fun. The only part that really wasn't very fun was scraping the old white paint off the frame. But it was very satisfying to be able to sand the raw wood after removing all the paint, and then repainting it. I decided to leave the inside near the panes of glass white for some depth effect.

Here you can see the boring white side of the window before I started working on it. Notice, however, the very un-boring hardware that really adds to the character of it:


Scraping and painting...



Then, since it was no longer the holidays (these things do tend to take some time for me to get to...), I set out to find things I wanted to use to decorate it. I took some time and kept a look-out for fun little items that spoke to me in my regular daily wanderings. I really like the final product.



Here you can see it in context with the other things on that particular wall:

Super fancy business woman , a.k.a. Crafty Katy

Earlier this week, someone - jokingly? - called me a fancy business woman. Although I would love to take that as truth, here's an example of the less fancy aspects of my business.

I have a client, there's a convention this weekend (actually beginning on Thursday), the woman who usually staffs this particular convention is getting married this weekend, so... they asked me to take it on. No problem!

Except, I didn't know that the whole thing had to be developed and created by... you guessed it! Me! Also, it's all very last minute so I'm not able to order what I want and have someone else make all the stuff like a proper fancy business woman. And so I spent my afternoon making the table top display.

Initially I was a little concerned because it was going to involve cutting paper in straight lines and I do not have a paper cutter nor am I proficient in cutting in straight lines. Ah, but I do have quilting supplies!

Anyway, here's the final product (before and after).



This is just the first step. I have a tack board which is 8x4 feet that still has to be covered with pictures and information when I get to the convention, the pictures and info is stuff which I still need to find and print... it's going to be a long week.

You know what? Actually, this wasn't the first step. The wheel came in multiple pieces and had to be assembled as well. And then there's the step of coming up with the questions and answers for the wheel. Oh man, I'm so not fancy...

More DIY home stuff

I love my apartment. I know I've said that before but I really do. One of the very few things that bother me about it, however, is the lack of counter space in the kitchen. It's always the problem with apartment kitchens. I have a very cute kitchen, with the original cabinetry and an old stove, yellow tiles and light blue/turquoise accents. But the counter space is lacking.

So, I have taken steps to increase my counter space. I got a couple of butcher block topped cabinets. During a previous bout of home improvement fever, I made curtains for them. (see January's post: http://katysthoughts.blogspot.com/2012/01/home-improvements-continue.html)

The continued problem though, is that the top of the new additional counter space was covered with stuff. SO, today I took care of that problem as well, giving myself a whole new large area of counter space. So happy!!!!! It's like I have a whole new kitchen to work with!

Upcycling my way to a more organized life

Upcycling. It's the newest craze. Not really, but that sounded good. It's a fairly new word though, I think. Basically it's just a fancy word for finding new uses for old things. I like the concept and today I made it work for me: A few months ago I found four of these hooks at a salvage yard. I'm not sure why I liked them but I knew I would find some use for them eventually.


Today I finally did.

The problem: too many scarves and cardigans and no place to put them (other than in a big pile on top of my dresser, which was making me a little crazy).

The solution: upcycling! Using those old hooks from the salvage yard to make my life more organized: attach them to the side of my dresser as scarf/cardigan hooks.

I feel so much better now!

Here's the final product: