Housiversary: Year 7

Technically, the 7th anniversary of my move-in happened in July. So I’m running, oh, 2 months behind schedule at this point. Sounds about right. Happy belated, house!

This year has been crazy. I find myself plodding through one of those times in life notable mostly for its impressive and sustained level of stress. I’m not sure when or how that will change, but I know this: it needs to. On good days I am reminded that there is more to life than the things I worry about, and I need to pursue those things again.

In that spirit, I gave myself an afternoon to work on, yes, but also enjoy the house I bought 7 years ago (and refinanced in August!)

HOLY SMOKES there’s a couch now! A non hand-me-down, non Ikea couch!

This is the Dublexo by Innovative Living. It does the couch thing very well, but also:

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It’s got Funky Day Bed Mode and Sleeper Sofa Mode! We test drove this functionality by staying in last night and finally — after 5 failed attempts — finishing the movie Dune. I think the couch was instrumental to our success. We started sitting upright but transitioned to a horizontal viewing position sometime around the appearance of Sting’s metal diaper.

Not too long ago I thought I might like to buy a vintage mid-century couch and fix it up myself, but with the limited time I have for projects… nahhh. I didn’t need to spend weekends worrying about how to get an 8-foot frame to an upholsterer. I needed my life to be easy for a change. And thanks to the great people at Cella Luxuria, that’s exactly what it was.

 

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Normally I would make some attempt to color-correct these but whatever LIFE IS SHORT. But I did spend a couple hours framing up part of my feather collection. I’ve been unsure of what to do with them for a while now, but I finally think I like them grouped and wall-mounted here.

And here. Uh, I have a lot of feathers.

That does it for now! Happy 7 years, house. I’m tired and I have nothing coherent to say, but you’re always here for me when life gets like that. <3

 

 

Do-some-of-it-yourself backyard revamp

It’s been 55 days since I declared the start of Project Back Yard, Take 2. I had hoped to be sipping mojitos out there by June, and you know what? That is exactly what I did last night. So although it was a helluva lot of work and construction has been consuming all my leftover energy, I am calling this project a success. Here’s a look back at an 8-week, low budget revamp of this tiny rowhome “yard.”

Step 1: The fence

Nope nope nope.

This was the most important part of the job, and one I couldn’t pull off myself. I needed a good contractor. My initial round of googling resulted in a guy coming to my house and commenting that he “couldn’t leave his equipment unattended in this neighborhood,” but promising he’d email me a quote. Stop me if you’ve heard this one before. He never answered his email or phone again.

Can I rant here for a sec? People. Port Richmond is not dangerous. It’s not trendy, that’s for damn sure, but there’s absolutely no reason I should be hearing “why do you live here??” from so many of my contractors. A) It’s flat-out unprofessional, and B) I’m paying you to install a fence, not review my life decisions. If you have concerns about my neighbors who work as plumbers and coach little league, do us all a favor and keep them to yourself.

I eventually found my contractors on Thumbtack, a site where you post the work you need done and receive bids on the job. I only received one bid, so I can’t vouch for the site being a solution for every situation, but my guys came out next-day and had the fence up within a week.

They made me two cute little gates: one to hide the breezeway where my drain, trashcan and gardening equipment live, and they moved this one — the main one — away from the ideal planting locations. They also rebuilt my stairs for free.

Cost: $1,300

Step 2: Cement

Step 2 was grueling. My existing concrete was level enough, but old and cracked and in all-around rough shape. It quickly became obvious that a patch job wasn’t going to cut it. So I decided to pour new cement over the existing slab.

Did I know what I was doing? Nope. Do I know that this won’t eventually crack again? NOPE. It probably will. But this solution had two clear advantages for the time being: it was inexpensive, and it was DIYable. I went one square at a time, recreating the divisions in the original slab by bounding each square with foam strips until the concrete had cured a bit. Then I rounded any rough edges with a sureform.

A few weeks later, everything was dry enough to give it several coats of concrete stain.

Cost: $165; lots of calories

Step 3: Planting

My original plan was to figure out a way to DIY a big planter box so I’d have a home for some perennials. And as luck would have it, the fence guys left a section of unused fencing that was just screaming for repurposing.

USE MEEEEEE.

The process was super easy. I basically removed a few planks, sawed the rest of the sucker in half, trimmed off the ends at their cross braces, and used the free planks to build the sides. The boyfriend was here for plating day, so he assisted with installing a false bottom and lining the box with plastic sheeting. Cost: free. Although I did make us dinner.

I wanted my planting choices to be economical: stuff I’d use, stuff that was inexpensive, and stuff that will hopefully come back next year. In the sunniest corner we planted blackberry vines, which should spread out nicely over the trellis we installed.

Also in the box: sage. It’s already attracting butterflies and bees.

The mint is from my father’s garden. The oregano was one of the only things to re-seed itself in my previously-neglected yard.

I wanted a buddleia, too. My mother always had one when we were kids, and I had one little section of trellis left to offer it some support as it grows in.

This corner is a bit of a catchall for whatever else was donated to the back yard makeover effort. The baby lillies are leftover bulbs from my father, again, and the sedum are cuttings from his garden as well.

The succulent is a rescue from my office. I added tiny deer vertebrae because, you know. Why not?

Cost: $145

And there we have it!

Before
After. Panoramas don’t make straight lines.

Total cost: $1,610. Definitely worth it for a whole new usable space; it may be small, but there’s room enough for yoga and reading and dinners outside. I didn’t realize how much I missed having a little privacy back there until the fence went up. No offense, fellow Port Richmonders.

Student loan debt 0

This is not a back yard update. Although unlike in years past I have not given up. Oh no. Things are happening! Things involving concrete and fencing and hammers. Things that are making me happy.

No, this post is to commemorate a special occasion.

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That’s right! Yesterday — 10 days before my 31st birthday — I finally finished paying for college.

I had been chugging along for many years, rounding up my monthly minimum payment to the nearest $50 and telling myself that the extra couple bucks would speed the process up. It didn’t really matter how true this was — I didn’t have the resources to do much of anything else. But as the years rolled on, I started to land better jobs, and some freelance clients, and finally one day in the summer of 2013 I had a conversation with a good friend who was tackling her loans pretty aggressively. “Should I be doing the same?” I wondered. “How long will this take me if I don’t double down?”

Well…

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And that settled it. I was not waiting for TWENTY TWENTY-FOUR to roll around.

I have a lot of feelings about student loan debt. I feel proud, but also very lucky — lucky to have supportive parents, lucky my car didn’t die in the last few years, lucky to have found work in a creative field, lucky to have avoided massive unforseen medical expenses. Lucky to have been born when I was, and not right now, because I do not know what this chart will look like for kids attending college in 2033.

Because when you’re 18, you never see this chart. When I decided as a freshman in college that I hated my affordable, state-sponsored school, and I would “figure out” how to pay for private school*, I did not visualized this chart. I did not see myself at 30, still paying for classes I took as a teenager.

So I suppose that’s why I’m posting it. This post is part congratulatory, part cautionary, and part appreciatory. You can survive private art school. But it’s hard. And you’d better make a couple of friends who can light a fire under your butt afterwards.

*My parents still paid for a lot of the last 3 school years. Real talk. My debt could have been twice as bad. Thanks, you two.

Back Yard: Day 1, Take 2

I first declared Day 1 of Project Back Yard, oh, almost two years ago now. So long ago that a goofy image I hotlinked in the post is gone.

I am here to try this again.

It turns out to be kind of a bad time for me to be taking on a house project, money-wise. Between the last gasps of my student loans, repairs to my 9-year-old car, and bedbug extermination fees (did I mention I had bedbugs?? I had bedbugs.*), I’m feeling a bit squeezed. But then I go outside, and…

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Yeah, that’s no good. The time has come. And I figure it’s probably better to be a little cash-poor now and make it up over the summer than tackle this job in August when it’s 98 degrees and a billion percent humidity. So the fence guy is coming out to give me some quotes today. The plan is to pay for that job, and then DIY the rest (planter boxes, deck tiles, maybe some built-in seating if we’re feeling exceptionally competent with the power tools.)

Who knows? Maybe by June I’ll be sipping mojitos in my own private back yard oasis.

Until the mosquitos find me.

 

* A note on bedbugs: they are insanely easy to get, but there’s still a lot of stigma around getting them. Having bedbugs doesn’t mean you’re dirty, or poor, or careless, or anything else. Even The Wall Street Journal had them!

That doesn’t mean you have to tweet your head off about it like I did, but know you are not alone.

You can beat bedbugs, although I wouldn’t recommend trying to do it yourself. There is no Easy button when it comes to dealing with these incredibly well-adapted little assholes. They are very, very good at hiding. I hired professionals and it took 3 rounds of spraying my house’s teeny cracks before the job was done (and thanks for being so thorough, Point Pest). Just spend the money, if you can. I know it sucks. It’ll feel like insult on top of injury. But consider it a civic good deed. Getting them exterminated the right way keeps them from spreading.

Coming back home

Warning: I’m going to blog about my house on my house blog. Weird, right?

2014 has been a year of neglecting this place in favor of other things. Personal projects. New jobs. Design classes. Meeting creative people. All worthy endeavors, but the house was relegated to “that place I sleep” for the majority of it. I haven’t had the energy or the brain power to figure out, for example, how to make my stove less hideous. (I didn’t take a new picture of it for this post; it hurts my eyes. Here’s an old one.)

In 2015, I’d like to get back to spending a little more time with this ol’ rowhome of mine. I’ve been here for SIX years now. (Whaaaat? It’s true.) In that time both my budget and my taste have changed (I’d like to think for the better). So with that in mind, and with freelance and homework finally off my plate, 2015 seems like the right time to bring some of my attention back home.

I no longer have a Penncation — that glorious paid week off between Christmas and New Years when campus shuts down and I am free to cut baseboards for days on end — but I did spend a good chunk of time this past weekend on some easy decluttering and rearranging.

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Just Wonderful is a lettering piece I made a few years back, and it just so happens you can pick yourself up a copy on Society6. The new raccoon skull was a holiday present — an excellent one.

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The tiny chalk board on the left was also a gift. It’s by the mighty Peg and Awl (shoutout to a fellow Moore alumna). On the right, I finally finished my first bottle of St Germain! I’ve been waiting to get my hands on this bottle forever, but I confess to not really knowing what to do with it. In traditional Lauren fashion, I put a dried branch in it and called it a day. On the wall: a poem letterpressed by Erica Maust back in our Penn days. Which seem like forever ago already. On the cabinet: a dopey picture I took in high school photography. Which also seems like forever ago, but justifiably so.

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I decided to neaten up my collection of peacock feathers by shaving them down to just the eyes. They look less like a tangled incubator of bird flu germs this way.

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Oh hey look more feathers and shells and twigs. Okay. You get the idea.

What I’d really like to do in 2015, though, is tackle this living room situation:

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It still looks a’ight, I guess, although I’ve grown out of the aubergine cushions a bit. But for a room I’ve spent so much time renovating… I don’t get a lot of use out of it. I never hang out here. And it’s totally because of this couch. This creaky, hard-edged couch.

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This couch may be causing a bit of a crisis in my life right now. Every time I look at it, I know it needs to go — or at least fall victim to an experimental hack to create something different (ottoman? Second-bedroom lounger?). But new couches are expensive. Does one buy a 4-figure couch for this strangely-sized living room? Does one dare to try to define this space with a… sectional? Is one actually the kind of person who buys a sectional!? Does one expect to be in this house for long enough to make it worthwhile? Or does one expect to die alone here. Perhaps on this sad, low-end IKEA creation.

Ahem.

Stay tuned in 2015. There will be plenty of house-angst, I promise. And hopefully some budget-friendly house solutions.

 

 

 

 

I’m here without you, baby: lessons from The Lonely Project

Note:

Hello! Lauren, your neglectful blog author here. I haven’t posted since January so here’s a quick catch-up summary/litany of excuses:

  • January – May: Freelance design, basically every spare evening and weekend I had. Learned a ton, but also stopped vacuuming and doing dishes and embracing the basic self-care one needs to perform to stay sane and enjoy life.
  • May: Completed my graduate certificate in Emerging Design and Research at Penn.
  • June: Accepted a new job as a marketing designer at the awesome local startup RJMetrics. Gradually learned to say no to side jobs. Started breathing again. Did a lot of outdoor yoga. Did a lot of vacuuming.
  • July: 6-year anniversary living in this old house. I celebrated, as is customary in these last few years, by failing to notice the date had come and gone.

All this to say: I have no house updates for you. The weeds in my backyard are so massive they’re probably supporting their own complex ecosystems. But I would like to use this space to talk a little about the project I created as part of my design certificate. It’s my blog, I make the rules!

Why The Lonely Project?

img2I wanted to do this project for at least a year, but bringing it to life was a struggle. At the beginning of the process, all I knew was this: I felt lonely. And I wanted to use that feeling to make something. Hopefully something useful. Something that would make myself less lonely, but maybe also something other people could use to do the same.

As the idea tumbled over and over in my head, not solidifying into anything particularly useful, I looked around for similar projects to serve as inspiration. But I didn’t find much. When you google loneliness, you get a lot of…stuff. There are definitions, and quizzes, and a wikihow entitled How to Deal With Loneliness: 15 Steps (with Pictures).

With pictures, you say? Well golly. I feel better already.

None of this seemed terribly compelling. What I really wanted was to read individual people’s words and hear about their experiences. I wanted to feel like there were other people out there working through the same emotions. And so when Penn offered to let me take a final class — a research-based independent study that would result in a culminating project — I decided it was time to force this nebulous idea out of my brain and try to create the thing I wished already existed: a sort of landing page for the lonely.

So, what did I make?

Simply put, The Lonely Project is a mobile website that displays tweets about loneliness. It’s programmed to search for any recent posts that use the words “I” and “lonely”. It also tries to exclude tweets about NOT feeling lonely, so what’s left are the direct words of people who are all currently experiencing the same emotion.

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The site displays only the words of the tweet, one tweet at a time. You won’t see the name of the user, or their profile picture or location. And when a tweet is loaded you only have two options: you can load a new tweet to replace the current one, OR if the words on the screen move you, you can press the tweet button and the twitter account @aLonelyProject will reach out to the original poster for you. It sends a simple message:

Someone over here wanted you to know that you’re not alone. #lonely #lonelyproject

That’s it. A simple idea, and a simple site to match. It was still the most complicated thing I had attempted to code, but after receiving few PHP tips (via Twitter, of course), I got it up and running in late April of this year.

What have I learned?

IMG_3033It’s difficult for people to talk about feeling vulnerable.

Some of us are completely comfortable putting the words “I’m really lonely” into the world, but many of us are not. We have a variety of ways of saying it without reeeeeally having to say it.

One common strategy is self-deprecation or humor. I see many, many tweets that follow the formula I honestly feel really terrible + “LOL”. People expect to be teased for coming across as weak, and there’s so much stigma surrounding mental health. Confessing that we feel less-than-stellar makes us nervous. So before anyone else can laugh at us, we laugh at ourselves. I know this is ridiculous, we say, but still…

Sometimes we say we’re lonely with emojis, or with gifs. But some of the most common tweets I see are song lyrics. Surprisingly (to me, at least), the most commonly posted lyric of all is this pair of lines from a twelve year-old 3 Doors Down Song:

“I’m here without you, baby / but you’re still on my lonely mind”

Occasionally, a user of The Lonely Project will hit the tweet button on a set of song lyrics and I’ll receive a reply along the lines of “thanks, but it’s just a song.” Someone else said it, we say. Someone else felt it. It’s not really me.

 

People really like hearing from the project! 

When I first launched the site, I was very concerned that I’d get a lot of negative feedback from people who were essentially being surprise-tweeted by an unfamiliar account. It’s technically against Twitter’s terms of service to write a program that automatically sends at-replies based on a keyword search. Now, I would argue that @aLonelyProject isn’t REALLY auto-replying — each instance is triggered by a human interaction — but still, I understood that if the reaction to the project was poor, the account could be reported and shut down.

I recognized that the people whose words get featured on the site were sharing true moments of vulnerability, and of sadness. Would it be comforting to hear from this half-bot they didn’t know had been searching through their words? Or would it feel like an invasion of privacy? In short: would I be making people feel worse?

My instinct, though, was that Twitter users were posting these feelings publicly because they did want some kind of acknowledgement. And thankfully, that seems to be the case. As of yesterday, the account has tweeted 1,454 times and has received the following: 496 faves, 351 retweets, and 256 replies. Of the replies, only a handfull have amounted to “hey bot, fuck off.” Some people reply to express confusion, but the vast majority of feedback has been positive.

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At the very least, over a third of the people contacted by the account are pleased enough to throw the tweet a fave. At best, this:

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They may like hearing from it, but that doesn’t mean they’ll use it.

My plan for the project was that it would spread organically; someone would be contacted by the twitter account, the message would make them feel a bit better, and they’d follow the URL in the account’s bio info to start tweeting to others. And that does seem to happen, but not at the clip I was hoping. The most unique visitors the site has seen in one day is in the mid-50s. On a typical day it sees roughly 10 visitors.

Those visitors, though, spend much longer on this site than any of my other web-based projects. An average sessions is just over four minutes. And I know that most of the time @aLonelyProject posts, it’s not me using the site. But still, for those people sitting in bed with their smartphones and googling “I’m lonely” and looking for something to do about it, the project isn’t going to turn up in their search results. Yet. Nearly all referrals to the site still come through Twitter.

 

Other surprise findings?

Lonely people are desperate to interact with Justin Bieber.

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Not really my thing, but hey.

What’s next?

I’ve had a lot of neat suggestions regarding The Lonely Project, from usability improvements to quantifying results. A coworker at RJMetrics suggested I perform a sentiment analysis on user’s tweets before and after the project interacts with them, to get a measurement of whether their mood has improved. As we like to say at work, “data or it didn’t happen.”

The site got a mention in a Washington Post article about automated Twitter accounts (sometimes called bots) as well:

Since then, artful programming has let people in chatrooms communicate with bots as if they were other people — and even communicate with other people through the intermediary of bots. The Lonely Project, by the Philadelphia botmaker Lauren Hallden, anonymizes tweets from people who say that they’re lonely, and invites readers to send them a comforting tweet, also anonymized through the bot.

“Someone over here wanted you to know that you’re not alone,” the tweet reads. It’s one of those rare instances when computer code and social media racket coalesce into something like magic.

I’ve also had a few invitations to speak about the project. I’ll be presenting it to a design class at Penn in the fall, and plans to bring it to a bot conference in Boston are in the works.

I’d love to hear your thoughts as well. And of course, if you’d like to tweet to some lonely people, feel free to use the project or give it a share. It’s at: laurenhallden.com/lonelyproject

Quick DIY end table

The day before New Year’s Eve I had just finished up the massive baseboard project and I was too pooped to do much, but I poured a Manhattan and fell into rearranging the craft/sewing room. Furniture was moved. Wacky collections of objects were rearranged.

(From Instagram: weeds from Port Richmond railroad land, peacock feathers from my last job, a container of spare buttons, an empty bottle of port from my only trip to California. These are the things I save.)

Sitting in the room was this piece; what I assume is a plant stand gifted to me by my sister, champion houseplant cultivator, as a housewarming present.

I really liked the lines of it, but I never knew quite how to use it. My house doesn’t get enough light to support plant life in anything but a window. So it had been hanging out unused in the craft room for, errr, five years, waiting for inspiration (and Manhattans) to strike. Finally, they did.

Please excuse my terrifying basement.

From a bit of leftover shelving I cut out a circle to match the diameter of the plant stand. After some sanding and stain…

Instant end table. It’s just the right size for the little corner of the room occupied by my old butterfly chair.

The wardrobe and chair have traded places, which I think makes the room look a little lighter when you first walk in.

The hodgepodge of furniture I own really is insane. Especially in this room, which became a sort of catch-all for things I wanted to save but didn’t know where to put. But I think it kinda works. An area rug would be nice, but meh. I’ll probably get to that in 2020.

Oil wipe Lauren circa 2003 is judging you.

The last time you’ll hear about baseboards

I remember why I put the baseboard project off for so long: baseboards SUCCCKKKKKKK.

The picture above gives you some idea of what I was working with. The living room (left side) had been carpeted straight to the walls–the drywall here was nice and clean, relatively speaking–but the dining room had once sported a few layers of laminate and baseboards installed on top of that, which left some rough-looking walls where it was all ripped out.

And the doorway was a freakshow: here, the original living room baseboards poked out from behind the drywall installed over them. The homeowners before me just covered that mess up with a weird section of purple wall carpet. You know, WALL CARPET. Pretty sure wall carpet is a thing people have in their homes. Yes?

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Every woman should own power tools, I tell you.

I’m exhausted, so I’m going to type less and photo-montage more. In progress, from Instagram:

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It was a slow, tedious job. The house is 93 years old and as you would expect, the floor has settled in its own unique way. This made boards rest at slight angles and caused them to come together strangely at corners. I just did the best I could and kept the wood putty nearby. In my limited experience, that’s the attitude you have to maintain when dealing with old houses.

I used up seven 12′ MDF boards (no real pine here, sorry–I am cheap) and chopped them to size with my favorite tool, the miter saw. I moved around the house in circles, installing the longest wall first and then the next-longest wall I could with the remnants of the last board I had used. This conserved materials in case I miscut and had to do a section over (which luckily, I didn’t. Um. This time, anyway). Total cost was $158.

And now for the payoff:

(Twitter pillow in the last shot courtesy of world-traveler @leek1729. Merci!)

There you have it! It was 4 days of straight-up grief, but I am so happy with the way it polishes the place up. I’d say I should have done it years ago, but I spent all of my previous 4-day vacations on earlier house projects. These things take time, I guess. That’s okay. Right, Lauren? It’s OKAY.

And now if you’ll excuse me, I’m taking these caulkpants off. They’re more caulk than pants at this point anyway.

 

BASEBOARDS?!

Those of you who have followed this blog for a while (all three of you) may know that baseboards are kind of a recurring theme. Or, more accurately, the lack of baseboards. A quick summary:

Well, we don’t yet have baseboards or rugs, and window treatments are something of a dream. But now I have confidence that we’ll get there. Maybe next year, even.
July 2009

Yes, I know, I still have no baseboards. It’s been — what? — a year? I should really tackle that next.
March 2010

I could fix most of this situation with baseboards, if I ever get around to baseboards.
August 2010

(No, I still don’t have baseboards. Shhhh.)
May 2011

I clearly still need baseboards, though. Just how many yearly wrap-up posts will you have to suffer through before I can show you pictures of baseboards? Stay tuned.
July 2011

Work, little horseshoe! Win mama the money she needs to finish those baseboards already!
November 2011

Apparently after 2011 I decided that my ongoing unwillingness to tackle the baseboard project was probably no longer blog-worthy and I shut up about it.

But guess what.

They’re HERE.

They’re not installed yet, of course. They’re not painted yet either. But they are in my living room and now I really have no excuse.

Baseboards by 2014, guys. Four years late is better than never.

Housiversary: Year Five

In late July of this year, I celebrated my 5-year anniversary in the house. I celebrated by not remembering it was our 5-year anniversary.

I have fallen down on my bloggerly duties, but in my defense, it’s been a remarkably busy year work-wise. I’ve been involved in a ton of freelance projects, I’m charging through the last class of my graduate certificate in graphic design, and um, I made this silly thing and it went viral.

Instead of working on the house, I’ve been living in it. And designing websites in it. And cooking in it. And trying to get as much sleep in it as possible. So I’m going to cheat this year and give you a collage of “living in it” photographs. Because let’s be honest, I’m two months late with this post already and I don’t even know where my real camera is right now (at my office…?), and I haven’t vacuumed in weeks. No one wants to see my dust bunnies.

Living room:

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Still love this space. It’s my own personal museum, complete with cow rug, deer skull, drawings, art books, plants that welcome my neglect, a gecko named Ox, and hey look! I finally bought a bike! Not much has changed in here this year, aside from expanding and reorganizing the collection of wackiness.

Dining room:

dining-room

The dining room did get a bit of attention, with the relocation of the bar to the floating hutch. Also I have a (not-pictured) rug! Worst blogger ever.

Kitchen:

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This is where I show you a bunch of examples of me eating healthy. The fried eggs drenched it in soy sauce at 2:00am are never instragramed.

Bedroom:

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Purple closets: not pictured, but still here.

Craft room:

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BEAR SKULL. Also, I’m glad I went with this cheap framing solution for the blueprint. It looks so much more intentional hanging here now.

Office:

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This is where the Dating Ipsum happens.

Bathroom:

No one instagrams their bathroom. Not much new in here… I painted this cabinet. So there’s that.

Front porch / back yard:

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Hey remember my ambitious plan to clean up the back yard? Didn’t happen! Shocking! Perhaps early next spring. I’d at least love to get the old fencing replaced by planting time.

So that’s it. Thanks, house, for being the safe space where I get to relax and embrace the quirkiness within. The last five years have been a bit of a tricky time in my life, but you’ve provided some much-needed stability and I’m grateful to be able to call you my home. And compared to where we were in 2008, really, I’d say neither of us is shaping up badly at all.