Apartment Decorating Strategy #312 

Record Frames 

When we were just dating, Cliff happened to admire one of the records, Time Out by Dave Brubeck, in my parent's dusty and neglected record collection. His actual words were, "This is a classic you should have this framed and hanging on the wall."

A few months later for Christmas my parents sent him the record in a special frame so that he could hang it on the wall. 

Later we picked up three more record frames at Restoration Hardware. Cliff enjoys rotating his records through the frames creating different displays. Since we don't currently have a record player and Cliff is not going to part with that record collection...ever, it might as well earn it's keep too!

Recently his parents were getting ready to chuck their record collection and I picked out a couple of their Christmas records. The Koledy album is my favorite. Not only is it red and white, it features a nativity scene and celebrates Cliff's Polish heritage. 

One of the things on my thrift wish list is a real kitchy beach music album cover to go in my bathroom which has sort of a beachy theme. I also think vintage children's albums would make cheap and darling nursery decorations.

There are several other frames in the apartment that have Christmas pictures in them. I like changing out my pictures with the seasons because I can store pictures in the frames themselves and just rotate them.

Photo Tags

I am really excited about this discovery! I had the idea this year to use old photos for Christmas tags. I think it will spark fun memories and conversations at our family gatherings.I made some just by printing out photos and coloring on them with Sharpie markers. 

Then while tooling around Flickr, I clicked on the "edit" photo button with the hopes of cropping a photo. What I discovered was Picnik. Using Picnik's very intuitive tools I was able to add text and little graphics. There is tons of really cool stuff if you sign up for the premium service ($24.99 a year) but the free stuff more than meets my needs.

I did have this one printed at Target, but a 5X5 square print has to be done through the mail. So I got cheap and just ordered a 4X6 which got cropped and cut off the "Merry Christmas." Just so you know with old square pictures, either wait for mail delivery or plan for some cropping. This photo is my father (in the santa hat) and his brother at some sort of 50's Santa Land  in the Adirondacks.

Tag Your It

With my in-law's coming for Thanksgiving this year, Cliff and I scrubbed the kitchen within an inch of it's life. How's that for a date night? 

One of the many things we discovered was that our canisters were mostly empty. Others contained long forgotten baking soda and tea bags. 

During the big weavle invasion of '04 we had emptied out the traditional flour and sugar and somehow never used them again. I think for a long time I was just scared by the whole bugs in my flour experience! Still, space is money canisters! Either you function or it's off to the goodwill with you! 

We found (weavle resistant) stuff to put in the canisters and in order to remember what each one holds I made some temporary tags. Since my in-laws were cooking Thanksgiving dinner I wanted to make the little-kitchen-that-could as user friendly as possible.

Somewhere I have seen cute little chalkboard ornaments used to label canisters. I may still pick those up if I see them. In the meantime these freebies are on the job.

Oh, and by the way those vintage red canisters earn their keep holding my cookie cutters.

Scrappy & Happy

This notebook is for a dear friend and former colleague who rescued me at OFS in my first year. She took me under her wing and told me I was normal. The school was indeed a parallel universe. She assured me that in time, things would still seem strange and foreign, but that I would survive anyway.

For that I will be eternally grateful. Nicole has moved on to other pastures which are just like teaching, sometimes green and sometimes bone dry.

She is busy studying for her board exams this month which is why I feel safe posting this picture here. I know she doesn't have time to read blogs!

I got the idea to make a covered notebook from Lucy at Sweet Repeats who is my collage idol. She had sent me a bitty one as part of a prize package and I still carry it in my purse and it has held up. She also sent me the old sheet music that I used here. The other scrappy part comes from my stash of ribbon and magazine clippings. Added with three pieces of coordinating paper from Michaels and those fancy clips.

The happy part is that this gift from the heart doesn't take up much space. We LA dwellers have to be kind to each other and be sensitive to the storage crunch.

November Sweet Goodness 

The theme for this months swap was "Tags and Swags."

 The tags were pretty easy. The swag had me stumped for a while. Then I saw a picture of Jodi's kitchen which appeared to be pale green. Since my sister in-law's bride's maid dresses were pale green it got me thinking. 

I  mined those dresses for all the tulle I could get and came up with a snowy theme. Ikea had great little strings of battery powered star lights. I tied strips of tulle, ribbon, fabric scraps, and silver pipe cleaner like tinsel around the light string.

At first I wasn't too happy and  I posted pictures on flicker. Bridie and Sarah gave me some advice. A quick trip to mecca garnered me some great clear snowflake plastic balls and big silver bells. Voila! Thankfully, Jodi has a winter theme in her living room! 

Amazing how these swaps work out!

It's Time for Show and Tell!

Things aren't all set up over here, but I am going to jump right in! 

Let's start with the awesome goodies I got from my swap partner Jodi.

While I did devour the Dark Chocolate Peanut M&M's, my favorite thing was this Merry Christmas banner. I love these curtains. They are one of my favorite things about our apartment. 

We clip all of our Christmas cards along the edges of these curtains and the banner is just icing on the cake. I really appreciate that the banner can be folded up and takes just a sliver of space to store.

Jodi knew that I love to bake cookies and this cookie cutter wreath is perfect for my kitchen! She also sent me a tin of extra mini cookie cutters which were instant favorites. The tags are already attached to to gifts. Thanks Jodi!

Our Better Than A Hollywood Movie Story

My favorite history- How We Met Again written by Cliff


In the year 2000, I bought an iMac, my first new computer since 1990. With this embarrassingly cute machine, I finally had access to this internet thing I’d been hearing about for the past seven years.

One intrernet feature was a People Search Service. I typed in my own name, and sure enough, up came the address, phone number, and map of where I had lived six years ago.

I typed in friends’ names… but if you tried a common-sounding name, you’d get hundreds of possible matches around the country. So I tried to think of people from my past with more unique names… and made contact with two that night: my old Army buddy Brewster McCracken, and my old church buddy Jane.

Jane came into the Asbury First United Methodist Church Youth Group as a freshman when I was a senior. She was very quiet and very adorable. We also went to the same high school, and I eventually asked her out.

I was just beginning to study cinema at the George Eastman House, one of the top film archives in the world. They were doing a series on Jack Nicholson, and for our first date, I took Jane to see THE LAST DETAIL (1973)… little suspecting that a story about a trio of U.S. sailors might be a bit, uh, salty, for a 14-year-old girl. Soon I was dying in my seat. If this girl next to me gave her parents any inkling of what I’d exposed her to, that would surely be The End.

But she didn’t, and it wasn’t. We went out a few more times. Jane informed me that we’d actually met some years earlier. She was born in September of 1971. The Little family, who lived three houses down the street, came to visit with a baby gift. 31/2-year-old Cliff presented newborn Jane with a Fisher Price stacked ring toy. It was both a hello and goodbye: a week later, the Littles moved to the next town.

Back to 1986: Jane and I drifted apart. The following summer, she played a bit part in one of my amateur movies. She came to my house for the gala premiere party, and that was the last time I saw her. In 1988, she and her family moved to New Jersey.

After my hello call in 2000, we exchanged a few emails over the next year. After 9/11, I wanted to visit NYC, and contacted Jane about meeting her. The only night she was available was New Year’s Eve.

We had a wonderful time. Our hosts Kevin and Dina led us around Manhattan’s Lower East Side, and we rang in 2002 at Marie’s Crisis Café, a hang-out where Broadway folk gather around a piano and sing show tunes.

Exactly one year later, the four of us were again around the piano at Marie’s. The singing stopped about a minute to midnight so people could get ready for the Big Moment.

By the time the countdown for 2003 began, Jane and I were engaged.

Here are my rings from Cliff. The first were Fisher Price the second ring belonged to his Grandmother before me.