Apr 24, 2011 | Life
Easter for us just means a lot of family fun: colorful baskets brimming with toys and chocolate bunnies and jellybeans; cinnamon rolls for breakfast; a midnight snack and a handwritten note left out for the Easter Bunny; an Easter egg hunt in the garden [in the Portland rain]; playing with a new set of dominoes, learning Go Fish, watching Wow Wow Wubbzy as he paints Easter eggs; eating an evening meal filled with fresh Spring foods.
Oh, and if you’re in a crafty mood – you could also make my DIY $4 Easter Wreath from all those leftover eggs from the hunt!
Hope everyone’s having a wonderful Sunday – no matter what you celebrate!
xoxox
Carly
Leave Comment
Jan 17, 2011 | Blogging
It’s my 3-year blogiversary! I can’t believe Chic Steals is now 3 years old. It’s been an amazing journey, and I’m hoping the best is still yet to come! Thank you all for being on this journey with me – your readership and support has been invaluable as I’ve found my voice and discovered what it is I can contribute to that great wide (virtual) world.
So changes are now in the air! After many years on Blogspot I’ve finally decided to take the plunge and move this blog over to WordPress. I have no idea how long this will take me, though I’m going to try to get it done this week. As a result, there may be times when you try to access my site and find it down, with broken links, or the RSS feed doesn’t show up. Please bear with me…I will get it fixed eventually!
So thanks for an amazing 3 years…and here’s to 3…13…30…more!!
xoxox
Carly
~If you liked this post, please share it!~
Leave Comment
Aug 9, 2010 | Life
Office Before. Blech!
Sorry for that brief hiatus – I took a mini-vacation from the blogosphere for the weekend.
I’ve been cleaning up and redoing my office – or at least the room in my house where we keep the computers and I have my sewing machines and do a lot of my DIY.
It was a mess. An utter, utter mess.
The room has pretty much no storage, piles of fabrics and clothes and tools and papers everywhere, and my childhood desk that I had installed in there was made in the 80’s and thus, much lower than the standard height of 29.5″ of the desks nowadays, which are made to accommodate a computer workstation. That 26″ high desk had me hunching over my computer and giving me back pains, and the mess was totally non-conducive to doing anything. I couldn’t find any papers or important things, couldn’t make headway on any projects…in fact, the only place I could work was outside of this room because it was so clogged with stuff.
So we bought a bookshelf, desk attachment, and some storage boxes from IKEA, and I’ve been sorting and cleaning up (though I’m far from done). My computer has been pretty much unplugged for the whole weekend.
The hiatus was really nice too – just spending some family time without me stuck on the computer all day was fun.
Though the office is definitely still not clean, it’s a vast improvement to what it was. I’m not taking pics until it actually looks clean!
Why is it that order and organization are so much more conducive to being creative??
Hope everybody had a great weekend!
xoxox
Carly
Leave Comment
Jul 21, 2010 | Life
Pudding out and about.
I’m going to be busy the next couple days getting over the jetlag from Japan, unpacking, and DIY’ing my heart out for a cool project I’ll share with you all very soon.
The hydrangea finally is beginning to bloom!
These shots were actually taken in late June, before I went to Japan, but I thought them nice and summery – just at the beginning of what can truly be called “summer” here. Of course, by now there’s a lot more happening in the garden right now, but I thought to share these photos first.
Foxglove.
I was going to get rid of the foxgloves in my garden when I read that touching them with bare hands can cause a rash at the very least (since foxgloves are extremely poisonous due to chemicals from them once being extracted to create Digitalin – a group of medicine used to treat heart disease!! Even a nibble on the topmost leaves can cause death, apparently.) But they’re so pretty I left them in the backmost corners of the garden, hoping Lil Tot and Pudding don’t come in contact with them very much. The other one that is flowering right now has light pink varying to white flowers.
The nasturtium bloomed too! And a nice shot of Pudding’s butt.
In early June all the wild strawberries we have finally produced fruit – tiny, compact little bites. Very sweet!
Hope you guys are having a great summer!
xoxo
Carly
Leave Comment
Mar 26, 2010 | Life
Finally! I’ve got my voice back – la la LA – and Lil Tot seems to be on the mend, after about a week of staying inside and doing NOTHING.
I managed to reorganize my tights drawer yesterday with the Perfect Sense Drawer Organizer. I never trust those things that are like “AS SEEN ON TV!” or items you’ve seen a million places already that just look kinda hokey and unreliable…but this actually does what it says it does and it doesn’t feel like it will fall apart at a single breath. Though I didn’t take a before piccy, this is what my drawer looked like AFTER…
Everything all neatly stored away.
Apparently the diagonal divider makes 31 or 32 compartments, depending on how you space it…and that’s FABULOUS, except that I have more than 32 pairs of tights AND socks, so of course I still have to figure out what to do with the overflow. (As you can see from the photo, I’ve stuffed 2 pairs of tights into the same compartment here and there, he he.) I definitely have Too Many Tights!!
I’ve also lined the walls of the drawer with perfume sample inserts ripped out of magazines…I also cut up my magazines once they’re about 3 months old, saving any photos of clothing, shoes, accessories, or bits of advice that strike my eye. I also cut out those perfume inserts, open them up, and line my clothing drawers with them. The scent wafting out of an open drawer is beautiful, and it lingers on my clothes all day. (That was a little tip I found in the book Wear More Cashmere: 151 Luxurious Ways to Pamper Your Inner Princess, one of my faves that gives little everyday tips for indulging your inner glamour girl.)
And…drumroll please…I also reorganized my under-the-sink storage in my bathroom. It was pretty awful BEFORE…
And now I think it looks tons better AFTER.
Okay…I have a huge amount of stuff.
I used a bunch of Crystal Clear Shoe Drawers and a Crystal Clear Oversized Shoe Drawer atop one Crystal Clear Sweater Drawer that I bought from The Container Store (tho you can also buy on Amazon thru the links above if you don’t have a local Container Store). Granted, it would probably have looked neater had I used drawers with non-see thru plastics, but I like to see what’s in my drawers. I also have my old Kit n Kaboodle makeup organizers (remember those from the 80’s???) and a couple of empty cardboard boxes from Amazon.com orders and chocolate assortments (they’re the perfect size for little boxes to further organize the insides of my drawers with). More places to put things once I need them!
Somehow, life just feels so much better when you’re organized.
xoxo
Carly
Leave Comment
