Meet Fiona!

Friends, I’d like to introduce you to my new best bud, Fiona Fit.

My new BFF

That’s right. I bought a new car this weekend! A couple weeks ago my old ’97 Camry finally bit the dust after our 7 years together, leaving me with no transportation for a week until my sister went back to college and I could drive her car around. My little brother will be driving that car to school starting today, so I was under a bit of a deadline to buy a new car.

While my Camry and I had a pretty good relationship, it routinely failed me in one regard: I had a really tough time feeding my furniture buying habit with the proportions of the cargo area. Example: I bought two patio chairs at Target earlier this summer, took them out to my car, realized there was no way they would fit, and had to call my roommate to come pick them up in her Ford Escape. So when I started contemplating a new car, I really wanted something that was more flexible when it came to carrying around bulky items. I had my eye on mini SUVs like the Toyota Rav4 or Honda CRV, but once I realized how much used ones were selling for and what my budget was, I knew it wasn’t going to happen. That led me to start looking at hatchbacks.

Originally I was planning to buy a used car, thinking that there was no way I could afford a new car that suited my needs. I was reading reviews of the Toyota Matrix and the Mazda 3 when I saw another car come up over and over again: the Honda Fit.

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What really sold me on the Fit were two things: great fuel efficiency and this brilliant thing that Honda calls “the magic seat”. I’m not sure why it took car makers so long to come up with something like this for a small car, but it’s brilliant. The magic seat allows the back seats to fold down really low so that the backseat and trunk form a completely flat surface. When the magic seat is folded down, the Fit has cargo space that rivals some small SUVs and definitely beats the Matrix and the Mazda 3. And the Fit can get over 40 miles to the gallon on a highway!

To see how the magic seat works, check out this every so slightly ridiculous video demonstration of it:

I learned so much by going through the car buying process. My dad helped me out big time by teaching me how to determine what I should offer on a car, and by going car shopping with me. The boy was also a big help by going with me to actually purchase the car (I shopped Saturday and purchased Sunday). I was totally in control of the process, but it was nice to have him there to add another person to the buying side of the table and keep me company during the lengthy purchase process.

I absolutely love love love my new car. It’s perfect for me—it will get me to and from work while saving me money on gas, and I’ll be able to pick up furniture on Craigslist without borrowing my parents’ minivan. Yesssss! The more I drive the car, the more I feel like I’ve made a smart decision, and that’s really comforting when I think about the thousands of dollars I spent and will continue to spend on this purchase. And so far my car has not been affected by the recall, but even if it is, that can be taken care of pretty quickly. I'm not stressin' it.

Oh yeah – I almost forgot to mention that to make this new car thing even sweeter, I got an amazing deal on Fiona. Seriously, I was collecting quotes from other dealers and communicating with them throughout the buying process, and only one other dealer came close to the price I got on the car. I even had one dealer say that if Honda of Tysons Corner was willing to sell me a Fit for the price I paid, I should “run, don’t walk” to snag the deal because the Fit is in such high demand.

Sarah and Fiona = Friends forever

I mentioned that I learned a ton by going through the car buying process, and I’m going to dedicate an entire blog post to the process. I know there are plenty of you out there who have already grown up and bought a car, but I’m determined to help out those of you who were like me two weeks ago: almost completely clueless.

So what happened to my dear old Camry? She’s still in my possession, but I plan on attempting to sell her on Craigslist in hopes that she might be a bit more valuable to a person who can fix her and drive her than she would be to a dealer. When I finish that process, I’ll be sure to tell you about that too.



I know Camry, I'll miss you too.





Handy Girl Shout Out: Dress Dyeing Diva

Over the summer one of my roommates was in the wedding of two of her good friends from college. She had a great time and absolutely loved all the personal DIY touches that the couple had added to their ceremony and reception. The bride and groom are quite colorful people (in the good sense) and they opted to have the groomsmen wear colorful ties and tan suits while the bridesmaids wore orange dresses. Oh, I should also mention that the bride and groom and a lot of the wedding party/attendees graduated from Virginia Tech, so they have a special place in their heart for orange.

Well, one great party/college reunion and a late night trip to Taco Bell later, Marla had a pretty but very orange dress. Not that she didn’t love it for the wedding. It’s just that if she had been shopping for a cocktail dress this probably wasn’t the color she was picking, and it also probably wasn’t one she was likely to wear again.

My roomie had paid over $100 for the dress—not too much by bridesmaids’ dress standards, but it’s still a lot for a recent MSW grad still looking for a job (are you hiring?). Not wanting to let the dress hang in her closet unused, she explored the idea of having it professionally dyed. When that turned out to be more than she budgeted, she turned to the idea of dyeing it herself. We reasoned that whether she screwed it up by dyeing it or left it in her closet, either way she wouldn’t be wearing it, so she didn’t have much to lose.

She searched the internet trying to find instructions and materials to dye her dress navy blue. I pointed her to Sherry at Young House Love’s wedding dress dyeing tutorial where she could get some pointers. The one thing she kept worrying about was the fact that she would be attempting to dye polyester, a synthetic that doesn't take stain as well as a natural fiber like silk or cotton. 

She ended up buying a kit online from Pro Chemical & Dye and used the instructions for it that they have online, and which also come with the kit in the mail.

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Don't worry, you don't use all of these to dye a dress. The kit came with different colors.

At first she was a little worried that the dress would turn more of a brown, but as the blue began to take, the orange became less and less visible. After she finished the dyeing process she hung the dress up to dry in our laundry room with a tarp to catch the water dripping from it.

The result? A perfectly dyed navy blue dress that she can wear to weddings, cocktail parties, and other formal occasions for as long as she can fit into that dress. Which will probably be for a while because she is pretty little.

It looks black in this picture, but it's actually a deep navy blue.

Speaking of size, Roomie does have one warning: because this process requires you to boil your dress for an hour or two, the dress will likely shrink a little. Not too much—it still fits her, but she can tell it’s tighter. So if your dress already fits like a glove, this may not be for you.

A beautiful dress for my beautiful roomie!

Hardware Makeover

Last fall I purchased some knobs on HomeDepot.com for a dresser I had just snagged and refinished on Craigslist. At the time I had only begun to scratch the surface of the amazing design blogs I now read almost daily, and I really didn’t know what kind of hardware I wanted for this piece. I was so used to adding glass knobs to new pieces, but they just didn’t fit this piece at all. I also knew that this dresser needed 12 knobs, so I couldn’t afford to splurge on super pretty anthropologie knobs like the ones I just ordered for my desk. So I settled on brushed nickel flower knobs from HomeDepot.com and paid about $2/each for them.



After my room began to take shape and I started falling in love with a gold accent here and there, I knew that the knobs I had on my dresser weren’t working for me. I would love to put some gold O-ring hooks on the dresser, but I’m looking at buying a new car and a new computer soon (and possibly a new TV for my room—it just turned itself off twice in the last 10 minutes) so I really need to be budget conscious and work with what I have to the extent that I can.

Inspired by my recently purchased but not yet received anthropologie gold knobs with white patina, I decided to makeover the knobs currently on the dresser. I had actually been thinking about doing it when my favorite bloggers decided to spray paint some of their hardware. I took it as a green light from the blogiverse to start my project. Luckily I was able to complete with materials that I already had on hand.

First, I unscrewed all the hardware from the dresser. Then I stabbed holes in a box about 2 inches apart from each other using a screw driver. I then loosely screwed all the knobs into the holes in the box. Once the knobs were in the box, I set the box down and set all the knobs so that they were facing up.

I used two types of spray paint for this project: a white Rustoleum Painters' Touch primer from Home Depot, and a metallic Design Master Brilliant Gold spray paint that I picked up from Michael’s a while ago when I repainted some picture frames. Warning: This brand of gold spray paint smells a little funky.

First I sprayed a thin layer of primer on the knobs while they were facing up on the box. The layer didn’t quite cover, but that was OK because I planned to put another layer on it. After I sprayed the tops, I put my hand in the box and flipped them over, letting the knobs hang from the box so that I could easily spray the sides and skinny parts of the knobs. Then I flipped the box back over and let the knobs dry sitting straight up again. Unfortunately I was so focused that I forgot to take a picture of this step in the process L.

Once I had sprayed two layers of primer on the knobs, I moved on to spraying the knobs gold. I used exactly the same process to spray the knobs gold as I did with the primer. This type of paint dries kind of matte, so I didn’t have to worry too much about ruining the metallic finish. And because I planned to add a patina to the finish, I knew that if the gold finish had a few imperfections they probably won’t be visible.

After I the second layer of gold paint dried, I took the knobs inside and set up a work station with the knobs, a small paintbrush, some paint, and a rag that I cut from an old t-shirt. I used an off-white Martha Stewart paint sample that I bought over the winter from Home Depot (and also used to paint the IU on my boo’s chair).

To add the white patina, I simply brushed on a coat of white paint to the face of the knob, making sure that I got paint in all the crevices. Then I took my rag and rubbed off the paint, leaving a thick-ish coat of paint in the crevices and a light layer of patina on most of the smooth surfaces. After I got top painted, then I brushed paint onto the sides and the neck of the knob and then wiped it off, making sure to leave a light layer of patina. The knob looks especially good if you can get a little bit of shine through in some spots. I painted and buffed off the paint one knob at a time, as I found that the paint started to dry and was harder to buff off if I tried to paint two knobs at a time.

Once the paint dried (which didn’t take long), I put the knobs back on the dresser and admired my work. I also made a somewhat miserable attempt to photograph the finished product. Hopefully you get the picture. I’m much happier with this new finish. It has a bit more character and matches the style of my room better. Of course I’d still love some slightly more stylish knobs, perhaps of a different shape, but this is an excellent no cost alternative.

Before

After!

If you were to tackle this yourself without already having the materials, you should be able to get spray paint for under $10, so it wouldn’t be an expensive upgrade at all. Next time you see beautiful hardware you love but can’t afford, look around at Home Depot or Lowes and think about how you can upgrade that inexpensive hardware to look more like the designer pieces!

Going on a Cardboard Safari

I've admired Cardboard Safari's collection of cardboard animal trophies for a long time, but the big ones always seemed a bit out of my price range. Today I realized they were on sale at Joss & Main, so my plan is to pick one up and decorate it so that it looks like it belongs in a house full of four girls and not a boy's bedroom. Not quite sure what route I'll take when it comes to covering it, but here are some options I've contemplated:

pinned here via snowandgraham.com

pinned here via flickr.com









Now it's just a matter of deciding which animal to buy. I kind of like the moose more, but maybe it's just because he's so small and cute on that wall. The deer is a bit more feminine, but potentially harder to cover because of all its antlers. What do you think?




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I might call an audible and go with the rhino.

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Side note: I actually purchased a mini cardboard safari animal trophy from West Elm last winter as a cheap little housewarming gift for the boy. West Elm had listed the wrong dimensions on their website, so I complained that this little guy was a lot littler than I had expected. They were discontinuing the sale of them through West Elm, so they credited my account and told me to keep Mr. Mini Buck. Awesome!

Side side note: My boo told his buddies that I made Mini Buck out of a pizza box. And it seems they believed him momentarily. Ha! I wish.

Why Every Smart Man will Join Pinterest



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Pinterest is one of the coolest sites I’ve seen in a long time. I love it because it’s brilliantly simple: a tool that lets you store every cool thing you see on the internet, sort it, and share it with your friends. I used to email myself links of things I loved, and now I can just pin them. I hardly even use the etsy “favorite” function anymore because I can pin the picture on any one of my boards.

Which brings me to my main point today: it’s in a man’s best interest to join Pinterest.

Before you guys all scoff at me and think, “why would a man want to be on THAT posting pictures of pretty living rooms and outfits?” Why? Because your girlfriend/wife/mother/sister/daughter is on there posting pictures of pretty things she loves. Things that you could buy for her.

Now I’m not saying that Pinterest is an invitation for you to surprise her weekly with gifts. I’m just saying that when you want to be thoughtful for a special occasion and get her something you know she likes, all you have to do is check out a few of her boards and find something she’s already listed. For example, I pin a ton of stuff from etsy. If my boo were to look at my “So Stylish” or “Art Ideas” board, he would find a multitude of reasonably priced items that I would love to buy for myself.

Follow this board.



Follow this board.

Not only can a man use Pinterest to give the lady in his life exactly what she wants for that special occasion, he can also sound like he actually cares about how she’s decorating her house. If my man took a look at my “Dining Rooms” board, he would be able to have a conversation like this:

Sarah: I’m so tired of sanding this dining room table.

Kyle: Really? Are you refinishing it?

Sarah: Yep, a dark stain.

Kyle: Oh right, because you love the look of dark wood tables and light painted chairs.

Sarah: Wow you have really been listening to me!

Brilliant!

If the man is really smart and fully embraces Pinterest, he can get it to work in his favor too. He could start pinning things like this Darth Vader alarm clock:

Darth Vader alarm clock

Or this nice messenger bag:

j.crew Abingdon messenger bag 

And then his lady knows exactly what he wants and won't buy him something silly like a hawaiin button down or socks.

A man can also pin pictures of things he finds awesome, including: zombies, amazing basketball dunks, demotivational posters, etc. I would caution that pinning of the wrong variety could backfire. For this reason I suggest that men stay away from creating boards like “Hot Girls” or “Annoying things my girlfriend likes”. Also a bad idea: following ex girlfriends or women that show too much interest in you.

So men, seriously take Pinterest into consideration. When your lady unwraps her next present and says, “Oh thank you! How did you know?” you will definitely thank me.

Desk Jewelry

As I mentioned before, I love love love hardware. It’s like jewelry for your furniture, and just like jewelry can make or break an outfit, hardware can really pull together different elements of a room.

Recently I’ve been looking around for some knobs to put on a dresser that I painted earlier this summer (and intend to write a post about soon). I saw this beauty on Pinterest about a month ago and loved the texture and subtle gold tone, which I have in different elements in my room already.



buy here. pinned here.

But when I realized it was $14 at anthropologie, I pinned the image, longed for it momentarily, and moved on to find something cheaper.

I checked out a my other favorite hardware sources including World Market, Home Goods, and etsy, but I couldn't find anything that suited my taste. And still the square Parterre Knob stayed in the back of mind. Finally last week I decided to at least see how it would look, so I ran over the anthropologie, darted through their door at 8:50 pm like a total a-hole (they close at 9) and made a beeline for their hardware section.

I’ve learned from experience that the way you picture something in your head rarely works as perfectly as you envision it to look, so I picked up plenty of options. Like, 12 aqua or neutral knobs. I also picked up two little dishes that were super cute and only $4/piece. The girls who worked there must have thought I was really in love with aqua I also happened to be wearing a tone on tone aqua outfit that included a blue/aqua necklace.

Yep. Our house is a mess.



Some of my purchases. A few of them weren't available online.
1. 2. 3. 4. 5.

I came home and displayed the finds to my roommates, who sweetly swooned over my purchases. Then I took them upstairs to my room to see how they all looked.

I decided I liked the neutral ones and narrowed it down to the Mother of Pearl knob and my original heartthrob Paterre knob. I honestly still love the white patina on the gold knob, and I really like the studded texture. Something just wasn’t quite right though. While I preferred the texture of the Paterre knob, the Mother of Pearl knob was a better shape. As you can kind of tell, this desk has quite a few curvy lines, in the curved corners of the table top, the detailing below the drawers, and the pattern I stenciled on top of it, and a square knob didn’t suit it all that well.

Still, the Mother of Pearl one wasn’t doing it for me. That’s when I remembered that there was a round version of my original heartthrob online. I’m not sure I love the Rosette Parterre Knob as much as the square, but it has the same texture I am definitely in love with, and I think it will look really good on my desk.  I still haven’t been bold enough to pull the trigger on buying four knobs that would cost twice as much as I paid for the desk, but I think it’s gonna happen soon. And when it does, rest assured that there will be pictures!

buy here. pinned here.

Lovey Dovey Breakfast Dish

I saw these on Pinterest a few weeks ago and made a mental (and written) note to make these one morning.

pinned here

The boy almost always has a can of cinnamon buns in the house, so when he suggested he make them this weekend I volunteered to do the baking arranging on the pan. I took each bun and unrolled them a little, rolled one end in towards the other, and pinched the bottom to make the hearts. Not as glamorous as making homemade cinnamon buns, but a fun twist on a delicious classic nonetheless!