Hey.

Remember this?  I likey.  I likey a lot.

You know why I likey so much?  Because it’s all poo-green like in the olden-days. I like the olden-days, much better than I like the current-days, mostly because of the appliance colours.  I mean, let’s be honest.  Appliance colours really do define the zeitgeist, more so than political change or social movements.  The main reason that the 2000′s sucked was because of all the stainless steel appliances.  You know what stainless steel appliances lead to?  Paris Hilton.  Obviously.  And nobody wants that.

Anyways, so the other day I was sitting on the floor of my kitchen, staring aimlessly into space as I often do, wondering how I could make my kitchen more old-timey without spending a jabillion dollars, as I often do.  And then I realized the solution was simple.

PAINT THAT SHIT.  Like… with house paint.

I submit as evidence, the kitchen scale that I bought for $2.00 at a yard sale last year:

It has a marginal retro vibe, yes.  But it is pretty boring.  IMAGINE IF THAT BAD BOY had an old-timey appliance colour?  I can guarantee no one would be selling it at a yard sale.  They’d be putting that shizz up on Etsy for like $150.00.  FYI: Old-timey appliance colours fall into the following brackets:

• 50′s-60′s: mint green and like, farty pinks
• 70′s: poo-greens and eyeball-attacking oranges
• 80′s: anything with lasers painted on it

My kitchen has beautiful, imported, calm blue Italian glass tiles for a back splash (due to my MEGA BALLERDOM), and although I really like my poo-green Kitchenaid, I felt that a mint-green would be appropriately old-timey.

DIY Retro Kitchen Thingamajig

Materials

• Appliance Thingamajig (i.e. yard-sale scale)
• Can of paint (need ideas for colours?  I just gave you some.  Avert eyes upwards.)
• Painter’s Tape
• Paintbrush
• An Exuberant Spirit and Positive Outlook (optional)

Step One:
Tape the areas that you don’t want to be all retro-looking (i.e. the areas that actual have functional parts and moving levers and pulleys and junk):

Step Two:
Prime the Thingamajig:

Step Three:
Paint it mint green.  Slap a coat of low-gloss polyurethane on it.  Bask in the glory of your mint-green success.  Put fruits on it.  Take pictures of it.  Instagram them.  And so on and so forth.

I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but I feel/am very uninteresting lately.  Every morning I think to myself  ”Do I have something interesting to share with people in an online format?” and similarly, every morning I think to myself “No.  No I do not.”

But Molly doesn’t care – she give me stinky kisses regardless of my ability to wax philosophical-slash-make people interested in me.

As long as she has her gross old Green Ball and she has access to a sun beam, preferably both, I am the best/most interesting person on Earth.

In an attempt to keep my brain churning, I am at least working on a few projects to be revealed soon.  This one might be familiar if you follow the blog… another huge Slatty creation that is going up in a very special place.  This one will be for SALE, so if you want a huge Slatty Map, but don’t want to put in the MULTIPLE HOURS of back-breaking labour into making one (trust me, I forgot how much work goes into it…), you can buy it.  Willing to hear what you are willing to pay so that I can price it.  May I suggest THOUSANDS UPON THOUSANDS of dollars in pure gold?  Feel free to pay that.

In other news, I am starting to plan for the garden much earlier this year, because now at least I have an inkling of what’s hiding under there.  Look at my damn-ass beautiful field of Crocuses.  I know.  It’s like I’m the Crocus Whisperer.

I have grandiose plans of buying annuals and actually planting window boxes and shit like a retired woman in Austria.  I imagine that is what retired women in Austria do – just spend the year planning out the window boxes to hang from their Austrian ski chalets and shit.

Finally, since I am a crazy person, I also have a whole other project in the works.  I haven’t really tested everything yet, but basically, it will be awesome.  TYPOGRAPHY!  CANADIANA!  WOOD!  All of the things that go into awesomeness will be present.  Stay tuned.

… but I ask politely, demurely, anxiously, sexually (less so… but still), that you take 2 minutes out of your day and vote for my “spacious” bedroom in Apartment Therapy / Legget & Platt’s My Bedroom Retreat contest.

CLICK  HERE: http://www.apartmenttherapy.com/natalies-spacious-bedroom-my-bedroom-retreat-contest-186628#contest-widget-7758

WHY???  See below:

1. My write up is ditzy and I sound stupid and now I’m embarrassed that I said my bedroom is for “play[ing] with my dog Molly for long periods of time… she loves rolling around on the bed.”  I sound like such a sexless loser.  So feel sorry for me and vote.
2. I am the only person I know who doesn’t have an iPad.  I know – first world fo’ sho, but still, come on.  You will significantly increase my ability to waste time AND I will be more likely to post to my blog about things that have no consequence in your life.
3. I did the whole thing myself with my brain-hole and I didn’t have any help (…not even from my boyfriend.  Like, NONE.  He sat on the couch in his underwear.).
4. The room is 90% thrifted and DIY.  I’m so Parkdale-Hipster-Lady-esque that YOUR BRAIN MIGHT EXPLODE.
5. I will send one karma unit  of incandescent happiness to everyone who votes, so your day will probably become awesome.
6. Some of those people submitted their DAMN bedrooms like four weeks ago and have FOUR WEEKS of additional voting time under their belt.  UNFAIR?  Maybe, but what would I be if  I complained about the equity regulations of a contest that could potentially give me an iPad?  A stupid person, that’s who.  SO VOTE HARD.

Thank you friends and lovers (mostly friends).

Last Friday was the inaugural Outdoor Movie Night on my deck – an amazing idea from Tami who is full of amazing ideas all the time.  We decided to watch Fantastic Mr. Fox, which I had never seen before and which I now love with all my bosom.

Despite the fact that it was HOT AS SWEATY BALLS outside… and the projector was emitting a blinding yellow glow… and I forgot to buy speakers…

Fun was had by all I think.

Next time we’ll be able to shake out the kinks faster.

As mentioned previously, I had someone doing a shoot of my apartment this weekend (HA HA HA I am so fancy.  I have people “doing shoots” of things in my life.), and I felt the need to complete a few last minute unecessary crafty things to make my place look more interesting than it is.

My loft space has that huge, blindingly bright Turkish Kilim Rug, and although I LOVE it, it’s really really hard to design around because it’s like, overwhelming and basically attacks your eyeballs.

On an unrelated-but-related note, I have been thinking about making a floor “pouf” for some time.  First, because it’s always good to have extra seating, second, because there was this extra space at one side of the loft, and last because I like to say “pouf”, over and over and over.  POUF!

I saw these at West Elm.  And they are beautiful.  And I thought that the crazy same-but-not-the-same kilim fabric would compliment the craziness of my rug.

AND THEY ARE THREE HUNDRED AND TWENTY DOLLARS.

Like, seriously?  Come on.  FINE.  I get that they are like, “one of a kind” and someshit like that, but you clearly just took old rugs that couldn’t be sold as rugs because they were defective and cut them up and sewed them into fucking squares.

Then I was all like “I CAN CUT SHIT UP AND SEW IT INTO SQUARES ON MY OWN.”

So I went to designer fabrics and found me some “kilim-esque” fabric.  25 bucks a yard.  Bought a yard and a half.

Molly approves.

Then I cut it into two squares and four long rectangles.  It’s not fucking brain surgery.  Here are your instructions:

Then you stuff the box with shit.  I literally filled it with a bunch of old blankets and some old gross pillow or something, then I tore apart the stuffing from some other pillow I didn’t want any more and filled that shizz up.  A note – you will need WAY more stuffing than you think you will.

Molly approves.

Then you top-stitch around the seams at the top and bottom of the box. That is all you need to do.

I’ve just saved you $280.00.  You are welcome.  Buy me a present.

Through a friend I managed to get in touch with one of the Toronto photographers for Apartment Therapy… she perused my bliggity blog and decided that I was worthy of a shoot and house tour on the site.  Yeah.  I know.  I pretty much exploded out of my brain.

Anyways, so I spent the majority of the weekend furiously cleaning my house, completing some last-minute and totally unnecessary DIY projects, and basically creating a fictional utopian home design environment that I felt would be suitable for the post.

For example, I do not usually have single, perfect blooms of flowers in small French ceramic vases next to the faucet in the bathroom.  HOWEVER, for the purposes of the shoot, I needed to increase my fanciness.

Hopefully, all went well.  I *think* it’s going to be on the site in late August.  Of course I will milk it to death if/when it is posted, so don’t worry, you’ll know.

I also had to answer one of those surveys that asks me like, what my “style” is and what my “inspiration” is.  I hate those so much because you sound like a huge poser no matter what you say.  If you say “My style is mid-century modern with a dash of edgy flair”, you sound like a poser.  If you say “I really don’t have a style, it’s more whatever grabs my attention”, you sound like a poser.  Rest assured, my answers were poser-y and you will read them and be all like “What a poser.”.

Molly was unimpressed.

She always thinks I sound like a poser.

In the spring, I had these grandiose plans of creating an organic utopian herb and vegetable garden on my deck and dancing around it in while wearing long floral dresses in barefeet and playing a tambourine, but then I thought “I have TONS of time to make an herb garden”, and decided to get drunk in my underwear and watch The Bachelorette.

Then, on the weekend, I realized it was friggin July and my poor deck was still barren of organic herbs and shit.  Unacceptable.  So yesterday I decided to get my shit together and get started.

Problem #1 – What to plant
Although I would like to say that I picked my herbs and vegetables based on future plans of cooking up some delicious domesticated pasta sauce recipe like mothers on mom-blogs and shit, it was  mostly dictated by the following:

1. The vegetable plants that were left at the local corner store and didn’t look like they were on the verge of death; and
2. Herbs that I could put in booze to make a delicious cocktail.

So I got a tomato plant that was big (but no tomatoes on it…), a pepper plant that was small (with no peppers on it…), but looked like, green or whatever, and the following herbs: basil (for caprese salads), mint (for mojitos), lavender (for fancy aromatic classic cocktail things), and parsley (because I needed four to make my herb garden symmetrical and I couldn’t think of anything else).

Please note my helper in the top right corner of the photo.  She made sure she was around me at all times, snoozing leisurely while I sweat and slaved in the heat.

Problem #2 – How to hang them up
So I had planned to hang my herbs up on the fence, but I didn’t want to spend a lot of money on some like planter-hangy thing because I’m cheap.  So I put something together that was likely modified from something I saw on Pinterest or some shit.

Basically, you buy terra cotta pots, and those like, tube holdery things that are silver and you always see at the hardware store and you think to yourself  “What the hell are those things?  Could I make something with them?  It looks like I could make something with them.”  Test the size and make sure they go around the pots, but stop right at the lip (so you can hang them).

Also buy galvanized wire, nails, and picture hooks (galvanized means “no get rusty”).

Here is my super-ghetto hanger creation:

Then you just smack the picture hook into the fence, hang the wire-tube holder thing on it, and stick your plant in it.

Ghetto?  Yes.  Expensive?  No.

Note – when I hung it, the planter was tilting a *little* too much, and the water like, spilled out the front of it, so I had to add another nail in the wire closer to the ring to keep it tilted up.

BOOM.  Instant herb garden for like, ten bucks.

I also planted my tomaters in a big pot as well as my “pepper plant”.

I give them both a 10% likelihood of producing edible fruit.

Here is my new and improved organic hippie garden!  Time to put on some Donovan and dance with a tambourine!

I decided to reward myself with things that are bad for me.  Molly also thought she deserved a rest from ALL THE WORK SHE DID.

Molly hates thunder.  She doesn’t freak out and get excited, but every time it starts to rain she just gets really quiet and sad and wants to come REALLY CLOSE TO MY FACE for some reason.  In the photo above, she is trying to keep her face one inch away from mine at all times.

Alternatively, she likes to be perched on my shoulder like a deformed smush-faced parrot and sit there with her ears back.  Despite being slightly annoyed that I literally could do nothing the whole time that the thunder was banging (due to my dog-shaped shoulder-growth), I was pretty much GUSHING with motherly happiness because I like to think that being close to her mommy makes her feel comfortable and safe.  I AM SO GOOD AT BEING A MOM (to small dogs when they are extremely scared and need human contact from anyone who is close to them).

Just thought I’d mention this because it makes me so happy that I almost plottzed: I HAVE HYDRANGEAS in my garden.  They just POPPED THE FUCK OUT OF NOWHERE and are all blooming in my face.  They are one of my absolute favourite flowers. and like, every time you go somewhere fancy they’re all like “HYDRANGEAS, HYDRANGEAS EVERYWHERE FOR FANCY PEOPLE!”  Unless you are Madonna.

In other news, a good friend from University is getting married this weekend and I’m totally looking forward to it because, in addition to the pure, innocent exchange of virginal nuptials, I have it under good authority that there will be copious amounts of wine and cheese entering my mouth-hole all weekend.  What else could a girl want?

We went out last weekend for her Bachelorette party.  To Crocodile Rock.  If you have not heard/been of/to Crocodile Rock… well… then… you still have a small piece of your innocence intact.  Good for you. 

Basically, if you are a:

1. Cougar;
2. Cougar-Fetishist;
3. 19-year old; or
4. 17-year old with a 19-year old’s ID

Then this is the place to be. 

It wasn’t as bad as it could have been because the people I was with were awesome and I decided to wear orangey-red lipstick which makes me happy.  However, in hindsight it makes me look like a craggly old potato-faced witch… so I’m either going to have to re-think this whole lipstick thing, or I’m going to have to come to terms with the face that when I wear lipstick I will only be approached by blind ugly men. 

Here Nicole says “I have two beers, and do a pouty face.”

Here Nicole says “I have two beers and I do a sexy “both beers in my mouth at the same time” face.”

Oh Nicole, you so crazy.

In order to overcome the shock of being at Crocodile Rock, as well as the realization that I looked like a drowned rat with orangey-red lips, I decided to go to the bar by myself and have three whiskey shots.  Which rapidly pulled the evening into a downward spiral, culminating in the following:

Just so you can appreciate what I mean when I say I can eat A LOT… let me tell you what I purchased and consumed from McDonald’s:

• Quarter Pounder
• Supersized Fries
• 10 Nuggets
• An additional Quarter Pounder
• An additional “medium” fries
• Filet-o-fish

Yes.  I ate it all.  I ATE IT ALL!!!!!!!!!!  TREMBLE AT MY FEET, YOU WEAK ‘SINGLE COMBO’ EATERS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!  I SHALL SOON CRUSH YOU ALL WITH MY HUGE FRENCH-FRY FED THIGHS!

The long weekend was caliente to the extreme, and I think it’s safe to say that summer is totally, completely, officially here. 

I think we all knew this was going to happen, but TB park was so saturated with people it looked like a hipster refugee camp.  So of course I got all gussied in my wannabe Amy Winehouse doo-rag, retro Vuarnet France-esque tank,  and new Supers, and sat in the sun with some girls and one special little guy.

I also spent some time drunk and passed out with wet hair at a pool while smoking cigars and accidentally taking unflattering “forgot my iPhone camera was set to the side facing me”  pictures of myself with a crinkle-neck.

Apparently my deck is a perfect sunbathing spot.  Why?  Because it is basically bathed in full “center-of-the-sun” level heat for 10 hours straight.  Things got a little hot.

Molly wanted to be one of the girls and got her tan on.

THEN THIS HAPPENED:

It’s too hot.

Also spent time gardening.  About three hours.  And barely anything looks changed. 

WHY did I work in the garden for three hours with minimal results?  Mostly because of these stupid, small clover-weed things.   ARGH!  They are such little bitches.  You have to sit on your knees and pull out each little damn mini-clover plant by hand for HOURS AND HOURS AND HOURS.  I hate them so much.

Although these peonies have me plottzing with excitement…

Molly had a tough weekend because the new place doesn’t have air conditioning… I think I’m going to have to get a window-mounted one for the bedroom because she is totally listless and unhappy in the heat.  However, she did meet a new boyfriend neighbour on holiday Monday.  These two spent a scandalous amount of time rolling around and presenting their private parts to each other in doggie ecstasy.

…most of the time, with all things, basically.

When it comes to gardening, though, I am totally and completely clueless.  I have unintentionally murdered many-a-plant.  Mostly through a combination of extreme neglect, then guilt and extreme smothering with water after realizing that I’ve pretty much killed the plant due to neglect.  Then it rots and dies. 

I feel like that should be some kind of metaphor for all my relationships in life, but it’s not.  But if it was, it would be all poetic and shit, and I would write a book called “The Tao of Gardening” about a handsome male gardener who teaches the stupid clueless girl about gardening, but it would be this big metaphor for their relationship and then she would learn the error of her ways and they would tumble into the garden all romantic-like and bang.*

*Note: I still might write that book because it sounds like it would sell, so DON’T STEAL MY IDEA.

Now that I have inherited a huge, complex, and multi-staged garden from my previous tenants, I have to get my shit together and figure out how to keep things alive.  In the fall, it had overgrown to “That-Crazy-Person-on-the-Street-with-the-Jungle-Garden” stage.  I did a bit of work earlier in the spring, but then I was too busy watching Game of Thrones reruns and drinking wine to occupy myself with the garden.

The worst part about it is that some of my neighbours have outright said to me “I HOPE YOU MAINTAIN THAT GARDEN BECAUSE WE ALL LIKE IT”, and there is this huge mountain on guilt on my shoulders every time I enter or exit my house, because I’m sure all my responsible, financially independant neighbours with children are talking about me at their book clubs at night and saying things like “That alcoholic girl down the street is totally MURDERING that garden.  What a bitch.”

Then last week, I caved.  Things were starting to look pretty ragged.

I planted none of those plants.  The only thing that I have added to this garden is about 50 purple tulips that are not pictured because my garden is fucking huge and I can’t even fit it in one photo.

So on Sunday, when we had those 3 hours of sunshine, I got my arse in gear and figured I should TCB. 

So, little known fact: “gardening” really means “ripping shit up from the ground and hoping it’s a weed”.  This is a problem, because everything in my garden, unless it’s flowering, or I’ve seen it in my mom’s garden, looks like a weed.

Take the image below:

There are definitely 3 different plants here, denoted by the circles.  But then, there are other leaves that kind of look like the other leaves, but might be other plants.

I have no fucking idea what is supposed to be here and what isn’t.  So I just ripped a bunch of shit up and left, like a couple of sprigs of the plants that were mystery-plants.  Here is my “after” picture (after 2 hours of gardening… it looks pretty much the same):

Anyways, let’s revel in the actual non-weeds that have magically appeared in my garden with absolutely no work from me.

SO MANY HOSTAS.  It’s fucking Hosta Town in there.  All the other plants are just visiting.

Couple of random daffodils.  I like daffodils that have a different colour “shaft” than “base”. 

Does anyone know what this thing is?  It looks all fancy with its pointy leaves… and there is definitely some kind of flower bud all busting out.  I hope it’s a big poofy flower, because those are awesome.

This big leafy dark thing.  Again, I have no idea but he looks expensive.  Thoughts?

I’m preeeety sure that is a big ol’ viney rose bush thing.  No big deal, just live in a house with a big vine of roses out front.  FANCY.

Here are all the tulips I planted in the fall.  I didn’t plan out the spacing too well, I know.  Stop judging me.

And my favorite thing right now… fiddleheads!

I think.  Are fiddleheads just un-exploded ferns? 

Yes, I just googled it and they are.

FIDDLEHEADS!

I will keep you updated as I continue to fumble through this shit and likely kill something really expensive.