I was at Huntington Beach and when I sat down I saw this couple cuddling, I couldn’t help but to snap a few shots of them. He seemed so very protective of her and I thought it was absolutely adorable.

So new challenge for the week: go out and take candid pictures of random strangers.

I will warn you that the before shots are gruesome. It looks so scary that when I’m looking at it now I don’t know how I ever got anything done in this room. I’m so much happier now and I actually enjoy sitting in front of the computer sometimes.

Before – The Desk

Before – The Craft Station

Before – Storage

After the shelves were up and the ceiling and trim was painted bright white

Desks are put together and installed

The lighting in here is just gorgeous now, I actually open the shades on a daily basis

After filling up the shelves and putting in the computey

The desks are from Ikea, I get a lot of questions about them. I’ve heard positive and negative things about Ikea, personally, I love their furniture. It’s relatively inexpensive and looks great.

I still need two new matching office chairs, one for each side and some lighting then I would say this room is officially done. I use one side of the room as my office and the other side is for crafting, sewing, scrapbooking or whatever else I feel like making at the time. I always wanted a “craft room” and now I feel like I really have one. This room is so pretty now I feel like I could live in it, which is funny because I kind of do. I spend more time in this room than I do in the rest of my house combined (not counting the pool, of course).

And now a picture for design purposes.

Mac Vs PC

Uber nerd station? I think so. This is not permanent. Heaven forbid that anyone ever need this amount of technology on one desk. I feel as if the room is ready to explode with electricity at any moment, toasting me like a crispy piece of bacon. Soon the Mac will be the only thing occuping this desk while my PC gets shoved away, never to be heard from again. Actually, I’m doing some comparisons before making the switch.

Now. Onto the pretty stuff. New photos. This is the only one I’m going to post here. There are more but I’m scattering them across the interwebs like breadcrumbs. I call this one Ode to the Pirate.

eye patch ftw

Afterwards I couldn’t help but have a little photobooth fun. It’s not everyday that a girl puts on fake eyelashes and sews up her only black pencil skirt for the sake of a picture. I figured that I should get my moneys worth.

Photobooth fun

Some tips when you find a lost dog:

1. Place fliers in the neighborhood where you found the dog. They are pretty inexpensive if you print them out at home and they make a huge difference. It turns out, the owner of my found dog lived across the street from where we picked her up at.
2. Fax the flier to all of the local animal shelters. The animal shelter usually has a lost and found book that they will place the flier.
3. Call your local newspaper and see if they run free ads for found pets. It just so happens that the Las Vegas Review Journal will run an a free ad for four days.
4. Use the internet. Craigslist is a good place to start but there are also dozens of other lost pet databases like Petharbor.com and AnimalFoundation.com. These websites will even email you if there is a close match to your post.
5. Try to keep the pet for as long as you can because most shelters are only obligated to hold the pet for 3 days before putting them down. If you absolutely cannot hold onto the pet any longer try calling local rescues to see if they have any room. Rescues and the SPCA are no-kill shelters but they do not have to take the pet. They will only take pets if they have the room. There are dozens of no-kill shelters and rescues in all major cities so try to find one of those before taking a pet to the city-run shelter.

I was so impressed with this one photo project from the book that I decided to replicate it on my own wall. Using ball chain, magnets and a few photos, I now have a gorgeous photo display.

Not only does it look great, it alleviates the need to frame every picture, eliminates the clutter and the magnets makes it super easy to change the photos anytime.

I love all the pictures on the wall so far. I took all but one of them myself. I printed them out on my home printer on 5 x 7 printer paper and they look AMAZING! Every time I walk past it I smile a little.

I have so much extra ball chain that I’m probably going to end up doing these in a few other rooms as well. I’ll just need more photos to fill them all up!

I would definitely recommend the book for anyone who has way too many photos and not enough space to display them.

P.S. My dream home looks way more like an art gallery than an actual home.

Obviously, this invite has fake information for 2 reasons. 1. I don’t want any e-stalkers and 2. they haven’t actually decided on venues yet.

After I did the text the card was pretty easy to assemble. Add some ribbon, a few flowers, sparkle, shine and everything wonderful. Bam. Finished product. I love not having to design for clients because there’s no one slaughtering a perfectly decent design.

2008

2009

Side note: why is it that the year I have the nicest camera of my life I take absolutely zero good photos? Ponder that one. Until next time, adios.