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…that when I tell people that I want all the bedrooms to be on the same floor in our new house they look at me like I’m crazy? It doesn’t seem like that odd of a request to me. I mean, I know that there are certain styles of houses where the master bedroom is on a separate floor from the other bedrooms, and some people are totally cool with that. I am not one of those people. Am I insane for wanting my un-conceived children to sleep on the same floor of the house that I do?
Seriously, I want to know. Someone today actually looked at me like I was crazy and didn’t have words to express how crazy he thought I was.
I think I may have come up with an entirely clever way to use Flickr that helps me be organized and crafty all at once! I mean, I know that Flickr has already (kind-of) helped me organize my yarn (well, mostly via Ravelry, but I used Flickr to do it, so it sort of counts). Now, it might help me organize my sewing.
What if… I photographed my fabric, and in the description section noted what type it is, how many yards I have, how wide it is, etc (basically, everything I know about it), and even what I’m thinking of making with it.
And then, what if… I photographed all of my patterns (fronts and backs), so I’d always have a catalog available to me, no matter where I was (assuming that I had internet access, so basically if  was with me I’d be good, because he has an iPhone). [Editor's Note: if Apple comes out with a 3G iPhone, which does not mean what I thought it did, but whatever, then says he'll buy it and sell me his old one. I wasn't really all on board with this iPhone thing, since I use my phone maybe once a week for phone calls, and already have an iPod that I love, and a Nintendo DS to play games on, but having the internet in my pocket is oh-so-tempting. We'll see. Some people seem to think that Apple will do this soon, but thinks not. I'm not holding my breath. It works just as well to have him with me when I need the internet.]
And then, I could be smart and tag all of them and be able to keep two open windows and browse between the two until I matched things up.
How cool would that be?
OK, you don’t have to be excited, but I am. If only there were a Ravelry-like site for sewing. Alas, there is not (and I don’t think I could keep up with that many craft-related sites, because as it is I barely stop in to Ravelry once a week these days, and Etsy is just way too time consuming, as in I spend way too much time browsing for things I’d like to buy). But this DIY version using Flickr might just be the answer. And then I can keep my fabric tucked away in a drawer where it won’t get faded from sunlight or covered in cat hair.
Come on, you know you wish you’d thought of it first.
Well, the only way I have to create these is rather primitive, but here are the as-promised before and after shots of the spare bedroom. There’s still work left to do, like replacing the window and carpeting and generally making it look good, but we got a lot accomplished this weekend, and I think it makes a big difference.
 ...  ...  ...
Also, after getting the curtains hung (not hemmed – that’s a task for another day), I spent almost 2 hours ironing my recently purchased fabric. I know, that sounds like a lot of time. It was. I woke up this morning and my back reminded me instantly of how I’d spent the night. But, I find great value in the process of washing and ironing new fabric (washing is necessary to pre-shrink fabric, and the ironing lets me get to know the fabric better, see how it will drape, how difficult it will be to work with, etc), so I put up with it. Kind of like priming – don’t like doing it, but I know it’s important, so I do.
 Newly pressed fabric
 Black floral for skirt
 Cute cars for Grant
 Polka dots for skirt
 Daisies for skirt
 All the fabric (minus the boring white twill) that I bought at SR Harris on Sunday.
Lastly, my favorite activity from yesterday (and favorite photos of the day):
 Flowers for the dining table
 Close-up of the buds.
Tonight is SNB at our house. What’s on the menu? Stir-fry with asparagus, carrots, cauliflower, broccoli, and chicken (if the vegetarian isn’t coming), served on brown rice. Not my best meal ever, but it should still taste good. What would I really like to do tonight? Make peanut butter cookies. Not helpful, though. Is it likely that any knitting will actually get done tonight? Probably not. I am in a very bad place with the blanket I’m working on and would rather ignore it for now, because I think I have to rip out several rows, and I can’t deal with that at the moment. Instead, I might pick out a pattern and cut some fabric, or measure and cut for the rollerblinds. Or just sit on the couch and chat with my friends. Who knows.
Some things I’ve seen on Etsy that I just had to buy (the images are from the item’s listing and not my own, except for the letterpress sets, because I either haven’t received them yet or haven’t had time to photograph them):
 This cute little succulent said, "buy me! I want to come live with you!"  So did this cute frog planter. Conveniently, they both arrived in the mail on the same day, and fit together perfectly. Once planted, they’re going to go live on the windowsill in our bedroom, since the original owner said the succulent likes lots of filtered sunlight. I thought it might come live at work, but it doesn’t seem to fit. One of these days I’ll find a bonsai tree for my desk.
 I have to admit, one of the main reasons I bought this planter is that the title said "Oh SNAP, Frog Planter" which I thought was incredibly hilarious. Also fun that whatever is planted comes out of his mouth. I'm thinking herbs.  Another scarf. Sometimes I can't help myself.  Beautiful pendant. Artsy and expressive.  This is a mug I bought for A because I just couldn't resist it. Etsy is a haven for owl-lovers, and I see stuff on there all the time that she'd love. I just don't buy all of it, because we all own enough stuff anyways, right?  I bought this cute flannel fabric with no purpose in mind, but I'm sure I'll come up with something.  I love, love, love these earwires. I need to buy some more for making more jewelry, because I only got 5 sets and have probably 2 left. They're just the perfect shape that they don't fall out of my ears (like some other earwires) and don't need the little rubber backings. Plus, they look really nice and make some professional-looking jewelry (in my opinion).
Saturday we ran some very weird errands, and by weird I mean that most of these things we probably don’t do more than once a year (at most!), and to end up doing them all at the same time was just weird. We picked up ‘s tire (that I’d injured while driving through Iowa last weekend – their roads sucked) and only had to pay $16 for the repair. Then we dropped off our vacuum to have it repaired (I don’t think I’ve ever had a vacuum cleaner taken to be repaired). Then it was off to Southern Lights to pick out some new lighting fixtures for the bathroom and kitchen (which means that for $200, we’ll have replaced all of the lights in the house, because had replaced most of them before, and there are only a few left, and this will be it). That wasn’t very easy, since we were essentially picking out new lights for the new (and as of yet unknown) owners of our house (very unknown, since it’s not on the market yet). I’d link to what we picked out, but they don’t have everything on their website, and I don’t have a list of the model numbers here with me. We also stopped at Super Target and Barnes and Noble. And then bought a chicken (for baking, not as a pet), and made a quick stop into Cub for the last of the chicken roasting needs.
Whew! This was all, of course, between coats of paint in the spare bedroom, which is now done. Yay! I do not have photos for you yet, but I will soon. (If you really need photos,  also did some painting this weekend and has before/after pictures on her blog.) We’re hanging the curtains up tonight, which means I can move the furniture back and take pictures. It should look very nice. All in all, I’m quite pleased with the color, though for a while I wasn’t sure of it. It has a hideous name (Tea and Sweets, for goodness sake – picture is almost at the bottom of the page), but looks good in the room. It’s just a little bit pinky, but basically it’s a nice warm feeling (more so than the picture on the Ralph Lauren page shows) that is neutral yet still a color.
 Oh, I also roasted the chicken on Saturday. Much to my surprise (though true to what everyone said), it was very easy.
 Unfortunately, I only have "before" pictures, as we ate it too fast to take pictures.
 Oh, and before making the chicken, I made some Irish Soda Bread. You know, because I can do everything. All at once.
 No worries - it didn't turn out very well. I will be looking for another recipe, because I like Irish Soda Bread and it's really easy to make (since it's a quickbread and requires no yeast, rising, or kneading).
Sunday I drove up to  ‘s house to return her orbital sander and drop off my winter coats for storage (one day soon they’ll all live in our house). Then I went to SR Harris to try to find fabric to make new rollerblinds for the upstairs windows. That place is crazy, and next time I’m bringing someone with me to hold my hand, because it’s just a little nerve-wracking and overwhelming. Maybe  would like to come. Truthfully, I like shopping for fabric online better, since it’s easier to browse a large selection and everything is well-photographed. I ended up getting the most boring fabric possible – plain white twill. I really wanted some black awning stripe for the loft and some khaki-colored twill for the two bedrooms, but in the end, that’s not what happened. There were about 20 different shades of khaki and I was pretty sure I would pick out the wrong one. And the black stripe that I found looked faded already, which was no good. So white it is. If all goes well, in our next house we can have fun rollerblinds (because there were a lot of prints that I would have loved to use, including some black and white floral prints, some nice colorful stripes, and a solid lime green that I thought would look awesome – and before you freak out, keep in mind that these are just the rollerblinds, not the curtains, and so a little bit of color and pattern is cute and not necessarily a bad thing). I also bought some cute fabric to make myself some skirts, and a really cute print to make a blanket for  . Pictures later.
I spent, at most, half an hour studying for today’s final. I’ll never know the grade on it, and since I only need 50% to get an A, I decided not to care that much. I have perfect attendance and have been paying attention in class, so I should do pretty well. I just couldn’t force myself to re-read the one textbook we have, especially the concluding chapter where the author basically said, “sociology is everything I want it to be.” Bah.
Lastly, some random pictures for you from the weekend:
 Growing Amaryllis
 Cherub
And, two LOLcats that I thought were very cute/funny:
OK, that might be a slight exaggeration. But, I have pictures, so you be the judge.
(View all pictures of the spare bedroom on Flickr. In case you haven’t caught on, there are sometimes more or better comments on Flickr than here describing the photos. You might want to check it out. I like to put notes on the pictures themselves too. *Shameless plug alert* I also like it when other people leave me comments on my pictures.)
 Yes, we spent date night painting the spare bedroom.
 I put a second coat on all the trim and Prince Charming was kind enough to pick up the roller and do all the walls.
 It only took an hour this time (instead of the nearly 2 hours I spent on Wednesday on just edging), which was nice.
Still, between the time spent painting and all the time I’ve spent on my computer this week at work, my elbow feels a little tingly. No pain yet, and Advil seems to be keeping that at bay, but I’m paying attention for any changes that might signal something worse.
I put new batteries in my old camera and it seems to be working fine now, so no new camera for me at the moment. That’s fine – I don’t really need or want one. The one I have is only three or four years old and perfectly serviceable, and it’s pretty dinged up from all the use. If I had a new one, I’d want to keep it all pretty and safe, which would probably mean I wouldn’t carry it everywhere. Still,  thinks we should take a look at the Elphs sometime.
I did take some other pictures last night….
 I bought tulips on Monday after work just because I wanted to.
 Actually, I bought cheese for me, strawberries for Prince Charming, and tulips for the house.
 Aren't I nice?
 ...
 Update on the frostbitten plants
 My analysis is on Flickr
 Also, an update on the amaryllis, which is doing great and growing like a weed! I can't wait until it blooms!
 Lastly, an image of the gift I received from my boss for Administrative Professionals' Day.
 (Lest you think there are administrative unprofessionals, it is actually just a more politically correct way of saying Secretarys' Day, though I suspect there are probably plenty of unprofessional administrative assistants, and probably some people I work with who think I act unprofessionally at times.)
- When I fell in love and finally realized it, I shared it with the person who’d told me months ago that he loved me (patient man that he is, stuck around and waited for me to figure out what he already knew)!
- June (this is Minnesota after all) is when the flowers bloom and it heats up outside!
- Oh no! The internet connection is down, and so are the phones! (At work, that is. We have IP phones, so if our network goes down, we basically can’t do any work at all unless we have files stored on our local machines, which we’re not supposed to do.).
- Paris Hilton is my BFF is the craziest tv show ever.
- Cheese and anything make a great meal!
- I want a garden.
- And as for the weekend, tonight I’m looking forward to resting my arms from painting (maybe), tomorrow my plans include painting the spare bedroom and Sunday, I want to be able to enjoy nice weather (but I don’t know if that’s in the forecast)!
Why a response and not a post on Earth Day? Well, quite frankly, I just never got around to it. I was too busy saving the planet. Just kidding. I was just busy. Besides, didn’t you get just a little tired of it all by the end of the day? I know I did.
How did I celebrate? I didn’t really do anything special, if you must know. I rode the bus to work, as I normally do (except days when I have class) – KSTP5 was there filming for some special on the news that may or may not have aired. The bus was friggin’ crowded with people who were trying to feel good about themselves by taking the bus once a year. I wouldn’t mind, because they are trying, I suppose, but our bus is already crowded. Nothing unique happened during the day. At  ‘s we benefited from her Jewish co-workers who recently celebrated Passover by emptying out their kitchens into hers, so I suppose that’s earth-friendly. Perhaps to celebrate Earth Day she should make something artsy with all the rejected paint samples.
The small changes I have made this week include setting up a pile both at work and home for re-usable paper (that is, paper that has already been printed on one side but can be re-printed on the blank side for non-important documents), installed a printer driver that is supposed to help cut down on excess printing from the internet (though I’m not fully in love with it, so I don’t want to extol its virtues too much, but it’s called GreenPrint and you can try it for yourself if you want), and made a commitment to attempt to bring my reusable grocery bag when we go shopping more often. I’ve also tried to print out fewer emails at work and deal with them electronically instead, though that is difficult for me to do sometimes (depending on the task).
Honestly, though, I feel pretty good about my interaction with the earth. Compared to some people, I am quite “green.” I recycle everything (which annoys some people I live with, *ahem*), use public transportation when possible (I was nearly 2,000 miles short of my 3,000 mile oil change when the 3 months had transpired), try to turn off lights in rooms when they’re not in use, etc. I know I take longer showers than is probably advisable, am still a consumer at heart and so I don’t help landfills much that way, and am not doing everything I possibly can to protect the planet. But I do good, and feel OK with that.
By the way, a report came out that put the Twin Cities not just in the top 25 green cities, but at #8!
Two vaguely related articles for you today (because almost everything else in my “to blog about” folder is food-related):
Yesterday, I discovered a new feature on J Caroline Creative. You can order samples of fabric, which is just wonderful (assuming you’re not buying the clearance fabric, which I’m drawn to – not that you can’t buy samples of the clearance stuff, but it may very well be gone by the time you receive and evaluate your sample, so it doesn’t seem the wisest choice). So, I ordered 18 samples (at 50 cents each, I figured I could afford it), mostly to see what other fabric would work with the tablecloth fabric I already bought, and some for fun.
Here are the tablecloth options (as presented via photos from their site, and while I’m hoping that colors are true to life, you can never be too sure):
 Tablecloth fabric options The big sample in the middle is what I already have. I have enough to make a tablecloth out of, but it will have a large seam down the middle. So I thought that if I put a stripe of something else down the middle, it’d look better (more purposeful that there was a large seam, that is). So, here are some of the fabrics I thought might go. I had to shrink the samples a bit, so they look a bit different, and I’m not sure about how the colors will really look. All the very dark colors are actually brown, not black as they may appear. And the lightest colored parts should all be cream or white, even though sometimes they appear bluish. My favorite is the lower left corner, the stripes, but I don’t know how the colors will end up looking. Anyone have any favorites?
 And here are a few more samples I got for some fun projects. The bicycles one is so cute, that if it looks good in real life I might try to make something for our Korea friends (not Korean, as only one of them is actually ethnically Korean, but our friends who are currently residing in Korea), who are big bikers. Not sure what, nor that I will have the time to make anything before their one-year wedding anniversary, but it’s a nice idea, right? The top right corner would make a nice pillow, and the bottom right corner is exactly what I want to make roller blinds out of, but I can’t find it in real life or in black (instead of brown). The apples and pears would make some fun kitchen stuff, like an apron or place mats or napkins or something, don’t you think?
 And lastly, here's the fabric I already bought (in addition to the green and brown silverware pattern above). At least, that’s what my invoice says I bought, but I remember that something was back ordered or out of stock or something, so I’m not definitely sure what came to the house. The top left corner came, and it’s beautiful (it’s brown, if you can’t tell). The top right corner came, and it’s black, and while I don’t love it, I bought it to make a pillow for the spare bedroom, so it’s all good. I love the one on the bottom right corner, but I’m not entirely positive that it came, or that if it did, all that I ordered came (I think they didn’t have 4 yards, so they sent 3 or something like that). I had plans for something that I don’t remember, but I might have to rethink that anyways, so it’s all good. What would you make with it? And lastly, the bottom left corner may not have come, I don’t remember. Nor do I remember what I was going to do with it. It’s pretty, but that’s all I know.
 Lastly, since I reference it yesterday, here are the fabrics that have inspired me to make something for Grant. They’re not to scale, since the two fabrics are from different sellers. Also, the top three skinny ones are ribbons/trim, so they’re definitely not to scale. But aren’t they cute? Really, sometimes it’s hard to be inspired by cute little boy things, but these worked for me.
I also got a lot of ribbon on clearance, which is beautiful but I won’t bore you with. Hopefully one of these days I’ll have some time to at least decide on a project and cut something out. (I know, I know, I keep saying that, and nothing ever gets done.) I have a deadline for painting the spare bedroom – the girls are going to come over to our house next week for SNB, so I want to have the bedroom primed and all painted before then. I think that’s a reasonable goal, and the only kink in the plan I foresee is if my tendinitis decides to flare up and I’m unable to paint.
Tonight’s plans include putting away a lot of clean laundry and studying for my final exam. I’m all registered for summer semester classes – Gender and Culture (an anthropology course; I had the choice between that and Comparative Women’s History, which sounded better but wasn’t offered and isn’t being offered this fall either), and Introduction to Urban Education and Reflective Teaching (required to get into the program). Should be good, I hope. At any rate, I’m getting closer. All 4 of the remaining content courses I’m required to take are offered this fall, as well as the other education course required to get into the program. Not that I can take 5 classes and work full-time, but it means that I am very close to being done with the less-important part (meaning I could really take those classes at any institution and they’re not as specific to urban teaching as the program is, though there are a lot of ethnic studies courses required which I believe is special to the program) which means that I’m left with a whole bunch of education courses, 11 plus student teaching, to be exact. I’d like to think that I could take 4 classes a semester (after all, I did take 3 and plan a wedding and managed to get straight A’s), but that may be pushing it (especially since classes at Metro State seem a bit harder than those at Saint Paul College). It may also depend on what else is going on in life at the time, like whether or not our house sells or a whole bunch of people plan weddings in the fall out of state that we have to travel to or… you get the idea. If the house miraculously sold and we moved before the end of the summer (not really predictable, but it’s a nice “what if,” isn’t it?), I think I could handle 4 classes, as long as there’s only the one out of state trip that’s already planned (my cousin’s wedding in Michigan in October). Fall seems a long ways off and I can’t register until August, so there’s really not much point in spending so much time thinking about it.
isn’t feeling well, so if you think of it, send happy thoughts of chicken soup his way.
My eyes itch today. Can’t really itch those, at least not well, and not without ruining my makeup. I took my Zyrtec this morning, but forgot it yesterday, so I’m paying for that this morning. Perhaps I have more than just skin allergies? Perhaps instead of the dermatologist I should have scheduled an appointment with an allergist? If she tells me that (in three weeks when I finally get my appointment) I should go to an allergist, hopefully it won’t take nearly as long to get an appointment.
Speaking of appointments, shouldn’t I have a dentist one coming up?
I got a headache yesterday at about 11am. I took some Advil, because I had some body parts that also hurt. It didn’t go away. At about 2:30 I took some Excedrin. Still, it persisted. It didn’t blow up into anything big, but by 8pm I was draggin’. I was glad that when I woke up this morning, I didn’t have a headache (often, when I go to bed with a headache I wake up with a worse one, which is a terrible way to start the day and why I try to not go to bed with a headache). But now it’s 9:45 and I’ve had a headache for the last 15 minutes. I might not take anything (not my usual course of action) – it didn’t work yesterday, why would it today? Of course, the idea that I might have a headache all day long is slightly frustrating and exhausting.
Just thought I’d drop in and say that. I’ve got another story coming up later, but I’m in the middle of some projects so it’ll have to wait.
This morning when I dressed for work, I thought it was a little risky wearing short sleeves, but it was a short-sleeved shirt with a tank top underneath and another layer of short-sleeved sweater on top of that, so with my long pants and socks (instead of nylons), I thought I might be OK. Boy, was I wrong. For a brief time between 8 and 8:30, the air was on, but before and since it has been absolutely stifling in here. I feel like I’m having hot flashes. It’s hot enough to make one feel ill. I’m so glad I leave at 12:30. Also so glad that there are only two classes left!
The wedding this weekend was nice, as was the drive to and from the Quad Cities (Illinois/Iowa border, for those not in the know). Well, nice might be an overstatement, but definitely not as bad as driving through Wisconsin for the billionth time.
Tomorrow I can register for classes, so we’ll see what happens there. I think, at the least, that I should have some time for crafting, once I get the spare bedroom painted. I’m hesitant to start a project knowing that that’s what I really should be working on. Tonight I’m going to prime the edges, gosh darn it (I know I’ve said that before, but time keeps slipping away). There are no more excuses, since the only homework left is to study for the final, and I’m not too worried about that (unless he gives us reason to during class today). I just need it done so I can move on with my life and not have it hanging over me. Of course, there’s about a billion other projects that are also hanging over me, like the furniture I keep saying I’m in the middle of painting. Right. I may have decided to only prime them before moving. At first I was just going to paint them white and wait to decorate and get handles and stuff until after the move. But if the priming looks good enough, I may just stop at that until the move. (Plus, over the weekend we reviewed the list of things that we need to get done on the house and it’s longer than I thought it was, which seems a bit overwhelming to think about, so I’m not going to.)
Oh my gosh, I have to leave and go get something icy to drink, because it’s ridiculous how hot it is in here. There’s a dress code, or else I’d threaten to take off some layers (well, the dress code and my modesty stop me from doing that).
Somehow, I ended up at this article on FoxNews about weird sex laws. It’s similar to things you’ve probably seen around the internet before, so perhaps you may just want to skip this post if you’re bored of all that. Here are a few things I found amusing/interesting from the list:
- I broke the law last week by sleeping naked. Apparently illegal in my state.
- I’m a fan of the law that says men in Minnesota aren’t allowed to have sex with live fish. Dead fish, apparently, are perfectly acceptable. EW!
- I’m guessing the law about it being illegal to serenade your girlfriend in Kalamazoo really put a damper in some people’s plans to do just that after watching Say Anything in 1989.
- I wonder how Florida lawmakers thought people were actually going to get clean while showering, if it is (was?) illegal to do so naked.
- Good to know that while I was in Arizona, if I so wanted to, I could have gone topless and not broken any laws. (My job security, however, would have decreased tenfold, and it wasn’t that high to begin with. Wonder if, since I was on the reservation, it might still have been illegal….)
That’s all I’ve got. We’re out of town this weekend for a wedding. Hope everyone has a good one!
I’ve been a little camera-happy lately. Here’s some of what I’ve seen…
 Rain
 which we were so thankful for
 because it was not snow - alas, the snow came a few days later.
 Matea playing peek-a-boo on the stairs.
 She's really curious as to what all the noise is (we were working on the pantry), but much too afraid to find out what it might be. She needs the security blanket of being able to race up the stairs and hide under the bed or in the shower.
 In this picture, she looks completely unamused that I am photographing her, but really the flash went off at just the wrong time.
 Did I mention that all my knitting stuff went into storage (except for 2 projects)? Here's evidence of that, all my yarn bagged up and waiting to be taken away.
That’s it! Sorry it wasn’t more interesting.
There can be no doubt that I love Etsy. Perhaps too much. My spending for the month revolves around coffee, food, and crafting supplies, and recently those have skyrocketed (I blame the new sewing machine that I haven’t used). One of the things I love about Etsy is that the sellers are, generally, crafty people and like to put nice touches on the their products. For instance, when I came home yesterday there were two packages waiting for me. When I opened one of them, this is what I found:
 How cute is that? My purchase, all wrapped up in tissue paper with a little lace tie.
My arrivals yesterday (from both packages together) included:
 Fabric!
The brown has a suede-like feel and the floral pattern is embroidered on. It should make a nice skirt (or a vest, were I a stylish cowgirl, but I am not) and maybe some pillows. The green is super-cute, and as noted would make a nice skirt, but inside it is mostly scraps (which I knew upon purchasing), so more likely it will be used for some table linens, because it matches our dishes. The gray on top was purchased with the idea of making a pillow, but I might change my mind. It’s very gray (and not so much black and white), and may make a cute shirt instead.
I’ve been trolling the pattern websites lately and have come up with many options, most of which I will not purchase or do anything with. I like to collect the ideas, however, and have the inspiration there at my fingertips if I need it. I never really enjoyed the process of going to the fabric store with MOM to sort through the pattern books, and now that they all have their stuff online, I don’t have to do that anymore. Very nice.
And, for those of you who were wondering, I figured out what I was doing wrong with my future publishing function, and have fixed it. It wasn’t exactly intuitive, but whatever. WordPress made a lot of changes with the last update and I still haven’t adjusted to many of them, so this is just another one. I don’t usually do future posts, so it’s not really a big deal (though I should have done the last linkfest as many smaller posts, spread out over several days – don’t worry, I won’t do that to you again – and if it wouldn’t take too long to fix, I’d just do that now, but what’s done is done). I don’t know anyone in person who uses WordPress, but if, like me, you couldn’t figure out future publishing, leave a comment and I’ll fill you in on what I just learned.
Yes, yes, it took much longer than expected to get you these pictures, but other than my general forgetfulness, there was a good reason. You’ll have to read along to find out….
 Here is the pantry before we started.
As you can see, it was difficult both to close and open the door, because of the shoes sitting on the floor and the items inside.
 So, we took everything (and I mean everything) out. Here's what was left after we threw away or recycled the junk.
 And then we had one very empty closet.
We took a trip to Ikea and bought supplies (details are on the Flickr pages for exactly what we used), and I spent the better part of Saturday morning painting the inside of the closet ( patched, and we learned some important lessons about what patch is good and what is not, which we will take with us into our next project). There was also cleaning of the floor, wiping away cobwebs, and killing the random errant spider.
 Then there was the debate about where exactly to hang the shelves, how many, how far apart, etc. In the end, this is what we came up with.
Roughly, from top to bottom, the distance between shelves is 10″, 12″, 14″ and 16″ (with 10-ish inches from the top shelf to the ceiling, and 2-ish feet from the bottom shelf to the floor). The shelves are 11″ deep which leaves approximately enough room between them to squeeze if you are very narrow-hipped, or else you have to turn slightly, but it is still entirely accessible (unless your booty is very large, in which case we can’t help you).
 Here's Prince Charming installing the shelves:
 Here's what it looked like when we were nearly done and realized that due to a measuring mis-estimate and a wrong recording of another measurement, we were short two shelves (so I took this pic while Prince Charming ran back to Ikea):
We finally got the last of the shelves installed, and as I went to stand up, I killed the bottom right one. Oops. Totally leaned on it and put my weight on it to get up, without thinking. Well, we patched the holes and debated re-installing it or not. “Not” won out, since we could always put it in later if we wanted to, and this way there was room for extra tall things (like 20-pound bags of cat food) and provided more access to the back storage area).
 So here's the "done" picture after all that.
 And the "done" with the food in the pantry.
Then, the unthinkable happened on Tuesday night (or was it Thursday? I’ve lost track of time) – while simply trying to take something off the bottom shelf, it fell down. With horror, we realized that the mega cool anchors we’d bought (which supported 50 pounds each, and there are 4 supporting each shelf), weren’t the right kind for the shelves actually ( tells me they were designed to hang things like pictures, which pull directly down on them, instead of shelves like these, which pull out on them, if that makes sense).
 So, we sucked it up and pulled everything off the shelves.
And then pulled all the shelves out. And then patched all the holes ( did most of the work here). Another few trips to Home Depot and the right anchors were purchased (100-pounds of support each, $20 for 40, and we needed 2 boxes!), along with some screws that would hopefully be long enough to reach the stud near the door on the right.
 We spent another Saturday installing shelves, with the end result looking nearly exactly like it did before, only this time, they're much sturdier.
 As an added bonus, almost everything on top of the cabinets and everything on top of the refrigerator now has a home inside a cabinet or in the pantry. Yay! Not only can I reach the flour without a stepstool, it is one step closer to market-ready that our house is.
 I even moved most of the refrigerator magnets to the sides so that it would be prettier for pictures (we'll have to do some more tweaking still before putting it on the market, but I think we've made some major progress).
 and  were quite impressed, and we’ve said at least once a day since finishing, “I love the pantry!” It’s a good thing, too, since we put a lot of work into it. At least we should get the investment (about $300 for all the materials, I think) back in the selling price of the house.
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thankful
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