Draw me a picture

How cool are these?

Rings made from colored pencils by Maria Christina Bellucci.

feeling better

The past week I was sick. As in stay-home-from-work sick. My mom and boyfriend were both bummed not to be able to take care of me, but takeout and bowls of ice cream fueled my recovering. (Despite being pretty sure I had the flu, I never had any stomach problems which I considered pretty lucky.)

Now that I'm on the mend, I'm still babying myself. So I decided to make No-Fuss Chicken Soup (yes, I totally made up that name and the recipe.)

No-Fuss Chicken Soup

32 oz chicken broth

Half a rotisserie chicken

1 carrot

Half a yellow onion

Rice noodles

Green onions and cilantro, chopped

Put the chicken broth on the stove and bring to a boil. Add carrot and onion. I cut part of the carrot into long slices and part into small pieces. Do whatever you prefer. Let simmer for a bit to soften.

Chop up the chicken and add to the pot, along with the noodles. Cook for about 5 minutes or until noodles are soft.

Top with green onions and cilantro. Enjoy!

in hopes of increased blogging

After the swimming incident of '08 and the failure of the borrowed replacement camera, I am finally buying a new camera. Today I got a large reimbursement check in the mail that will pay for the camera and allow me to put some money in my savings account. And hopefully I'll start to have more posts soon!
Especially cause it's 2 weeks till Copenhagen! Won't post much while I'm there but will have so much to post after!

bragging for a moment

I won a free giveaway from PUREnaturalMinerals on Etsy (or PNminerals on Twitter) for four of her fabulous mineral eyeshadows. Picking which ones I wanted was so hard but I chose to go with ones that I normally wouldn't choose and that would be fun to play with. I'm so excited to get them in the mail!

I chose Bling, Nectar, Ember and Wine. I think they'll fun together and I already have several blues and greens that I love.

quite the pair

When I moved in to the house there was no table or place to eat other than TV trays, so first I found a round wood table for $10 on Craigslist and a couple of chairs to go with it. I only have two chairs, but there are just two of us and it allowed us to stick the table in a corner so that it works well in our space. The chairs were nice but a little beat up, so they needed something to make them pop. Thanks to IKEA I had the perfect solution.

How was my first upholstery job?

new listings

First Prize Necklace

Link Necklace

Gold Thread Lucite Multi-Strand Necklace

More on the website: percent.etsy.com

home improvement makeover

Recently graduated, living off a nonprofit salary and having had 2 days to pick out an apartment in a new city, my new roommate is awesome but the apartment itself is um, lacking...

Work has kept me from doing some of the bigger plans I have- ranging from painting walls to weatherizing windows- but soon after arrival I started on a project that I had been planning even before finding my room. A year ago I bought some beautiful fabric at Joanne's (when my car was broken down in Minnesota) and have used it for a variety of things since.

I wanted to decorate part of my wall with the fabric, but not just as wallpaper. I started out by cutting the top of the fabric down.

And I also cut out birds individually.

I cleaned my wall with just water and a sponge. I sprayed the fabric all over with fabric starch. The instructions I found online recommended using either regular starch or spray starch. For such a large piece of fabric, I wish I had regular starch as it was difficult to saturate the fabric with spray starch. You can see the results below- there were definite difficulties getting a tight bond against the wall. I left some tacks along the very edge to keep the fabric up.

But the results overall- I love them!
The other great thing- the fabric peels off with basically no residue! Just clean the wall with a little water and you are set to go. Fabric is a great choice for those of us who are renting.

My fabric wall decoration has created a cozy corner with my desk where I can craft, though I'm still in need of the various storage supplies to really set up a neat crafting corner. First house project- completed!