A Girl Named Timi

Decorating Dilemma #2

And A Couple Things I Need To Get Off My Chest

First off...........I'm not happy about the judges eliminating Kerry off last nights episode of Top Designer. I think they just may have freed up an hour of my evening on Wednesday nights! I really liked him, I'm really crabby about the judges decision on this. I could have given them a list of others that should have gone home first! I realize they may know a little bit more than me (My first hint .....The title of my blog and the pictures) but I LIKED HIM!

Kerry if your reading my blog.............Please come visit me! I need your help and I want to hang. I'll cook!

2nd thing I'm a bit crabby about........No make that really pissed off about .............

Farmers Market vs. Grocery Store

These are some beautiful Honey Crisp Apples I got at the Farmers Market yesterday. We scarfed down the others I bought last week so I stopped yesterday and got a couple more. 5 large apples............$1.99 a pound. Total cost $5.06

I stopped at the grocery store first before going to the farmers market. I decided to get some of their Honey Crisp Apples just in case the LOCAL Farmers Market was out. They were low last time I was there and the woman said they had a hard time keeping them in stock.

Above photo.........4 medium size Honey Crisp apples from the grocery.....Sign at grocery said LOCAL apples.....$3.99 a pound! Are you freakin kidding me??? SHIT! Well OK, but I'm only getting a few.

$9.35 for 4 apples!!!!!

are you freaking kidding me???? I was just about floored. I see that I saved .50 a pound some how but big deal. How can there be such a price difference? I realize the grocery store has a larger overhead but that much??? Also note the Basil at $12.99 a pound. I just needed a couple leaves so I didn't even pay attention to the price until I got home. Again.........are you kidding????

This got me on a rant in the car while shopping with WSU Larua about how I think there are companies taking advantage of hard economic times and gas prices by jacking prices up unnecessarily.

Now for what sent me over the edge and my head spinning.................In my Honey Crisp apples from the grocery..........one of them was a fuji and had a big old nasty rotten bruise on it! Totally my fault for not paying attention I guess.

There are so many points I wanted to make with this posting, all political but my head is still spinning. Guess I'll clean the shot gun so I can start shooting the deer that ate my Honey Crisp Apple tree down to a stump , then I might just get off my lazy ass and learn to garden!

Now for Decorating Dilemma #2

As if we don't have enough going on around here already, we have decided to update our downstairs family room. The contractor came on Sunday to set up a schedule for makin it happen.

This has been one of the things that has annoyed me since we moved in.

I HATE IT!

When we moved in to this house we didn't redo the family room because

1) we had to live in it for a while when gutting the rest of the house of it's filth and ugliness. The walls were either wall papered, covered in cedar siding, or painted red (I still have some wall papered rooms painted funky colors) when we moved in. The carpet was dark brown shag and orange shag. It was LOVELY!

2) we thought the rug wasn't too bad and it could be cleaned and salvaged. WRONG! It was clean for about week. It's so dirty underneath that when anything wet (water, spilled drink, wet shoe, wet dog feet) hits it, the dirt from underneath comes right up and makes stains. It's a freakin nightmare and it's gross! This room is so nasty (in my mind) that I swear it's making the rest of the house dirty too.

We said we were going to redo this room once we got all settled in our new house. Maybe 2 months it would be this way. Well it's been 3 years. We talk about what we think we would like to do EVERY SINGLE Saturday and Sunday Morning over tea and coffee. I think the only days we missed talking about it were days we weren't sitting in the room.

This is a room we live in. This is where we watch TV, do laundry, eat dinner, its' also the main walk way from the garage, kitchen and sun room.

This is a photo from the down stairs going up to the entry way and kitchen. I wanted to show how open it is. We love that it's open but that's about all we like about it.

This is looking down the stairs from the kitchen in to the family room

The Hubs was all annoyed I would show you these pictures with everything being a huge mess. Piles of clothes on the floor, dish towels from eating on the chair, my new garage sale junk thrown in the floor at the end of the stairs, dog kennel, dog bed, and the stains on the floor. It's were we live! It's a mess most of the time. We eat dinner down here, we watch TV, read, work on the computer, do laundry, go in and out through the garage or sun room. The dog and cat sleep down here, eat down here and go in and out through these doors. The treadmill lives down here and collects dust. The doors to the sun room open up in to the room. Stupid me! I wasn't thinking when we took the sliding door out and put these doors in. I should have had them open the other way.These are the ugly stairs from the kitchen. They need to be redone with a new handrail. You can't see it but Decorating Dilemma #47 is the entry way that has ugly doors (you can see) and a faux ugly brick floor.

This is a sample of the cedar siding that was through out the whole house. Isn't it BEEEEEEautiful??? We had this everywhere. This wall needs to be redone also. Problem..........it's the access for under the house. It's drafty, ugly and............well a stupid place for it as far as I'm concerned.

Dilemma?????.............Where to start, where to start??? I don't know? I want this room warm and cozy down here. Comfortable, easy to get around. I have been looking at it so long that I can't see what to do with it. I have redecorated this room 115 times in my head. In real life............this is our 3rd set of furniture in 3 years. Nothing seems to work. This furniture has to work. The Hubs said no more!
????what to do with that gas stove area. We are keeping the gas stove as it's a main source of heat for us and brand new. There was a huge dirty broken 1980's pellet stove here originally. I just don't have any ideas about what to do with it. It's a zero clearance stove so it doesn't have to have brick or something fire proof behind it. We do need tile pad under it. What to do??? It's super ugly now so I guess anything would be an improvement. Any ideas?????? I would love to see pictures of what you did if you had the same situation to deal with.

The stove is a dark chocolate brown. Do I want to do a dark chocolate brown carpet with light tile under it? Or should I go with a beige colored carpet with contrasting tile? My furniture is light beige. I painted the walls light blue a year ago thinking it would help me like the room. I didn't! I like the color, it's Martha Stewart cake plate blue. It's very subtle.

Stove close up
I would love some feed back! Let me know what potential you see in this room. I'm sick of looking at it. I think it needs a fire right in the middle of the room. I could be wrong!

After this we are doing 3 bathrooms..........wait until you see them!