framing, rearranging, and the trials of being left-handed

One of the things I'm learning through blogging about our decorating adventures is just how much longer it takes to complete a project than I anticipate. We just wanted to hang a few pictures on the wall, and it turned into a month of acquiring materials, assembling, and hanging.

But it's done! Just look at this amazing finished product:

This project is on par with the table for my sense of accomplishment. It took less time to complete the actual work, but it was just as arduous, let me tell you.

First there was the headache of the wrong mat cutter. You would think my problems ended as soon as I bought the correct cutter. Nope. You see, I have the nasty habit of being left-handed. And the ideal mat cutter has a nasty habit of being right-handed. Sure, I could use it. It even has instructions for lefties. They are simple: Use it backward. Thanks, mat cutter people. I will gladly use your push-style mat cutter backward, rendering it a pull-style mat cutter and completely obscuring the handy-dandy start-stop guide which was a selling point on the darn cutter to begin with. 

I tried, people. I tried. But I could not get the right amount of pressure with either my right hand (I make sad attempts at being ambidextrous) or by pulling it.

That's where wonderful Husband comes in. He did go to design school after all. He did a beautiful job! 

But I'm getting ahead of myself. Let's talk about the process.

First I needed to measure the prints to determine the size of the opening in the matboard. That I was able to do last week. Then we subtracted the print size from the mat size, divided the remainder in half and voila! we had our measurements. Husband also took care of the math. I'm terrible with fractions.

So going into Saturday's extravaganza, I had this handy guide of measurements:

So I marked the back of each matboard (after labeling it to prevent future headaches) like so:

Then they were all ready to cut! I made a few paltry attempts with a practice piece, but Husband was the man for this project. I love that it was so collaborative. I tend to take over DIY projects because I have a strong "vision" of how everything should look and how it should be done. That doesn't make my way right, and it certainly doesn't make me able to do everything I set out to do. Especially in this right-handed world. So take a look at Husband at work:

And a close up of one of his amazing corners:

Sure, we probably shouldn't open up a framing business (simply because our method is far from perfect, speedy, or cost-effective), but it was more than good enough for what we needed. I couldn't wait to see how they looked on our prints:

Beautiful! While Husband finished cutting the mats, I went to work trimming the calendar pages and taping them to the finished mats:

Not pictured: My method of cutting perfect squares of masking tape. The photographer found it amusing, but I don't think anyone needs to see it. It makes for a more interesting anecdote than a photograph.

All we had left to do was pop them in the frames (probably the easiest part of the project) and decide on a layout. We had a little fun playing musical chairs (or maybe Tetris) until we came up with an arrangement that satisfied us.

Not pictured: The countless other layouts we didn't go with for reasons such as "too much yellow on top," "too much blue on the left," or "too many different typefaces together." I thought a checkerboard pattern of the darker pieces and the lighter ones would look good, but it didn't seem to work. We decided that we liked the dark/blue pieces on the ends, and our light/yellow pieces in the middle. It grounds the piece as a whole, I think.  Ireland, Switzerland, and Argentina moved around more than I'd like to admit!

We thought the hardest part was over. Cutting the mats was extremely nerve-wracking. Probably more for me than Husband, who did the actual work! But when you add the factors of our un-level floors and ceilings, utter lack of a level (the app did not cut the mustard), and our combined desire for precision, you have a giant headache on your hands. That's why I don't have pictures of the during, with the cute pink hanging templates featured here all over the wall. We tried countless approaches which all would sound insanely boring and probably completely inefficient. We're still learning!

After giving up in frustration Saturday night, we went out for a delicious dinner at a new (to us) place in our neighborhood. Before 10:00 this time. A relaxed, scrumptious dinner and a bottle of wine was exactly the way to unwind after previously wanting to tear our hair out. We woke up Sunday morning refreshed and ready to go. And still pulled our hair out a little. Eventually we found a pretty efficient way to get the templates on the wall, found the proper number of nails and got to hammering.

And then we hung them up. And then they were all over the darn place. And I couldn't look at them because they looked so unprofessional and wonky.

I cannot tell you how much I love ScotchBlue tape. We used it in our many attempts to create reference lines for our templates. And we also used it to level all our wonky pictures. I wrapped some skinny pieces around the hardware on the back, and ta-da! what once was wonky now is perfect!

This is my favorite view--from the couch! It was a ton of work, but it made it all the more worth it. We moved around some other pieces, which we didn't take pictures of because they're completely temporary and some of the lines from previous frames behind them are totally hideous. We also hung a picture in the kitchen, so Husband is no longer staring at a blank wall behind me at the table. I am still starting at a blank wall behind him, but we're working on that.

It may have taken more blood (I cut myself twice and in really stupid ways), sweat (our heat was seriously out of control), and tears (I cry about everything, including wonky framing arrangements) than anticipated, but we're ecstatic with the results.

How about you? Any projects causing you more gray hairs than anticipated, or do you expect things to take as long as they do?

(Psst, check out my Broadway post for a cute pic of me outside the theatre. Proof that we were really there!!)

a night out on broadway

Updated: With photographic proof after the jump!

I may not have mentioned that I have a love-hate relationship with New York. I think I can safely say that the majority of New Yorkers have this relationship, so I'm not alone. So a part of my life project is taking advantage of the elements of New York that you can't get anywhere else. Or most places, that is.

We take advantage of going out for dinner at 10 at night (as we did after we Flor'd) plenty often. We take advantage of not having to own a car every day of our lives (and sometimes, when lugging around bags full of 23" throw pillows, 9 yards of fabric, and a hammered aluminum bowl, we wish we had a car).

We don't often go to Broadway shows.

I grew up watching musicals and listening to the soundtracks on vinyl. My mom had an awesome collection that included the staples of Rodgers & Hammerstein, Camelot, and who knows what else. I also listened to a bunch of Simon & Garfunkel. I have extremely good taste. I grew up thinking that Gordon MacRae was the hottest thing on feet. (I later discovered Hello, Dolly and the joy of Tommy Tune, along with Singin' in the Rain and the inimitable Gene Kelly.)

I saw touring companies of Miss Saigon, Fame, Rent, and Chicago growing up in Rochester. I saw Sebastian Bach in Jekyll & Hyde (twice!) during college, and even dragged my mother along for the ride. I saw Cabaret at Studio 54 and went back to see Rent when Adam Pascal and Anthony Rapp re-joined the cast. (Adam Pascal dared to be sick that day.) I've seen Spring Awakening sans Lea Michele and Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark for no particular reason other than my undying love for U2. (So undying that I love them even after paying good money to watch that train wreck.)

This sounds like a lot.

I have lived in or around New York for 11 years. That's not nearly enough.

Until now.

Inspired, perhaps, by missing my dear friend, The So-Called Wife, who really took advantage of her time in New York and saw a truly impressive number of shows, Husband and I will be seeing not one but two amazing shows within the span of a month.

I was also inspired by the big, big, BIG names headlining these shows.

First, there is a Broadway event we simply cannot miss. If you don't know the piece of pure entertainment joy that is Hugh Jackman, well, you really need to get out more. I had just graduated college and had zero dollars to my name when Hugh starred in The Boy From Oz, so I wasn't able to see that. I also think you couldn't get a ticket if you had lots of dollars, it was that popular. (The same is probably true for A Steady Rain.) So when I heard Hugh was doing a one-man show for ten weeks only, I couldn't pass it up. I repeat: A one-man show. That is Hugh Jackman (the second greatest person to portray Curly in Oklahoma! since my dear Gordon MacRae), singing and dancing practically by his darn self on stage. And interacting with the audience. And generally being the amazing song-and-dance man that he is. 


Who wouldn't want to stand out in the rain for him?

Never mind my weird face. I was super-excited!

getting seasonal

Guess what? I'm not done talking about things we did on Saturday. It really was a big day.

Yes, I told you that we went fabric shopping on Saturday, but that was not the beginning nor the end of our travels. First we stopped at CB2 to return a throw pillow liner that had unfortunately been sliced long before we bought it and was spewing down everywhere. Thanks to CB2's great customer service, they overlooked the fact that the return period had long since passed in order to provide us with something that wasn't basically broken. We also checked out their lamp selection, as mentioned here and ended up saying "meh" to just about everything.

We didn't leave the store empty-handed. We left with these cuties:

Aren't they adorable? Subtly seasonal but totally appropriate to have out now. We should probably pick up some new tea lights, because the ones pictured are both a.) completely useless and b.) the last ones we own in the universe.

We didn't stop there. After our trip to The City Quilter, we dropped in at a flea market across the street (the best use of a parking garage I have ever seen), looked through some vintage post cards and otherwise enjoyed ourselves without buying a thing.

We then ventured on to West Elm to check out some other lamps we'd been thinking about. We are now in a lamp holding pattern because we hate everything. The ones I thought I liked at West Elm seem entirely too tall. I need to figure out how tall table lamps should be. I think I need some sort of decorating encyclopedia. Does such a thing exist?

But we didn't leave that store empty-handed, either. After pondering a couple of their Christmas trees, we decided to think some more about our eco-friendly tree selection. We couldn't resist this little display:

We picked up a star anise-covered decorative ball and paired it with some bright green acorns in one of our crystal bowls. I wish I had smell-o-vision so you could get a whiff of the star anise. It smells as subtly festive as it looks!

Last, but not least, is the bowl I could not leave the store without:

It is currently packed with 8 pounds of apples (which all fit, by the way), because I asked Husband to pick up some apples for apple sauce. I may have written "8 pounds" on his shopping list. I did not actually intend for him to buy that many, but the more the merrier for this awesome hammered aluminum bowl and our future apple sauce!

I had been pondering the perfect fruit bowl for our lovely yellow table, and I can't tell you how amazing I think the silver looks with the yellow. With the addition of our folding chairs (which lived in Philadelphia with Husband for two years), I think the kitchen is coming along just as steadily as the living room without putting so much effort into it!

And that's how we do festive at the Philirao house.

fabric store shennanigans

I did it!

Remember when I talked about how scared I was to go to fabric stores in New York? Well, after two weeks of putting it off (a freak October snowstorm and preparing lunch for my in-laws precluded trips on the last two Saturdays), we got up early and went this Saturday.

I did a bunch of research to find the most affordable upholstery fabric stores in New York. On Friday night, I decided to do a little last-minute Yelping just to make sure I had all my options in order.

Let's backtrack to discussing this with my mother, who is a proficient quilter and frequent buyer of fabric.

Mom: You should go to City Quilter. I wish I could go there. It looks amazing.
Me: Mom, I'm not making a quilt. They won't have anything that I need or want.

Now let's go back to this Friday night Yelping escapade. Want to guess what place had the highest ratings when I typed in "upholstery fabric" and "new york, ny" on Yelp?

Yep.  The City Quilter.

My mother is often freakishly, supernaturally right about these things. And she would freak out in this store. It's the most beautiful crafting haven I have ever seen in this city. And I have been to my fair share of paper stores (a secret love of mine).

They had, of course exactly what we wanted. And in our price range.

The only down side is that these are not "upholstery" fabrics per se. They're your average cottons, the weight of which is absolutely fine with me and my sewing expert: Mom. Your average bolt of cotton, however, is about 44" wide. Which is really annoying when you want to cut a bunch of 24" squares, like I do.  We talked it out with the nice girl cutting our fabric and got 3 yards of each of these amazing fabrics:

Aren't they stunning?!


Do I think they coordinate exactly perfectly with each other? Of course not. I am really, really, really weird about matching. But we both love every single one of them and I don't think we could part with any of them. They each match the couch and bring out different aspects of that lovely rich chocolaty brown. They each coordinate with our throw pillow of inspiration. And they all look cool with the rug.

They'll learn to be friends.

Let's take another look.

Swoon.


If you look closely, you will notice that the top one is drawings of houses, the middle one is a light print of buildings, and the bottom one is names of cities. We are nothing if not thematic.

I suppose we would have been better off--or my matching-mind would be more at ease--had we stayed within the same shelf when picking out our fabrics. The fabrics near, say, the city names, were all tonally similar and would have gone together beautifully. This says a lot for how well City Quilter is arranged, because not only are color families placed together, they're also tonally arranged so each divided shelf would make a beautiful tone-on-tone quilt. But Husband and I are not ones to limit ourselves, and we really loved these three fabrics. Husband had a great time in the store--he may have been the only man in it--and really enjoyed their inventory of city-themed fabrics. I love that ours are abstract and therefore more subtle.

The more I look at them (they're sitting in the chair so I can stare at them while I'm on the couch), the more I love them. I can't wait to have them covering our pillows!

framing failure

I really wish this post were a documentation of our success in matting and framing our calendar prints.

It's not.

Here's where I admit that Husband and I aren't pros in anything that we do around the house. Cutting matboard is among the things we've never done before. Therefore, we did not have the tools to cut matboard. Yesterday, while out on a shopping extravaganza (to be detailed later on), we stopped in A.I. Friedman and found the exact mat cutter I had picked out online. And since we needed a ruler, I picked up one that I thought matched.

I didn't.

I bought the Logan Series 1100 handheld "freestyle" mat cutter and the Logan "Adapt-A-Rule" ruler.

Although they were in the same darn display, these two items are not compatible. The "Adapt-A-Rule" is compatible with Logan Series 2000, 4000, and 5000, as noted here. I thought it would work. It's a straightedge, right?

Wrong, wrong, wrong.

I refuse to show you my finished product. The blade of the "freestyle" cutter slipped under the ruler, creating a sweet little curve near where I started cutting. Not ideal for a crisp mat.

Thank you, Logan people for making such easy-to-open packaging. I was able to make my horrible looking mat, stop myself from doing more, and put everything back in the package to pretend nothing bad ever happened.

I learned a lesson:  Read the packaging!


I had looked up mat cutters online, and I'm pretty sure I found the Series 2000 and decided to buy it. Did I write down the series number? No.  Did I look to see if there were other model numbers? No.  Did I buy two items that probably work really well, but not together? Yes.

I'll be either returning the "freestyle" cutter or exchanging it for a series 2000 if A.I. Friedman has that one. I can't recall if I saw that one in the display. You know, right next to the ruler it's compatible with.

Why is one cutter better than the other? The 2000 (and higher) models clip on to the ruler. Meaning that sucker is not going to move from one end of the cut to the other. Which was exactly my problem.

I did manage to stop myself from doing more, making a mess, and hating myself. I'd rather wait and do it right than charge through and do a terrible job.

In the words of my father, who has successfully matted several pictures with none of these tools, "Mats are a pain in the _ _ _ to cut."

We did have some success on our outing yesterday. I'll show you soon! Today will instead be spent cooking applesauce, pumpkin bread, and squash soup. Our home will smell as good as it looks!

framing up some empty space

We've been cooking up a big framing project for the past couple of weeks.

It involves a calendar:

And this space:

As you can see, our beloved neighborhood find--an Impressionist painting of a Parisian street--is not longer cutting the mustard on the huge space above the couch. Not only is it off-center, it's just too small for that huge white space. This couch is slightly lower, and the darker color contrasts our (horribly bland rental) wall color in the least flattering way. And those other two Impressionist prints are just sort of floating there, looking haphazardly planned and tiny.

So we need something bigger to really make a statement above the couch.

I don't know about you, but I have bought more calenders than I can count with the noble intention of framing the artwork after the year was over. I have never once succeeded in my goal. Husband picked this out in a wonderful paper shop in Rhinebeck, New York, and once again we intended to frame some of the prints. Cut to now, when we have uncharted territory above the couch.

Who wouldn't want to look at vintage travel ads every day?

Did you know that we love Greece?

The vintage feel goes with the Modernist vibe of our space without going overboard. It also incorporates one of our passions--travel--into our living room. Because design should be personal!

So how are we going to accomplish this wall hanging task? With two simple tools. Eight 13x16 frames and eight ivory mats:

The frames are from West Elm's Gallery Frame collection, which is totally affordable if you buy one or two. If you buy eight...well, it's an investment. But even if and when we decide to change up our artwork, we'll have these frames forever. They're excellent quality and even came with white mats cut for 8x10 pictures!

The matboard is from a local art supplier. That was a fun Saturday morning adventure. We woke up fully intending to nosh on bagels for breakfast and head out to fabric stores for our throw pillow cover project. But I soon got overwhelmed, because fabric stores sounded like a fully-day trip, and my in-laws were visiting the next day (and I wanted the apartment to look even better than usual). So when we woke up, I suggested looking for framing materials, since the frames had arrived the day before. I love that I can stay in bed and do this searching on my iPhone. Before we got dressed I had found UADC, a short 3 subway stops from our apartment. We got our bagels and headed off to the warehouse. And a warehouse it was. We crept up some creepy stairs into a creepy hallway and looked at each other. We decided if the inside was creepy, we'd go home. Inside we found a no-frills warehouse supplier and a very thorough salesperson! It wasn't our usual shopping experience, but when the mats came to a total of $14 (and we even bought two extras to mess up on!), we were in love. They were able to match the color of the calendar paper exactly, and cut the mats to fit the frames perfectly. If I had the measurements of each of the prints, they would have cut the openings for me, too! But I love a challenge. I will definitely return for future projects, including the mounting of a gorgeous Monet print we bought in Paris almost four years ago.

Moral of the story: Never leave Queens. You can buy anything you need in Queens. In fact, come to Queens to buy things!

All this is super-duper great.  But it's not the best part.  This is the best part:

See that pink piece of paper? It's a mounting guide, and one comes with every single frame. We bought six 5x7 frames for some wedding pictures, and those came with mounting guides as well. You see, we haven't bought one of these hang and level tools, and who knows how well that would work for these particular frames (which require two nails to hang). So we can tape these suckers to the wall, see if my handy-dandy iLevel app works effectively, and voila! we'll know exactly where to place our nails. Did I mention they even have pictures of the hanging hardware in the exact location? Pretty darn genius.

I still need to pick up a good blade to cut the matboard, and a T-square to make sure my angles are good, but this project is coming along! Before long we won't even need a TV because we'll just want to stare at our walls.

stay tuned!

For the record, the Philiraos are alive and well and will blog again! I know you were worried.

We have had a dearth of fun "after" photos lately as we assemble the moving parts for our next set of projects, but I have a preview of our framing extravaganza in the works. This includes a shout-out to our beloved borough for being a place we can get ten13x16 matboards for under $20, making it the cheapest part of our framing project.

In the mean time, we have been fully enjoying our reinvigorated living room, watching movies on the Movie Sofa, vacuuming up a storm, possibly knitting a ranch house (see the greatest film ever made for this reference), and entertaining family and friends. One of the greatest perks of this project has been the initiative to have people over more often. Not only are we proud of what we've done, we have tons of seating in the living room, and a conversation-oriented layout to boot! We had one of our closest friends over on Friday (for mushroom-centered dinner and some Magnolia cupcakes) and we my in-laws over yesterday for a big pot of soup (pictures to follow) and other Mark Bittman specialties.

We were absolutely triumphant both times! On Friday I added the garlic at the wrong moment (too late), but the wine and beer had already started flowing, so no one cared. If all eat semi-raw garlic, no one notices. That's your pro tip of the day.

Yesterday was extra triumphant because I made biscuits from scratch and was totally unstressed! Husband entertained with amuse-bouches (olives and hummus) in the living room while I used a wine glass to cut biscuits (pro tip #2: don't buy biscuit cutters if your drawer space is limited; you're bound to have a glass in the correct size).

We then amused the parental units with canned Greek specialties at our local European store, got rid of a box of VHS tapes (remember those?) and sent them home with leftovers.  Homemade minestrone for the win!

I have the day off tomorrow (it's Election Day and I work at a university--another win!), so I am planning do my civic duty:  laundry.  There are no contested races in my area, so voting is not as imperative as it could be. We may make an appearance anyway, because we're cool like that. I also hope to blog about our awesome framing project. You are going to love it. I know I do.

a relaunch of sorts

In case you haven't noticed, the blog grew a new name in the past few weeks! That's right, we're Philirao, Inc. Much more fitting, and now that I'm directing your attention to it, permanent.

Friends, I wish I had more to share. I wish I'd either a.) done anything interesting in the apartment or b.) at least taken pictures of the living room minus Sad Elephant.

I did not.

In the next few posts--before we get to some exciting projects this weekend--I'm going to introduce you to the Philiraos. Why should you care about our living space if you don't know us? While I realize that most everyone reading this knows us, we still have a darn good story. It will also prepare you for some fun decor that's coming up in the future. We love to travel and a lot of what we surround ourselves with comes from our travels. Also we got married once and I'm finally framing pictures of that event.

In other news, I attempted to use As-Yet-Unnamed-Modernist Couch to cure a migraine last night, and it failed me miserably. New Couch isn't perfect.

Stay tuned!

getting by with a little help from our friends (and my calendar)

First things first:

Sad Elephant is getting a new home!

Sad Elephant in his sad glory*

* photo included for reference in case you, like my father, are unaware that "Sad Elephant" refers to a couch. And in case you are also unaware, yes, the Philiraos name a large majority of their belongings.

Most likely, he'll be moving in with one of our dear friends, who likes him far more than her current couch. That is, if he manages to fit in the back of her brother's car. All signs (and measurements) point to yes.

Also, I would like to point out that it is a good idea to put things on one's calendar. When I called for my Salvation Army pickup, I wrote down the date on my scratch pad. I entered the date, time, and confirmation number into my phone, along with the number to call and change the appointment.

The date was Friday, November 4th.

I proceeded to transmute this date into Friday, October 28th, aka: tomorrow. Pretty sure I did that out of desperation to get Sad Elephant out of our house. He kinda-sorta fits in the room (space-wise), but he's really impinging on our pilates practice space. And my pilates practice in general.

Yes, a couch refuses to let me exercise. New couch doesn't help the situation, as it is really freaking comfortable.

Husband and I are really happy that someone we know is taking Sad Elephant. True, we have been eager to get rid of him and move on to our modern living room, but we still have an emotional attachment to the couch. We've spent probably a year cuddling on that couch, if that's possible. (I did the math. Five years living together, a few hours a day spent cuddling on the couch, we've probably spent a year on it. What? We're excellent cuddlers. We'd win gold in the cuddle olympics.) This is not to say that we will go over to our friend's apartment and cuddle on our former couch. That would be weird. Cuddlers, yes. Weird, no. (At least we try not to be.)

So, in this situation, we'll have visitation rights. We're giving the couch up for adoption. It's a great way to treat your furniture. Show it that it's still loved, just by someone else now.

Best part of all of this?  Because the Salvation Army pickup is actually next Friday, if the couch refuses to fit in the back of the car, it still has someplace to go, and I don't have to wait for another appointment. (Because the Salvation Army has the waiting list of a really fancy restaurant. For serious.)

I hope, for everyone involved, this works out painlessly.

I hope, in the future, I will stop referring to pieces of furniture with personal pronouns.  (Haven't determined if new couch is masculine or feminine. Perhaps neuter. I think it refuses to gender identify, as it is modernist.)

downsizing the library (or: why i'm a literary pirate)

Update: For a much smarter way to say some of the things I attempted below, see this post on Apartment Therapy.

I have a Masters in English. Throughout grad school, I called myself a "literary pirate."

Why? Specifically because in addition to the late works of Thomas Hardy, I truly appreciate the pleasure of young adult novels. Trashy ones, often times. I have read Twilight and although it is hardly well written, I appreciated it for what it was: a young adult romance full of misguided angst. (I didn't like the controlling hero or the heroine's self-definition through her love interest, but something about the crappy writing pulled me in and wouldn't let me go until it was all over.)

I have also worked in romance publishing. For a small, independent, mass-market publisher that couldn't hold on to good writers because it couldn't pay them what larger houses could. I have read a lot of mid-grade romance. And there are plenty of worse things I could have done for eight hours a day.

This could easily turn into a treatise about the values of popular fiction. I won't go there. Suffice it to say, I love to read and my tastes are not as discriminating as I once thought.

And I love books. I never thought I'd see the day when I'd even ponder buying an e-reader. I also never thought I'd see the day that I wouldn't by CDs, but that day has come and gone.

I love books, but I also love trees. And if trees don't have to die--or I don't have to be surrounded by dead trees--in order for me to read a book, I am all about that.  My expansive library had, in recent years, turned into a burden. It haunted me a little. I was already reeling from the fact that even after the purchase of a rather large bookcase a few years ago, I have no room for any more books. And then I went to grad school and had to buy probably 50 more. Husband has books from his parents' house and from grad school that live in boxes because we simply have no room for them.

And you know what's not happening to these books while they're littering my shelves and decorating my walls? They are not being read. And at the end of the day, a book is meant to be read. The majority of books are not decorative. The ones I have--mainly novels--are not coffee table books. They are gorgeous when they're all lined up, but that, in my opinion, is not their purpose. I'm a defender of literacy and someone who must have a book with her at almost all times. I read on the subway, I read in order to fall asleep, I read when I'm bored, I read for utmost pleasure. I can honestly say that, in my memory, there has never been a time when I wasn't reading a book. Meaning, there has never been a moment when you could ask me, "What are you reading?" and I wouldn't have an answer. I am always reading. I may have just started, I may be in the middle, or I may be desperate to get to the end, but I always have a book to go home to. But only read one book at a time. It's only physically possible to read one book at a time.

Ergo, I have hundreds too many.

I had to be vicious.  I had to be a pirate about it. I had to loot my library indiscriminately and box it up without thinking too hard about it. I would only keep things that met very specific criteria (favorite authors and books, gifts, anthologies, and things like Proust had to stay). I also did this when Husband was out, because he's not quite a literary pirate yet.

I packed until I ran out of boxes, and 175 books later we have significantly downsized our library. Husband came home, looked sad, forced me to babble something like I did two paragraphs ago, and then proceeded to unpack his boxes of books from other locations and pack a lot of them up as well.

I think the folks at the Salvation Army are getting a great deal. Since they're getting the better part of the library of a literary scholar (in pirate guise), these books are annotated. I took out about 6 Post-It pads worth of notes, flags, and other sticky items. Would I want to buy already-underlined and marked up books? No. But maybe someone else will, and they'll learn from my notes and underlining.

I also defiantly left my name in most of them. It's like writing your name on a dollar bill. Maybe I'll get it back one day.

Here are the results:

Note: These were full.

Not shown: three more boxes.

It's a disorganized mess, but the books are going to a better place, where they will ideally be sold to people who will read them and love them. There's Dickens and Austen in there, Flaubert and Turgenev, Bronte and Bridget Jones's Diary.

I'm already having thoughts--I kept a Christopher Rice novel to reread and now I want to reread all my Christopher Rice books--but I know I'll feel better when I have new, light shelves covered with meaningful artifacts from our travels and our life.

Salvation Army just needs to come now so I don't have any more time to think about it.

What about you? Does the mere idea of downsizing your library make you rock and suck your thumb? Or have you always had a carefully pared-down collection?

shedding some light on the situation

As mentioned previously, lamps have given me a minor headache. Or a major OCD attack. You see, I have two fixations I'm trying to work though while simultaneously redecorating our living room. They are as follows:

• I have what I have recently termed an unhealthy obsession with symmetry.
• I am extremely rigid in my ideas of what matches.

 Are these necessarily bad fixations? In the scheme of things, no. A little symmetry never hurt anyone, and in the long run, rigid matching is more attractive than not matching at all. But I think they're limiting me. They came to a head when it came to lamps.

First I immediately thought we needed two matching lamps to go on our end tables. Because that's just what you do, right? This directly butts heads with Husband's and my lighting needs and preferences. I like what could be termed "mood lighting." I (pretty vehemently, maybe violently) dislike overhead lighting. Husband of course likes lots of lighting and thinks overhead lighting is pretty effective at that. Our living room and bedroom have ceiling fans (an awesome feature in a New York apartment, I might add), which conveniently feature lights. I get a little stabby when Husband turns them on, particularly in the bedroom. Overhead lights are, to me, for the kitchen. For places in which you'll be working. Not for cozying-up places. I prefer not to be on display while cuddling up watching Dancing with the Stars. Husband also likes what I term "funeral parlor lamps." You know, floor lamps whose fixtures face upward like this. Apparently they are traditionally called "torcheres." I take my terminology from my mother, and I have seen them in funeral parlors. I think they're fine for providing additional lighting, but not for right-by-the-couch task lighting. I'm not saying Husband wants these as our primary lamps. He just likes them more than I do.

Keep these differences in mind as we proceed.

Next, my rigid matching problems. This extends to all areas of my life that involve matching. Dressing, makeup, decorating, perhaps even cooking. And I'm really anal about it. I currently think our throw pillows don't adequately match with our rug. Time the throw pillows spend directly adjacent to the rug? Zero. So I'm going with it, because they aren't diametrically opposed and coordinate enough not to be jarring. When first thinking about lamps, and their shades in particular, I wondered if they were supposed to match the rug. I don't know why I chose the rug as the item in the room they should definitely match. Balance? Something at that height should match something on the floor? I just wanted to be weird? Probably the latter.

I got over that pretty quickly, because if I hadn't, my lamp shades would need to look like an abstract aerial view of the Midwest in order to match my rug precisely.

So whatever darn shade comes with the lamp I like is the shade that the lamp will wear for the foreseeable future. Unless the lamp randomly comes with a shade screen-printed with, like the Kardashians or large dice or perhaps some chevrons. I have chevron issues. Also Kardashin issues. Dice are fine.

In order to break myself of the symmetry habit--and focus on balance instead--I thought maybe we could each pick out a lamp. Thus satisfying the new balenced-not-crazy-symmetrical initiative and our different lighting needs and preferences.  Ergo: I get a table lamp on "my" side of the couch, and Husband gets a standing lamp on "his" side of the couch. (He really likes lighting to be high. He is rather tall, but less so when he is sitting on the couch.)

Here are our ideas:

Possible table lamp for me (from West Elm)

Possible standing lamp for Husband (from CB2)

Putting them next to each other like that rankles both my matching and my symmetry tendencies, so I'm going to try and write them away. The lamps are similar in these ways:

• Exposed cords (the glass jar lamp's cord runs through it, while the standing lamp's cord runs down the whole of it [and allows you to adjust the height!]).
• Drum shades (not exactly the same size, but the same shape).
• White shades (it doesn't look that way in the top photo, but the glass jug's shade is actually white.
• Organic materials. True, a glass jug is nothing like a wooden frame, but they're both organic materials. The wood frame definitely has sharper lines, but it does complement the round glass bottom...by being the exact opposite? 

I think I'm okay with it. I sort of prefer the wood over a metal floor lamp, just because both glass and metal might be too shiny (and sterile?), and the wood adds warmth. And our room is cozy. We'd like to keep it that way.

Of course, now that I say this, we will go see these lamps in person and Husband will not like his lamp. He is unsure about the exposed cord, which is bright blue. I can work with it, I think. I will probably like the glass jug lamp in person, as my only qualification for a lamp was "glass jug base." Since it's called the Glass Jug Table Lamp, it's obviously meant for me.

As soon as we began looking at lamps, we discovered how much more expensive they were than what we'd hoped. Everyone wants a $30 lamp, right?  But we figure these, like our couch and rug before them, are long-term investments. We hope to have these lamps for years and years (hence our deliberation and blogging about them so darn much), so spending upwards of $100, while not a drop in the bucket, is something we can rationalize in the long run.

Yeah, this isn't a blog about saving money in home design. This is a blog about "re"-decorating an apartment you never decorated to begin with. (Hence the "re.") Investments abound.

We are saving money in other places. Wait till you see my blog about wall art!