leanemarie's Profile

I do a combination. I have several old family candles, nativity, nutcrackers, etc... When it came time to get my first tree, I didn't have any ornaments. I then went out and did all white lights with gold, silver and copper decorations. I find that I really like the old meets new, especially because I just bought my frist house and it's 1950s retro meets loft apartment.

Great post! My mom actually painted her office Benjamin Moore's Pumpkin Spice. It looks sensational when paired with dusty deep blues, ambers and other jewel tones.

Thank you so much for this post, I'm in the middle of the very same thing! I have an old Necchi sewing machine that's inside of a cabinet and I wanted to paint the tired wooden cabinet a nice glossy white with nice gold hardware.

I'm in the middle where I realized that the whole thing just looks terrible and I'm needing to use my disc sander to remove all of the white paint and start from scratch. Mind you I'm doing this in the front bedroom of my 2nd floor apartment.

This was so encouraging, thank you!

I think a nice mink colored subway tile with a dark grout could be really nice as a backsplash and maybe do a dark rich (almst black stain) on the cabinets or perhaps paint them a light olive color. At this point I'd go with a white wall to make the other colors really pop.

My problem doesn't involve my single night owl neighbors. They're mostly considerate of when they do things like vaccuum. What I can't stand is when people let their kids scream and laugh and carry on at 7:00am on a weekend. Vaccuuming has been known to take place as early as 6:00am.

I'm a night person and I really do my best to stay out of my front room which is right above the kid's bedroom, not to use appliances, etc... in the evenings. You'd think they could be more considerate about mornings.

When I was in high school, I was also weight conscious and tended to bring a protein shake for my noon time meal. For that I'd just run to my locker, grab the shake and find an isolated corner to down my lunch quickly. I didn't feel like attracting the attention in the lunch room.

When I was 16 I was allowed to leave campus for lunch. Thankfully my house was a quick drive from the high school so I usually ate leftovers from dinner the night before.

Oh wow, my dad and I used to laugh hysterically over Hildi's designs! Meanwhile two thumbs way up for Vern Yip. So much love!

I've been trying to eat fairly healthy but not go overzealous. In the mornings I've been doing a cheese free quiche with fat free half and half filled with a ton of veggies and a glass of oj. Lunches tend to be a green salad with grilled chicken breasts, a whole wheat pasta with tomato sauce, veggies and grilled chicken, or something along those lines. Dinner has been a bowl of soup with lots of veggies and a hot turkey sandwich on really good whole wheat bread.

If I get hungry during the day, I eat some trail mix which I make with unsalted peanuts, walunts, pecans, soy nuts and raisins.

That plus coupled with 3 or 4 trips to the gym a week and I'm feeling pretty darned good!

I personally don't make my own stock. I live alone and going to that extreme for a homemade soup is just a little too much for my tastes. However, I always always always buy a low sodium boxed broth plain then add a ton of fresh veggies and other ingredients to make the soup, along with plenty of seasoning.

I think the stainless might be a little too modern with your cupboards. I love the gray though. maybe you should go with a nice charcoal subway tile.