love is blonde

When the husband and I were mapping out a rough budgetary sketch for the year, we set aside a figure for fertility treatments. It’s not like we were excited to spend money on such a thing, but we just hoped it would be worth every penny.

And then! Through some combination of good fortune and the Obamacare Fairy (kidding), I was able to switch to new insurance that would cover our entire fertility treatment plan. The whole freaking thing, minus a few copays. It is awesome.

The only problem is that instead of mentally depositing the budgeted funds back into our savings account, I started to think about it as FREE MONEY. And Free Money is extremely dangerous.

Free Money forced me to buy the single most expensive furniture purchase in my life. Meet my four new Tolix chairs.

Free Money also made me buy a new purse, a bunch of new clothes, and way too many birthday gifts for the husband (which I never do because I am usually a grinch). I can’t decide if I should feel guilty, or grateful, or if I should just go ahead and make out with those chairs already.

Let’s take a little break from the fashion talk and move over to some house talk. Back in March of 2010, my awesome parents came to town for a week of house renovations, which included removing the most beat-ass front door ever known to man, and installing a shiny new glass panel front door.

The old door had about 14 layers of paint in various stages of peeling-off, a giant crack down the wood, and a knob that no one has owned a key to for at least a decade, which resulted in more than one awkward incident of getting locked out of my own house, once during a blog-friend party, which resulted in Jennifer and me trying to break into my house though the back door, but getting so scared halfway down the back alley that we ran back out to the street screaming like children.

So it’s an understatement to say that the new front door is a thing of glory. It’s energy efficient and lets in so much light, which my little rowhouse desperately needs since there are only windows in the front and back.

However, along with letting in light, it also let in peering eyeballs from the street. If you’re standing on the stoop, you can see all the way through the house to the back wall. Which means that my neighbors probably spent a lot of time staring at me throwing marvelous dinner parties staring at my television.

After approx. one bazillion hours of researching the best solution for the door, with a goal of maximizing light and privacy and beauty and minimizing cost and bulkiness, we decided to purchase Emma Jeffs window film from her USA retailer, 2jane.com.

Here are some before, during, and after pics of the installation. I’d love to hear what you think!

Here is what the film looks like on the roll. We had to measure and cut to size but it was really easy.

Here is my Handyman Husband, who is not really handy at all, but he is cute!

We decided to leave about 5 inches free at the top and the bottom, in part because I didn’t want to buy the gigantic size that was double the price, and in part because the cat likes to see what’s going on in the outside world. It would probably look more “finished” if we covered the whole thing, but it just made sense to do it this way.

Installation was surprisingly easy. You separate the film from the backing paper, spray everything with a mist of water, apply the film to the glass, and squeegee out the air bubbles. Seriously, that’s it. It should last a very long time, but would be easy for the next owner to remove, with no damage to the window.

The look from outside the door is subtle and frosted. Light and color shine though.

I searched high and low for window films (of all kinds, temporary, permanent, in-between) and these are by far the most modern and lovely ones on the market, especially in the USA. It seems like folks in the UK have more options, perhaps those Brits are on to something with the window film and we still need to catch up in the states? I am happy with the Pearl pattern we chose, but I also really liked the other patterns available.

At one point, we ran into a slight snafu because some moisture got trapped and was causing a cloudy bubble in the middle of the film. You can sort of see it in the photo above. We sent a question about how to fix it off to the Emma Jeffs website, and within 24 hours received personal replies from Emma herself (!) and Roxie, the owner of 2jane. Their advice helped us solve the problem (it just took one little pinprick and a little time) and I was floored by the stellar customer service. Although it wasn’t necessary, they even offered to replace it for free if we couldn’t solve the problem. I dare you to get that from Home Depot!

This was a fun little project, and now I can enjoy the light streaming into my house, as well as enough privacy to wear my pajamas past noon without fear of getting caught.

Disclaimer: We bought the window film ourselves. Nothing was given to me free, except Andrew’s three minutes of manual labor and his modeling skills.

Just a few little items today, chickadees:

1. I am minutes away from buying plane tickets to Colorado in two weeks to spend time snuggling my nephew and playing with these darlings. This makes me so happy.

2. The lovely K and I are unveiling a new (yet familiar to you old-timers) project tomorrow. So please do come back!

3. It only too me 3.25 years, but my guest bedroom has gone from this:

To this:

And that makes me pretty darn happy, too. Anything making you happy today?

…and a very happy new year!

We are spending the long weekend in Delaware with my in-laws, where we will eat lots of delicious food and be terrorized by our cat, who decided to come with us. Okay, so maybe we forced him to come against his will and now he is making us pay dearly, by doing things like climbing ladders in the middle of the night. I still have no idea how he got past my advanced pillow-barrier but I woke up this morning to a cat on the top rung, beginning his descent.

I hope Santa brings you everything you asked for, and he doesn’t, may I suggest you buy it for yourself during the post-holiday sales? I tried to keep things simple this year – just a few gifts, two cute burlap stockings, and one batch of bike-riding Christmas cards. As you can imagine, Andrew loved posing for this photo.

One

My sister-in-law (I wish I could just call her “my sister” but it gets confusing because then you might think I’m talking about my “real” sister, and anyway…) gave me this awesome monogrammed recipe box as a gift for being in her wedding. I love the colors, the monogram, the pattern, and the lucite box.

Finally last weekend I handwrote my go-to recipes on it, including an amazing homemade Caesar salad dressing from my friend Jess. This dressing is kicky with the garlic and about 4,683,294 times better than anything you can get in a bottle. Make it for yourself, or for your honey, or for a dinner party (preferably with homemade croutons)!

Two

I took an eight-session photography class this summer to get acquainted with my new camera. I’ve still got a whole lot to learn, but wanted to share my favorite photo I’ve taken so far. It’s from a hallway at the Smithsonian American Art Museum, one of my favorite go-to places when friends and family come to visit DC.

Three

Its a bird, it’s a bird, it’s another bird! Actually I think I count eight birds in my newly accessorized powder room. I’m awaiting the arrival of some funky monogrammed hand towels and then I promise to show you the whole thing. It’s my new fave spot in the house (which sounds kind of lame…but true!)