rest days.

well, in case you're not on the twitter with me, or on the facebook with me [you can access either via my pretty little social network buttons], you might not yet know that for all 31 days of october, i will be writing.

that's right, folks. 31 consecutive blog posts. and it all starts on saturday, october 1st.

now those of you who have been reading this blog for awhile may think, "what the heck could ann possibly talk about for 31 days?? please God, let it not be mustaches." well you're in luck. God heard your prayers and there will not be 31 days of me in various fake mustaches, digital or otherwise. [you're welcome, suzanne. :) ]

actually, i will be writing for 31 days about making a rental a home. because guess what?? that's what my life (aside from worketty work) is all about right now. or it's what it should be all about. [did i mention that i didn't unpack my kitchen for like 6 weeks?? is that normal??] clearly, i'm not an expert, but i have learned a few tricks through the past 5 rentals i've lived in.

so buckle up. there's a whole lotta home stuff coming you way beginning saturday. :)

the war on ants. or, reason #2 on why i'm giving up on life.

ever since the day we moved in to our row house, there has been an issue with ants. i present to you,

the war on ants: a drama in seven acts.

act I: traps

there were a bunch of ants in our kitchen before we even unpacked. so the first or second night, when we went to walmart, i went the cheap route and got a bunch of traps to put around the kitchen. i figured i'd kill them off before i unpacked.

little did i know that i would later laugh at how simple i thought this all would be.

act II: spray inside and out.

after a few days, when the traps were still there, but the quantity of ants traipsing across our counter was not diminished, and all our kitchen was still packed away in boxes, we headed back to walmart. in my very first apartment (also an old old rowhouse) i also had ant issues. and i bought this gel stuff that you put near their trails and they eat it and die. so while we stood in the "kill pests" aisle and i swore that the stuff existed, steve convinced me that an indoor/outdoor spray would be our best next step.

we still hadn't unpacked anything, so it was relatively easy to spray this stuff all over the counter top and then wipe it off later (according to the directions).

steve also sprayed out back (the kitchen is at the back of the house), and there he saw a long stream of ants literally marching two by two (hurrah! hurrah!) into and out of our house via a crack in the brick. so he sprayed like the dickens on that trail and around the base of the back of the house.

and it actually seemed like it was going to work. that is, until...

act III: the back yard work.

someone (and i won't name names) decided that they really wanted a backyard, and so their kind sweet and loving husband went out back and turned this

into that.

which was wonderful, because we were being all manifest destiny about our backyard, claiming what was ours. and meanwhile, disturbing what i can only assume was an incredible ant metropolis, because all of a sudden... 

act IV: they're baaaaack...

the next night, steve wandered downstairs in the middle of the night to get himself a glass of water. when he turned on the lights, the ants were everywhere!!!!

because we were out of ant death spray, and the traps (still on the counter) were obviously useless, steve quickly googled what household items ants hate. and answer?? cayenne pepper and vinegar. since i still had not unpacked the kitchen (i wanted to make sure the ants were really gone--glad i waited since they apparently weren't), vinegar was nowhere to be found. however, tony chachere's creole seasoning was within reach, and definitely has pepper in it.

for those of you non-cajuns, tony's is a staple in any cajun house or restaurant, and you'll find it more often on your table than you will find heinz ketchup. here's what the shaker looks like:

in the morning, i woke to cajun seasoning all over the counter tops, all over the kitchen...

i wasn't sure whether my husband has suddenly taken up sleep walking (and sleep cooking??) or had possibly gone insane. i made sure to check as soon as he was awake. and while there weren't any ants on the counters when i first found the seasoning all over it, it also wasn't a long-term solution.

act V: liquid traps.

i was starting to get pretty annoyed. i put stuff up on twitter and fb and the resounding response was "get the terro." and "terro outdoors works every time!" "it will kill the whole colony!!" so out to the local ace hardware i went, to get me some terro. luckily, the guy who helped me concurred with my online peeps and sent me home with this:

i personally love the back of the package because it lists all the types of ants it will kill. included in that list is "crazy ants." is that a specific breed, or a diagnosis?

again, steve and i followed the directions and put them outside on the obvious trails, especially the re-instated trail to the back of the house.

we watched them walk around the traps, and in the traps, and we tapped our fingers together maniacally, whispering, "that's right, little ants. eat away. enjoy your feast, for tomorrow you DIE!!!" then we threw our heads back and let out an evil laugh to the moon. [note:: embellished for dramatic effect.]

oh, and by the way?? this fail proof method that everyone and their brother's mother recommended?? the package says that it can take 7 - 14 days. so i continued to find an ant here, and ant there in my kitchen. and i continued to squish them. i kept my kitchen in boxes and if we bought food it went in the overhead cabinets.

so we waited. and ate tuna sandwiches until we glowed in the dark. the ants were still getting in. and a small piece of me died on the inside.

act VI: let's call the landlard, shall we??

it was at this point that i decided there was no way in gehenna (that's hell in hebrew, and worse than hades according to wikipedia) that i was going to keep spending my hard earned money in a war i wasn't winning against the ants. it was time to call in our alliances ... (pause for dramatic effect, even though the title of the act gives it away) ... the landlord.

act VII: spray, reprised. [plus, let's fill those cracks, shall we??]

during our ant watching back in act V, steve noticed that the main trail went right into a pretty big crack. so we made sure to mention that to the maintenance guy that the landlord sent over. he literally bought the same. exact. outdoor. spray. that we had, and sprayed the outside. then steve showed him the crack and he caulked it up. awesome.

and that was it. we'd see a meandering ant every few days, but compared to the legions before, we just figured it had come in on our shoe. i got busy unpacking our kitchen and cooking normal people food. for all appearances, it was the end of the story.

epilogue: need your foundation inspected?? i know a few guys.

this is like those campy horror movies that even when they're finally over, there's a funny little scene to make you think that maybe the bad guy isn't dead after all.

yesterday, i moved a pile of cardboard boxes [why yes, i'm still unpacking my home 8 weeks after we moved in -- why do you ask??] and found a whole bunch of those crazy ants running for cover. i shouted a few words that begin with "die mother" and rhyme with "truckers." while i doused some paper towels with white vinegar and killed them all with my bare hands.

then i went outside to see if they'd burrowed in to the caulk. nope. they'd found another way in ... by the water spigot.

so i got a small creamer, filled it with vinegar, and doused their trail. and then i did it again today. and i'll do it every day until maintenance comes and fills the crack near the spigot.

relatedly, if you need your foundation inspected for cracks, i've got a FOOL PROOF method.

stash.

because i'm in a goofy mood today and i am using my blog as a means of procrastination from my *real* work, here's a picture of what i would look like if i had a mustache, which i know is something you've been wondering and worried about for awhile now.

and you're welcome. have a lovely weekend :)

crayon drip art.

oh man, i have been planning to do this project for what feels like for. ev. ah. i even bought the supplies over a month ago. so pour yourself an extra cup of coffee, snuggle into your couch, because i am going to share the heck outa this project :)

but before i go in to that, here's the pin(s) that inspired this pin-mitation...

i bought the crayons back in early august, and the canvas a week later. but i waited until today to actually pull the trigger ... because i was scared. you see, i have two brothers, and in our family, one of us is the artist, one is the athlete, and one is book smart. here's a hint as to which one i am ... i cried in t-ball because i was perpetually getting hit with the ball, and the closest i ever got to an art class was art history. or studio in media art. so yeah. not so great with the art-ness.

plus, the canvas was like $25!! that's a lot of money for me to waste if i choke!! but with october (and its 31 days) coming, i knew i had to wrap up a few projects. so this afternoon, i sucked it up and glued the crayons down.

i'm a sucker for rainbow order, though it's hard to decide how much red to have on the violet end, or how much violet to have on the red end. these are the decisions that kept me away for 6 weeks.

then i got out the ole hair-dryer and went to town. [some blogs said that this could only be done with a heat gun. i don't own a heat gun. other blogs said that they used a hair-dryer. so instead of spending another $25 on a tool i'll likely never use again, i got all risky business and used my crappy old hair-dryer.]

two things to note above: 1) i decided to line them all up so that you could see the names of the colors. because a) i love words and b) i'm woody-allen-grade-neurotic like that ...and, 2) this is of the crayons as i applied heat. the first thing they do is get a little greasy and the paper gets all greasy and shiny. and i basically used my hair-dryer to melt the crayons. i alternated between low and high settings, and i also adjusted the slope of the canvas to control how fast the drips went.

it was interesting because before i started, i googled "crayola melt point" and got this link, which basically told me that the melt point is the same (roughly 105 F), but that the viscosity (or how quickly it will flow down the canvas) is different for each pigment. this was TOTALLY true. i had started on the red end, and at first, it felt like all i was getting was brown to drip!! yikes!! you can kinda see that i tried to remedy that, and that combined with the fact that the red shades are a bit close, makes the red end a bit muddy.

see how the colors are more pronounced closer to the crayons, and muddier below?? yeah. [see, this is why i never could do art, i over analyze my work and beat it to death.]

above you can also see the splatter. this was a draw-back of using the hair-dryer because it not only heats the crayons, it also blows strong hot wind at them. so once they become melted, it's easy for the top melted layer to get caught in the draft and go flying. this, too, made my control-freak self shudder.

 i did love the way that the silver crayon melted!! the metalic was so neat to see running in and around the rest of the wax :)

and you can see that because the wax was hottest near the crayons, there's only a thin layer, but further away, it tended to pile up. there's some real texture that's hard to see from the straight-on photos on pinterest. i tried to show it a little more with a pseudo side shot.

and i have a few more gratuitous crayon drip art photos that i don't really have much to say about, but i'm just going to throw them in for good measure, so that you can ooh and ahh and make me feel like an artist. (bah!!)

i love the pseudo watercolor effect that happened above the crayons. [that was because the wax at the top would melt and had nowhere to flow, and then would get pushed along the top of the crayons by the air current from the hair-dryer.] the only thing i'm lacking is a photo of it hung up over the couch because ... well, it's not hung up yet :)

so what do you think?? have you done any crayon art?? i feel like it's all over pinterest, and it's a fun new medium to try :)

baltimore dmv: where my soul goes to die.

if you've been following me on twitter, you know that i've been having a rough past few days. between being sick and trying desperately to get our car registered in the state of maryland, i've not been putting many Ws up on the board. and for whatever reason, not all of my tweets are making it to facebook. so rather than blather on about the dmv, i'm just going to let the tweets tell the story...

 thursday...

monday (yesterday)...

and then tuesday (today)...

baltimore dmv: where my soul goes to die.

relatedly, i'm considering on a scale of bad to really really bad, how awful it would be to just not register my car at all. and it might totally be worth just driving a non-registered car around for the next 5 to 10 years. maybe. 

and no, i apparently do not know how to spell "bureaucracy." -12 adult points for me.

you can go with this or you can go with that.

this post has been in my head since thursday, when i had am immediate response to the shoe question i put up on twitter/facebook...

it got an overwhelming "shoe!!"

{i'd also like to point out that i'm wearing an unnecessary scarf.}

so i figured that if i could have all my friends with me while shoe shopping, why not bring them along for trying on dresses for an event, right??

see, i've got this work-related black tie event to go to tomorrow night in DC. and even though it may sound super duper fun, i will likely know no one there, and steve can't make it, so i'm feeling like the girl with no friends who is headed to prom without a date. i mean seriously, who even does black tie anyway?? rich people. that's who. rich people in DC.

so to compensate for my feeling a little like a fish out of water, i need a little help choosing my dress, so that i can have a little extra confidence. i know you know how the right outfit can do that for you.

when i looked up what black tie meant for women, the internet said a cocktail dress. which i feel like can be anything. so i looked in my closet and came up with two likely contenders. and i put them on with shoes, and took grainy pictures with my trusty (but oft annoying) iphone. no scary mustache this time--i just cropped my make-up-less head out of the shots :)

so what do you think?? should i go with this??

this dress is velvet in the skirt and some kind of sheeny fabric up top (not silk or satin because it's washable, but nice nonetheless.) the fabric makes it feel right for this time of year and i can wear normal bra plus make-me-skinnier tank top. it also makes me look a little like joan on mad men. would likely wear with short pearl necklace.

...or should i go with that??

this one is lighter, the fabric being matte jersey. and while the photo tends to make it look a little more conservative than the first, the drapey-ness can tend to show off a little cleave if you know what i mean. i can wear a normal bra, but can't wear a make-me-skinnier tank top because of the deep-V neckline. the neckline and big broach thingy can be a challenge for coordinating accessories. but this one can kinda feel sexier. but i can't decide if it's "i'm young and i'm comfortable being a curvy woman, even at a work event" kind of sexy, or "i'm young, and just moved here from the west coast, and i clearly think this is LA--in a bad way" kind of sexy.

so what do you think?? i know that the photos are terrible. but help a sister out here :)

also, i now have the fatboy slim "weapon of choice" song stuck in my head ... "you can go with this, or your can go with that..." and here's some christopher walken craziness if you have it in your head too.

making marriage work.

i'm sitting in bwi right now. i just got in from a work trip and i may be here awhile. steve's going to pick me up, and most of the time, he's already at the airport by the time i land.

but steve has a sleeping disorder. and that means that sometimes (like this week in particular) it's really hard for him to a) fall asleep and b) get good sleep. as someone who rarely has difficulty sleeping, i get cranky when i'm running on anything less than 8 hours. but for someone like steve, 8 hours of good rest is a rare luxury. [and yes, he's been to sleep specialists and the whole nine.]

so this morning, when i knew it would be the only day this week that he could sleep in & not need to be somewhere, i told him to just sleep.

so i'm here, blogging on the ole iphone, hanging out at an empty gate at bwi on a saturday morning, because being here right now is worth the small sacrifice to let my husband get some rest when he can.

and i tell you about it not because i want to flaunt what a great wife i am, [just stick around a few hours, i'm certain to do something negative to negate this small sacrifice], but because in this moment of quiet reflection at the airport, i'm reminded of what makes our marriage work so well--the small things we do for eachother that other people can't or won't do. and just as quickly as i'm willing to give up my comfort & wait awhile so he can rest, he would be equally as willing to give up his rest to make sure i don't have to wait. [believe me, i sometimes have to fight him to get the man to let me do something nice for him.]

because at the end of the day, that man is my life. i could lose my job. i could get cancer. i could have any number of awful things happen to me. and through it, i would have God and steve. and that's worth a few small sacrifices. :-)

marketing to women.

moving to baltimore is a new chapter of my life. i've been thinking about things that need to change in my life, and thinking about what i need to do to accomplish those things, etc. i thought for like 2 seconds about putting it all up on here and decided instead to get myself a notebook / journal. you know, those things where we wrote about our life before the internet??

but something happened--i made a dire mistake.

i was at target and i saw the clearance sticker and i bought it. and i brought it home. and just when i was ready to break it in, i looked at the cover and saw ... it.

i hadn't bought an "organizer," i'd bought an "organizher." an organize-her. organize. her. here's the thing ... i really hate kitschy grammar/vocabulary.

**steps up onto soap box**

maybe it started when i was a children's ministry director and i decided against changing "kids" to "kidz." because you know how it is ... when you're teaching kids about Jesus, you also need to confuse them about spelling. similarly, when marketing to women, if at all possible, try to insert words like "her" "she" etc. [no joke, i just googled for examples and pulled up a blog entittled "she-conomy: marketing to women." {insert primal scream.} what. the. frak.]

because apparently women and children are more likely to buy / like it if it's cutesy and kitschy.

well i'm only one person, but here's what i think of that::

**steps down off of soapbox**

one yard wrap.

the first thing i made from a pinterest tutorial is a pin i continue to see floating around, even 4 months later. ever seen this photo pop up on your feed??

the tutorial looked so simple that i figured it was a nice, low-risk choice for a first pin. so i went to the local fabric store and bought a yard of this fun striped cotton jersey and snipped and ended up with this: {warning, blury iphone photos ahead.}

[i hate taking pictures of myself with my iphone because it's so freaking hard, so in every photo, i'm making a crazy face, so i put on a funny disguise. so you can laugh at the funny disguise instead of my funny face :) ]

i have to admit, that i trimmed it up a bit because i'm so short, so the one yard was a bit long on my little frame. after a few washings, it seemed a bit asymmetrical, but i kinda like it that way.

the way i cut the arm holes, the back is a little bit like a racerback. it's a great little addition to a tank top + jeans outfit, and it's naturally drape-y and has this nice movement to it because of the way it lays.

but i also like to style it a few different ways when i wear it...

[the slouchy + belt is actually my favorite way to wear it, but it doesn't photograph well. so you'll just have to trust me that i really do wear this out of the house, and no, people don't think i'm homeless or wearing a blanket as a shirt. i promise.]

i also like this look because it doesn't have the hanging tails that tend to make me feel a little like a nancy kerigan.

all told, this was a super duper easy tutorial, and for super duper cheap, i have a fun vest/wrap to cheer up a white tank top + jeans outfit :)