hope for Spring

Today marks the 3rd snow day I've had in a row and the height of cabin fever. These tulips that Tim brought home for me are giving me hope for Spring.

biscuits

It's another snow day here in Baltimore, and this is my second day off from work in a row. In order to keep from being bored, I made some breakfast biscuits. I found the recipe on the internet, and they're simple yet so good.

Here's the recipe:

2 cups all-purpose flour

1 scant teaspoon salt

3 teaspoons baking powder

1 teaspoon baking soda

5 tablespoons butter

3/4 cup plus 2 tablespoons yogurt

Heat oven to 450. Mix dry ingredients together. Break up butter into small pieces and rub the butter and dry ingredients in between your fingers so that the butter is evenly dispersed. Add the yogurt and mix. Knead 10 times or so and then roll dough into about 3/4 an inch. Cut biscuits with cookie cutter, jar top, etc. Put on ungreased baking sheet and bake for 7-9 minutes or until golden brown.

I myself used whole wheat flour to make them a bit healthier. The recipe yields about 8 biscuits. I usually put on some jam before I eat them.

Delicious.

The Book Thing

The Book Thing is a free book store located about 3 blocks from our house. It's a warehouse full of books that people have donated and anyone can go and take as many books as they want. The only condition is that you cannot resell the books.The books are organized and everything. It's a pretty neat place and we go almost every weekend; it's one of our favorite parts of Baltimore.

Here's what we got on Saturday:

Great Expectations-Charles Dickens

Barrel Fever-David Sedaris

The Red Pony-John Steinbeck

Ford County-John Grisham

McCarthy's Bar: A Journey of Discovery in Ireland-Pete McCarthy

I Am the Central Park Jogger- Trisha Meili

Under the Tuscan Sun-Frances Meyer

Dreaming in Cuban-Cristina Garcia

Antic Hay- Aldous Huxley

The Bean Trees-Barbara Kingsolver

Prodigal Summer-Barbara Kingsolver

barnes and noble date

Tonight, we went to Barnes and Noble down by the harbor to spend some Christmas/birthday money.

Here's the loot:

Coin albums for Tim, two boxes of Christmas cards, My Upmost for His Highest devotional, a daily planner for my work that was half off, and Pocket Ref. Yum.

Look how pretty the cards are. One box is by William Wangerin, the guy who photographs Weimaraners, my favorite dogs. 20 cards (5 different types) came in a box, and the box only cost $3 and change because of a 75% off sale. The other box are Unicef cards that say, "Hope is a gift all people can share," which is really sweet.

house tour: living room

Since I love looking at other people's living spaces, I figured I would post some photos of our apartment for the interested masses (ie. our moms).

We live in Charles Village, which was voted one of the 10 best neighborhoods in the country by the American Planning Association. We lived in this hood last year, too, but we moved into this new apartment in August for many reasons; it's a bit bigger, light and airy and not as hot in the summer as our last place.

First up, our living room:

Sealion chasing his toy mouse on our new rug, which was a Christmas present from my sisters.
Antique pedestal side table found via craigslist for $30 and painted white; antique set of drawers found at local furniture store for only $79; beautiful antique wooden armchair (that needs reupholstering) on craigslist for only $50!

Antique lamp bases climbing up the wall were found yesterday at a salvage shop.

These plants get lots of light! My lemon tree hasn't sprouted any lemons yet and it's been almost a year since I've had it. :/

Pretty little light catcher that I got in Spring Lake, NJ (right near where my mom grew up) when I was a kid.
The pretty art piece on the right is from Tim's brother, who made it for us for our wedding. It's called "The Sage Chapel, deconstructed" and has parts of the chapel in which we were married printed on it.

The framed hearts and sailboat pictures were made by me with recycled magazines.
Found these old floral post cards in the antique shop down the street from where I work.
Stained glass my wedding gift from Tim.

Stay tuned for photos from our bedroom and our spare room/office.

old phone photos

I found these photos from last year on my cell phone...

Antique side tables bought on craigslist and painted white.

Tim on our friends' moped that they used to store inside their apartment.

Tim and Greg at Fenway Park in Boston

In Annapolis (our favorite place) on Labor Day weekend.

St. John's College in Annapolis.

salvage

We went to Housewerks today. Housewerks is a really neat architectural salvage shop.

Old stuff is a passion of mine, and we spent about 90 minutes going through their 2 floors worth of gems. The warehouse was full of window panels, old lamp parts, old sinks and bathtubs, a lot of iron gates and grates, old signage, chandeliers, and other miscellany. After getting our hands very dirty from digging around, we walked away with the following for $22:

6 iron and/or brass lamp bases (I think) and 5 coat hooks.



We hung the lamp parts up on our living room wall:

I clearly need to figure out how to take proper photos. The top picture is with a flash and looks too artificial, but the bottom one without the flash looks too fuzzy. Oh well...

We're planning on making a coat rack with the hooks, but we first need to find the right piece of salvaged, distressed wood (or even better, a nice rectangular window/stained glass panel).

painted-on greek columns

Last Saturday night was Tim's work's holiday party. It was at a place called Valley Mansion, so it's sounds very nice and all; however, the name is deceiving because it's actually a fake mansion in the middle of a strip mall in suburban Baltimore. It's literally a building with a fake stone facade in between a Planet Fitness (I think) and some other store with a McDonald's in the parking lot. Inside the banquet hall we were in, the walls had Greek columns painted on them. ahaha. It was fun, though, albeit cheesy.

At least it was an excuse for us to dress up somewhat: