Porch Remodeling

After I was tired of yard work (which I didn't complete fully). I decided to take on my porch. We have this great three season room but unfortunately it started being used as the extra room where we dump stuff that we don't know where to keep and don't wanna keep in the basement. Like our cooler or the old fan, car seats.. yes car seats... !!

Below are a few pictures of how are porch used to look.


Trust me this is no exaggeration.. its not like its cluttered because Paul is working there. It used to be that bad. I had cleaned it up several times and it looked ok, but never good enough.


As you can see there is a whole array of furniture there... wicker (some of which I bought at Craig list and other brand new at Home Depot); Chairs from our inherited dining chair set; some other random chairs. To top it, I got these really cute hot pink cushion covers from India for my in-laws; which got rejected.. so I exchanged the ones that i got for myself the year before (brown in color.. i guess more suited for them). They work great in this porch I think because they give a nice contrast to the greenery. And then I had got cushions for my wicker which are country style.. so really was a hodge-podge :).

So the first thing to do was get rid of those ugly blue blinds and put some nice drapes. I knew I wanted sheers but the challenge was the color. The problem was that with all the various hot-pink, green, brown, yellow, I had to get something that will compliment everything. And there is this chance of me inheriting black wicker furniture so I had to think ahead. First I got green-white drapes, gawd they looked hideous and nothing like what the JCPenny catalog showed; and green not sure what i was thinking.. i forgot about all the natural green around the porch :-s. So then after some thinking I decided to go with gold sheers and volla they worked. My windows are 64 inches long, so i got the sheers that are 63 inches long and figured it will work. I forgot about the 6 inches that go above the window as they need to be hanged on a wire/rod. But it didn't look that bad until I came accorss these cute crushed sheers at Christmas Tree shops at 2/3rd the price. And these new gold sheers were not plain sheers but had a little pattern so that waas nice. So I went from $150 green sheers to finally $50 gold sheers from Christmas Tree Shop :D. Below is the newly redecorated porch. It looks prettier at night in the yellow light.



After the drapes were decided on, the next challenge was what to hang them on as all the porch is made of metal and putting rods would be very tough and not exactly what I had in mind. So I decided to go with curtain wire. Paul helped me put the wire (in the picture above) and I put the curtains up. Bought some accessories, a nice bamboo rug - that compliments the drapes and finally was able to my marble plates I got from Agra.



A few trips to the mall and 2 weeks later the porch is ready for entertaining !! :)

10 dollar haricut anyone ?

Pics on demand :) :

Side View:



Yesterday, I got an awesome haircut. One which generally here costs me about $40 and in New York City about twice the price. But I got it for 10 bucks.. yes 10 bucks...

Do any of you have salons that train students who pursuing a career in hair styling ? Usually these students require models. What this means is that if you volunteer to be a model for the student you can get your haircut as cheap as free. We have a few salons like that here, good ones, and I thought I will take the risk.

They let you choose a haircut, sometimes they have restrictions like there should be at least 2 inches of hair to cut or something minor like that. The best part about this is that the student is supervised by the best stylist in the salon (usually the owner). So the parts that are difficult to cut like the bangs, the professional stylist will do it and show it to the student, so you are practically getting a haircut from them. Supervision also includes some tips for the student by the stylist which you can use for future haircuts. Like this stylist guy was telling the student how she should look for the right length to cut the bangs.. and at what length the face looks wider , so to avoid that. Next time when I get a haircut I know the perfect length for my bangs D:

It was a big risk considering this Friday I have a wedding to attend. I know P, M, or M would never ever do anything like this before an event to attend... but do try this sometime :). I got some few good tips and a great haircut :).

Amnesia

Has this ever happened to you ?

A friend of your casually comes to your office and asks you to close your eyes and says.. "Tell me what dress are you wearing today?" and you go "Oh.. ummm... errr... shooot... what the f am I wearing today ?"

Or this kind of conversation:
Friend: "How was your weekend?"
Me: "Oh it was awesome !!"
Friend: "What did you do ?"
Me: "Oh we had a lot of fun. we... ummm.. errr.. crapppp... what did I do ?"

Both of these happened to me today !!!
I am having the weirdest day of my life :-s

Alpha Bitch

I had mentioned earlier in one of my posts that I should probably write a blog about my "alpha-bitch" role in our household. We are a small family of 3 - me, my husband and our dog Clover.

"Alpha Bitch" is sometimes what my husband calls me... and not for the reasons you might be thinking. Hmmm.. how can a person be not shameful about admitting to be a bitch ?

Let me give some background. Our dog is no angel but he is the apple of our eyes !! He is just 1.5 years old and because he was our first dog ever, we ended up spoiling him. After some really bad behavior (growling and snapping !!) he is now undergoing professional training. So he is in his transition period where me and my husband are reasserting our position in the hierarchy. This might sound strange to some folks but dog owners will know exactly what I am talking about.

So there are various drills that we have to do when Clover acts out of his place. And for whatever reason I am quite good at asserting my alpha role :D. This is where "Alpha" in my nick name comes from.

The term "Alpha bitch" though was coined by me, accidentally, one day after a drill. I was feeling good because Clover gave up as soon as I started the drill.. and I was so excited.. that I was going "Who is the alpha ? Me." and my hubby goes.. "Who is the bitch?" and ofcourse without paying attention i said "Me.. I am the alpha bitch." And then I paused.. and found my husband laughing so hard that he got a stomach ache... :).

Bollywood coming to Hollywood ?

Recently I watched this new movie that is quite talked about "500 Days of Summer". The movie was good.. though I hated the lead female character and hardly felt sorry for the lead male character. Not sure if that is what was intended. Anyways I am not gonna give away anything here as its worth watching it.

Now you are wondering what has this to do with Bollywood ? For the first time a Hollywood movie that is not a musical had a song in this movie total bollywood style. The hero falls in love and then there is a song with him dancing and then a bunch of folks dancing with him... its awesome !! If I say more I am going to ruin it for you.

And then there is this new series that I want to watch "Bollywood Hero", but here is the twist.. its an American series starring actresses like Neha Dhupia and hollywood actors well more like comedians - Chris Kattan...

Bollywood is indeed coming to Hollywood !! :)