The Interior DIYer
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DIY Friday – chuck it bucket*

Like most projects, this weeks DIY project started from habit. Our living room gets the most use, and therefore all of the things end up there. I’m a little bit of a neat freak {I can already hear my husband when he reads this – “a little?!“}, and if I’m sitting among chaos for too long, I can feel the crazy build up. When I gather all the stuff in our living room that’s to be redistributed back throughout our apartment, I noticed I was always dumping said stuff on the corner of our couch or by our living room door.

After a while, I started using a reusable shopping bag hanging on the door to collect said items, but to be honest, I wanted to gouge my eyes out from looking at it. That’s when I came up with the idea of having a basket on the floor which could easily accumulate our crap, and I could pick up and zip around the apartment with. Thus, the chuck it bucket was born.

I’m not claiming to be the inventor of this idea, but it’s something I’ve found immensely handy when it comes to tidying up, and thought it was an idea too good to keep to myself. But hold up, “where exactly does the DIY come into play, Alex” I hear you say. Well, I’ll tell you. I had seen Kirstie Allsopps dip-dyed basket DIY earlier this year and I had it firmly planted in my brain. When I was on the lookout for an appropriate basket / vessel, I had a plain, circular, woven basket with handles in mind. I was on the lookout for a long time, and finally found the perfect one in TK Maxx! But wait – it was too perfect. It was already dip-dyed white. Yes, I battled with myself – do I just pretend I dip-dyed it myself? Incredibly tempting, but no.

I had this dip-dye project in mind for so long as a DIY Friday, and now I can’t do it. But alas, my only justification is Kirstie’s link I included above which has thee most painfully easy DIY; just shove a basket in paint and you’re done. But, I still wanted to share my spiffy new basket. I jazzed it up a little bit by adding a mini black curtain tie-back from Home Focus at Hickeys. And lord knows, I like a little jazz.

I’ve had this basket for a couple days and already it has come in so handy just lugging stuff around our apartment. Chuck it in. Lug it around. End of story.

*Yeah, it’s a basket, not a bucket, but c’mon ‘chuck it bucket‘ sounds so much better.

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‘Tis the season

I asked my mom the other day if I was ever a princess for Halloween. “No, never. You always wanted to be a witch or something scary. You never wanted to be a princess“, and so it stands. I’ve always been more comfortable with darker Halloween costumes, and darker colours in general – not just at Halloween time. Case in point – I’m naturally blonde, but I dye my hair black because I prefer darker colours and I think it suits me better. Husband however, disagrees. Strongly.

I’m a firm believer in scary Halloween in my house. Not cute and bright – not to say any of those things are wrong in any way, I always find when I decorate my home, out comes the creep. All the old books, my swelling decanter collection takes the spotlight, and more stuff from outside comes in. I’ve almost always decorated from pieces I already have. I’m sure in time, when I produce spawn, the cuter Halloween will come out. I’ll cross that bridge when I come to it … 

Something that irritates me to no end around this time of year is bad fake blood. It’s either believable and I’m going to faint, or it’s such a high-pitch red ain’t nobody believing that. A good few years back I came up with a recipe for good fake blood, which I use to this day. Mix a couple spoonfulls of instant coffee with a teaspoon of regular red food dye, and dilute with around 5 cups of water. You’ll more than likely need to mess with the coffee / red dye / water ratio, but it’s minimal effort for what I think to be convincing results. Keep in mind this is red food dye, so don’t be mixing it over your 3,000 count Egyptian sheets. Unless of course you’re looking to add a blood stain to a costume,  then by all means, drip away. 

This year I decorated with mostly pieces we already have. I got fancy on the shelf over our TV and taped a Blair Witch style stick man in our cloche {that movie still terrifies me. Please don’t judge}, I added some discerning labels to our decanters, an awesome skull wreath my dad found at Home Store + More {it was 50% off – and still is!}, and a smattering of skulls here and there – most of which were already out. Because in case you’re new here, I like skulls. 

So that is what I’ve added to our home so far this creepy season. I’ve been pouring all my spare time into making my Halloween costume. To go along with the creep factor, I’m dressing up as Lydia in her red wedding dress {which has about one million layers of lace that I’m sewing by hand}, and hubster will be Beetlejuice, obv. I cannot. Wait! What are you guys being for Halloween? And do you try your hand at making your own costumes? xx A
NOTE: no kittens were harmed in the making of this post.  
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Dear Martha

I’m a couple days late as I only saw your blogger slamming video yesterday morning. Before I start, for any of you – like me yesterday morning – that have yet to see Martha’s unsavoury statement and wanna know what my impending rant is in regards to, this is what Martha Stewart recently said during an interview –

“I do have a minor gripe about that too {social media} because who are these bloggers? They’re not trained editors at Vogue magazine. I mean there are bloggers writing recipes that aren’t tested, that aren’t necessarily very good or are copies of everything that really good editors have created and done. So, bloggers create … uh … kind of a … uh … popularity. But they are not the experts and we have to understand that.“

Oh Martha, where do I start? You let your verbal diarrhea get the better of you. Allow me to compare what you said to that of a school teacher. You’re at your desk in class when your teacher all of a sudden not only fails you, but stands up on his or her desk, points and ridicules you in front of the entire class. That’s what your statement does, Martha. You made bloggers feel unimportant and wrong for no reason whatsoever. We thought you got our backs.

But I do feel sympathetic towards you Martha, I really do. You don’t know what it’s like to have a blog. You have a writhing team of people to do it for you. You have an indisposable amount of photographers, stylists, editors, writers, designers, and coders. Us bloggers however, are the stylists. We are the photographers, the editors, the writers, the Photoshoppers. We mindlessly arrange and rearrange a space to get a photo to look just right. We are hunched over our computers in our pyjamas with no bra on, Googling code with needy cats on our laps, endlessly editing our posts and tutorials.

Here’s a cute picture of my cat to break up all the text. 

May I ask you Martha, when you started your catering business, did you start off using someone else’s recipes? Albeit you maybe changed an ingredient here and there but as the legend of Martha Stewart goes, you started off baking cookies in your basement. I’m no expert when it comes to cookies, but I’d say there’s about 6 or 7 ingredients that go into a cookie, and chances are, your first cookies were a copy of someone else’s. I’m not placing the blame game here Martha, but if you’re going to go down that route, you best be taking a long hard look at yourself first. 
I’m not the only blogger to write about Martha’s statement this week. Most bloggers, like myself, can barely keep their hands still over the vast amount of expletives they’re shouting at their computer screens. Some bloggers chose to write about how Martha in fact supports bloggers, but to that I say Martha’s brand supports bloggers. She sure doesn’t sound like she likes them. She even kinda backhandedly apologized on Twitter. 

The thing that gets to me the most Martha is that if you were starting off now – you and your homemade cookies in your basement – you would have started a blog about them. Don’t get me wrong – I’ve always been in awe at your creations, creativity and what you’ve achieved from such humble beginnings. But for now, that open wound needs to scab over.

p.s. As more bloggers have stepped forward and voiced their opinion, Holly Becker of decor8’s post inspired me the most. After my blood pressure resumes, I’m hoping to do as Holly says, and take it as constructive criticism {not that I consider myself an expert in the first place}.