all things girls can tell

moving day is near!

 

hello, bloggity friends! thanks so much for your patience - i know i've been posting somewhat sporatically lately, and for that, i apologize. hopefully things will be back to normal some time next week. to keep you all in the loop, as you may know, i've been remodeling the tiny bathroom in my house (almost done! so close!) and now that the project is finally nearing an end, tomorrow i'll be moving back into my little house. yay!

long time readers (well, hello, there!) might recognize my little house from photos (of which there are lots!). my orange living room (in an older photo, above, and i swear i didn't intentionally paint it etsy orange) will probably once again make an appearance here, time and again. what i'm so very excited about is blogging my re-adventures in decorating the great little spaces of my home! i'll be sure to show you all the new and exciting decorating i do (and, of course, all the great little nooks i've always loved).

i figure it's only appropriate for a lady as obsessive about housewares as i am to give you a little sneak peek into my own little place from time to time. so wish me some (much needed! we still have lots of snow!) luck on my move tomorrow!

drexel school farewell party

 

at the end of the block, south of my house, has stood this stately, decrepit, old school building. you can see its gorgeous arched brick openings with its dignified keystones from my backyard (here's a photo i took the summer before i moved in looking down the alley from my yard toward the school). as years have gone by, i knew that the likelihood of the school being salvaged and made into something amazing (the type of potential you're trained to see in such lovely bones of buildings in architecture school) was decreasing by the day.

as beautiful a relic as it is, it began to cross the line from lovely and abandoned to ominous and threatening over the past months. trees rooted themselves at the roofline, their roots weaving their way down the brick facade, causing a hazard to pedestrians and cars on the street. the fenced off areas of sidewalks attracted the grossest types of litter. it became an unfortunate eyesore at street level.

finally, the city put up demolition notices. our neighborhood association scrambled to arrange a meeting with L&I and our city council representative to learn what the impact would be on us and our houses during the project. so, we're now a week into what we're told will be a 5-6 demolition. i'm posting photos of the demolition (as i happen to walk by) in this flickr set.

dressing my new bathroom

you may recall that i mentioned just a few short weeks ago that i was completely renovating the (tiny) bathroom in my little house. i'm really excited about the progress we've made, but now i need your help!

i've done all the big decision making by now - picked the tile, the fixtures, tweaked the layout and everything's falling nicely into place. so now comes the fun part - picking the accessories! i need a shower curtain and a pretty (little) bath mat / rug to make it feel nice.

so far, i really like the following curtains and things, but i'd love, love, love to see what you've been drooling over! i'm positive i'm missing something really wonderful (ideally in the less than $100 range...) so link away in the comments! so you know what you're working with, the tile i chose is primarily white (forgive me for being dull -  think of it as a lovely new canvas), with really classic patterns (overall, i'd describe it as neutral retro... does that make sense?) a pop of color would be nice, but i'm not opposed to staying nice and light and just playing with texture, either...

 
from urban outfitters 

from india rose

from sprout home

what can you find that's more exciting?
(ps. in case you've never checked, the selection of shower curtains on etsy is pretty dismal. almost in an entertaining way, i guess...)

super small bathroom

i've always hated the bathroom in my little house, and it recently dawned on me that this month would be the ideal time to completely gut the little space and start over. it would be impossible to renovate it while the house was occupied since i only have one tiny bathroom in my house, but this month the house can be empty.

 

to say my bathroom is about 5' x 6' would be a generous description. it's tiny. and the weirdo who worked on my house before i bought it actually thought it wise to build a wall into the middle of the space (that's it above, after a little demolition), partially obscuring the (small) window. genius!

so, after a little convincing, last weekend, my dad came out to help me clear out the existing (so small it was practically a joke) tub, super cheap looking vanity, that infamous wall and all the supremely ugly tile. now the room's a rather refreshing clean slate (well, maybe not so much clean as empty) and the fun part is here - selecting the new finishes and hardware!

which leads me to the inspiration for this post, really (my goal wasn't simply to tell you about the work my dad and i did saturday) - googling for "small bathroom" inspiration or design ideas? totally amusing. i can't actually figure out what these people would consider a "normal size" or "large" bathroom. so, enjoy some of the "small bathroom" photos below, and take a minute to think about these underprivileged homeowners that have to deal with these unfortunately tiny washrooms. awwww.

 
(this one might actually be bigger than my eat-in kitchen)

(hello, gorgeous bathroom which is easily twice the size of my bathroom.)

(who hangs decorative plates in their bathroom. kitchen or dining room? sure. bathroom? odd.)

i can't wait to show you what i decide!

floods, diagrams, and features - best (and worst) week ever

this has been an incredible week so far - it's beer week here in philly, and being the giant craft beer nerds that we are, cute erik took today and tomorrow off of work. which would have been as nice and relaxing as it sounds, except that right after i finished making scones for breakfast this morning (i have the best scone recipe ever, passed down from my great-great-grandmother in scotland. so good.) we discovered a good 2-3 inches of water in the basement. right now, the basement is the current home of girlscantell (more on that below), so it was a nerve wracking morning, getting a pump set up and drying off so much stuff and hoping for the best.

the good news is that the damage was minimal, and the better news is that the lovely folks at apartment therapy san francisco highlighted my work today in this lovely write up, really brightening up a pretty crummy start to my day. if you have a moment, take a peek at the post!

the best news is that girlscantell (that's me!) will soon have a brand new, real, super fun, clean and lovely studio space! my friend, kate, and i will soon be occupying a big, bright, amazing workspace on the fourth floor of the vox populi building in chinatown (those are our windows, above). i can't wait to have lots of room for making (and storing) girlscantell goodies, and to have the company of one of a whip smart, super creative studio mate all day. yay!

so, the sad news is that the diagram of the week will probably be postponed for another day or so while we collect things and put the temporary basement workspace back in order. but i'll warn you - this week's diagram is so phenomenally awesome, you definitely want to pop back in a day or so to check it out. or you can sign up for the girlscantell email list and not only get a first glimpse at the new design, but also a special handy dandy discount code for it. awwwww yeah.

wall fashion and frames

cute erik and i finally sat down (well, i suppose it involved a fair amount of walking around, and moving things back and forth, not so much just sitting) to consider where to hang the art and prints we've accumulated. hanging pictures isn't something i wanted to rush into, and so last night we did mostly preliminary thinking. the "well, if this is over here, then we still have this wall for something amazing we find at some point in the future" kind of thing.

my dilemma is that i go back and forth between loving a sparse, uniform, typical gallery type arrangement (this is the architect in me, being kind of minimal, i guess) and dense arrangements of all kinds of media, framed and clustered (like the inspiration photo above from hownowdesign). i have a lot of really wonderful images that i love from artists i adore (it's an occupational hazards of having worked for an amazing site full of unbelievable artists for a year and a half, i suppose). since i want to continue to collect amazingness, it seems only natural to group and cluster all this great stuff.

the wall that we chose for this project is in the closet (sounds glamorous, i know, but before you scratch your head too much, i should mention we decided to turn an extra bedroom into a really awesome room-sized closet, since closets in south philly rowhomes are small, to say the least). the wall is about 8 feet long, and a nice neutral toasty almond color, so i think it'll be a great canvas for all kinds of wonderful imagery. 

one of the most fun parts of this project will be acquiring the perfect collection of frames to hold all the stuff i want to hang. i started browsing around etsy for fun frames, and here's the best of what i've found so far.

 

i know this is a chalk board, but that makes this frame from bluebellbazaar even better. i just love the weathered tones of it. 

 

blackelm has these great modern wooden frames, and i super love them and how great they'd contrast fancy vintagey frames. 

 

from buckscountyframes (which is, incidentally, not far from philly at all) come these stunning, poppy yellow frames. simple, but with great color. 

 

i found just the kind of thing i was looking for in recycledrelic's shop - classic white, worn, fancy frame, made from recycled ceiling tin. so good!

reorganization and secret gardens: little peeks into my home

the totally awesome rikrak studio (who has a really amazing blog!) wrote a fabulous little post on how much she enjoys potlucks (and i completely share her enthusiasm for them!) and was kind enough to include a set of my potholders. if you have a minute, she has some really sweet features on her blog, it's totally worth a read.

so i felt inspired today and basically took apart my little studio area and put it back together. i'm very happy to feel so much more organized. i've been wanting to do this for some time now, but just couldn't bring myself to do it unless i felt really inspired to. hopefully it'll nudge me to print a little more often than i have been, now that things feel fresher and more orderly. i hope you enjoy the before and after photos!

also, i wanted to share my secret little garden with you all - it was a pleasant surprise upon moving in with cute erik to realize that some of my favorite houseplants would flourish on the nice, fat windowsill in my shower, of all places. it's been really fun watching my amaryllis get closer and closer to blooming each day for the past few weeks. i like when corners of your home that shouldn't really be superfun end of being some of your favorite spots to be. yay!

craigslist, strangers, decisions.

finding tenants for my beloved little house is beginning to feel like dating. it's a whole lot of meeting strangers, trying to determine if you're making good decisions, feeling things out, seeing if you click, and having to trust people you really don't know very well yet.

selling furniture on craigslist is equally nerve wracking, though i suppose those interactions are just little flings - you only need the person to show up once, close to on time, and not be a total flake. and i can't for the life of me figure out how people got rid of their extra furniture before craigslist. the whole thing would just take so much more... effort. i'd probably have given up and just rented my house furnished at this point.

so it's nice to be on my way to work (in brooklyn), despite the rain, so that i can have a few hours when moving or packing anything isn't possible, and i can just focus on being productive for work. although, i do hope the rain gives the phillies a break this evening. we just need them to win! eep!

(ps. yes that is a poster-sized diploma hanging there on the wall in girlscantell headquarters. thanks, thomas jefferson, for the world's biggest degree.)

printing napkins, building walls and baking apple pie.

this weekend was completely wonderful. i worked on three projects that i've been excited about for some time now. the first is a custom order - the SLR camera diagram, hand printed onto napkins for the 90th birthday party of a professional photographer. i was a little hesitant about printing on paper napkins, since i usually print cloth napkins, and it took me a while to find the right ink and materials (i ended up finding perfect ink - USDA approved, food safe, permanent ink, yay!).  i'm really pleased with the results. and i can't wait to incorporate this mini-camera diagram into more items!

i also made my first from-scratch apple pie of the season, from apples we picked on saturday, which was wonderful. we ate it with "philadelphia style" ice cream (i've lived here for three years, and didn't know anything about "philadelphia style" ice cream, but it was super good, so i like it...) and watched mad men. so perfect. (although, wasn't last night's episode... odd? no betty, sterling cooper's selling out, don's going by dick again... i'm so confused and just dying in anticipation of next week...)

and, the biggest project of the weekend, we worked on my requisite concrete block alley wall in my backyard a bit yesterday. my backyard's been an ongoing project,  so i'm happy whenever we make a bit of progress on it. who knew laying brick and building cinderblock walls was so time consuming? 

sewing session

for the first time in months, i had some time to sit down at my sewing machine this week. since cute erik has been so helpful lately in getting stuff done around my house with me (yay! new programmable thermostat, new bedroom light fixture and about one hundred other things!), the first thing i tackled was curtains for his kitchen. and that totally got my sewing bug going.

last night, i finally got to sew a project i actually cut out last year, printed months ago and just finally got around to. yay! turns out, all i need to do was drink a whole lot of diet coke, turn on the fiery furnaces EP and open up my giant cutting table in the living room.

also, don't forget that ignite philly (2) is tonight! see you at johnny brenda's!