Updates and Room Designing

I haven't been able to stop wearing my heels.  I'm addicted!   This is the person who used to hate heels, because all they did was hurt.  But these shoes, I can walk in them all day~  I'm really just wearing them around to get used to walking in heels.  I can walk at normal speeds and up, but if I start walking slowly, I begin to lose my balance.  I can't get distracted, lol.   I can't wait until the weather warms up!


Anyway.

Last Thursday, Tara and I headed to Mitsuwa~!


I got Tara to try something new~!  Well, a few somethings.
One was super new to her, Mangosteen.  I've had the Snapple drink before, so I knew that it was good, but our favorite gummy company Kasugai had released this new flavor (or at least, our Mitsuwa had gotten it in for the first time).
But later on, as we were finishing up our shopping, and looking at sushi, we came across some onigiri.  She had never heard of it before, though it's not really that much different from sushi.   She tried the spicy tuna.  She was worried about the taste, but once I told her that she could even get spicy tuna sushi at Dominick's, she was sold.  We ate them in the car (I got sake salmon).  Besides the lack of soy sauce for the rice, it was so tasty!  And she's added spicy tuna and onigiris to her list of delicious Japanese treats XD  Hopefully when we go back, they'll have more for us to get.  At $1.25, and very filling, I could go for a few more.

I bought a wonderful new soup book at Half Priced Books (serious Godsend, that place) called The New Soup Bible for $9 that has a whole section of Japanese soups, so next week, she and I are going to have a Japanese food day and cook!   Does onigiri go with ramen?  Lol, let's find out!

With my new resolution to work on my room, I've been looking at lots of room design, furniture, bedding, whatnot.

There's a lot of ideas I've gotten while exploring various sites.  But it was a specific picture that I found in a Cutie Interior book that grabbed my attention.

What a lovely room~~
Yeah, it's a whole ton of pink, and I would definitely tone it down to like... 5/6ths that, lol.

Still, upon seeing it, I knew exactly what I wanted to do with my little room:

As I've said before, I don't have any dressers or closet space at all in this room.  The closet that was once here was long ago gutted, and basically all of my clothes sit in baskets on the floor while my various items either sit on one of the two small tables... er, excuse me, a table and a TV tray... or on the floor in bags.   I have a tub full of old artwork and sketches, and my ball joint dolls sit in their boxes on top of that.  I have to do my makeup either on the floor next to my little plastic drawers full of makeup supplies (and some books in the bottom drawer) or I have to lug everything into the bathroom.

My current plan is to move my bed out of the 'closet' area and to the other side where my bed won't waste space.  The vanity is where it is because originally I was looking at a vanity that had a side cabinet for necklaces, however, I found a lovely acrylic jewelry holder with plenty of space for necklaces, so I can hopefully get a smaller vanity, and put it flush against the west wall (my room is smack dab in the middle of the west side of the house, so right now, the vanity is on the north wall).  I put a small wardrobe on the south wall, but it can actually be interchanged with the closet area, if I want to get something bigger.  If I can figure out how to install pretty closet doors though, I'd definitely just turn the closet back into a closet.

Oh but yeah, a vanity~  I must have one.  I don't like doing my makeup standing up in the bathroom, but doing my makeup holding a mirror between my legs is way worse.  And since there's no longer an outlet in the bathroom, I certainly can't do my hair in there.   It would be fantastic to have somewhere to comfortably sit and do my makeup.  It's be wondertastical if I could get one with lights, but I doubt I can, not without spending a bunch, so my own little daylight lamp would be just as great.

I also need somewhere to sit.  Currently, I have my bed.  That wouldn't be such a huge problem, except if I'm laying down.  The TV is on the right side of my bed, so whether I'm sitting against the foot board, or laying down, I have to have my head turned one way.  Then my neck gets sore.   I'd like a nice, comfortable chair to sit in, when I'm lounging, when I'm playing video games, whatnot.  But I also don't have enough space to have permanent seating, so I want something that folds away, and I also need something comfortable.  Really comfortable.  Sure, I can wear size 2 pants from Old Navy like it's nothing, but that also means I'm the real life princess from the story of The Princess and the Pea, and anything short of 7 inches of cotton, I might as well be sitting on metal, lol.  Everything hurts if it isn't very cushioned.

But yeah, I already have a bed, but unfortunately it's very modern.  I got it years ago, when I was into the contemporary style.  I've already figured out that I can cover them with some kind of a slip cover, and cut some slits in them so that I can keep the X shape they have, and tie them together with ribbon.  I still need new bedding, what with mine falling apart more and more by the second, and I could do with another pillow, maybe even replace the pillow I have too.  I'd love to have a nice fluffy bed, and though it would be slippery, I'd like some satin sheets, so I don't have to wrap my hair up every night.   Also, I'd like to make a fake canopy style for my bed.  I think it would funnel whatever sunlight I do have right over my bed, which I would love.  Where the windows are, would be actual curtains, and everywhere else would be a lovely curtain of either lace or a chiffon fabric, or perhaps the mix of both under a thicker curtain to trap the light in when I wake up and give me an even more private place to be.  Seriously, I LOVE privacy, and if my grandma's going to come barging in to tell me things that mean nothing to me, I'm going to have at least one place of refuge .  I'll have to figure out how to make a one sided dust ruffle too.  Can't be too hard.

Then, some minor things: a new laundry basket (I'm looking at a pretty one with 4 sections), a full length mirror, because there's not a mirror in the house that allows me to see the full outfit from hair to shoes in one go, a trash bin, because a trash bag hanging on the doorknob is not only really tacky, but it keeps the door from opening all the way, and a TV stand, so I can put my systems away.  I love my SNES and my PS2, but I don't love them sitting on the floor!  I'd love to be able to put my games away too.

I don't have it on my layout, but I have got to get rid of this light fixture.  My grandma got it because she liked how it looked, but she didn't think about the recipient at all, as usual.  It's huge, so while normally walking with my slippers, I'm like 2 inches under, I can tell you, I'll probably put on my heels while sitting on my bed, and I will definitely hit my head on the light as I walk from bed to door, and that's with my hair down!  Imagine me, heels, hair up, and ramming right into the light fixture probably covered in dust.   Even if I pull in the chain (though there isn't much chain to pull in anyway), it's just too big, and it makes my room feel even smaller, plus it adds a ton of heat to my room, which already gets pretty hot.   It's got to go.

And finally, the walls.  Apparently, I can't paint them, but I think I can....  If I can paint a shade lighter or darker.   I have to repaint anyway, because of the nicks, the unfinished areas where they started painting, but didn't quite put on enough layers, the floor trim is too small and doesn't go all around, so bugs can come in and go as they please, and speaking of bugs, there's quite a few centipede carcasses marked about, lol. So, with those things in mind, while it probably has to stay yellow, I think that a new shade would make the space seem fresher.  And then I want to put up some nice wall hangings, because I don't want to see yellow everywhere!

Here are some ideas and bits that I'm hoping to incorporate into my room:

This was actually a curtain idea that came in the same issue of Cutie Interior as the picture above, but I like it more as a dust ruffle.  I'd like to add a bit of straight ruffle behind it, so it's got the two textures.  The top would be in a cute pink and yellow fabric, while the back, I think would be a cream.

Also not to be used as curtain designs.  I got these from Victoriana.com.  I want to use a combination of them for my canopy.  I like the cording from the first one, and the ruffles and shape from the second.  Very regal.   I wonder if it can be done without having to buy a canopy bed.

Still not for window treatments, lol.  I forget what website I got these from.   (Edit: I remembered!) I'm staying simple for the window treatments because you won't be able to see them, and anything ultra fancy would just be bulky.  Anyway, this is how I want my bed to look under the decorative coverings above.  One layer of lace, one layer of solid fabric.

Okay, to get away from the canopy (well, it is the focal point of the room, after all), this is what I liked for wall coverings.  Normally, I'm not a fan of random things on walls that don't have any function.  It makes me feel like it's clutter.   However, in this case, I'm not a fan of the wall color, so putting something up to cover up a lot of it makes it functional.  Another picture from the Cutie Interior book, I'm thinking of having some scrolls of fabric up, with beads tied up like here between them.  I'm sure I can use pins, since you can fill pin holes up.

The idea I'd like to work with if I end up with a wardrobe instead of making a closet space.  I love the color theme, and in fact it's the theme I want to work with in this room and in my future house.   I want to paint the wardrobe pink, give it gold accents, and line it with pink velvet, lol.  I'd also like to turn the acrylic jewelry holder into something like this too.  Clear is cute and all, but I'd rather have something a bit more solid.  This came from another issue of Cutie Interior.  I love that magazine, I wish I could get a subscription to it.

Still job hunting.  Now that the Christmas season is over, it looks like jobs are picking up.  Hopefully someone will finally see my worth.  I wonder how long it'll take to do all of this.  Hopefully not so long that I'm here for another 3 years, lol.

In other random news, I spent the day with Steve Thursday.   He's always so quiet, so I worried he would just do what he always does, lol, but he actually talked with me.  We had lots of random conversations ranging from Japanese candy, to Pink Panther, to my "skills" playing Touhou.  I do heart Steve lots, I just wish he'd talk more, lol.

Also, I got my tablet pen to work again, all by myself!   I feel like I've conquered something pretty big, even though all I had to do was glue the screw holder back together so that the mechanism wouldn't shift from the power source (battery).  It probably sounds more impressive than it is, lol.  I also learned how to speed up my laptop.  It used to slow down after watching a lot of videos, or looking at a lot of pictures.  By turning off a bunch of processes, my computer no longer goes into a fit after leaving Firefox on for an hour, or by wanting to listen to music while I'm on Photoshop.  Yeah, something anyone can do, but I feel accomplished, because a year ago, I'd probably just complain that I need a new laptop.  There's so many useless processes taking up memory and making my laptop fan go into hyperdrive!

Psh, look a me!  IIIIIIII'm every womannnnn, lol.

Should post one of my first reviews tomorrow or Monday.  I'm being really lazy in editing my photos.