20/20 : Day Three

Day 3 - 20/20 Home Cure - Fall 2010 from maxwell gillingham-ryan on Vimeo.

Day Three: Find inspirational photos for your home. This is where Pinterest comes in...for me, anyway. I don't have a ton of home magazines sitting around and going to the book store is out of the question for today. So a 20 minute date with Pinterest it is! I've been pinning home inspiration for awhile now. Here are a few from my boards:

this photobooth wall art

this shared kid's room

this DIY baby mobile

this kitchen (specifically the blue tile)

this bedroom

this chevron front door

(What's with the 20/20 thing? Click here.)

20/20 : Day 2

Day 2 - 20/20 Home Cure - Fall 2010 from maxwell gillingham-ryan on Vimeo.

Day Two: Buy flowers. Fun and easy. Enough said.

20/20 : Day One

Day 1 20/20 Home Cure - Fall 2010 from maxwell gillingham-ryan on Vimeo.

Day one: Floor and surface clean one room. Done. Check. Easy. But the 20 minute thing? It had me busting my rear to beat the timer. I went two minutes over and realized later that I forgot to dust the top of the art work. Well, regardless, I now have a clean living/dining room that I feel pretty proud of. And I will admit - the adrenaline rush I got from trying to beat the clock felt pretty good.

On a completely unrelated topic, I've been getting traffic from some questionable sources. Because of that fact, I've decided to pull all pictures of Little Miss from the blog and won't be posting any more of her. At least not very often, or until I get that source figured out. It's frustrating, as photography has become a type of art for me, but I just can't get my mommy brain to let it go.

Looking forward to day two of the 20/20 challenge!

The 20/20 Cure

Hey all...
I just stumbled on something called the 20/20 Home Cure: 20 minutes for 20 days from Apartment Therapy. It's based on the book The Eight Step Home Cure by Maxwell Gillingham-Ryan and he is taking AT readers through the new 20/20 process each day by video. Essentially you get 20 minutes to complete the project he assigns over the course of 20 days. As soon as I watched the first video I immediately decided I was on-board. My house gets the once daily pick-up-the-toys-make-the-bed-throw-dishes-in-dishwasher thing. But I never really put much more than that into "keeping house". The process is geared toward working or otherwise busy people who don't have more than 20 minutes at a time to pay attention to the house. And come on, 20 minutes!?, that's so do-able!

Each day I'll embed the video and blog my experience. Just Monday-Friday, no weekends. Who's with me? Even if you are a day or two behind, I'd still love for you to join along.

Here's video #1 just explaining the process and I'll be starting with the official "Day 1" video tomorrow.


20/20 Home Cure - Fall 2011 - Big Invite! from maxwell gillingham-ryan on Vimeo.

when it's just too much

When your kitchen looks like this...


the only logical thing to do is break out this:

The Big 'Two-Five'

My birthday came and went, just like that. No big deal. Boom shacka lacka. And now I'm 25.
James, Little Miss, and I celebrated on Friday evening at an Italian restaurant. Treating myself to the house white is becoming a once-a-year splurge for me; something I may or may not look forward to more than the entree. From there we took a trip to The Fresh Market where I picked up beautiful crisp-white fresh hydrangeas, a dark chocolate bacon bar (insert angels singing), and melt-in-your-mouth raspberry drops.
It was a wonderfully good/normal day. I love that I heard from all the people that matter most, and am totally okay with (completely relived) that the happy birthday tune was not once sung. Now, onward to year 26! What will it bring? I guess we shall see! (Oh dear. With lines like that I must be getting old...)
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