I've miraculously gotten all my personal and business paperwork filed in a coherent way. This is huge! A laber maker sure makes it easier than I expected. I also went through all my old magazines and took out the pages I wanted to keep. After all this paperwork clean-up, we recycled a ton this week! I also got a good tip to sign-up to limit junk mail at DMA Choice and credit card offers at Opt-Out Prescreen.

Through all my sorting, I found this really cool little fold-out guide to speed cleaning.
It's very handy, so I made a pdf of it to print out:

Most of our bins are cleaned out and I've listed a bunch of stuff on craigslist to sell. Current project for this weekend is to clean out my car and hopefully list it for sale. Its the only thing keeping us from being debt free except the house. Yay for no more credit card debt or worries!

I also have a bunch of old unlabeled VHS tapes that I've unpacked. I'm going through them and figuring out what is on each to get rid of unnecessary ones as well. So far I've watched "The Secret" that my mom sent a year or two ago. It was actually really interesting. Decluttering 2009 is off to a great start!

Why can I not find any reasonably priced bedding that will match our bedroom theme? We found the perfect rugs but the bedding will not cooperate. I have purchased and taken back about 5 different comforters so far because they just didn't work. Here's the room before we moved the furniture in a few weeks ago: I'm looking for something with embroidery of some sort, but not frou-frou or french. Everything I find seems to be obnoxiously paisley or damask. I want something that seems sort of period appropriate, but not country or overly traditional and has to fit with the colors of our rug: sage green/beige, copper, plum, turquiose. It's a tall order. Here's a similar rug to the one in our room: This is the front-runner so far, minus all the pillows and such: Ralph Lauren "Rutherford." I checked it out in person at Macy's and it looks like a heavily aged tapestry and the colors match our scheme. However, at $299 for the duvet cover alone, its a bit over my $200 maximum. I could buy off eBay, but I never know until its in the room, and I want the option to return it. I would love an Ann Wallace or Dianne Ayers set, but I think with the embroidery, the price would be over my budget as well. The Candiff set from Target is pretty, but its out of stock, doesn't have any turquiose or plums, and the pattern is a bit busy, but more in the British arts & crafts vein: Then there's a more simple "Rosa" collection from Macy's. However, I didn't see this one in the store. THe embroidery looks gorgeous without being over the top. I'm not sure if I should do a solid color without any green or accent shades visible: Any ideas?

This is the site in my kitchen as of late: It may be hard to believe, but it actually looks worse than that now as we brought even more dishes in from the garage yesterday. How do I own so many freaking dishes? I suppose a better question is, how did I live without so many dishes for the last 6+ months and why do I need them all again now? To showcase some beauty, here are my custom leaded glass cabinet inserts. I made the small ones with leaded glass tape from Van Dykes Restorers. I used the same pattern as in our original attic windows. I picked out the wavy glass from Cline Glass and had them cut it to fit. The center window is a custom stained glass piece from Middlefield Glass. I designed it on their website and I LOVE IT! It was broken the first time I received it and I had to send it back, but it was fine the second time around. Jeremy also assembled a cute kitchen island/cart that I bought to match our cabinets since we couldn't fit a permanent island in the kitchen. I love it! The other shot shows our kitchen swinging door we salvaged from the ReBuilding Center and had dipped, then painstakingly refinished. The grain is soo beautiful. It fit perfectly in the original frame too. Lastly, here are my pretty boys looking sweet as well.

Wishing everyone a great holiday!

The water main burst outside of our next door neighbor's house today! I came outside to this view:

Thankfully, it was running down the street into the other drains. I just hope they can take the load. I was able to get to work, but am not sure if they've shut off the valves yet. There was a bunch of tech's standing around waiting for instructions for about 30 minutes. SHUT IT OFF ALREADY!

Our basement was dry as a bone. I just pray it stays that way! Here's hoping we have water service tonight.

Our resident spokeskitty poses next to a matching jack-o-lantern.

He was a human for Halloween and hated every second of wearing his kitty shirt. Luckily it was only for this short photo-op.

We're now in the inspection period for our craftsman house o' luv. It's the perfect Valentines gift.

I'm praying that the report comes out good, or that the seller will pay for any needed major repairs.

We accepted an offer on this NE Portland home, and just in the nick of time as I guess another higher offer came in right after ours became legally binding.

We still have to go through an inspection period, where the whole deal may crumble, so we'll see how that goes.

This was a flipped house on a huge lot (for Portland), and there are a few cosmetic projects we'll need to do (like removing the textured ceilings and wallpaper ICK!) but otherwise everything is upgraded or new.

View the Flickr photos (my personal photo gallery is down ick!)

I forgot to post a direct link to our SF photos back over labor day weekend!

Here's my favorite, only because it has my girl crush o' luv: Kristen Bell aka "Veronica Mars."

Here's some other highlights:

Also in case some people missed the announcement below of the newest version of my fitness site, formerly known as "Simply Irresistible." Go to SuburbanDebauchery.com to see everything updated, fresh and new!

I also want to reitterate how much I DESPISE all things Rachael Ray now that I have seen her new hideous talk show. Also the majority of her meals are really unhealthy and basically sound disgusting (although I'm sure some of the more comfort food options taste fine...) but seriously she is hardly svelte eatting that shite. I just hate her demeanor and serious want to kick her in the teeth. I don't think I've had this much h8 for any TV personality well evAr. I'm a proud member of the Rachael Ray Sucks community on LJ too. Join me please and get this hag off the air.

On a more positive note, I'm still madly in lust with Dane Cook (as usual), who is hosting the season premier of SNL this weekend (WATCH!). I plan to see his new movie too (even though Jessica is in it ACK!). Speaking of movies, Jackass 2 is a MUST SEE. Seriously. MUST SEE. TWICE.