Here's some exciting news... The city of Minneapolis is giving us a 0% interest loan that gets paid off only when we sell our house. While we certainly don't want to change the place a ton and therefore price ourselves out of the hood, we do want to make some "quality of life" changes. Such as, oh yeah baby, a shower in the bathroom instead of down in the basement. It feels so self-indulgent to do this when the shower downstairs works just fine, but really folks, it will be heaven to shower in a proper room with a light and even an exhaust fan. We need to pick out the tile for the backsplash, and then the shower head and faucet. I think that'll be fun to pick out. Speaking of self-indulgent, why not build a deck too? I mean, we don't even have one tree on our entire property, so it's not like we can go for the cool, shady oasis that the Juice has going on. (That I'm so jealous of, by the way) Here are a couple of imperfect, but on the right track for our space, ideas that we've seen so far. Please insert all the weird crap you can imagine I'll be using my summer to find, giving these spaces oh so much more personality.



I love the shade provided in this one, but hate the metal banister.



Again, I like the shade given on this one, and I kind of like the privacy latice... but there's still something about it that I don't l-o-v-e love. I keep getting hung up on coming up with something that will match the era of our little stucco house. I'm not sure what that would be though.

On Friday afternoon I found myself in Anthropology wondering how to justify spending $68 on a tank top. Folks, I REALLY tried, and it just can't be done. Happily, lots of the stuff I liked was just a basic tank with a little birdie sewn on. Or a basic a-line skirt with an extra little vintage-looking ruffle sewn into the hem. I can do that kind of stuff no problemo! I'm going through my fabric stash this weekend, and I'm totally looking forward to hitting the sewing machine hard tomorrow afternoon.



This bird is hand sewn, but wouldn't it be adorable in a light color embroidered on a dark t-shirt that's just lying around the house? Martha has all of the state birds just ready for your downloading pleasure.

Speaking of Martha, I just might need this. You can get it here.