Oh Yeah, I went to Russia

Back in June I went to Russia for 2 whole weeks for work. It was my first trip out of the country and quite an experience!! :) I have never been on a flight that long. It was nine and a half hours to get across the pond and when we arrived I was so ready to get off that plane!

We were picked up at the airport (yeah, we were not driving over there...) and I snapped this picture as we drove away. I thought the airport looked really cool and modern.

Look to the left of this picture - yep! That's Ikea! In Moscow, Russia. :)

These kinds of apartment buildings were everywhere. They were all this big and so colorful.

This was my room at the hotel we stayed at.

Yep, I had a kitchen too. It was pretty awesome.

The view from my room.

St. Basil's Cathedral! Pretty cool, huh? :)

This building is a mall! Crazy, huh?

My dinner one night. Just kidding, but isn't that the fanciest way to bring a customer ice ever?

Yummy, yummy pizza.

One of our colleagues made us macarons!! :) They were the most delicious things ever.

One of the restaraunts we went to had the napkins in these containers and I thought they looked really cool.

One day when I was coming back to my room, I saw this sign on the door next to mine. It says, "Bankrupts Anonymous." I thought that was very strange. Okay, so I'm in Russia and there's a group of English-speaking Americans gathered in a room in this hotel to have a meeting about bankruptcy. Hmmm.... Ok.

I have more pics that I haven't even gone through yet so I have more to share later, but I wanted to give a glimpse into my trip! :)

Step 3

The evolution of the half bath continues! First I painted it, then I added a new mirror and a roman shade.

I finally got around to adding some art to the powder room downstairs. I knew for a while what I wanted to do, but I didn't have any frames. I went to a local thrift store one day and found these bad boys which were on sale for $3 each.

After some spray paint, they were looking pretty spiffy! The art I used is from a blog called Sprik Space. The blogger created a line called Pattern Pieces which come in several different colors. I picked 4 I really liked and got them printed at Costco as she suggested.

 

I love how they brighten up the half bath! It's so nice to have some art on the walls.

 

I finally feel like I can call this room finished. Art really does finish things off. :)

Dinner Party Anyone?

The time has finally come. I have upgraded to a new dining room table and chairs! My old table and chairs were great and served me well for 2 years, but the time came to move on. The old table and chairs were a steal on Craigslist - $150 for the whole shebang. However, it only sat 4 people (unless you pulled out the leaf, but I only had 4 chairs anyway) and was pub height. I really wanted a regular height table that could seat 6.

Check out how u-g-l-y the dining room was when I first moved in!!

Anyway... I went ahead and put the table and chairs on Craigslist for $300 to see if I would get any bites. I got so many emails and in the end sold it for $250. Not bad, right? I'll accept a $100 profit! I had also been saving up for a while, so I was ready to start looking. I browsed several different places, but ended up settling on Overstock.com. I found the perfect table and chairs for me there. I loooove dark, chocolate brown stained furniture so when I found a table and chairs that came in a beautiful Espresso color and were inexpensive to boot, I was pretty happy.

I chose the Havana Carson Table, which was $207 and I ordered 6 of these dining chairs.

After using a 10% off promo code and getting $1 shipping, my total came to $469. Yay! And I already had $250 from selling the old table on Craigslist! When the new table and chairs came I had to assemble all the furniture. It took a long time to put all those chairs together, but it was worth it. I was so proud of myself after I finished them all. :) The table was easy peasy after that.

Here are my new table and chairs in their home:

As you can see, the old living room rug got moved into the dining room.

I pretty much love them! :)

Strawberry Pie

A few months ago I decided that I wanted to make a strawberry pie (yeah, it was kinda random). After searching the interwebs, I settled on using this recipe to make the crust (from here):

Ingredients:

* 2 cups all-purpose flour, sifted
* 1 teaspoon salt
* 2/3 cup butter or 2/3 cup shortening
* 5 -7 tablespoons cold water

Directions:

Put flour into a mixing bowl with the butter. Use a pastry cutter to cut the butter into the flour. Then add the salt and water. Mix together until a dough is formed. Roll out your dough on flat surface. Bake at 375 degrees until brown.

For the pie filling, I used the following recipe (found here):

Ingredients:

4 cups strawberries, washed, de-stemmed and quartered
1 teaspoon lemon juice
3/4 cup sugar
4 Tablespoons corn starch

Directions:

Mix all ingredients together.

How easy is that part, right? Haha.

After all that, I poured the filling in and did a lattice top with the extra dough.

Then I let it bake until it was brown, about 25 minutes.

Beautiful! And it was delicious to boot. I took it to work and shared with my co-workers to bribe them to like me more. :)

Landscaping

For a long time now I've been wanting to do something to the front flower beds to make them look nicer, but number 1 - I was lazy, number 2 - I didn't know what I wanted to do.

Here's how the front yard started out:

When the house was built, they planted bushes and laid down pine needles and that was all of the landscaping. After 2 years of living here, I finally got rid of the pine needles and did some work. Well, with the help of my mother of course (she worked in a nursery growing up so she knows a lot about plants).

The first thing we did was weeding and digging up the old small bushes because they had died. I thought it was strange that they had died, but once we started digging we figured out why... The flower beds were full of concrete, brick and rocks. What could grow in that?! We planted some new bushes and planted some flowers. I snapped these pictures while we were digging holes for the flowers:

Craziness... After we dug all that up and planted everything, we mulched and watered. Things are looking gorgeous now!

As you can see on the right, I took some leftover bricks from when the house was built to create a divider between the grass and the flower beds. It wasn't that much work, but I really like the look and hey, it was free!

In June, I bought some patio furniture on sale at Target and I love it. :)

The blue pillows came from Home Depot and were a birthday present from my mom.

After pouring a bunch of new soil in, I'm hoping the new bushes won't die like the old ones.

I bought that hose storage thingy (that's a technical term) and it's been great at wrangling the heavy water hose.

It's so nice to pull up to well-manicured flower beds after work each day instead of the ugly before, haha. :)

Living Room Art

I FINALLY put up the first artwork in the living room! I have had nothing on these walls for over 2 and a half years. How sad is that?

I wanted to do something personal and meaningful (and cheap, haha) so I DIY'd some art in Photoshop and printed it out.

So where did I put it? See the space between the two windows on the right? That's the space I chose.

And voila:

 I chose a trumpet because I played trumpet in band for 10 years. The middle picture is the Space Station and I selected that because I work on a Space Station contract. The computer on the bottom is for the 4 and 1/2 years I spent in college to get my degree in Computer Science.

The new art is so cheerful and happy! I love it. :)