Kitty Deschanel

Sexy Nerd and I seem doomed to lose a tree in our backyard every summer. Here is our yard two summers ago: See that big, beautiful ash tree? The focal point of our yard? Don't get too attached to it. Here is our yard last summer: No ash tree. Just the neighbors ridiculously close house, perhaps placed at an angle so it could be as close as possible. Lush green (fake) lawn though! Once we'd realized the tree was infested with ash borers, it was too late. It was a sad loss, but we moved on, planting sticks in its place that will one day (Sexy Nerd insists) grow tall enough to block the neighbor's windows. This summer was going to be better! Just look at all the cherries we got from our 2 cherry trees: So much cherry goodness! My mom is going to be so mad when she sees I posted photos online with my house a mess! Do you know where I'm going with this? If you have a cherry tree, you may not want to finish reading this post. It gets pretty scary

This is the soap I use in both of our guest bathrooms. The bottle is pretty and it smells like honey. I like it...except for one tiny annoyance. See if you can guess what it is. So far, so good. The little beehive and lovely oranges make this bottle look adorable on my bathroom countertop. See it down there on the bottom of the label? Grrr. Am I naive for thinking that my San Diego Soap Company soap was made in San Diego? *Sigh.*

And what a beautiful strawberry it was! Delicious!

My office is in desperate need of a makeover. Although we pulled up the dingy, gray-blue carpet from most of our house when we moved in, the gross carpet is still in my office! Keeping it company is an old garden tub, glass shower doors, and other dusty reminders of our master bathroom remodel. The thing I hate most of all? My office window looks out onto a street corner where drivers ALWAYS run the stop sign, leaving me yelling at them in my pajamas when I really should be working! Solution? Take over the guest bedroom, which has no view whatsoever of that damn stop sign. Really, it has no view whatsoever of anything, but I'm okay with that. What does this mean? In addition to fancying up my ugly, ugly office, I get to redo the guest bedroom! I've been browsing around and have found a few fun products. Isn't online shopping fun? I love this sofa, which could be used instead of a bed at night and could be a comfy place to watch TV during the day (and it's only $249 wi

Super huge, mega exciting news today! But, due to my BlogHer (awesome, by the way) agreement, I'm not technically allowed to have the giveaway right here (phooey!) Luckily, BlogHer is perfectly happy with me linking to my giveaway: Win A Le Creuset Stock Pot! LambAround's 1st Giveaway! Good luck, everyone! If I were a rich girl, I'd throw in that bottle of wine too!

Sexy Nerd has big plans for our yard this year. He also has no shame about being photographed in grungy sweatpants...outside...where all our neighbors can see him. That said, he surely won't mind me posting these photos on my blog, right? He recently installed the wire fence you see behind him. It sections off our yard into the attractive hang-out-on-the-patio area and the garden. The Garden (coming soon, I hope!) Sexy Nerd is hoping to grow an assortment of fruits and vegetables this year, including tomatoes, jalapeños, watermelon, kale, cantaloupe, bell peppers, cucumbers, and strawberries. By fencing off half the yard, he has effectively prevented his crops from being devoured by pests. Garden-Munching Pests For maximum enjoyment of the patio section, we have our handy dandy bug zapper! Betcha didn't know people actually use these. Neither did I. Welcome to Albuquerque! So, what's the best feature of our backyard? Is it that miniature

One of our favorite changes made during our kitchen remodel was repainting the laundry room door with chalkboard paint. We decorate the door for each holiday. It has had a Christmas tree, fireworks, pumpkins, and all sorts of other holiday designs over the last year or so that we've had it. We've been lazy lately and, up until this morning, it was still decorated for Valentine's Day . I casually mentioned to Sexy Nerd that it's about time we erase all the hearts and put up an Easter design. I was thinking that it would be funny to draw an easter bunny wearing a Pope hat, like on South Park. Surprisingly, Sexy Nerd said that he was way ahead of me and had already updated our chalkboard door. This is not what I'd had in mind: Weirdo.

Sexy Nerd and I have been looking for new chairs for a while. My old Ashley Furniture glass dining table and metal chairs from college just weren't right in our new house. However, as the old dining set cost $200 for the table and 4 chairs, I was having trouble justifying $100 or so per chair for replacements. So, the glass table is now being used as a desk in my office, Sexy Nerd refinished an old dining room table to match our style, and the old chairs received a much-needed update, courtesy of a $3 can of burgundy spray paint (which looks pink when photographed, for some reason). Now to find cheap upholstery fabric that looks awesome! And learn how to reupholster a chair! And sew more of that upholstery fabric into matching curtains! And sand/paint those yucky cabinet doors! And rearrange all the furniture! And find 2 more chairs that will look good with these because we want to seat 6! And build a window seat in the dining room! Ah, good times. This Post is Blog Ho

HGTV is going to announce the winner of the 2010 HGTV Dream Home in Sandia Park, NM in just a few days (March 15 at 8pm ET/PT). I'm sorry if you thought you were going to win it, but you're not. Who will the winner be? Sexy Nerd and I are going to win the HGTV Dream Home! WOO HOO!! What makes me so sure? How do I know?? Well, technically I don't know for sure ...but I've become attached to the idea and figure that sending "Sexy Nerd and I are going to win the 2010 HGTV Dream Home" vibes out into the universe can't hurt! You can help by repeating after me: "Sexy Nerd and Lamb are going to win the 2010 HGTV Dream Home. The LambAround blog is the best blog ever and I will visit all of the sponsors. Pica and Biscuit will look cute and happy in the 2010 HGTV Dream Home. They can share the kid's room." Don't feel bad about us winning instead of you. I will take zillions of photos and post them here! It's a win-win situation

Want to make your closet an organizational superstar? If you've only been using it to store your clothes, it is underutilized. I'll start this post by admitting that I don't exactly have a tiny closet, especially now that our bedroom/bathroom renovation is nearing the end. However, I certainly don't have a ginormous closet either (it's downright tiny after I stuff all my clothes and junk in there!) and many of these tips can be applied to a small, non-walk-in closet. I don’t go into my office every day. But what does that mean for the To-Do pile on my desk and the appointments on my calendar? Well, unless I convert to a nudist lifestyle ( probably not going to happen any time in the near future), my typical day is going to include a few trips to my closet.   I don't know why I never thought to put my calendar inside my closet before! I see it before leaving the house each day, which is especially helpful if you like to check things out from the

The first time we ever saw our house, the previous owners had the downstairs laid out so that you walked into the dining room, then went to the living room, which was across from the kitchen. At least, if you used your imagination, that's how it was laid out (the previous owners were a little odd). When we purchased the house, we decided to flip the layout, so that the dining room was across from the kitchen and you entered into the living room. It seemed to make so much more sense! However, as our bathroom renovation is coming to an end (after over a year!), I'm beginning to wonder if the original layout might work better, albeit with a few changes. This idea all started when Sexy Nerd began fancying up our dining room (a bathroom renovation and a dining room renovation at the exact same time, you ask? Sure, why not!) We've been trying to create a classy, formal dining room feel. However, since you can see into the living room and the kitchen while at the table, it never

I stumbled upon these cute placemats from burkedecor.com and am optimistic that I can make something similar using bamboo placemats and rubber stamps. We'll see.

Over the past few weeks, Sexy Nerd has made some major updates to our dining room. He repainted the chairs, refinished the table, switched out the light fixture, and, of course, put up the gigantic tulip wallpaper mural that has been sitting in the closet since March (finally!) There is still a lot to do (like recovering the chairs, adding 2 more chairs, and building a window seat,)(oh, and replacing that ugly white tile around the fireplace!) but we think the changes look pretty good so far. Somehow, that green dolly always finds its way back into our dining room!

We found these at Nordstrom (or was it Bloomingdales?) when we were in San Diego and I've been kicking myself for not buying them ever since. I figured that they would go on sale and I'd simply order them online - neither store lists these on their website! Now, I've located these super cute little napkins here, but the shipping charge is $8.00 (to ship 4 feather-light napkins that could easily be mailed in a standard yellow envelope with 2 stamps like I use at work every day!) That price sucks the cuteness right out of these. If any store in Albuquerque is selling these, lemme know! 6/10/18 Update: My awesome boss gifted TWO packs of these napkins to me. Isn't she the greatest? In the decade I've had them, I've used them...twice. Ah, the joys of entertaining in your mind!

*Update* Wondering how our master bathroom remodel turned out? Click here for photos! Is it just me, or has this remodel been going on FOREVER?? To be fair, we were distracted for a while with the task of saving our dying ash tree. Did you know that there is a type of insect called an ash borer? We didn't! Was the rescue time well spent? Not exactly. Oh, our yard is so crappy now! Fingers crossed that the bathroom will be completed within the next month. We still need to plant a new tree!

I love browsing through decorating blogs. Here is my quick contribution to the world of bargain-hunting decor: This plant was marked down to $0.50 and was in a shopping cart full of discounted Easter merchandise last year. It didn't look like it would last very long, but here it is almost a year later and doing great. Not bad considering that it spends most of its time in the guest bedroom with the blinds closed. Instead of planting it in an actual pot, I just placed it inside a cute bowl from the $1 Store. The colorful thingy on the right is just an old jar filled of incense and tied with a bow. As for the slate tiles, they are the top of the bar that Sexy Nerd built. They're sitting inside a groove, not grouted down, so that if we ever change our decor, we can easily switch out the top of the bar with different tiles.

I need this chair. Actually, I need 4 of them. Maybe even six. Why, oh why, must they be $139.95 each?? Damn you, Pottery Barn. I will just have to DIY my own...somehow...with spray paint.

The shower is gone! So much for that being "the absolute last step of the project". I guess using the guest bathroom isn't that bad. Just when you thought it couldn't get any messier... My pack rat side won't let me get rid of the old shower door. We donated the bathroom fan from the guest bathroom, and look what happened - we needed a fan for our remodeled master bathroom and had to buy a new one for $30! But realistically, what am I going to do with an old shower door? Maybe if our new walk-in shower opening ends up getting water everywhere, (Sexy Nerd swears it won't) we can use it again. A hidden passageway between the walls of the two bathrooms? We are so totally adding that space to the closet behind the wall on the left. Eventually, we're going to need to throw some things away. Not the old cabinets though. I don't know what we'll do with them, but as soon as they're gone, we'll think of the coolest use for them ever!

*Update*  This bathroom remodel is finally finished! Here are the glorious AFTER photos. Even better, we've moved. Be sure to check out photos of the bathrooms in our new dream home in the mountains outside of Albuquerque, NM. I may be a bit biased, as we designed everything in the new house from scratch, but can confidently say they're stunning. Recently, I came home from work to discover that my husband had used his day off work to demolish our master bathroom - surprise! The new sink area is coming along nicely. It used to be 75% of SN's walk-in closest. Eventually, there will be a mosaic tile countertop joining the 2 sinks. There will also be a big, sparkly chandelier here, as well as an electric fireplace. Our "new" Jacuzzi tub (new to us, at least) is installed and ready for use. If only I had ordered the waterfall faucet sooner! What's that? You don't think we would actually take a bath with everything in the room destroy