Written on January 29th, 2010 by Peter6 comments
The majority of home improvement blogs tend to present the viewer with a very carefully constructed representation of continuity. In short, most blogs show a visitor something that the blogger has found which has been overwhelmingly positive; a force in their life has been discovered and utilized in way that makes not only home improvement, but life in general a more noble and harmonious pursuit.
We, however, prefer a more honest approach and are more than willing to familiarize you, dear reader, with our cock ups, as John Cleese might call them. We want to tell you when we screw up, because we think mistakes in homemaking are productive. Mistakes help us learn and by sharing our failures with you all, we can help you learn in a more honest fashion.
So here is an epic fail:
It began so innocently, with a beautiful, sunny Sunday afternoon of thrift store shopping. My betrothed and I found what might be the best antique store in Austin, a little place called Out of the Past, after the masterpiece of a film noir with your favorite bad boy and mine, Robert Mitchum. We paid this place a visit, met the store’s wonderful proprietress, and purchased two beautiful silver pieces for use in our upcoming wedding. As with most vintage silver one may find, these pieces were tarnished. As we were leaving the store the owner called after us, “Now don’t go buying any of that silver polish! It smells! Use toothpaste instead.”
Well, I attacked this project full bore, thinking it would give me an opportunity to share a thrifty tip with our readers. Unfortunately, I was wrong. Yes, a man was wrong. Somehow the planets aligned and the forces of nature turned against the human race: a man was wrong. The toothpaste did not yield any results. I then tried soaking the silver in warm water and baking soda. Again, nothing.
The picture above serves as both a before and an after. I did manage to remove one microscopic spot, but I would assume that scrubbing furiously for an extended period of time using oatmeal could have produced the same result. (No, I haven’t read any evidence that oatmeal can polish silver.)
The moral of this story, unfortunately, is that some home remedies are sheer quackery, like the nineteenth century elixirs of life sold at medicine shows across the U.S. This did not work, so by all means, use your toothpaste and baking soda for, respectively, personal hygiene and troublesome stomach ailments, not for imperfections of silver.
I’ve mentioned before that Peter and I are engaged. My sweet nerd asked me to marry him about eleven months ago. All this time we’ve been tossing around grand ideas and setting a few things in stone but now its really time to actually start putting together all the pieces. Recently we’ve spent a lot of time pouring over thrift stores to find some details that will seems a little more unique to us.
Isn’t the top of this vase amazing?
The thing that I love so much about this idea is that all of these items are out on display in the house. (Well, two of the swans are. We actually bought 16.) We’re happy that we’re not just wasting money on things that we’ll have no use for after the wedding and since our friends are so used to seeing these things in our home, it’ll make the wedding feel that much more like us.
For all you married folks out there: what were some of your favorite things from your wedding decor?
Yesterday’s photos were so gross that I thought we all needed something pretty to stare at. Enjoy!
{Decor Pad}
{Kishani Perera}
{Decor Pad}
When I was visiting Clay, he showed me a quick trick for cleaning grimy faucets. You will need is baking soda, vinegar, a plastic bag, and a rubber band.
Pour some baking soda and vinegar in the plastic bag until the mixture starts to bubble like a volcano. Then attach the bag to the sink using your rubber band. Wait awhile–we forgot about it for a few hours but I’m sure an hour would have sufficed.
Remove the bag and enjoy a cleaner faucet! It’s that easy and look at the difference!
Don’t you wish you had a friend like me to post photos of dirty places in your house? 
Thanks Clay!
I hardly ever watch TV. In fact, Peter and I don’t even have cable. (This is when I usually watch my friends gasp and prepare myself to answer a bajillion question about what I do with my spare time.) But when they changed TVs so that in order to watch regular non-cable programming you needed to have cable or some special converter box, Peter and I decided to invest in a box to satisfy our house guests. For a few days, fascinated by our new channel selection, I watched more frequently. One day I came across an infomercial for Cindy Crawford’s Meaningful Beauty. I was immediately interested and then as the price stared plummeting I quickly became skeptical–until it fell so low (I’m sure you can hear it in your head, “BUT WAIT!! If you buy right now we’ll take this $150 value and give it to you for for $19.99″) that what I would be getting would actually be cheaper than buying beauty products from a grocery store. Immediately I turned off the TV, walked away, and told myself that if the deal was really that good then I wouldn’t be getting so much for free.
A few days later, I drove down to visit my mother and in her room I saw this:
I found it hysterical that my mom (who also almost never watches TV) saw the same infomercial and also thought that the product sounded like a great deal. Apparently Meaningful Beauty works on a system of automatic renewal so my mom had ordered a shipment and before she’d even made a dent in it she had another one at her doorstep. Being the kind person that she is, she gave he second set to me.
I was immediately put off by the renewal system because I hate it when companies try to get me to spend extra money, but the products themselves turned me off even more. Imagine Clinique’s Dramatically Different Moisturizing Lotion in a formula that clumps so much that you feel like you are pumping buggers into your hand. This is the best way I can describe the night cream. Most of the other products seemed no different than a simple lotion. All in all, I would not spend money on this product. This formulas used for these lotions are unimpressive and they probably rely on the renewal scheme to ensure multiple purchases.
Has anyone else tried Meaningful Beauty? Maybe you liked it more than I did.
Image courtesy of Wrinkle Cure Review.
