Ok here’s some of Jill’s pics from last weekend while I post a recap for this weekend…. Thanks for the CD Jill!!! I'll update the photoblog soon with the rest of her pics….
wonderful. Sat. afternoon we went to the West Side Market with my bro. If you live in Cleveland and haven’t been to the market you need to go immediately. They are open until 4 today. Go now. It’s amazing. I bought all sorts of spices (both the quality and price are way better than the supermarket), various meats and cheeses for lunch this week, and hand made pierogies from The Pierogi Palace. I don’t really like pierogis except for these - these are fantastic. My brother bought fresh, unsalted peanut butter. It tasted like peanuts. Soooo good. I wonder where that line is – because the reduced fat/reduced calorie Jif that I buy is probably better for you calorie wise…but I’m sure that this stuff is waaay better for you as far as additives and scary chemical stuff goes…. Which is better overall? Dunno…
anyways…
Sunday of course was football. This week the Bengals and the Steelers didn’t play at the same time – which meant a long day of knitting for me. We went up to the Winking Lizard to watch the games with Osam – it’s a good thing I don’t care if I knit in public! I cranked out a ton of my epic project. It actually looks like what it’s supposed to be! I hate to be so vague but Christmas will be here soon. Osam at one point asked me "whatcha knitting" and Matt says "she’s knitting a ____. She’s turning a ball of yarn into a _____. Isn’t that amazing?" Which I thought was the nicest thing to say ever. He is a hell of a guy.... Anyways, both Matt and Osam were pretty (understandably) crushed by the end of the day. Luckily Family Guy was new…. Nothing like seeing Brian dancing to "It’s Peanut Butter Jelly Time!!!" to cheer him up. I seriously don’t know how that show does it… how they get away with everything that they do and how they find all of the references that they make. I remember the dancing banana from studio 4th year so what was that… 2002? Yeah… spring 2002…. Good times… good times…
Ok so I updated the photoblog again with more Murder Mystery Party pictures. These are all from Rebecca – she used the sepia setting on her camera and they look awesome. How nice of her to resize them all so they would fit into an email!!!
Buzznet is weird and a little not user friendly in my opinion so basically to see the pics click on this link Murder & Housewarming – and then on the right hand side there is an orange bar with a blue button on it. If you click on the blue arrow it gives you more and more pictures. Sorry if that’s a little too explanatory but I know someone who missed like half of my pics b/c of that! Anyways here are some of the highlights:
"This Man is Stone Dead"
The Murder Mystery party that we had last weekend was amazing! We ended up with 25 people (26 characters after Osam bit it), one extra murder, and a lot of empty liquor bottles. Everyone dressed up. Everyone. It was awesome. The food was great (Thanks everyone for helping out!!!), the company was great, and the game was phenomenal. I was waiting to post a recap for the rest of the pics but it seems like that could take awhile (Rebecca and Jill I’m talking to you!). So for now I posted a gallery of all of Jessica’s pictures on my photoblog….. here’s the link – Murder Mystery Party
The awards were:
Best Costume (pictured left): Velma Blake (Alyson I) & Cash Steal (John J)
Best Actor: Baroness Ravioli (Laura G.)
Most Money at the end of the night: Harriet Hambini (Alison I)
Super Sleuths: Sly Sleeze (Dan), Jack "Greasy Thumbs" Guiseppi (Peter), Guilda Guilseppi (Bridget) and Cash Steal (John J)
At first I was worried that the game wasn’t going to fly – it took everyone a little while to get into it…. But once Big Jim went to make his toast, we killed the lights, and shot him the game got really good. Everyone got so into their role – I got to scream at Osam, grease the accountant with free admission to my "clubs", and generally secure that my husband would be taking over the Chicago operations…. I paid off the reporter, the mayor, and the congressman and tried to recruit new "workers" for my operations. But I was far from the most into it – the guys were wheeling a
nd dealing all night. At one point Matt, Joel, Osam, and the politicians were in the back room of the basement trying to reach an agreement and LB & Rebecca were listening at the door and feeding all the info to Alice (the reporter) in order to seek revenge on Brian for being paid by Osam to cheat on Rebecca with LB. Oh yes it was a tangled little web… but what a great game. I’m also very impressed at all of the different groups for mingling so well…. Family, Cleveland friends, and College friends all hung out and worked together to screw each other. It was fantastic.
The party must have been a success because when I mentioned that there is a Murder at the Four Deuces II everyone seemed interested. Perhaps we have to make this an annual event!
I also have to give a big thank you to everyone for the housewarming gifts and for helping out with everything. Megan got us an awesome snow shovel which from the looks of things will be very useful tonight, Laura P gave us a Christmas Cactus which is in full bloom (I can’t get mine to even produce buds! I think it gets too much light. Next year that plant’s going in the closet for October), and Sarah T gave us some fantastic wine. Alyson T gave us the most random, fun thing ever…. A Slip ‘n Slide!!!! So now I can’t wait until summer when we can set up that bad boy.
In knitting news (I swear this is a knit blog, really), I have been knitting a lot this week…. But nothing that I can post. It’s all gifts. The epic project is taking forever Sandlot style but it’s looking awesome. I’m going to post some pics on the knit along site so if you email me I’ll send you the link. I also plan on making my first ever knitpicks order sometime soon – does anyone have any thoughts on their Andean Silk? I want it for things that are worn close to the body – scarves and mittens and such – but I’m worried about it itching b/c of the wool content… any thoughts?
The bedroom was painted in this horrible off-peach color and not very well. It looked like someone had slapped a coat of neutral over whatever was there before…. The thing is that we blew our entire painting budget on the upstairs so we needed to redo this room on the cheap…. Luckily we had leftover paint kicking around! The ceiling paint and off-white wall paint were out of my mom’s paint stash. The red wall was leftover from the apartment – we had bought paint to match the mullions but never did anything with it. We used the same semi-gloss trim paint as we used upstairs so that wasn’t too costly….Add a few curtains and touch-up paint the furniture and an old mirror and Voila! Finished guestroom. I’m very happy with the way this turned out vs. how much it cost us to do….
Downstairs Bedroom #2 "Office/Gray Room"
Basically this was the same deal as the other bedroom – we had to redo it with zero money. We used the gray paint that we had painted the concrete columns in our apartment mixed with some light blue that my mom had and got a lighter gray. Then the yellow was leftover from the big yellow box in our apartment…. Perfect for an accent wall. My wonderful grandmother found us a day-bed hand-me-down from one of her knitting friends (yes my grandmother has knitting friends, too!). She made a slipcover and 
pillows for it and it is the perfect couch! Add a cheap desk from staples and wireless internet and we have our very own office! Oh yeah – we have wireless internet now. It rocks so hard…. So now all of our friends with laptops can come over and play on line wherever.
2nd Floor Studio: 
I love this space. I know it’s completely empty but that’s what I love about it right now. There is so much potential. We could move the drafting board up there and make it a true studio… or the computer and make it an office… or a couch and make it a nice comfy spot for me to knit or read w/o Madden in the background…or I could put a loom here…..or build shelves across one of the walls….or Matt could put another tv and his playstation and make guy-land…or as Matt's brother said turn it into a music room...or even sometime down the road this could be anything. This is our flex space…. The space that gives us room to grow. But whatever we make it the dormer is absolutely the perfect spot for my bead table. I get my own little beading cubby!!! This is honestly the room that sold the house for me.
It was painted a dark, dark blue with even darker trim. I’m not really a blue person to begin with and dark would definitely not do for the crafting studio I had envisioned. So we went with the same color scheme as for our bedroom – Chocolate Brown accent walls and then medium brown (up the same paint strip) on the arched walls and light brown on the other flat walls. It’s a lot pinker than I had originally planned but I like it…. The color is one of those hard to describe colors that seems to change on us….
By the way… the built-ins are filled with yarn. Yup… I get my very own set of built-ins for my stash. And when I run out of room in the built-ins there is a huge storage area in the attic off of this room! I seriously think sometimes that house was built for us…. Oh and these twisty branch thingies came off of a bush in my front yard! I really like the way they look just bare and in a vase.
Our Bedroom: 
Since our house is what realtors would call a bungalow (meaning it has bedrooms on the first floor), we decided to take over the 2nd floor bedroom as a master suite of sorts. There is a half-bath up there so it works out perfectly. It was painted a light purple/blue and then sponge painted in hot pink, cark blue, and purple over half of the wall. There is a previous post called "Before" that has a pic of this awfulness. Although I think the previous owners had a young daughter and this was her room – so I guess hot pink sponge paint would be appropriate for that. And whoever had painted this did a great time and had obviously spent alot of time on it. For us, however, the pink had to go.
We went with a similar color scheme as the studio - dark brown for the flat walls and a gold color for the sloped walls and ceiling. The bed and nightstands are Ikea- which I had my eye on for years and jumped all over once we found out that we couldn't fit the boxspring up the stairs. We also bought the wood slat blinds once we learned that there is a street light directly across from our bed…..But the hand painted curtains are the real showstopper. My mom bought them in Italy over 25 years ago. My grandmother reconfigured them to fit with our windows.. I love design like that – some things mass produced so it's within our budget with little touches that make it uniquely ours. I'm so happy with the way it turned out I can't even tell you. Even Dexter has his own little cubby - we put his bed into one of the built-ins making him very happy. 
Kitchen:
So yeah… That’s my house! It’s amazing what having a party will get you to accomplish…..In knitting news I haven’t done anything in over a week… but tonight my only plans are to eat leftover dips, watch Arrested Development Season I and Monday Night Football, and knit. So hopefully I’ll have some progress to show on something soon.
