Do not adjust your sets.

Yep, I've had another play around with the Comments field. Now, you may remember I had hours of fun changing it and then changing it again in the not too distant past, but there was an incident last night which has led me to change the stupid thing again. Himself insisted that he had left a slightly premature (the Moroccan-stylee understairs door is still waiting to be filled & painted) self-congratulatory comment on this post, but I didn't get the usual e-mail that pops in to let me know a comment's been left on the blog and I need to moderate it. So, obviously enough, I didn't believe that he'd left me a comment at all... and then I logged into the control panel for the blog.

Suffice to say, oopsie.

Now we're back to business as usual with Word Verification, peeps, so you'll see that you need to re-type a random string of letters or numbers thrown up by Blogger before your comment will be published. This is only to make sure you aren't some mad spammer-type trying to spam the ickle pink blog with your spam (I was inundated with rubbish when I switched it off inititally) and means that if I haven't access to the Interweb for a few days or my 3 mobile broadband goes off the radar for entire weekends with no notice for "maintenance", you can comment away to your heart's content.

Lovely biscuits!

New to this whole blogs/commenting malarky? Clicky here for a wee "How To" guide!

Stupid no-shipping-to-Ireland internet shops...

To horribly maim a classic quote: It is the best of things, it is the worst of things. I generally love Internet shopping - the convenience! The choice! The cheap prices if you don't get caught by the Customs lads! - but there is nothing guaranteed to cause your heart to sink into your boots quite so quickly as discovering that the online store who is the sole stockist of that *perfect* bed/dog harness/dress/ribbon/button/pair of glasses (I could go on, I've been burnt quite a few times) does not ship outside the contigious United States.

Yeh, yeh, I'm sure it's even worse if you're living in Alaska or Hawaii, whatever...

Yesterday, while having a Google of jacquard headboards, I stumbled across the online store of American company Brocade Home via a post on Apartment Therapy. They stock a bed base that is so close to being exactly what I want for our bedroom that I actually stopped breathing. That's it at the top of this post. When I saw that they offer it in white as well as black, I started to feel faint, which was when it occured to me that I should probably start breathing again. Prepared for a mahoosive price tag, because surely to God this was too good to be true, I involuntarily squeaked with delight when I saw that it was $299.

Excira and delira with my find, I toddled off to see how quickly they could get it to me... Ah. There's the rub. "Nope, sorry Lyndar, we are not shipping this lovely, ideal, you-want-it-so-bad-you-might-actually-cry bed to your country. If you want it that bad, we suggest that you move your ass to a real country like the 48-State America."

B*stards.

See, *this* is why my house isn't Finished...

Anyone who knows me will be able, no doubt with a roll of their eyes, to attest to the fact that I am inclined to be wildly distractable. I'm also inclined to over-think things. I think (har har) this is why I'm an absolute terror for taking too many things on at once, and nowhere is this more evident than on the home front. The only room that actually looks finished in our gaff is the sitting room, and even it isn't *quite* there yet. There are pictures and photos to be hung over the couch. The room could probably do with a mirror over the mantlepiece. Two of the speakers of Himself's surround sound yoke have yet to be mounted on the walls. There is a certain (possibly sideboard shaped) je ne sais quoi missing from the alcove to the left of the fireplace.

And that's the room that's closest to being done! I won't get into the nearly-there kitchen units, half-painted kitchen walls, or still-to-be-wallpapered wall in the dining room. Let's not mention the stairs which needs at least one more coat of paint to finally take it from pine to pristine white, or the guest bedroom that was painted a gorgeous Farrow & Ball grey and got a purple acrylic chandelier but is now filled with a dressed mattress spare bed and piles of clothes and mounds of what can really only be described as detritus.

Have we just moved in, you wonder? How long are we living there? Oh, just over 2 years...

As ever, though, I have a plan. Himself and I will both tackle the stairs some weekend (unheard of - usually I like to do these decorating things myself to make sure they're done right) so that it's ready to take a runner - when we do eventually find one we can agree on. That's job Numero Uno, since it's the first thing people see when they come in the front door.

Speaking of which, must finish painting the inside of the front door.

Himself will then be charged with putting up those bloody speakers (power tools job, lots of noise and dust - right up his street) while I finally finish the kitchen presses. This was the first job I tackled when we moved in so it's absolutely shameful that it's still ongoing. Althouuugh... excellent daylight is really a prerequisite for tackling the painting of the doors and surrounds as well as the actual kitchen walls, so winter is maybe not the greatest time to be getting gung-ho about finishing the project for someone who's after perfect results. Might pop that on the back burner until the weather picks up.

The spare bedroom can't really be sorted out much until we get a not-just-a-mattress-on-the-floor bed in there, which won't be happening until we get a new bed for our own bedroom and shunt the old one into the spare room. However, I have yet to find a bed that I like and until that happens, progress upstairs will continue to move at a slower pace than would generally be desirable.

The worst thing is, I don't even want a fancy bed for our room!!! I basically just want a cheap, not too high, off-the-floor box (divans give me the creeps) with no headboard whose legs you can't see or else are a bit ornate. To that I'm planning to add an upholstered mid-height square headboard of my own creation. This is harder to find than you'd imagine: most platform beds either come complete with an integral headboard or extend stupidly beyond the width and length of the matress, at exactly the right height to cut the shins off me. (Seriously, I could be in an aircraft hangar usually used to house C-5s with a small desk in the centre, and I would still manage to walk full tilt into the bloody thing.)

IKEA's Vanvik (paired here with The World's Most Hideous bedclothes, ick) looked like a runner for a while. A fully upholstered frame, it had nice wee decorative legs, the sides of the base didn't extend beyond the mattress, I reckoned that It wouldn't be difficult to fashion alternative covers in my own choice of fabric. It looked better In Real Life than in the catalogue. And if I happened to run in to it, sure the thing was padded so I'd be grand. Result! Well, nearly - the bowed headboard means that it's something insane like 400 foot long which would look ridiculous in our not-actually-all-that-big room. I haven't crossed it off the list completely: I have a hare-brained scheme involving hacking a bit off the headboard and re-doing it in the back of my mind, and while it's unlikely to ever come to fruition I just can't shake the idea entirely.

Well, it's either that or start building a bed completely from scratch, and frankly I'm not sure either of our carpentry skills are really up to it... just don't tell Himself!

Happy Noo Year!

Yeh, I know.

I've been a bad, baaaaad blogger. But it turns out that Accounts Receivable types get real busy in an economic downturn. Who knew?

At least I have a birrov news for y'all since last we spoke:
- The Beaut.ie pre-Chrismas brunch was great craic, with goodie bags galore and lots of Lovely Girls downing sipping mimosas in Venu, cocktails in Café Novo in the Westbury Hotel, wine in Dakota and a random assortment of drinkies in Capitol Bar. Oh, and there was some food aswell. Pics here!
- We went to Monart for New Year's Eve & it was only fabilis, dahling. Love. It. So. Much.
- I have had a birthday and am now (gulp) 27. Eek!
- Himself had a birthday and is now 28. Ha ha ha ha haaaaaaaa...
- Ummm, that might be it.

Still no change on the job front but so far this week I have decided to be a journalist, a solicitor, an interior designer, and a beauty therapist. Not all at the one time, like, but it seems that there's at least one potential new job appealing to me every day. Who knows what I'll want to be today? Maybe a sexy assassin. Maybe the caretaker of the islands of The Great Barrier Reef. Can't wait to find out!

While I try to puzzle that out, have an oul' outfit picture to keep you going:

(I am something less than an ace photographer so things that are very definitely navy In Real Life look nearly black here, soz about that.)

* Dress: Chupi
* Navy cardigan: Warehouse
* Vest top: H&M
* Indigo jeans: Joe's Jeans (these have lovely navy sparkly bits on the arse pockets, so they have)
* Navy & blue shoes: Irregular Choice (can't really see them in this pic but they have flower corsages!)
* Cream flower ring: Accessorize

Usually I wear this dress with navy opaque tights which is a much nicer look altogether, but it was a bit chilly this particular day so on went the jeans.

Anyways, it was a Friday and actually I am still being very good about not wearing them generally. (So now!)