A thing of beauty. : Bits and Pieces.

1. I spent the day yesterday doing a much needed cleaning of our apartment. My zeal for having a clean house took hold quickly however, and before I knew it I was in full blown "rearrange the whole house" mode. I spent hours arranging and re-arranging, agonizing over every detail, and drawing diagrams of the house to test out positions. Naturally, after all this work, I just switched two pieces of furniture and called it good. I know, I know, I'm such an over-achiever. Nonetheless, even this small change has made a lot of difference in the apartment. It's much more open than it used to be:

the couch used to be where the black desk is. given that we only have two pieces of furniture in the living room, there's not much choice in rearranging.

Maybe we'll get a coffee table and a bookshelf one of these days...another chair would be nice too.

2. I also spent a fair amount of time doing this:

So whimsical.

3. Alex and I went to the thrift store on Saturday, and struck gold in the book section. I was so pleasantly surprised with the selection. It is so rare to find thrift stores with great books. Also, I think we paid a total of $10 for all these:

This is why we can't buy a coffee table.

Somehow, I haven't read Marilynne Robinson's Housekeeping yet. Gilead is on my top ten favourite books list, so it is somewhat of a shocker to even myself that I have not read anything else by this wonderful author.

Freddy and Fredericka by Mark Helprin is one of those books that I oversaw my Cool Brilliant Older Sister reading one day and knew it had to be good. Or at least interesting.

I was delighted to find this massive, hardbound copy of Emily Post's Etiquette Book (49cents...what?!). Though some of it is perhaps a little dated, it is necessary to have an etiquette book lying around, for all those uncomfortable questions you might have about who knows what.

Alex stumbled across this hardbound copy of the Essential Dali. Such a great find. It has large colour prints of Dali's paintings (even if some of them are a little creepy). I'm a huge Dali fan, though, so I'm so happy to have this book in the house.

Finally, I was overjoyed to find the D'Aulaire Book of Greek Myths (even if it is softcover). This was one of my favourite books as a child, with the most wonderful illustrations and gripping stories of the Greek gods and goddesses. They also have written a book of Norse Myth which is probably even better. These are necessary to have in the house when our children come along.

I'm really going to make an effort during these cold months to read more. Since graduating college, my reading has declined drastically, and I'm feeling the effects. Good thing I have Words with Friends to keep my vocabulary in working order...

4. I have been very very good about getting all my Christmas shopping for Alex out of the way. (First Christmas! Hurrah!) Most of the time it's very easy to buy for him since our taste is very similar and he's so excited about gifts in general. That being said, I've definitely had to restrain myself from putting the entire internet on a credit card. Kidding. But really, it has been difficult not to buy him things I really want to just steal for myself. Like these awesome Star Wars iPhone cases:

want. need.

5. I know it's Winter and I am supposed to be wanting to eat warm thick soup and bread all the time, but honestly, all I want to eat is this Lobster Roll and Fried Scallops from the Red Barn, the best seafood place in Maine: