SERIOUSLY BLOGGER, this post looks like shit. i blame you.

before i begin, can i just rant once more about new blogger? BECAUSE WHAT THE HELL NEW BLOGGER.  it should not require a degree in computer science to CENTER FREAKING JUSTIFY a picture now and then. i have center-justified it from your stupid layout icons, from the hover-menu on the photo itself, AND in the html on the backend. CENTER FUCKING JUSTIFY already.

ALSO! why can i not have consistent spaces between my paragraphs!? i'm already resorting to holding shift every time i hit enter so that the one space you SHOW ME in edit mode ends up being actually one space when published, but that doesn't even always work because NOTHING LOOKS THE SAME BETWEEN MY EDIT PAGE AND WHEN I PUBLISH.

wordpress, expect to host a new blog shortly. this is some SHIT. 

ahem. anyyyyywaaaaay.

when chris bought his place, it had these gross mini-blinds in all the windows that had apparently never been cleaned since they were installed. half of them were also bent or broken.

we replaced the ones in both bedrooms with lovely wide faux-wood slat blinds, but for some reason did not get around to doing the same in the living room, where the sad, stained, ugly blinds continued to live on in painful harmony with the vibrantly forest green carpet.

barf.

so this weekend i decided to fix! it! except then i remembered one reason we'd held off: what COLOR should we get? white seemed a poor choice, because gross, look at the CURRENT ones.  but would the chestnut color from our bedroom work in the living room??

only one way to find out!

yes, i did copy & paste a photo of the blinds in our bedroom onto a photo of the blinds in our living room. how ELSE does one make these decisions??

anyway, we didn't like that very much.  so even though i'd pshawed chris's suggestion of white blinds earlier, i tried inserting a picture of those:

oh. huh. that actually looks pretty good, doesn't it. i mean, not the poor man's photoshopping. that is still pretty janky.

an hour later, we were drilling new holes in the window frame, and oliver was being as helpful as always. 

i sure would hate to put up blinds that weren't pre-treated with cat hair.

i LOVE it. the change is subtle but fabulous. it turns out i wasn't against WHITE blinds, i was against yellowed, stained, metal "white" blinds. who knew.

yay!

ALSO this weekend! i went to cooking class at Sur La Table on the suggestion of my friend Liz, where we learned to make macarons. i expected this to go rather poorly, but was pleasantly surprised to learn that i COULD make a macaron without completely effing it up.  see?

it turns out they're not particularly hard to make, they're just incredibly fussy and tedious to make, and require a lot of specialized ingredients and equipment, none of which i have.  so i probably will never make them again (unless it's with someone else's stuff) but it sure was fun. and delicious.