Scarlett Ink

One of the things that I take pride in our home is the second floor bathroom. It’s big and spacious as well as tastefully designed. I keep it very clean and smelling nice since I consider it my retreat from the outside world. While the house was still in its planning stages, I put my foot down about having enough space in the bathroom area to walk in – even pace if necessary.

My work as writer requires me to be creative and in the mood to weave stories at all times, so off to the bathroom I go for some quiet time. I spend so much time there that I sometimes bring with me books, magazines and drafts of articles that I am writing. In addition, I realized that have accumulated a lot of skin care products and aromatherapy items over the last few months. My favorite spot in the house was fast becoming cluttered and littered with so many items – big and small!

I knew it was time to hatch some bathroom storage ideas worthy of my stature. It had to be elegant, a conversation piece if possible, yet functional and effective as a storage furniture. I finally decided on transferring a beautiful antique armoire from the sitting room to the bathroom. It was large enough to hold everything from my bathrobe and slippers to my favorite reading materials. Best of all, the lacquered finish added an exotic charm to the bathroom. Made me think of Memoirs of a Geisha.

Being married to a computer programmer has its ups and downs. Feels great when you want to know something about the capacity of external hard drives or the most recently released Apple software. He’s always in the know and you end up being updated too whether you like it or not. Trouble is, you also need a man in the house to do the nitty-gritty stuff. The kind that you don’t want to do yourself because it entails getting all sweaty and dirty.

As a work at home mom to a toddler, I wouldn’t want to worry about changing light bulbs, fixing leaky faucets and most especially – painting the house exterior. That’s something I expect a man to do. So when it was time to give the fences and walls a fresh coat of paint, I ever so nicely reminded my husband. It was our first home and I could tell that exterior painting was something that he has not done before.

We were able to find the correct type of paint, primer, as well as the brushes and rollers that went along with it. The ladder was also prepped and waiting outside. Then out came hubby in his worn overalls, paint roller in hand and wearing goggles. What a sight he was! I took one look at him and decided to call a professional. Of course, we found him by googling for exterior painters in our area.

I have always been a klutz about my things and it started to become a problem when I took up necklace collection as a hobby. It started as nothing, buying cheap necklaces from the subway and collecting some vintage pieces that would cost a dollar or two but then my small collection of inexpensive necklaces grew a life on its own, and soon enough I found myself saving up for expensive auctions and collecting some rare necklaces from different periods of time to add to my growing and now insanely expensive necklace pile. This would have been all good except that my collectible keeping habits aren’t what you would exactly call ideal.

I pile them all in one jewelry box regardless of the value and on several occasions I have had to bring some of my pieces to the jewelers so that they could be untangled or fixed because of my careless disregard on caring for them. It wasn’t until I broke one of my most expensive necklaces that I had a wake-up call and decided to find a good, organized way of keeping my necklaces. I looked online and I found this really beautiful, vintage necklace organizer that I thought would be a perfect keepsake arranger.

It’s a race for the best and the most tech savvy touch screen phone in the market today. Are you the only one left without this technological marvel? If you’re hesitant to purchase a touch screen phone just because you think technology is going to get the better of you, think again. The latest mobile phone craze does have more than meets the eye. Besides the sleek and slim designs, the 4G capability and wifi access, these top touch screen phones can also accommodate loads of different applications which make every day living simpler and much more convenient.

From teenagers to college students; to professionals and businessmen, the touch screen phone has evolved to become an indispensable tool. Everywhere you turn, you’ll see people talking or going on facebook via their iPhones or some other touch screen phone model. It has even been referred to by some as an extra limb or appendage that one cannot live without.

However, it is not advisable to purchase a touch screen mobile phone just to jump into the bandwagon. Make sure that when you do go out and buy one that it is because you like the features of the phone and really believe that you can make good use of it.

Whenever we check in at five star hotels or other elegant resorts, I always admire their elegant bathroom design ideas. Besides being spacious and very inviting with it’s plain or etched glass walls, I also find the marble or granite tile floors appealing. There was this particular place we went to that had black marble floors, glass walls and partitions in the shower stall, and gold fixtures. Now, of course, that would be pretty expensive to replicate inside my own bathroom specially since I don’t have tens of thousands of dollars to spend. However, that design idea really appealed to me and I wanted to recreate that elegant look and feel but scale down the cost as much as possible.

I started poring over design magazines, interior design books and actually started talking to contractors and craftsmen (for the marble and granite). I also asked for several price quotes, each one having different combinations of materials. I wanted to know if I would be able to save by using dark black granite tiles instead of marble; or, if etched glass would make me reach really deep into my life savings. Finally, after months of research, legwork and haggling, I decided on black granite floors; a tub with gold-plated claw feet; plain glass walls in the shower area; and gold-plated fixtures for the entire bathroom.

It set me back several thousand dollars, but the finished bathroom area was well worth it. It’s like being inside my own little hotel.

My grandmother passed several weeks ago, she was 86. Of course, a lot of people had been telling us that she was already on bonus time given that she has been sick on and off for several years. But even though we had more than enough time to prepare for her passing, I am still of the opinion that she could have stayed with us a few more years if not for that accident a couple of years ago.

Nana lived with my Aunt Bettie, who loves renovating and doing make overs inside her home. It just so happened that she was working on changing her kitchen tile flooring at that time. One of her friends was selling imported European tiles. I do admit that they were beautiful and very high quality, but my dear Aunt isn’t known for being the most practical of buyers. She chose the tiles which were too smooth and shiny, and would have looked better at bathroom walls than on the kitchen floor. Sadly, there was no arguing with her.

Off went the old tiles and in went the lovely Italian tiles. A few days after, nana slipped on the floor rug and since there was no traction whatsoever on the tiles – she fell heavily on her side and broke her hip. Since she was already in her 80s, the doctors refused to operate on her.

Nana spent the last years of her life in a wheel chair instead of up and about just because my aunt failed to choose the appropriate tiles for her kitchen floor. I can’t help but think that she would have still been alive today if not for that.

My penchant for discount kitchen furniture is a known fact to my friends and peers. Whenever they hear of someone moving to a different location, they immediately ask if they’ll be giving up some or all of their kitchen furnishings, among other things. If the answer is yes, then I am sure to have their names, addresses, as well as the date of their scheduled move. I make it a point to go there and meet the home owners personally before they start packing everything into crates and boxes. More than just getting a great buy, part of the experience of discount kitchen furniture hunting is finding out the history of the pieces, specially if they are very old.

Sometimes I stumble on antique dining tables or kitchen islands which the owners can’t take with them since they’re moving to a much smaller place. These pieces, I painstakingly clean, polish, or re-varnish before adding them to my own collection – or selling them to other interested people. I make sure though, to take pictures and email them to the former owners out of respect and gratitude.

These adventures of mine are happening more and more frequently, and I think I am gaining a following as the “garage sale” lady. Maybe I should make a career out of it. What do you think?

Living in the windy city has its disadvantages and if you think that windy city means the occasional gust of dust and debris on your face then you are seriously mistaken as how our town got its legendary nickname. Not only is it windy in our city eighty percent of the time but we are also one of the central locations that make up the hurricane and storm belt in the state. This has paved the way for many destructive onslaughts brought about by natural disasters that tear up the homes and leave peoples investments in shambles for many a decade. It is because of this predicament that many home owners learned to be smart about how they safety proof their homes against calamities such as storms and hurricanes.

For example, instead of using conventional window treatments alone, many construction firms strengthen windows with storm protection treatment such as reinforced steel on window panes and industrial grade glass. There are also companies that offer to do this specifically, and specialize in different window protection and reinforcement constructs. Companies like www.affordablestormwindows.com are reliable and provide affordable alternatives to disaster proofing options for windows, doors and lawns. They say that an ounce of prevention is better than a pound of cure, in our case it’s more of a pound of proofing for a pound of cure.

I had a sinking feeling the minute I woke up on Valentines day! There was just something at the pit of my stomach that warned me of impending disaster. Not an hour had passed when I found out that my car wouldn’t start and there was no time to find a rental since I had back to back meetings well until the afternoon.

Desperate, I huffed and puffed the whole ten minute walk to the train station and mumbled silent curses while I bought my ticket. Given my temperament, it was no wonder why the phrase “bloody valentine” was coined; I was really in no mood for loving and hugging. My plan was to arrive at the office on Valentines in my lovely new suit, fab makeup, and gorgeous hair. Besides the slew of meetings, I was also looking forward to a dinner date with the office heart throb (he finally asked me out after two months of flirting!).

And here I am, running late for my first meeting and looking like something the cat dragged in. Lisa, my colleague, took one look at me and immediately grabbed something from her drawer. She handed me an odd looking contraption and told me it would make me look human again in ten minutes flat. And boy, was she right! I never thought I would be so happy to see – much more use – ceramic flat irons in my entire life! But hey, they pretty much saved the day and my Valentines evening too.

From now on, I swear to keep my own pair of ceramic flat irons inside my desk drawer for any kind of hair emergency I may have in the future.

The most tragic thing that happened in our lives occurred when my son was seven years old and he drowned in the pool of our home in Jacksonville. I had just come in from a day of grocery shopping when I noticed that there was something bulky underneath the pool covers and originally thought that someone had left an inflatable life buoy until I realized that my son was missing. I almost fell to my knees on my rush to jump at the pool and try to save my poor boy but I knew then on that I was too late.

To this very day we still can’t figure out what happened and it has affected the dynamic in my family so much that I have attempted to leave my husband twice in the last ten years. Most recently we both decided that a change of scenery would do our marriage good and sold our Jacksonville home to move to Dallas. The first thing that I made sure when we arrived in our new home was to find the most expensive, best and reliable pool safety fence Dallas had to offer. There was no way that anyone was drowning in our pool again.