QOTD

Sometimes These Quizzes Are Accurate, Says The Ranch House

/ Ally Bean / 16 Comments

•  I took the What’s Your Architectural Personality? quiz.  My results said:

You’re solid as a Ranch house!

Simple and suburban by nature, you exude a cozy warmth that lets people know you don’t mind if they leave their shoes on in the house — it’s only carpet, after all! Family and friends are important to you, and you love having them stop by. While not overly fussy or vain, you care about your looks — but honestly, you’re happiest in sweatpants. To you, life isn’t measured in the goods you’ve acquired, but in time well spent.

•  My results linked to a webpage that explained that I am more than likely to be a… [mighty, mighty] brick house:

“Ranch homes tend to be easy to maintain because they’re often made of brick, which requires little fuss, and they’re sparsely adorned.”

•  Oddly accurate, don’t you think?  [Even more interesting when you consider that the last question on the quiz asked which dog I preferred: a basset hound or a golden retriever?  I chose basset hound.  If I had chosen golden retriever, then my architectural personality would have been Greek Revival— which doesn’t seem like me at all even though I like golden retrievers.]

Are We Talking About Me Or My Home Here?

/ Ally Bean / 34 Comments

•  I took this color personality quiz.  It told me that …

•  My results linked to an article on the Better Homes & Gardens website that told me when decorating a house…

“Honey colors take a back seat to the room’s other elements, making them a go-to color for those who want fabrics or art to shine.”

•  The article also featured this lovely photo of honey & honey-colored paint can lids…

•  But my favorite part of the article was a quote from Elaine Griffin, a NYC interior designer.  She said that one should…

“Think of it [honey] as beige after it has had a cocktail or after spending a day at the beach.”

•  Which means, I guess, that my house should be tipsy and sunburnt.  For me this sounds like an ideal day, but for my home?  Really?  That’s what it needs?!  Hmmm… who knew?  😉

[More home decor quizzes here: Love, Dreams & Color Schemes]

Let’s Get It Started In Here

/ Ally Bean / 10 Comments

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NaBloPoMo 2011

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Guess what I’ve decided to do.  Go ahead.  I’ll wait while you figure it out.

[HINT: look to your right and read the details on the big square.  Click on it, if you so choose.]

Yes, I’ve joined something.

[I know… it’s not like me, the free-spirit, to get involved in anything organized.]

And the something that I’ve joined is National Blog Post Month– informally known as NaBloPoMo.

[Cute nickname, huh?  It’s fun to say really fast as you type it.  Don’t judge me… we all make our fun where we find it.]

So, what does this really mean?

[If you’ve read this far down the page, then you must be a skoosh curious about what I’m up to this time.]

It means that I’ll be posting to this blog every day in November.  Contributing as much flapdoodle and twaddle to the blogosphere as I can.

[Sounds like fun, doesn’t it?  A challenge.  An adventure.  A way to make bloggy friends.  Plus,  for a limited time only, “Glorious Madness.”]

So for the next thirty days, I’ll write.  You’ll read.  And we’ll chat in the comments below.

[Any questions?]

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This Is What Passes For Excitement Around Here

/ Ally Bean / 8 Comments
Botanically, a tomato is a fruit. However, in ...

Image via Wikipedia

[Subtitled:  Somewhat Organized Thoughts Upon The Occasion of A Hopefully Random Act of Very Minor Violence]

Our mailbox is a rectangular, black metal one that sits on top of a white wooden post by the street.  It was tomato-ed. This is a first for us.

In the past our mailbox has been: smashed with a baseball bat;  peanutbutter-ed;  egged;  toilet paper-ed;  and robbed.  [One summer I decided to put a small bracket on the back of the white post and hang a basket of geraniums from it.  Very pretty… for the few days that it was there before someone stole it.]  But we’ve never had a tomato thrown at it.

The attack of this not-so-rotten tomato occurred between 6:30 a.m. and 8:00 a.m. while I drove Z-D to work.  Our mailbox, which is large, shiny and very noticeable when pulling out of our driveway, was just fine when we left home.  But when I got back home, the door to it was hanging open and there was a small dent in the side of it.  This I saw from the driveway as I pulled in.

It wasn’t until I walked down our driveway to see up-close what had happened that I realized that we had been tomato-ed with a large, firm, red tomato that left its seedy drool all over one side of our mailbox– and its gushy guts in the grass around the bottom of the wooden post.

As I didn’t grow up in suburbia I can only guess at the motivations for tomato-ing someone’s mailbox.  Questions plague me.

  • Which came first: the tomato or the mailbox?
  • Was this planned?  And if so, where did the perp get his or her tomato?  Stolen from someone’s garden?  Purloined from Mom’s frig?  Purchased at Kroger?
  • Is it possible that our mailbox wasn’t the intended target? 

Considering there are high school kids in the two house across the street from us & in one house next door to us, I have to wonder if this is a case of mistaken tomato-ing.

Answers to these questions elude me, leaving me to suspect that the real reason our mailbox was tomato-ed has nothing to do with logic.  I imagine, that like many things in life, the real reason that our mailbox was tomato-ed is that it was in the right place at the wrong time.