min-myinnersoul

You couldn't have missed the public fury over the Facebook IPO, over the last week, even if you not economically inclined !  Facebook was a darling before the IPO - great company, stratospheric valuations, etc etc, which this blogger has been heartily against. But now after the IPO , Facebook is a pariah, it botched up the IPO, lawsuits threatened, etc etc. This time this blogger is completely on the side of Facebook and totally flummoxed by the public reaction. What is the main charge ?  Facebook's price did not shoot up 10 times after the IPO. Instead it has declined by some 16% or so, over the IPO price, in the first week. The company has committed sacrilege. Really ?? Who are the moaners and bleaters. The punters who bought in the IPO wanting to sell on the first day after listing and make a 5000% profit. Please tell me why the company has any obligations to these greedy leeches ? What economic activity have these speculators done (never mind that in this lot might be Orego

Okay, it's here! The very last reveal...for now...until I finish the last room that I didn't get to..then that will be the final, final reveal;o) Anyway, today I am sharing with you the master bedroom reveal. This is the before shot. The bed was so-so. The lighting was an issue for the homeowner, and the elliptical was an eye-sore.  Here is a close up shot of the bed. Nothing to make you say wow.   But this could make you say "wow", right? What do you think about that headboard? The homeowner was totally over having the sleigh bed. She knew that she didn't want a foot board an longer.  We scoured a local antique store looking for the perfect windows to make a new headboard. I cannot take credit for this idea. This one was entirely hers. And I think she did a fantastic job of coming up with the idea. Her bed looks awesome now! We also brought in the roll top desk from the office to take the place of the "eye-sore elliptical."  All of the bedding was purch

Can you stand all of this revealing? Are you over it yet?:o) Well you've got one more post to suffer through after this one;o) Today I am revealing the office. The homeowner is a business owner, and does work from home. So she needed a space that was practical. She also wanted her office to be a place for crafting as well.   It wasn't really a space for crafting and was kind of cramped from all of the work stuff.   So here is how we made the space work better for both areas.   We bought shelving from Lowes and hung it on the long wall of the office. They are 6 feet in length. I found some really nice matching boxes at T.J. Maxx. I bought ALL of them:o) I wanted her to be able to have plenty of storage for her scrap booking materials as well as anything else that needed organizing.   She had this chair and ottoman in a guest room. The colors were very similar to what she already had in the office, so it was a perfect fit. On the wall behind the chair is a thimble collection that

Welcome back for part 3 of our reveal series! Today will be a quick post. It's only the hallway, but I felt it was worth sharing because I thought it was pretty:o) This is the before... Just a lonely bookcase crammed full of books and photos.  And the after....  The pictures came from Old Time Pottery, as well as the sconce. The small bookcase came from Hobby Lobby.  This arrangement seemed to fit the space better. It needed a little something, but not too much because we didn't want the hallway to be crowded. I tried to make sure that the prints had some blue in them because this is the hallway that leads to the unfinished blue entertainment room. I will hopefully get to finish it very soon:o) So here is the before again..  and the after.. Come back tomorrow and see the office reveal!

Today I am sharing with you the dining room makeover. There were just a few challenges in this room...all which were easily remedied:o) In it's former life, this room was a bedroom. As the family grew, they added on, and decided to make this space the dining room. They knocked through the wall and opened the space up to the kitchen.  One of the challenges of this room was the new furniture layout wasn't really flowing for this particular space.  The wall color was also a challenge. The room was very cave-like because it was so dark. That was definitely an easy fix. The homeowners were kind enough to have all the painting done prior to the hubs and I coming in.  This is the "after" shot. It is truly amazing what a new wall color can do for a room, isn't it?   So, here is what we did. We had the homeowners remove the leaf in the table and change the direction, so that the table fit the space better. When they have a large group over, they can always add it back:o)  

Its the world's ninth largest economy. Its six times the size of Greece. Its actually bigger than India. And its hopelessly bust . Yet; we aren't hearing much about it. Only because ,  its not a country. Its a state. The State of California. The world's biggest basket case ! This has been a favourite topic of mine having blogged before here and here . California has a state budget of some $90 bn. And it just projected a deficit of $15 bn. What sort of an economy runs a deficit of 18% of the budget ?? This has been going on for years . And what does that state do - simply borrow . And borrow. And borrow.  And with no hope of ever bridging that gap. If California had its own currency, I would be merrily shorting it. It would be a prime candidate for begging at IMF's door.  For once you can't blame the political leaders for the mess, although they are the ones being vilified and quartered. The blame must squarely rest on the citizens of California. For they are the on

Well hello there. It's been quite some time since I last posted. You wouldn't believe what all has been going on around here. And things won't be slowing down until next week. (keeping my fingers crossed;o)) Last week I re-decorated a friend's home....with the help of my very wonderful husband. Without his help, I would not have been able to finish even one room...Why, do you ask? Well, I'll tell you why. Because last Saturday, I decided I wanted to repaint the upstairs bathroom. I removed the HEAVY contractor grade mirror to make sure that the entire bathroom was painted. When I tried to put the mirror back, bad things happened, and I ended up with 2 stitches each in my index and middle fingers on my RIGHT hand...grr! So I have been a "lefty" for the past week. So I heavily depended on the hubs to help me work on this HUGE undertaking. I had to redesign 5 different spaces in one week. I still have one more room to complete. We ran out of time and steam:o)

The Hon'ble Supreme Court of India is a very esteemed body and is concerned with matters of grave constitutional importance, on which hinges the future of this nation of 1.2 billion people.  Therefore when this august body makes a ruling, we should take it very seriously and comply. It also goes without saying that the Supreme Court only rules on extremely weighty matters and does not lend itself to trivialisation. It is therefore very clear that the removal of sun films from car windows is one of the most important and pressing of issues that confronts India today. The Supreme Court has ruled, after intense deliberation, and careful consideration of legal issues that pasting a sun film on your car window is illegal . That it has devoted its valuable time to this, while it is suffering from a massive backlog of cases is enough evidence that this is an extremely grave matter. A very concerned citizen of India, Mr  Avishek Goenka (it is completely untrue,  that the aforesaid gentlema

This blogger is rather vain about his English. And yet he was completely flummoxed when he spotted the headline " JP Morgan loses $2bn in egregious error " . He has to sheepishly admit that he did not know the meaning of the word "egregious" and had to look it up in a dictionary :( Trust a banker to come up with an unintelligible world - at least unintelligible to one "master" of English :). It sums up the problem neatly. The financial world has gone so bonkers in dreaming up structures of incredible and ununderstandable complexity that we cannot sit by and watch this go on anymore. JP Morgan is a well respected bank. Its governance is top class. It should be one of the models of all that is good about the financial sector. In  Jamie Dimon, it has one of the finest Chief Executives in the world. It has superb risk management systems, strengthened even more in the wake of the financial crisis of 3 years ago. And what happens - it manages to lose $2bn in  on

Statutory Warning - This post has language which may be offensive to some. Reader discretion is advised ! Why is the  Finance Minister  an angry old man  - approximate translation of the title of this post for non Indians. He is one of the most mature and level headed politicians in India. And yet, these days, he is behaving like an "old f&*% with that perpetual scowl on his face" - you can see zillions of this category in any apartment owners' association in India. Either he has gone a bit batty or has let Ramamritham loose - both of which are awful developments for India I am referring to their collective antics relating to the tax laws in India. The Vodafone story is now well known and is the subject of an earlier post of mine. Pranabda is simply being extremely churlish and petty in pursuing this. I continue to be amazed that they are going after Vodafone (which was the buyer in this transaction and made no capital gain) rather than the seller, Hutchison Telecom,

Should we worry about India's economy ? Yes says Sriram , a friend and a most prolific and versatile blogger. He makes two or three posts a day  and has wide and original views on a number of issues.  On India's economy, he says "Less than a fortnight into the hundred days in India, the more I observed, the more I wondered whether India's economic "success" story was more hype than real.  That line of thinking morphed into to this column in which I wrote that "the economic health of India is not looking good." Every day, evidence seemed to pile on to further reinforce the impression that India could run into some serious economic troubles really soon.  I was particularly concerned that the country was not paying enough attention to the long-term requirements of resources, energy, and infrastructure ." You can read his full post here . Yes there's much to worry and despair about. We have made some progress, but make disproportionate n

We have had a lot of "Big Moments" going on around here lately. Two weeks ago, I ran in my first 1/2 marathon...It was the most excruciating experience I have ever encountered. The hills and the heat were absolute torture, but I survived (barely) and have the medal to prove it:o) These were the girls I ran with. Had it not been for my great friend Shannon(far left), I wouldn't have made it to the end. She is such a great source of encouragement and an awesome friend!! Another big moment was my little sister graduated from college. She is the first in our family to graduate from a university. She graduated with a double major on Saturday & we couldn't be more proud of her. Especially since she was the first. My parents didn't go to college & I only went to junior college and then cosmetology school. My brother will be graduating in two years, so we are really looking forward to that!!  The weather was wild that morning..it started out raining...and then the