Linkity links and a question.

After the exhaustedness of last week's Inauguration, and the exhaustedness of the excitement leading up to Inauguration, I've been totally pooped. (What excitement, you may ask? Well besides the peaceful transfer of leadership to the first minority leader of the free world, there was also the small matter of being invited to the White House on Wednesday, January 21. Yeah, that picture was taken from inside the gate.) Plus, DC was amazingly vibrant and dense with all our houseguests and various visitors coming for the festivities. It was fabulous to ride Bianca down the street and have groups of people respond to her bell with cheers. I'm sad that people have left and cars have returned.

In other fun news, my landlord determined my house's roof leak was caused by the heating system's expansion tank, which was housed in my closet. The back of my closet. The back of my deep closet. At least removing three years' of stored stuff from it (plus my clothes) means I have an opportunity to sort through and donate a ton of it to help me get ready for the big move in April. Unfortunately, this requires me to get it off my crafting area's floor in a reasonable amount of time. Sigh. I'll be doing that the next couple of evenings, rather than the much funner creating of new stuff.

Long story short, to tide you over, I'm going to link you to some fabulosity that you hopefully haven't come across before (or that you should rediscover if it's been a while). I can't remember where I first heard about all of these, so I apologize for the lack of hat tips.

} Open Drawer, a de-stash Etsy shop run by the woman behind d. Sharp and the d. Sharp blog.

} Dating a Banker Anonymous girls, a terrifying-if-true blog where women dating bankers in the financial meltdown can commisserate about their suddenly lower-rolling lifestyles.

} Angry Chicken, the blog written by Amy Karol that has now inspired me to eat much, much better (once I move out of my group house requiring me to share a somewhat-gross refrigerator with four other people, that is). Oh, and there are occasionally beautiful projects.

} Chez Larsson, a blog written by Benita, who has a lovely sense of simplicity in her Swedish home. It's a little heavy on the white for me to live with every day, but I do enjoy the tips on organizing and decluttering.

Semi-relatedly, is anyone interested in swapping before-and-after blog posts about crafting or studio spaces? I know I could use some motivation in getting my space cleaned up of things that don't belong in it, as well as better organized.