#stairs: the great height difference ship equalizer

[fourfoldfires]

these city lights, they shine as silver and gold. ✨

[zhydoesart]

Liberal Alcohol and Loosened Tongues

Summary: Roman comes home late, incredibly drunk, and confesses a few things about and to his housemates he doesn’t quite mean to.

Warnings: mentioned alcohol, intoxication, kissing

Ships: romantic LAMP, in particular Logince and Royality and Analogical

AO3

A/N: I blame Thomas, I can’t stop writing the Sides. EDIT: I’m probably writing more in this universe, so taglist is open y'all :P

Logan sighed, glancing at his watch once more as he shut his book. “It’s almost half past ten. Where is he?” Their housemate Roman had a habit of staying out late, attending various parties, but he typically arrived back home before 9:45.

Patton lifted his head and opened his eyes. “He’s not back yet?” He blinked as his eyes adjusted to the light. He’d been napping on the couch, knees pulled up to his chest.

“That’s concerning,” muttered Virgil, looking up from his phone.

Just then, the door opened, and Roman entered, stumbling a little. He wandered over to Logan, and the darker-haired man was nonplussed when Roman leaned back against him.

Logan, usually so intelligent and eloquent, was at a loss. Neither his mind nor his thoughts would form intelligible words, far too distracted by the weight of Roman on his chest.

“Hey guys,” slurred Roman, but something about the way he spoke didn’t sound right.

Logan narrowed his eyes, regaining some control over his thoughts. “Are you drunk?”

“I mean… yeah?” chuckled Roman lazily. “Mayyybe I had too much to drink at that party, and maybe I’m kinda drunk, so what?” He leaned further back against Logan, unsteady on his feet as he wrapped his arms loosely around Logan’s neck. “You know what? I love you guys so much, I love you, and not just like as friends. I mean, you’re great friends but…” He giggled hysterically.

Logan was having some difficulty processing what he’d heard. He looked up and his eyes met Patton’s, who looked equally as shocked, and then Virgil’s, who appeared quite stunned. Nonchalantly, he wrapped his arms around Roman’s waist, hoping the others wouldn’t notice. He told himself it was just to make sure that Roman didn’t fall over, but deep down he knew that wasn’t why.

“It’s late, and you’re drunk. We should get you to bed,” reasoned Logan, “or you’ll be even crankier when you wake up. We can talk about this in the morning.”

“I am not cranky,” mumbled Roman.

“I’m gonna go to sleep,” said Virgil. “Night, guys.” He turned and walked up the stairs to his room, half in a daze as his mind worked overtime.

“Goodnight, Virgil,” slurred Roman, waving shakily.

Logan looked to Patton. “If I carry his torso, will you help with his legs?”

“Of course!” answered Patton.

Together they carried Roman up the stairs. The drunk man was complacent as they laid him on his bed.

Patton pulled up the covers, but as he turned to go, Roman’s fingers grabbed his wrist. “Nooo, stay, wanna cuddle with both o’ you.”

Patton exchanged a look with Logan. “Well, it couldn’t hurt, right?” Patton had already given in due to the pleading way Roman looked at him and the way he currently reminded Patton of a child.

Logan sighed. “Why not?” Logan gave in because it was far simpler to just agree with whatever Roman demanded, and as it was late, he didn’t possess the patience to deal with his whining.

Patton crawled over Roman’s legs to lay on his far side, and Logan climbed onto the closest edge of the bed. He stiffened as Roman wrapped his arms around him, burying his face in the small of Logan’s back.

“Patton, your glasses?” Logan asked, attempting to regain his composure as he held a hand out. Patton handed him his glasses, and Logan placed the two pairs on the bedside table. He loosened then removed his tie, Patton untying his hoodie in turn. Logan tugged on Roman’s jacket until he understood he should take it off, and then helped to pull it off.

—–

Roman woke with no recollection of the previous night and, luckily, not much of a hangover. He realized he was holding someone in his arms as said person stirred, and then realized it was Logan—what had happened last night? Why couldn’t he remember? He did his best not to freak out. After all, it was probably nothing, Roman! (But if it was just nothing, why couldn’t he remember?)

Roman observed his sleeping nerd. He was even cuter without glasses, and asleep, he seemed so peaceful. He wasn’t frowning for once, which seemed so odd, as it was such a common expression for Logan.

Wait… his nerd? That wouldn’t do at all. …he’d fix that problem later; for now, he’d rather continue to watch Logan.

Gray eyes opened, and Logan gazed blearily around, recalling last night and where he was. He turned his head and was surprised to be met with Roman’s green eyes so close to his own.

“Roman, you’re awake,” he said, flustered as he pulled Roman’s arms off him. “Well, I’m going to go get Virgil, and we can discuss last night.”

Logan put on his glasses and went to wake Virgil, and Roman blinked. “Wait, what happened last night??” Suffice it to say, Logan ignored him.

—–

To say Virgil was grumpy to be woken up would be an understatement. He’d hissed when Logan shook him, for heaven’s sake.

“Virgil, please. Roman’s awake, and we need to discuss last night.” Virgil’s eyes opened wider, and he yawned.

“Alright, fine, let’s go. Coffee can wait, I guess.”

When they returned to Roman’s room, both men were awake. They were still cuddling, but they had sat up. As Logan watched, Roman laid a kiss to the top of Patton’s curls, and the shorter man giggled.

Logan cleared his throat. “Now that we’re all here—”

“Hey, did you guys cuddle last night without me?” interrupted Virgil, mildly pissed as he recognized the clues (such as Logan’s tie on the nightstand), and Logan sighed once more.

“We did. It was Roman’s suggestion, and you’d already gone to bed. We didn’t want to wake you.”

“Oh.” Virgil deflated, shoulders becoming less hunched as his irritation waned.

Roman frowned. His idea?

“How much of last night do you remember, Roman?” The other three all watched him as he attempted to form an answer.

“I— none, why, what happened last night?” demanded Roman, baffled.

“You came home late, drunk,” began Logan, pushing his glasses back up his nose with a demeanor that screamed, ‘angry mother.’ “You leaned against me, wrapped your arms around my neck, and told us you loved us all as more than just friends. Patton and I carried you to bed, and you asked us to snuggle.”

Roman blinked. “I did what?” he asked nervously. Did Logan say he’d told them he loved him? That wasn’t how he wanted it to go. That certainly wasn’t how he’d planned to tell them, and he certainly had planned it; an awful lot, in fact.

“You said you loved us,” repeated Patton, playing with the ends of Roman’s hair. “You seemed to mean it last night, but what about now?”

Roman thought hard, eyes wandering. Certain things could make him happy every time without fail, like Patton’s laugh, and Virgil’s teasing looks, and Logan’s expression when he was confused. Whenever Patton made one of his godforsaken puns, and Virgil’s look of utter contentment when he was listening to his music, and the way Logan lit up when he was ranting about the beauty of the universe and his love for the stars; all of those things gave him the inexplicable urge to kiss them.

“I do, I do mean that. I love you guys.” He smiled warmly in response to his recollection and the memories that made him happiest.

“I do too,” Patton admitted with a touch of timidity, kissing Roman’s cheek. “You’re my fam-I-L-Y, I love you.”

Logan took a deep breath before speaking. “I’m not the most articulate when it comes to emotions, but I need you all to know that I feel much the same.” The corners of his lips curled up at the sight of Roman and Patton so affectionate.

They tried not to stare at Virgil, but the anticipation was strong. The emo bit his lip, and Logan, sensing he needed support or encouragement via physical contact, softly gripped his hand. Virgil nodded gratefully in his direction.

Finally, he blurted, “Okay, yeah, I really like you guys too.” His face was pink. “There, I said it, happy?”

Patton squealed. “So it’s completely mutual?!” he beamed. “This is wonderful!”

Roman’s eyes sparkled, and he stood, pulling Patton up by the hands to join him. “Wanna go sing some Disney duets with me? Dance a little?”

Patton practically glowed, he was so exhilarated. “I’d love that!” The enthusiastic duo ran off towards Roman’s room.

Logan shot a knowing glance at Virgil, who returned it. “Let’s go get our coffee.”

“Finally,” agreed Virgil. “I could use it; not having it this morning certainly didn’t help my nerves.” The more subdued duo headed off to the kitchen.

—–

Roman set up the karaoke machine. This karaoke machine, however, had solely Disney songs, because that was just the kind of person Roman was. He looked pleadingly at Patton.

“I know I said duets, but Mulan first?” Patton sighed playfully, only mildly exasperated.

“All right.”

Roman launched into an energetic rendition of I’ll Make a Man Out of You, and Patton fondly watched his… boyfriend?… sing along at the top of his lungs. When that song was over, Roman put on A Whole New World. Patton sang for Jasmine, and Roman sang for Aladdin, and they were both overly dramatic in their rendition.

Beauty and the Beast’s instrumental track came on not long after, and Roman held a hand out to Patton.

“Dance with me?”

Delighted, Patton took his hand. “Of course!”

It was kind of a funny sight: Roman, the tallest of the group, dancing with Patton, the shortest. Despite the height difference, the two still looked right together, somehow. Maybe it was the love in their eyes.

Not only was Roman slow dancing perfectly, not missing a single step, but he also sang along to the instrumental. His voice was like silk, deep and smooth, like chocolate for Patton’s ears. As they danced, they were unaware that they drew closer together until their foreheads touched. Roman sang the last line, and Patton suddenly felt the atmosphere in the room change.

Roman ran his thumb down the line of Patton’s jaw, gazing with his beautiful leafy green eyes into Patton’s ocean blues. His line of sight flicked down to Patton’s lips, and then back up to his eyes, and Patton understood. He gave a small nod and a quiet smile, and Roman grinned back.

Gently, he pulled Patton’s face to his, guiding him forward until their lips met. Patton’s hand went to Roman’s neck, the short hairs there tickling his fingers, his other hand gripping Roman’s arm, while Roman’s hand was on Patton’s waist as he drew him closer.

It reminded them of sitting in an armchair by a warm fire, the coziness of the armchair due caused by Patton’s soft enthusiasm, while the warmth and intensity of the fire were because of the amount of pure passion Roman was channeling. Their lips brushed together again and again, sometimes soft and gentle and other times ardent and eager.

They pulled away, breathless. Patton was in bliss. This was the best day ever, he could hardly believe it was happening to him. He’d just kissed Roman freaking Woods, and they were together? Maybe? The only thing that could make this day better is if he got to spend time with Virgil and Logan too, but the day was long and they’d have plenty of time for that later.

For now, Patton gazed happily at Roman, taking in his now slightly ruffled appearance, and Roman gazed back at him, eyes filled with tenderness for the smaller man in his arms.

—–

Logan tried to focus on his book, but all he could think about was the delicious smell of Virgil’s coffee. They both had coffee in the mornings, but they preferred different brands, and while Logan usually didn’t stray from his brand, he was curious about Virgil’s. He lowered his book.

“I must admit, the scent of your coffee does intrigue me,” Logan remarked. “May I have a taste?”

“Yeah, alright,” said Virgil, but, in an uncommon rush of confidence and a surge of adrenaline, and instead of simply handing Logan his mug as Logan had expected, leaned over and kissed him.

The interaction only lasted what must’ve been 3 seconds, but Logan was dumbfounded. He touched his lips absentmindedly, but then a mischievous smirk appeared on his face. Logan slid one arm underneath Virgil, between his legs and the armchair, and one around his back, and, ignoring Virgil’s many protests, picked up and then set the emo down in his lap so that Virgil sat sideways across Logan’s thighs.

“Wh-what?” muttered Virgil, terribly aware of Logan’s arm around his back. He could still feel the phantom warmth of Logan’s other arm under his legs, and his face flushed the color of a strawberry.

“Shhh,” murmured Logan into Virgil’s hair, definitely not taking great pleasure in Virgil’s embarrassment and the way that simple sound covered Virgil’s skin in goosebumps. His face got closer to Virgil’s, and their noses bumped. “Close your eyes,” he whispered, and Virgil did, and then they were kissing.

It was like a wave crashing forcefully down upon a rocky shore, but Virgil didn’t know who was who. Logan’s fingertips trailed across his skin, leaving tingles wherever they touched. He was lost in the movement of their lips, his fingers curled in Logan’s hair, eyes closed. They only pulled apart when Virgil’s lungs began to burn from lack of oxygen.

“That… was intense,” he said, trying to catch his breath. He didn’t even notice that his fingers were clutching at Logan’s polo for dear life.

“It was,” replied Logan quietly. He thought he’d never get used to the lack of control associated with kissing, a thing he both enjoyed for its rarity and loathed as the control freak he knew he was.

Someone wolf-whistled from the hallway, and Logan knew who it was even before he looked. Roman stood on the other side of the open doorway, waggling his eyebrows suggestively.

“Roman, with all due respect,” stated Logan, “fuck off.”

Roman did that exaggerated scoffing noise he made when “offended,” but left all the same.

Logan turned back to Virgil, who now had a sufficient amount of oxygen back in circulation in his lungs. “Want to do that again?” he offered, voice low and almost husky in a way that made shivers run down Virgil’s spine, and he shuddered at the tone. Even so, the shorter man nodded eagerly (perhaps a little too much so), and they both leaned in again.

—–

general taglist:

@moxiety-my-love

[carrollstreetstation]

blood: a level-by-level breakdown

episode 1: the way of all flesh

the first episode, and the one included in the shareware version. like a lot of shareware episodes, it's generally a sort of mishmash of themes and ideas to provide a reasonable cross section of what a potential buyer could expect from the full game, introducing a small selection of enemies (zombies, the basic cultist and his tommygun counterpart, gargoyles, as well as minor menaces such as rats, the zombie fish, bats and a single grasping hand) as well as about half of the arsenal (up to and including the napalm launcher.) the name is a euphemism (actually a mistranslation from hebrew) for dying.

E1M1: cradle to grave (james wilson) almost every classic FPS game's first level is iconic and the subject of many remakes in other games. let's face it, there's few things a mapper covets more than the E1M1 slot. so here we are with caleb RISING FROM HIS GRAVE. the level is a cemetary and associated funeral home, rather short compared to the immediate next level, but twisting nicely in on itself. the opening room is surprisingly non-descript, just a simple, small crypt. duke nukem 3D in contrast might have dumped you on a fairly blank rooftop but it was a much more dynamic introduction to the game.

after a short couple of encounters in a cemetary you enter the funeral home proper. the chapel is where you get your first taste of the game's tendency to have enemies ambush you from above. up the stairs, past the organ, and through the mortuary, eventually winding up in a small crypt behind the building that leads to the exit. short and simple, but introducing some of the basics -- combat, enemies, secrets, while also showcasing a bit of the game's blackly morbid humor. by 1997 standards it's a gorgeously realized opener, with excellent use of texturing to create a gloomy, creepy setting to shoot zombies in.

E1M2: wrong side of the tracks (craig hubbard) this is where the game really starts to pick up. flowing smartly from the first level -- you start in the same spot you ended the last level, only now the way you came in is sealed off -- you start the level working your way down some train tracks; zombies and cultists stand in your way, and they've been offloading barrels with corpses in them, visible through the glass pane in the side (a reference to the classic zombie film "return of the living dead.") eventually you wind your way around to the front of 'miskatonic station' (heh) and it's lousy with tchernobog troops. they're not just gunning for you either, the zombies are swarming the nameless sadsack innocents that the cult has enslaved.

shoot your way through the station to the incoherent sound of announcements over the PA speaker, answer obscene calls on the public phones, check out pickman's bookshop and stop in for a bit at cask of amontillado. some really good moments here, such as the swarm of zombies breaking through the walls in the foreman's office and the bats flying out of the access tunnel leading off the tracks. it's also one of the best examples of the build engine era's attempts at creating realistic, every-day places to shoot things in.

E1M3: phantom express (james wilson) you've boarded a train and now you have to find a way to get into the engine car. a great opener as the train runs over some hapless folk stuck on the tracks. while the level is literally linear by necessity, it's still a rip-roaring good time as you clear out the cars one by one, culminating in an all-out shootout in the dining car in the back. for 1997 this level was extremely technically impressive; using a conveyor belt effect, they've created the impressive illusion that you're on a fast-moving train across the country. if you fall off, you die, so don't fall off. the conclusion of the level is quite dynamic, as you overload the engine and it explodes, ending the level.

E1M4: dark carnival (kevin kilstrom with revisions by james wilson) blood's pitch black sense of humor is on full display here. after the train derails you pick your way through the ruins until you reach a dark carnival full of wonders. a ghastly ticket collector sics zombies on you after you jump the line, and more zombies and cultists (and mimes) crowd the carnival from end to end. the midway has games of chance -- a shooting gallery, or the opportunity to field goal some severed heads for a prize. in the big tent is the tightrope over a pit of snakes, the big act of everyone's favorite circus freak, jojo the idiot boy. this is also where you meet your first gargoyles, when the carousel comes to life -- a good scare, there. on the way out, you have your options of where to go, even though the bridge collapsed: take a dive and swim to the exit, or cross the remains of the bridge to the secret level, provided you've found and remember the passcode. also: a delightfully vicious secret duke nukem cameo.

E1M8: house of horrors (james wilson) in case you weren't done with the carnival theme, E1M8 provides you with the ultimate carnival ride. the opener is pretty great, with a big horrible clown mouth you have to climb through; the walls are fleshy and gross, giving you the sense that maybe this might be more than just a carnival ride... it's an extremely linear affair as the water ride ferries you down a long winding tunnel, complete with ambushes and a few hilariously ineffectual jumpscares. the finale has you jumping out a window into a back lot for a big showdown before finding your way back to the regular ending of E1M4.

E1M5: hallowed grounds (nick newhard, craig hubbard, terry hamel) a major thematic change, one taking more after doom or quake than the usual "duke nukem for goths" that this game is. on rare occasion (well, half of episode four does it) the game decides music isn't necessary and turns it off for a level. deep, gutteral chanting, wind and thunder are your only soundtrack as you blast your way through a creepy temple. the cult's armies are out in full force here, lurking around every corner and coming at you in packs, with lots of ambushes from above and below. it's a long, winding nightmare that repeatedly loops in on itself. there are a few hints on how to complete the level, and you'd better heed them, because choosing the wrong door at the finale means fiery death. it's all burning torches and glowing candles, making this level a dark, moody affair, and one of the best-looking in the game.

E1M6: the great temple (terry hamel with revisions by james wilson) the climax of the episode is a big quake-style temple in the mountain, initially a linear affair as you work your way through some caverns up into the temple proper, only to switch back on itself several times. zombies, cultists and gargoyles are absolutely freaking everywhere. the level is highly reminiscent of quake in both layout and aesthetic, though as you near the upper areas and get a good look at just how high up you are it takes on a different vibe. plenty of traps, indiana jones style; plenty of firefights too, the best one being a huge shitshow in a room with a ramp that lines the walls, every inch of it covered in assholes to blow up -- and there's a dual akimbo powerup right there for you to grab.

E1M7: altar of stone (james wilson) the grand finale is just a simple boss level, though it'd make a good bloodbath level with its round shape, height variations and small dimensions. other than a couple of trash mobs nothing much happens until you step onto the central platform, at which point the biggest enemy you've seen yet, the huge stone gargoyle cheogh, comes after you. he doesn't have much in the way of attacks -- mostly just flies around and shoots electric blasts out of his eyes -- but he takes an enormous amount of punishment, shrugging off even your napalm launcher. upon prevailing, you're treated to a CGI cutscene that's far darker than its goofy early-90s models give it credit for.

final thoughts: for a shareware episode this is a fairly eclectic offering. the cemetary level sets the tone for the rest of the episode, but it's the train station that most ties in with the game's roots as a horror-themed response to duke3D. the train level is a technical marvel by 1997 standards, but it's probably the carnival levels (which are a clear reference to "something wicked this way comes") that give the episode its most iconic images, as carnival themes keep popping up. the back half of the episode with its sprawling temples really drive home the gothic horror vibe that the game goes for, as well as showcasing some of the more creative level design. if you're in 1997 and you're trying to decide if this game is right for you, this grab bag of a shareware episode should give you a good idea of what you're in for.

episode two: even death may die

while E1M1 is iconic, the entirety of episode 2 is equally so. set in the frigid north, with whole-level references to some of the most iconic horror tales ever written ("frankenstein," "the shining,") it's a departure from the first episode in that the theming is consistent throughout. even the haunted house level is surrounded by snow and cold. it also introduces several new enemies: the bloated zombie, the giant fish monsters, spiders, and most notably, the phantasm, a terrifying ghost that's only able to be hurt when it's about to attack you. the arsenal gets filled out a bit as well -- you now can use the special dynamite types as well as the ever-popular aerosol can flamethrower, plus the voodoo doll.

E2M1: shipwrecked (craig hubbard) the frozen north theme hits you like cold wind in the face, starting you out on a tiny boat heading towards a big wooden ship, locked in the ice (and named the HMS victor, in keeping with the obvious frankenstein ref.) while there's a few treats in the water, most of the level is spent exploring the relatively small ship, moving from fore to aft and back again as you collect keys and open up new rooms. your first encounter with gillbeasts will probably be in the small, flooded room at the fore, a nasty place to meet such a dangerous enemy. the finale is nonsensical, but kinda cool, and a quick swim later you're at the entrance to the next level.

E2M2: the lumber mill (craig hubbard) a quick little romp around a lumber mill, as the title suggests. mostly a small compound of small buildings, you'll be working your way around and through them, visiting each one in turn and clearing them out. first introduction of "bloated butchers" -- fat zombies with toxic puke and big cleavers that they throw at you. these guys can take a hell of a beating before going down. fun, short little level that exemplifies the exploratory focus a lot of these older FPS games had. good bit of humor to be had by the outhouses.

E2M3: rest for the wicked (kevin kilstrom and craig hubbard) it took me a long time to figure out what the hell this was supposed to be. essentially it's a prelude to the next level, a small hedge maze and resort complete with pool, hot tub, and the like -- all frozen over, of course. it's very restful with between 43 to 105 enemies running around. the hedge maze makes up most of the first part of the level, before switching over to the resort area, and then looping back around, finally sending you back to the start of the level, where you unlock a gate that leads to the exit. looming in the distance is a big old house, with one light on upstairs, and something in the window watching you...

E2M4: the overlooked hotel (kevin kilstrom with revisions by craig hubbard) zero points for guessing what this level is a reference to -- especially with that frozen guy in the hedge maze. the hedges aren't all that interesting otherwise, but once you get into the hotel proper the level really opens up, with an extremely non-linear layout for you to explore. not only that, but a series of very obvious secret passages basically connect the entire hotel, making it possible to duck in and out of rooms at will. this is also another example of the game making secret exits require a little bit of thought -- you need to find five tomes hidden around the hotel to unlock a portal. some good scares and creepy moments in this level, mostly based on "the shining," but my favorite is the library, the stacks illuminated by suspended lanterns, except for one in the far back, the chain swinging uselessly, with phantasms lurking in the shadow.

E2M9: thin ice (james wilson) if you liked the frozen sea from E2M1, you'll like this level, a big twisting network of caverns and cliffs overlooking a frozen lake. not much in the way of civilization here, but plenty of goons to shoot through. not a very visually interesting level, but it's fun to throw a dynamite plunger and watch chunks of ice break off and float to the other side of the lake. towards the end things get treacherous as you have to make some daring jumps from one jagged ice peak to the next.

E2M5: the haunting (james wilson and kevin kilstrom) while blood is primarily an action game, the developers did not at all forget that this is a loving pastiche of the horror genre, and as such have crafted one of the creepiest levels in the game, and my personal favorite of this episode. a sprawling old manor with a detached guest house, the enemy count is surprisingly low for the most part, allowing for a slow buildup of tension as you first work your way through a creepy hedgemaze, past the guest house (the same house you saw at the end of E2M3 in fact) and eventually into the mansion proper. it's all dark tunnels and cobwebs everywhere, most of the windows boarded up. phantasms lurk about upstairs, you can hear what sounds like hundreds of rats in the walls of the basement, and when you finally access that mysterious guest house...

if there's a level that most exemplifies what a creative mapper can do to scare people with the limited technology of the mid-90s, this is it.

E2M6: the cold rush (james wilson) after the open-ended nightmare that was E2M5, E2M6's little mining compound nestled in the cliffs is a refreshingly short little jaunt that's somewhat reminiscent of E2M9. at first the camp building (the sole structure) is inaccessible, requiring an extended detour of hopping from ledge to ledge around some perilously steep cliffs, eventually finding the key in a cave, which allows you to access the building proper. lots of gargoyles flying about to irritate you, along with the usual zombie/cultist trash. fun little surprise flamethrower trap when you go to look in a mirror, complete with crawling hands coming out of the walls to choke the life out of you. opening up the locked gate to the mine proper offers a real sense of forboding for such a simple effect -- but we're nearing the end, now.

E2M7: bowels of the earth (james wilson) the penultimate level of the episode is appropriately epic in scope: a long, mostly linear journey through a dark, seemingly abandoned mine that's already partially collapsed. while abandoned mining equipment has been left lying around here and there, for the most part this is a generally featureless series of tunnels and chambers, though towards the end it starts taking on a more concrete identity with a big underground waterfall as a major setpiece and some long-abandoned temple ruins. trash mobs are everywhere, including a great ambush early on where the tunnel collapses and zombies break out of the walls to surround you. at the end of your journey you're rewarded with what looks like a huge temple, with a swarm of spiders (and a stone gargoyle) crawling out of the darkened entryway. the lair of shial is near...

E2M8: the lair of shial (james wilson) like E1M7, the final level of the episode is just a small arena, though in this case it's a much more convoluted knot of twisting tunnels and chambers, with a huge spider nest in a small chamber that overlooks the bigger starting room. in that nest is shial, mother of spiders, and your boss for this episode. compared to cheogh she's much easier to deal with -- she moves slower and mostly sends swarms of spiders after you. and unlike cheogh, it's much easier to send her bouncing around with napalm launcher fire, thanks to her much smaller size. once she's been squashed, you're treated to another CGI cutscene, caleb cracking wise with an andrew dice clay reference of all things.

final thoughts: episode 2 is probably my favorite of the four original episodes. it's a gorgeously realized trek through varied settings that fit very well into the far north/winter theme. while craig and kevin's early levels are all great, it's james' later levels where the episode truly shines. hinting at the guest house of E2M5 as far back as E2M3 with two, if not three levels in between, was a great touch, and the way it teases you throughout E2M5 until you finally find the house key adds a little bit of power to a scene that otherwise might have been just another grisly moment in a game full of them.

episode 3: farewell to arms

episode 2 might have been cold and dark, but episode 3, in contrast, is positively explosive. this is probably where the game comes closest to its roots as a horror take on duke nukem 3D. set predominantly in a town somewhere in france, you'll spend a lot of time fighting in and around the streets, working your way through commercial businesses and other things you would expect to find in a small city. the cabal have come for war, and with them they've brought a dangerous new enemy: hellhounds, whose flaming breath can sap your health in seconds. fortunately, you also get to use the tesla cannon for the first time, and it puts them down right quick.

E3M1: ghost town (james wilson) right off the bat you know this isn't the typical blood level. you're dumped unceremoniously in a small section of the city, with a number of the shirtless innocents running away from you in the distance. tall buildings surround you, and the streets seem clear of cabal. this all changes once you start poking around in buildings, as cultists and zombies start coming out of the woodwork and stuff starts blowing up. in true duke3D style, after surviving a shootout in a small office room, you get to watch from the window as the building across the street is reduced to rubble in an impressive explosion. the biggest challenge, however, is clearing the hotel lobby, which is just lousy with armed cultists, who've put up couches as barricades. if you're savvy and quick, a reflecting shots powerup will make this encounter a breeze. some other neat moments are the elevator that collapses with a super secret at the top of the shaft if you can climb to it, and the secret room modeled after the sloth murder scene from the film se7en, complete with air fresheners.

E3M2: the seige (craig hubbard with additional work by terry hamel) craig hubbard has pulled out all the stops for what's one of the most creative and brilliant levels ever devised. judging by the development notes, craig really enjoyed himself with this level, and it shows. right off the bat you get to watch as literal actual airplanes bomb the streets below (using some cool design tricks to make it look good,) followed by room-to-room fighting, shooting your way through the city as air raid sirens scream non-stop and explosions and gunfire ring out in the distance. it's a brilliant piece of work, atmospheric as hell and fitting right in with blood's overall theme as caleb's all-out war on the cabal escalates into full-scale mayhem. probably my single favorite level in the whole game.

E3M3: raw sewage (james wilson) obligatory sewer level. seems like almost every early FPS game had to have one, going at least as far back as doom 2's second level in 1994. in any case, this is a fairly linear but twisting shootout through a rather modern sewer system. the usual trash mobs are here, including plenty of zombies, but little in the way of higher-level enemies save a few bloated butchers and a poorly placed mother spider. not a lot to really write home about, though some neat build engine tricks like opening the machine that protects the eye key provide some nice visuals to an otherwise non-descript series of tunnels.

E3M4: the sick ward (craig hubbard and james wilson) probably the very first use of a hospital in an FPS game (or second, if you count system shock's medical deck) and it continues with episode 3's rip-roaring urban warfare setting. it's a sprawling, thoroughly modern (and anachronistic) medical facility, filled with the usual goons and ghouls for you to gun down. most encounters aren't too tough, though a surprise pair of hellhounds can catch you off guard as you round a corner. some good laughs with the "assisted suicide ward" being a torture room and some good creepy moments with zombies rising from their beds to come after you, among others. eagle-eyed players (or just anyone who played duke nukem 3D) can spot the button in the chapel that opens up the secret exit. all in all, a solid, well-rounded level that offers a decent challenge and takes a setting that's already kind of creepy and ramps it up.

E3M8: catacombs (james wilson and craig hubbard) normally you would expect a secret level to have some kind of gimmick or whatever, but unfortunately E3M8 offers very little of interest save for a few cool encounters (mostly tons of zombies crowding some of the back corridors, and a prominently-placed guns akimbo powerup to mow them down with.) it doesn't even really look like much of a catacomb, just a series of poorly-lit, underground corridors filled with enemies to mow down. feeling more like a doom level, it's the kind of abstract nowhere that games like duke 3D were intended to move away from with their focus on realism. a fairly weak outing, all the more annoying that it's a secret level. the end has some neat rotating sector tricks to lead into the far more industrial E3M5.

E3M5: spare parts (james wilson and craig hubbard) and now for something completely different. wilson and hubbard have crafted a convincing industrial nightmare here, some sort of foundry perhaps -- it's hard to tell as it seems to be generally a series of big rooms full of molten material, and most of your time will be spent traversing the catwalks and side passages surrounding it. good use of textures enforces a consistent theme, and there's a subtle style to the architectural detailing that makes it more than just a series of boxes. some fun encounters here, especially the security scanner which detects you as an intruder and first sets flamethrowers on you, then some zombies.

E3M6: monster bait (james wilson and terry hamel) continuing in the industrial theme of E3M5 we have a sprawling dam complex reminiscent of duke 3D's water treatment plant level. it's a little anachronistic, but it works within the context of the episode. like E3M3 and E3M5 it's a mostly linear affair with you blasting your way through a horde of trash mobs (including a ton of cultists) and the occasional hellhound or butcher. the turbine room isn't the most intense encounter, but it's certainly the most visually arresting. though you do get a cool vista from the dam.

E3M7: the pit of cerberus (james wilson and craig hubbard) it's fitting that an episode so focused on fire and explosions should end in an underground temple crumbling under lava flows. it's a bit less interesting, design-wise, than shial's lair; first you have to find four switches to start the battle against cerberus, who announces his arrival with cool collapsing walls and explosions. cerby is dangerous when his AI works, spitting fireballs at you that do incredible damage (and set you on fire.) when he gets stuck on architecture is when he's most vulnerable. other than that, it's a pretty straightforward fight, especially since he's relatively slow, so it's easy to lure him down one of the side paths for a breather.

final thoughts: episode three is, if nothing else, a showcase for the build engine. all kinds of little tricks are at work here to give the episode its look and feel; take a look at how the airstrike in E3M2 works sometime. while it's a bit more varied in its theming -- moving from urban warfare to industrial carnage, with a decidedly out-of-place secret level -- it's still a generally coherent trip, moving away from the grotesqueries of the first episode and the frigid nightmares of the second towards a modernist city setting. with a little creativity one could run with this theme for some interesting horror-noir stuff, but the all-out action we get for this outing is perfectly fine too.

episode 4: dead reckoning

the final episode of the original retail version, "dead reckoning" is like episode 1 in that it's a bit of a grab bag of themes, feeling overall like where the leftover levels and dregs of the design team's ideas went. the first half is a weird mix of mad science and a few whole-level references to classic slasher flicks, only to switch to a hellish setting out of doom for the back half. the hellstaff makes its appearance at last in this episode, proving itself a devastating top-tier weapon.

E4M1: butchery loves company (james wilson) starting episode 4 off right with a classic frankenstein-style mad scientist's castle. based on development notes this was one of the very earliest maps to be created, and it shows, as it's very small and doesn't really come up to the standards of, say, E2M5. at best we can see a few sights like what might be frankenstein's main lab, brain storage (no zombies allowed), a ritual and/or book club meeting in the front hall, and a lot of timing-based secrets that reveal themselves without the player even trying. despite its short length, you'll have to manage your ammo carefully, as the level is a bit stingy with weaponry while throwing a few high-level enemies at you like hellhounds. eventually you find your way into a back room and the exit, all too soon.

E4M2: breeding grounds (james wilson, craig hubbard, terry hamel) but wait! there's more! apparently not satisfied with the tiny mad scientist level, wilson et al. went on to create a much larger level that, thanks to the level transition, is very clearly part of the castle proper, despite its much more modern look. oriented around a pair of huge flooded fish tanks full of angry gillbeasts and bone eels, the level is a mostly linear affair that loops in on itself, with locked gates and doors eventually being reached from the other side. it's a visually striking level at times, with scenes such as the curved observation hallway with a view into the big round tank, or the forboding gate to the spider habitat that you must clear. combat is a steady drip with occasional hellhound encounters as well as a mother spider and stone gargoyle to block your way.

E4M3: charnel house (craig hubbard and james wilson) of course, if you're running an evil mad scientist lab and you're going through a lot of bodies you're going to need a place to deal with the leftover cadavers, right? the actual corpse-disposal facility is but a small part of the overall level, and much of your time is spent blasting your way through the tunnels and corridors of an aqueduct system the charnel house sits atop. fairly low-key for the most part, save for a few intense moments where gillbeasts come after you when you're in the water, though there is a moment where part of the map is repopulated by a troop of zombies. a decent little maze but nothing to write home about.

E4M4: crystal lake (kevin kilstrom and james wilson) ki ki ki ma ma ma

i mean, what else do you want me to say about an obvious friday the 13th reference? you can even find jason's mask and knife in a barn. in any case, this is one of those build-cute type levels that's mostly a series of tunnels and corridors where all the walls are plastered with a forest texture to give the impression that you're in an actual forest, punctuated by a disjointed collection of buildings to give the impression of camp grounds. it's largely very linear, your path through the woods eventually terminating at an outhouse, beneath which is a flooded tunnel that leads to the exit as well as to the infamous crystal lake, which is home to a school of gillbeasts. the lake itself has very little to distinguish itself from any big water-filled hole, though there's a hellstaff on a raft if you need it. also, though the secret exits of the first two episodes required a little thinking to work out, in this case they don't even make you look for a button. you basically have to know exactly what wall to blow up, because the classic cracked-wall sprite that indicates a destructable wall is almost invisible against the cave texture it's on, and the chamber is dark anyway. it's worth it, though...

E4M9: mall of the dead (craig hubbard) craig's solo act returns for a level that's easily as memorable as E3M2, if only for that goofy-ass mall music. no prize for guessing what movie *this* is based on... though there's curiously not as many zombies as you'd expect. it's not super huge, but there's some good encounters (including a twofer stone gargoyle bout in the fountain room) and there's a few laughs with the store names. a sudden swarm of zombies as you turn a corner reminds you of this level's inspiration, and to escape the mall you climb up onto the roof. it's anachronistic, but who cares?

E4M5: fire and brimstone (james wilson) the back half of the episode begins in earnest with james wilson offering a taste of hell in this jarring thematic departure from the early levels. (there's a possibility the regular ending of E4M4 naturally leads to this level, but it's not the cleanest transition.) essentially a big volcanic pit honeycombed by cavern tunnels and ancient ruins, your path winds through the caves, hopping over lava flows, through the upper rooms of a central tower and finally on to an underground temple of sorts. pretty steady drip of combat, though lots of hellhounds and an inordinate amount of gargoyles to blow up. not a long level, nor particularly intense, but thematically stands out a bit from the other ancient ruins of evil this game features.

E4M6: the ganglion depths (james wilson and terry hamel) while it's not the penultimate level before the final boss, it very much feels like one, reminiscent of E1M6 with its mostly linear traversal, high-above-the-clouds setting and sinister ancient ruins set into steep cliffs. lots of tough encounters here, including several spider mommas (notably a twofer in a tomb) and a nasty fight right at the start with gargoyles (including a stone one) and some goons with only a bridge and some ledges to fight on. lots of generic evil chambers as sinister chanting fills the air, but some creative encounters and setpieces help salvage what's largely a lot of narrow corridors.

E4M7: in the flesh (craig hubbard and james wilson) the penultimate level is by far the weirdest one, thematically. no ancient temples, no crumbling cities. just a huge cavern of flesh, filled with the sound of slow breathing. a shockingly low enemy count for the final non-boss level, but devoid of the usual trash mobs, instead throwing gargoyles and gillbeasts and hellhounds at you. a few distinct areas evoke actual internal organs, such as the heart, lungs, and, amusingly enough, the stomach. combat is either trivial or a pain, the latter especially when dealing with the stone gargoyle in the stomach area.

E4M8: the hall of the epiphany (kevin kilstrom) the game's finale, and the place you've been trying to get back to since E1M1. after a brief cutscene, you're treated to a tiny map that opens up in sections as you first have to fight another stone gargoyle, another mother spider, and another cerberus, in order, before finally confronting tchernobog himself. the battle is not as straightforward as you'd expect; aside from a hitscan attack that sets you on fire, he also shoots out devastating fireballs akin to a cyberdemon rocket in doom. it's largely down to who kills who first, though utilizing the high-level weaponry such as the hellstaff will help. a bit of a disappointing fight altogether.

final thoughts: for what's essentially the finale of the game, episode four is dissapointingly the weakest part of the game. while the final few levels have a coherent theme and transition among them, the first half feels like the design team had too many ideas they really wanted to put into the game and had nowhere else to put them. it's not to say they're bad, but E4M1 especially feels like a wasted opportunity and probably deserved to have been cut, or at the very least merged with E4M2. the mall level is truly great, though. the final boss was also disappointing, with a poorly-designed arena making matters worse. as a whole it's simply not as memorable as the rest of the game.

h/t to the blood wiki for the screenscreamshots

[bountyofbeads]

The 1619 Project https://nyti.ms/2Hjvu0L

New York Times Magazine has a project called the '1619 Project' in commemoration of the first slaves brought to Jamestown, Virginia. The project provides a different perspective, from prominent African-Americans and others, than what most of us have been taught or told. Included are essays, photojournalism and poetry.

I will post several pieces from the series as I am a subscriber to my timeline. If possible please take time to READ 📖 and SHARE their stories.

"The 1619 Project is a major initiative from The New York Times observing the 400th anniversary of the beginning of American slavery. It aims to reframe the country’s history, understanding 1619 as our true founding, and placing the consequences of slavery and the contributions of black Americans at the very center of the story we tell ourselves about who we are."

Our Democracy’s founding ideals were false when they were written.  Black  Americans have fought to make them true.

By Nikole Hannah-Jones | August 14, 2019 | New York Times Magazine | Posted August 16, 2019 |

My dad always flew an American flag in our front yard. The blue paint on our two-story house was perennially chipping; the fence, or the rail by the stairs, or the front door, existed in a perpetual state of disrepair, but that flag always flew pristine. Our corner lot, which had been redlined by the federal government, was along the river that divided the black side from the white side of our Iowa town. At the edge of our lawn, high on an aluminum pole, soared the flag, which my dad would replace as soon as it showed the slightest tatter.

My dad was born into a family of sharecroppers on a white plantation in Greenwood, Miss., where black people bent over cotton from can’t-see-in-the-morning to can’t-see-at-night, just as their enslaved ancestors had done not long before. The Mississippi of my dad’s youth was an apartheid state that subjugated its near-majority black population through breathtaking acts of violence. White residents in Mississippi lynched more black people than those in any other state in the country, and the white people in my dad’s home county lynched more black residents than those in any other county in Mississippi, often for such “crimes” as entering a room occupied by white women, bumping into a white girl or trying to start a sharecroppers union. My dad’s mother, like all the black people in Greenwood, could not vote, use the public library or find work other than toiling in the cotton fields or toiling in white people’s houses. So in the 1940s, she packed up her few belongings and her three small children and joined the flood of black Southerners fleeing North. She got off the Illinois Central Railroad in Waterloo, Iowa, only to have her hopes of the mythical Promised Land shattered when she learned that Jim Crow did not end at the Mason-Dixon line.

Grandmama, as we called her, found a house in a segregated black neighborhood on the city’s east side and then found the work that was considered black women’s work no matter where black women lived — cleaning white people’s houses. Dad, too, struggled to find promise in this land. In 1962, at age 17, he signed up for the Army. Like many young men, he joined in hopes of escaping poverty. But he went into the military for another reason as well, a reason common to black men: Dad hoped that if he served his country, his country might finally treat him as an American.

The Army did not end up being his way out. He was passed over for opportunities, his ambition stunted. He would be discharged under murky circumstances and then labor in a series of service jobs for the rest of his life. Like all the black men and women in my family, he believed in hard work, but like all the black men and women in my family, no matter how hard he worked, he never got ahead.

So when I was young, that flag outside our home never made sense to me. How could this black man, having seen firsthand the way his country abused black Americans, how it refused to treat us as full citizens, proudly fly its banner? I didn’t understand his patriotism. It deeply embarrassed me.

I had been taught, in school, through cultural osmosis, that the flag wasn’t really ours, that our history as a people began with enslavement and that we had contributed little to this great nation. It seemed that the closest thing black Americans could have to cultural pride was to be found in our vague connection to Africa, a place we had never been. That my dad felt so much honor in being an American felt like a marker of his degradation, his acceptance of our subordination.

Like most young people, I thought I understood so much, when in fact I understood so little. My father knew exactly what he was doing when he raised that flag. He knew that our people’s contributions to building the richest and most powerful nation in the world were indelible, that the United States simply would not exist without us.

In August 1619, just 12 years after the English settled Jamestown, Va., one year before the Puritans landed at Plymouth Rock and some 157 years before the English colonists even decided they wanted to form their own country, the Jamestown colonists bought 20 to 30 enslaved Africans from English pirates. The pirates had stolen them from a Portuguese slave ship that had forcibly taken them from what is now the country of Angola. Those men and women who came ashore on that August day were the beginning of American slavery. They were among the 12.5 million Africans who would be kidnapped from their homes and brought in chains across the Atlantic Ocean in the largest forced migration in human history until the Second World War. Almost two million did not survive the grueling journey, known as the Middle Passage.

Before the abolishment of the international slave trade, 400,000 enslaved Africans would be sold into America. Those individuals and their descendants transformed the lands to which they’d been brought into some of the most successful colonies in the British Empire. Through backbreaking labor, they cleared the land across the Southeast. They taught the colonists to grow rice. They grew and picked the cotton that at the height of slavery was the nation’s most valuable commodity, accounting for half of all American exports and 66 percent of the world’s supply. They built the plantations of George Washington, Thomas Jefferson and James Madison, sprawling properties that today attract thousands of visitors from across the globe captivated by the history of the world’s greatest democracy. They laid the foundations of the White House and the Capitol, even placing with their unfree hands the Statue of Freedom atop the Capitol dome. They lugged the heavy wooden tracks of the railroads that crisscrossed the South and that helped take the cotton they picked to the Northern textile mills, fueling the Industrial Revolution. They built vast fortunes for white people North and South — at one time, the second-richest man in the nation was a Rhode Island “slave trader.” Profits from black people’s stolen labor helped the young nation pay off its war debts and financed some of our most prestigious universities. It was the relentless buying, selling, insuring and financing of their bodies and the products of their labor that made Wall Street a thriving banking, insurance and trading sector and New York City the financial capital of the world.

But it would be historically inaccurate to reduce the contributions of black people to the vast material wealth created by our bondage. Black Americans have also been, and continue to be, foundational to the idea of American freedom. More than any other group in this country’s history, we have served, generation after generation, in an overlooked but vital role: It is we who have been the perfecters of this democracy.

The United States is a nation founded on both an ideal and a lie. Our Declaration of Independence, approved on July 4, 1776, proclaims that “all men are created equal” and “endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights.” But the white men who drafted those words did not believe them to be true for the hundreds of thousands of black people in their midst. “Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness” did not apply to fully one-fifth of the country. Yet despite being violently denied the freedom and justice promised to all, black Americans believed fervently in the American creed. Through centuries of black resistance and protest, we have helped the country live up to its founding ideals. And not only for ourselves — black rights struggles paved the way for every other rights struggle, including women’s and gay rights, immigrant and disability rights.

Without the idealistic, strenuous and patriotic efforts of black Americans, our democracy today would most likely look very different — it might not be a democracy at all.

The very first person to die for this country in the American Revolution was a black man who himself was not free. Crispus Attucks was a fugitive from slavery, yet he gave his life for a new nation in which his own people would not enjoy the liberties laid out in the Declaration for another century. In every war this nation has waged since that first one, black Americans have fought — today we are the most likely of all racial groups to serve in the United States military.

My father, one of those many black Americans who answered the call, knew what it would take me years to understand: that the year 1619 is as important to the American story as 1776. That black Americans, as much as those men cast in alabaster in the nation’s capital, are this nation’s true “founding fathers.” And that no people has a greater claim to that flag than us.

In June 1776, Thomas Jefferson sat at his portable writing desk in a rented room in Philadelphia and penned these words: “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.” For the last 243 years, this fierce assertion of the fundamental and natural rights of humankind to freedom and self-governance has defined our global reputation as a land of liberty. As Jefferson composed his inspiring words, however, a teenage boy who would enjoy none of those rights and liberties waited nearby to serve at his master’s beck and call. His name was Robert Hemings, and he was the half brother of Jefferson’s wife, born to Martha Jefferson’s father and a woman he owned. It was common for white enslavers to keep their half-black children in slavery. Jefferson had chosen Hemings, from among about 130 enslaved people that worked on the forced-labor camp he called Monticello, to accompany him to Philadelphia and ensure his every comfort as he drafted the text making the case for a new democratic republic based on the individual rights of men.

At the time, one-fifth of the population within the 13 colonies struggled under a brutal system of slavery unlike anything that had existed in the world before. Chattel slavery was not conditional but racial. It was heritable and permanent, not temporary, meaning generations of black people were born into it and passed their enslaved status onto their children. Enslaved people were not recognized as human beings but as property that could be mortgaged, traded, bought, sold, used as collateral, given as a gift and disposed of violently. Jefferson’s fellow white colonists knew that black people were human beings, but they created a network of laws and customs, astounding for both their precision and cruelty, that ensured that enslaved people would never be treated as such. As the abolitionist William Goodell wrote in 1853, “If any thing founded on falsehood might be called a science, we might add the system of American slavery to the list of the strict sciences.”

Enslaved people could not legally marry. They were barred from learning to read and restricted from meeting privately in groups. They had no claim to their own children, who could be bought, sold and traded away from them on auction blocks alongside furniture and cattle or behind storefronts that advertised “Negroes for Sale.” Enslavers and the courts did not honor kinship ties to mothers, siblings, cousins. In most courts, they had no legal standing. Enslavers could rape or murder their property without legal consequence. Enslaved people could own nothing, will nothing and inherit nothing. They were legally tortured, including by those working for Jefferson himself. They could be worked to death, and often were, in order to produce the highest profits for the white people who owned them.

Yet in making the argument against Britain’s tyranny, one of the colonists’ favorite rhetorical devices was to claim that they were the slaves — to Britain. For this duplicity, they faced burning criticism both at home and abroad. As Samuel Johnson, an English writer and Tory opposed to American independence, quipped, “How is it that we hear the loudest yelps for liberty among the drivers of Negroes?”

Conveniently left out of our founding mythology is the fact that one of the primary reasons the colonists decided to declare their independence from Britain was because they wanted to protect the institution of slavery. By 1776, Britain had grown deeply conflicted over its role in the barbaric institution that had reshaped the Western Hemisphere. In London, there were growing calls to abolish the slave trade. This would have upended the economy of the colonies, in both the North and the South. The wealth and prominence that allowed Jefferson, at just 33, and the other founding fathers to believe they could successfully break off from one of the mightiest empires in the world came from the dizzying profits generated by chattel slavery. In other words, we may never have revolted against Britain if the founders had not understood that slavery empowered them to do so; nor if they had not believed that independence was required in order to ensure that slavery would continue. It is not incidental that 10 of this nation’s first 12 presidents were enslavers, and some might argue that this nation was founded not as a democracy but as a slavocracy.

Jefferson and the other founders were keenly aware of this hypocrisy. And so in Jefferson’s original draft of the Declaration of Independence, he tried to argue that it wasn’t the colonists’ fault. Instead, he blamed the king of England for forcing the institution of slavery on the unwilling colonists and called the trafficking in human beings a crime. Yet neither Jefferson nor most of the founders intended to abolish slavery, and in the end, they struck the passage.

There is no mention of slavery in the final Declaration of Independence. Similarly, 11 years later, when it came time to draft the Constitution, the framers carefully constructed a document that preserved and protected slavery without ever using the word. In the texts in which they were making the case for freedom to the world, they did not want to explicitly enshrine their hypocrisy, so they sought to hide it. The Constitution contains 84 clauses. Six deal directly with the enslaved and their enslavement, as the historian David Waldstreicher has written, and five more hold implications for slavery. The Constitution protected the “property” of those who enslaved black people, prohibited the federal government from intervening to end the importation of enslaved Africans for a term of 20 years, allowed Congress to mobilize the militia to put down insurrections by the enslaved and forced states that had outlawed slavery to turn over enslaved people who had run away seeking refuge. Like many others, the writer and abolitionist Samuel Bryan called out the deceit, saying of the Constitution, “The words are dark and ambiguous; such as no plain man of common sense would have used, [and] are evidently chosen to conceal from Europe, that in this enlightened country, the practice of slavery has its advocates among men in the highest stations.”

With independence, the founding fathers could no longer blame slavery on Britain. The sin became this nation’s own, and so, too, the need to cleanse it. The shameful paradox of continuing chattel slavery in a nation founded on individual freedom, scholars today assert, led to a hardening of the racial caste system. This ideology, reinforced not just by laws but by racist science and literature, maintained that black people were subhuman, a belief that allowed white Americans to live with their betrayal. By the early 1800s, according to the legal historians Leland B. Ware, Robert J. Cottrol and Raymond T. Diamond, white Americans, whether they engaged in slavery or not, “had a considerable psychological as well as economic investment in the doctrine of black inferiority.” While liberty was the inalienable right of the people who would be considered white, enslavement and subjugation became the natural station of people who had any discernible drop of “black” blood.

The Supreme Court enshrined this thinking in the law in its 1857 Dred Scott decision, ruling that black people, whether enslaved or free, came from a “slave” race. This made them inferior to white people and, therefore, incompatible with American democracy. Democracy was for citizens, and the “Negro race,” the court ruled, was “a separate class of persons,” which the founders had “not regarded as a portion of the people or citizens of the Government” and had “no rights which a white man was bound to respect.” This belief, that black people were not merely enslaved but were a slave race, became the root of the endemic racism that we still cannot purge from this nation to this day. If black people could not ever be citizens, if they were a caste apart from all other humans, then they did not require the rights bestowed by the Constitution, and the “we” in the “We the People” was not a lie.

On Aug. 14, 1862, a mere five years after the nation’s highest courts declared that no black person could be an American citizen, President Abraham Lincoln called a group of five esteemed free black men to the White House for a meeting. It was one of the few times that black people had ever been invited to the White House as guests. The Civil War had been raging for more than a year, and black abolitionists, who had been increasingly pressuring Lincoln to end slavery, must have felt a sense of great anticipation and pride.

The war was not going well for Lincoln. Britain was contemplating whether to intervene on the Confederacy’s behalf, and Lincoln, unable to draw enough new white volunteers for the war, was forced to reconsider his opposition to allowing black Americans to fight for their own liberation. The president was weighing a proclamation that threatened to emancipate all enslaved people in the states that had seceded from the Union if the states did not end the rebellion. The proclamation would also allow the formerly enslaved to join the Union army and fight against their former “masters.” But Lincoln worried about what the consequences of this radical step would be. Like many white Americans, he opposed slavery as a cruel system at odds with American ideals, but he also opposed black equality. He believed that free black people were a “troublesome presence” incompatible with a democracy intended only for white people. “Free them, and make them politically and socially our equals?” he had said four years earlier. “My own feelings will not admit of this; and if mine would, we well know that those of the great mass of white people will not.”

That August day, as the men arrived at the White House, they were greeted by the towering Lincoln and a man named James Mitchell, who eight days before had been given the title of a newly created position called the commissioner of emigration. This was to be his first assignment. After exchanging a few niceties, Lincoln got right to it. He informed his guests that he had gotten Congress to appropriate funds to ship black people, once freed, to another country.

“Why should they leave this country? This is, perhaps, the first question for proper consideration,” Lincoln told them. “You and we are different races. ... Your race suffer very greatly, many of them, by living among us, while ours suffer from your presence. In a word, we suffer on each side.”

You can imagine the heavy silence in that room, as the weight of what the president said momentarily stole the breath of these five black men. It was 243 years to the month since the first of their ancestors had arrived on these shores, before Lincoln’s family, long before most of the white people insisting that this was not their country. The Union had not entered the war to end slavery but to keep the South from splitting off, yet black men had signed up to fight. Enslaved people were fleeing their forced-labor camps, which we like to call plantations, trying to join the effort, serving as spies, sabotaging confederates, taking up arms for his cause as well as their own. And now Lincoln was blaming them for the war. “Although many men engaged on either side do not care for you one way or the other ... without the institution of slavery and the colored race as a basis, the war could not have an existence,” the president told them. “It is better for us both, therefore, to be separated.”

As Lincoln closed the remarks, Edward Thomas, the delegation’s chairman, informed the president, perhaps curtly, that they would consult on his proposition. “Take your full time,” Lincoln said. “No hurry at all.”

Nearly three years after that White House meeting, Gen. Robert E. Lee surrendered at Appomattox. By summer, the Civil War was over, and four million black Americans were suddenly free. Contrary to Lincoln’s view, most were not inclined to leave, agreeing with the sentiment of a resolution against black colonization put forward at a convention of black leaders in New York some decades before: “This is our home, and this our country. Beneath its sod lie the bones of our fathers. ... Here we were born, and here we will die.”

That the formerly enslaved did not take up Lincoln’s offer to abandon these lands is an astounding testament to their belief in this nation’s founding ideals. As W.E.B. Du Bois wrote, “Few men ever worshiped Freedom with half such unquestioning faith as did the American Negro for two centuries.” Black Americans had long called for universal equality and believed, as the abolitionist Martin Delany said, “that God has made of one blood all the nations that dwell on the face of the earth.” Liberated by war, then, they did not seek vengeance on their oppressors as Lincoln and so many other white Americans feared. They did the opposite. During this nation’s brief period of Reconstruction, from 1865 to 1877, formerly enslaved people zealously engaged with the democratic process. With federal troops tempering widespread white violence, black Southerners started branches of the Equal Rights League — one of the nation’s first human rights organizations — to fight discrimination and organize voters; they headed in droves to the polls, where they placed other formerly enslaved people into seats that their enslavers had once held. The South, for the first time in the history of this country, began to resemble a democracy, with black Americans elected to local, state and federal offices. Some 16 black men served in Congress — including Hiram Revels of Mississippi, who became the first black man elected to the Senate. (Demonstrating just how brief this period would be, Revels, along with Blanche Bruce, would go from being the first black man elected to the last for nearly a hundred years, until Edward Brooke of Massachusetts took office in 1967.) More than 600 black men served in Southern state legislatures and hundreds more in local positions.

These black officials joined with white Republicans, some of whom came down from the North, to write the most egalitarian state constitutions the South had ever seen. They helped pass more equitable tax legislation and laws that prohibited discrimination in public transportation, accommodation and housing. Perhaps their biggest achievement was the establishment of that most democratic of American institutions: the public school. Public education effectively did not exist in the South before Reconstruction. The white elite sent their children to private schools, while poor white children went without an education. But newly freed black people, who had been prohibited from learning to read and write during slavery, were desperate for an education. So black legislators successfully pushed for a universal, state-funded system of schools — not just for their own children but for white children, too. Black legislators also helped pass the first compulsory education laws in the region. Southern children, black and white, were now required to attend schools like their Northern counterparts. Just five years into Reconstruction, every Southern state had enshrined the right to a public education for all children into its constitution. In some states, like Louisiana and South Carolina, small numbers of black and white children, briefly, attended schools together.

Led by black activists and a Republican Party pushed left by the blatant recalcitrance of white Southerners, the years directly after slavery saw the greatest expansion of human and civil rights this nation would ever see. In 1865, Congress passed the 13th Amendment, making the United States one of the last nations in the Americas to outlaw slavery. The following year, black Americans, exerting their new political power, pushed white legislators to pass the Civil Rights Act, the nation’s first such law and one of the most expansive pieces of civil rights legislation Congress has ever passed. It codified black American citizenship for the first time, prohibited housing discrimination and gave all Americans the right to buy and inherit property, make and enforce contracts and seek redress from courts. In 1868, Congress ratified the 14th Amendment, ensuring citizenship to any person born in the United States. Today, thanks to this amendment, every child born here to a European, Asian, African, Latin American or Middle Eastern immigrant gains automatic citizenship. The 14th Amendment also, for the first time, constitutionally guaranteed equal protection under the law. Ever since, nearly all other marginalized groups have used the 14th Amendment in their fights for equality (including the recent successful arguments before the Supreme Court on behalf of same-sex marriage). Finally, in 1870, Congress passed the 15th Amendment, guaranteeing the most critical aspect of democracy and citizenship — the right to vote — to all men regardless of “race, color, or previous condition of servitude.”

For this fleeting moment known as Reconstruction, the majority in Congress seemed to embrace the idea that out of the ashes of the Civil War, we could create the multiracial democracy that black Americans envisioned even if our founding fathers did not.

But it would not last.

Anti-black racism runs in the very DNA of this country, as does the belief, so well articulated by Lincoln, that black people are the obstacle to national unity. The many gains of Reconstruction were met with fierce white resistance throughout the South, including unthinkable violence against the formerly enslaved, wide-scale voter suppression, electoral fraud and even, in some extreme cases, the overthrow of democratically elected biracial governments. Faced with this unrest, the federal government decided that black people were the cause of the problem and that for unity’s sake, it would leave the white South to its own devices. In 1877, President Rutherford B. Hayes, in order to secure a compromise with Southern Democrats that would grant him the presidency in a contested election, agreed to pull federal troops from the South. With the troops gone, white Southerners quickly went about eradicating the gains of Reconstruction. The systemic white suppression of black life was so severe that this period between the 1880s and the 1920 and ’30s became known as the Great Nadir, or the second slavery. Democracy would not return to the South for nearly a century.

White Southerners of all economic classes, on the other hand, thanks in significant part to the progressive policies and laws black people had championed, experienced substantial improvement in their lives even as they forced black people back into a quasi slavery. As Waters McIntosh, who had been enslaved in South Carolina, lamented, “It was the poor white man who was freed by the war, not the Negroes.”

Georgia pines flew past the windows of the Greyhound bus carrying Isaac Woodard home to Winnsboro, S.C. After serving four years in the Army in World War II, where Woodard had earned a battle star, he was given an honorable discharge earlier that day at Camp Gordon and was headed home to meet his wife. When the bus stopped at a small drugstore an hour outside Atlanta, Woodard got into a brief argument with the white driver after asking if he could use the restroom. About half an hour later, the driver stopped again and told Woodard to get off the bus. Crisp in his uniform, Woodard stepped from the stairs and saw the police waiting for him. Before he could speak, one of the officers struck him in his head with a billy club, beating him so badly that he fell unconscious. The blows to Woodard’s head were so severe that when he woke in a jail cell the next day, he could not see. The beating occurred just 4½ hours after his military discharge. At 26, Woodard would never see again.

There was nothing unusual about Woodard’s horrific maiming. It was part of a wave of systemic violence deployed against black Americans after Reconstruction, in both the North and the South. As the egalitarian spirit of post-Civil War America evaporated under the desire for national reunification, black Americans, simply by existing, served as a problematic reminder of this nation’s failings. White America dealt with this inconvenience by constructing a savagely enforced system of racial apartheid that excluded black people almost entirely from mainstream American life — a system so grotesque that Nazi Germany would later take inspiration from it for its own racist policies.

Despite the guarantees of equality in the 14th Amendment, the Supreme Court’s landmark Plessy v. Ferguson decision in 1896 declared that the racial segregation of black Americans was constitutional. With the blessing of the nation’s highest court and no federal will to vindicate black rights, starting in the late 1800s, Southern states passed a series of laws and codes meant to make slavery’s racial caste system permanent by denying black people political power, social equality and basic dignity. They passed literacy tests to keep black people from voting and created all-white primaries for elections. Black people were prohibited from serving on juries or testifying in court against a white person. South Carolina prohibited white and black textile workers from using the same doors. Oklahoma forced phone companies to segregate phone booths. Memphis had separate parking spaces for black and white drivers. Baltimore passed an ordinance outlawing black people from moving onto a block more than half white and white people from moving onto a block more than half black. Georgia made it illegal for black and white people to be buried next to one another in the same cemetery. Alabama barred black people from using public libraries that their own tax dollars were paying for. Black people were expected to jump off the sidewalk to let white people pass and call all white people by an honorific, though they received none no matter how old they were. In the North, white politicians implemented policies that segregated black people into slum neighborhoods and into inferior all-black schools, operated whites-only public pools and held white and “colored” days at the country fair, and white businesses regularly denied black people service, placing “Whites Only” signs in their windows. States like California joined Southern states in barring black people from marrying white people, while local school boards in Illinois and New Jersey mandated segregated schools for black and white children.

This caste system was maintained through wanton racial terrorism. And black veterans like Woodard, especially those with the audacity to wear their uniform, had since the Civil War been the target of a particular violence. This intensified during the two world wars because white people understood that once black men had gone abroad and experienced life outside the suffocating racial oppression of America, they were unlikely to quietly return to their subjugation at home. As Senator James K. Vardaman of Mississippi said on the Senate floor during World War I, black servicemen returning to the South would “inevitably lead to disaster.” Giving a black man “military airs” and sending him to defend the flag would bring him “to the conclusion that his political rights must be respected.”

Many white Americans saw black men in the uniforms of America’s armed services not as patriotic but as exhibiting a dangerous pride. Hundreds of black veterans were beaten, maimed, shot and lynched. We like to call those who lived during World War II the Greatest Generation, but that allows us to ignore the fact that many of this generation fought for democracy abroad while brutally suppressing democracy for millions of American citizens. During the height of racial terror in this country, black Americans were not merely killed but castrated, burned alive and dismembered with their body parts displayed in storefronts. This violence was meant to terrify and control black people, but perhaps just as important, it served as a psychological balm for white supremacy: You would not treat human beings this way. The extremity of the violence was a symptom of the psychological mechanism necessary to absolve white Americans of their country’s original sin. To answer the question of how they could prize liberty abroad while simultaneously denying liberty to an entire race back home, white Americans resorted to the same racist ideology that Jefferson and the framers had used at the nation’s founding.

This ideology — that black people belonged to an inferior, subhuman race — did not simply disappear once slavery ended. If the formerly enslaved and their descendants became educated, if we thrived in the jobs white people did, if we excelled in the sciences and arts, then the entire justification for how this nation allowed slavery would collapse. Free black people posed a danger to the country’s idea of itself as exceptional; we held up the mirror in which the nation preferred not to peer. And so the inhumanity visited on black people by every generation of white America justified the inhumanity of the past.

Just as white Americans feared, World War II ignited what became black Americans’ second sustained effort to make democracy real. As the editorial board of the black newspaper The Pittsburgh Courier wrote, “We wage a two-pronged attack against our enslavers at home and those abroad who will enslave us.” Woodard’s blinding is largely seen as one of the catalysts for the decades-long rebellion we have come to call the civil rights movement. But it is useful to pause and remember that this was the second mass movement for black civil rights, the first being Reconstruction. As the centennial of slavery’s end neared, black people were still seeking the rights they had fought for and won after the Civil War: the right to be treated equally by public institutions, which was guaranteed in 1866 with the Civil Rights Act; the right to be treated as full citizens before the law, which was guaranteed in 1868 by the 14th Amendment; and the right to vote, which was guaranteed in 1870 by the 15th Amendment. In response to black demands for these rights, white Americans strung them from trees, beat them and dumped their bodies in muddy rivers, assassinated them in their front yards, firebombed them on buses, mauled them with dogs, peeled back their skin with fire hoses and murdered their children with explosives set off inside a church.

For the most part, black Americans fought back alone. Yet we never fought only for ourselves. The bloody freedom struggles of the civil rights movement laid the foundation for every other modern rights struggle. This nation’s white founders set up a decidedly undemocratic Constitution that excluded women, Native Americans and black people, and did not provide the vote or equality for most Americans. But the laws born out of black resistance guarantee the franchise for all and ban discrimination based not just on race but on gender, nationality, religion and ability. It was the civil rights movement that led to the passage of the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965, which upended the racist immigration quota system intended to keep this country white. Because of black Americans, black and brown immigrants from across the globe are able to come to the United States and live in a country in which legal discrimination is no longer allowed. It is a truly American irony that some Asian-Americans, among the groups able to immigrate to the United States because of the black civil rights struggle, are now suing universities to end programs designed to help the descendants of the enslaved.

No one cherishes freedom more than those who have not had it. And to this day, black Americans, more than any other group, embrace the democratic ideals of a common good. We are the most likely to support programs like universal health care and a higher minimum wage, and to oppose programs that harm the most vulnerable. For instance, black Americans suffer the most from violent crime, yet we are the most opposed to capital punishment. Our unemployment rate is nearly twice that of white Americans, yet we are still the most likely of all groups to say this nation should take in refugees.

The truth is that as much democracy as this nation has today, it has been borne on the backs of black resistance. Our founding fathers may not have actually believed in the ideals they espoused, but black people did. As one scholar, Joe R. Feagin, put it, “Enslaved African-Americans have been among the foremost freedom-fighters this country has produced.” For generations, we have believed in this country with a faith it did not deserve. Black people have seen the worst of America, yet, somehow, we still believe in its best.

They say our people were born on the water.

When it occurred, no one can say for certain. Perhaps it was in the second week, or the third, but surely by the fourth, when they had not seen their land or any land for so many days that they lost count. It was after fear had turned to despair, and despair to resignation, and resignation to an abiding understanding. The teal eternity of the Atlantic Ocean had severed them so completely from what had once been their home that it was as if nothing had ever existed before, as if everything and everyone they cherished had simply vanished from the earth. They were no longer Mbundu or Akan or Fulani. These men and women from many different nations, all shackled together in the suffocating hull of the ship, they were one people now.

Just a few months earlier, they had families, and farms, and lives and dreams. They were free. They had names, of course, but their enslavers did not bother to record them. They had been made black by those people who believed that they were white, and where they were heading, black equaled “slave,” and slavery in America required turning human beings into property by stripping them of every element that made them individuals. This process was called seasoning, in which people stolen from western and central Africa were forced, often through torture, to stop speaking their native tongues and practicing their native religions.

But as the sociologist Glenn Bracey wrote, “Out of the ashes of white denigration, we gave birth to ourselves.” For as much as white people tried to pretend, black people were not chattel. And so the process of seasoning, instead of erasing identity, served an opposite purpose: In the void, we forged a new culture all our own.

Today, our very manner of speaking recalls the Creole languages that enslaved people innovated in order to communicate both with Africans speaking various dialects and the English-speaking people who enslaved them. Our style of dress, the extra flair, stems back to the desires of enslaved people — shorn of all individuality — to exert their own identity. Enslaved people would wear their hat in a jaunty manner or knot their head scarves intricately. Today’s avant-garde nature of black hairstyles and fashion displays a vibrant reflection of enslaved people’s determination to feel fully human through self-expression. The improvisational quality of black art and music comes from a culture that because of constant disruption could not cling to convention. Black naming practices, so often impugned by mainstream society, are themselves an act of resistance. Our last names belong to the white people who once owned us. That is why the insistence of many black Americans, particularly those most marginalized, to give our children names that we create, that are neither European nor from Africa, a place we have never been, is an act of self-determination. When the world listens to quintessential American music, it is our voice they hear. The sorrow songs we sang in the fields to soothe our physical pain and find hope in a freedom we did not expect to know until we died became American gospel. Amid the devastating violence and poverty of the Mississippi Delta, we birthed jazz and blues. And it was in the deeply impoverished and segregated neighborhoods where white Americans forced the descendants of the enslaved to live that teenagers too poor to buy instruments used old records to create a new music known as hip-hop.

Our speech and fashion and the drum of our music echoes Africa but is not African. Out of our unique isolation, both from our native cultures and from white America, we forged this nation’s most significant original culture. In turn, “mainstream” society has coveted our style, our slang and our song, seeking to appropriate the one truly American culture as its own. As Langston Hughes wrote in 1926, “They’ll see how beautiful I am/And be ashamed —/I, too, am America.”

For centuries, white Americans have been trying to solve the “Negro problem.” They have dedicated thousands of pages to this endeavor. It is common, still, to point to rates of black poverty, out-of-wedlock births, crime and college attendance, as if these conditions in a country built on a racial caste system are not utterly predictable. But crucially, you cannot view those statistics while ignoring another: that black people were enslaved here longer than we have been free.

At 43, I am part of the first generation of black Americans in the history of the United States to be born into a society in which black people had full rights of citizenship. Black people suffered under slavery for 250 years; we have been legally “free” for just 50. Yet in that briefest of spans, despite continuing to face rampant discrimination, and despite there never having been a genuine effort to redress the wrongs of slavery and the century of racial apartheid that followed, black Americans have made astounding progress, not only for ourselves but also for all Americans.

What if America understood, finally, in this 400th year, that we have never been the problem but the solution?

When I was a child — I must have been in fifth or sixth grade — a teacher gave our class an assignment intended to celebrate the diversity of the great American melting pot. She instructed each of us to write a short report on our ancestral land and then draw that nation’s flag. As she turned to write the assignment on the board, the other black girl in class locked eyes with me. Slavery had erased any connection we had to an African country, and even if we tried to claim the whole continent, there was no “African” flag. It was hard enough being one of two black kids in the class, and this assignment would just be another reminder of the distance between the white kids and us. In the end, I walked over to the globe near my teacher’s desk, picked a random African country and claimed it as my own.

I wish, now, that I could go back to the younger me and tell her that her people’s ancestry started here, on these lands, and to boldly, proudly, draw the stars and those stripes of the American flag.

We were told once, by virtue of our bondage, that we could never be American. But it was by virtue of our bondage that we became the most American of all.

[automaticphantomalpaca]

Sofa Buying Guide

The worst time to figure out that you hate a new sofa is after it’s been delivered. The convenience of online shopping makes browsing easier, but when you’re buying a couch sight unseen, it’s important to do your homework. After hundreds of hours of research, including visiting three furniture factories, interviewing industry experts, and parking ourselves on nearly every sofa we’ve seen, we can tell you exactly what separates a great sofa from a future curbside donation. This guide will walk you through everything you need to know to bring home a durable—and comfortable—piece of furniture. And we recommend some worthy brands we’ve personally tested.

Finding the right sofas for your space and budget begins with deciding what type and style you want. Just as important, you’ll need to determine what size sofa will fit in your home(including through doorways, down hallways, and up stairs, among other exterior and interior obstructions). Then consider how many people you want to seat and what you should avoid (and invest in) if pets or kids will regularly use the sofa. We tell you how to check for quality construction, how much you should expect to spend, and when you can get the best deals. We’ve also put together a buying checklist that you can consult while you’re shopping to help you remember the most important details.

A sofa is one of the most expensive pieces of furniture that most people purchase, and we encourage you to try them out in person, or to buy from online companies that have generous return policies. We hope that after you read this guide, you’ll feel comfortable purchasing a sofa that will be an investment in your current and future home. And if you’re curious about why two seemingly identically styled sofas might have drastically different prices, hop over to our companion piece, Sofa Buying Advice From the People Who Design and Make Them.

Decide what type of sofa you want

Sofas and couches come in many shapes and sizes. The right one for you will depend on how much space you have, how many people you want to seat, and whether you plan to use the sofa for napping or hosting overnight guests. These are the four types you’ll generally find:

Standard sofa or couch: These generally measure between 72 and 84 inches, comfortably seating three to four people.

Loveseat: Similar to a sofa, but intended for two people, these range from 48 inches to 72 inches wide.

Sectional: A larger modular sofa consisting of two or more pieces arranged in an L- or U-shaped configuration. Apartment-size sectionals are about the same size as a standard sofa, but larger sizes can seat five or more people.

Sofa bed or daybed: A sofa bed transforms to lay out flat, offering a mattress-like surface to rest on. A daybed is essentially a sofa with more depth, and is intended for lounging comfortably stretched across its length.

Although a designer may take offense if you call their sofa a couch, or lounge chairs, in everyday use there’s no difference. Both describe a cushioned piece of furniture with a back intended to seat more than one person. “Sofa” has always implied a more formal seating arrangement for entertaining guests (and the design/retail industry favors the term), and “couch” connotes the relaxed comforts of seating that’s intended to welcome any and all.

Choose a sofa style

Regardless of how well a sofa is made, you won’t be happy with it if you don’t also love the way it looks. Narrow your search to the styles that appeal to you and that will complement your home’s decor. Below are the eight most common styles sold today.

Mid-century modern: The hallmarks of the mid-century aesthetic are a clean and minimalist structure sitting low to the floor atop unadorned metal or wooden legs.

Lawson: The “comfy jeans” of sofas, the laidback Lawson is practically synonymous with what we think of as the quintessential couch where spare change gets discovered.

English roll arm: The cushioned yet firm high-back sofa is distinguished by its low contoured arms leaning outward. This style looks best in traditional and transitional decorated spaces that have enough room not to cramp its size.

Chaise: Imagine the seat of upholstered chairs and stools stretched out and you have the chaise. Traditionally this sofa features one side with an arm and the other side without (aka a méridienne sofa or fainting couch), like benchs, but many chaise designs forgo arms altogether.

Settee: A small upright sofa that’s distinguished by its seating for two, the settee is the original name for the love seat. Styles can range from traditional to contemporary detailing. Because of its petite proportions, the settee works well in smaller apartments, in a pair facing each other, or placed within unexpected spaces like bedrooms, offices, or even hallways.

Tuxedo: Boxy dimensions, tufting along the back and arms, and arms of equal height to the back are what distinguish this style.

Chesterfield: Identified by its quilted or tufted low back and its high arms, this British design is classically upholstered in leather.

Camelback: The aristocratic profile of the camelback (also called a humpback sofa) is unsurprisingly attributed to the hump at the center of the backrest. Sometimes there are two humps, and the sofa usually sits atop four to eight exposed wood legs.

Make sure the sofa fits in your home

We’ve all heard the horror stories about someone who purchased the sofa of their dreams only to discover it would not fit through a doorway, navigate a stairway, or fit inside the room. The carpenter’s adage of “measure twice, cut once” proves similarly true when you’re dropping hundreds—if not thousands—of well-earned dollars on a sofa,, or side chairs. Follow these steps to ensure that you don’t become a cautionary tale for future generations of sofa shoppers.

Accurately measure the sofa

Measure the width, height, and depth of the sofa; taking additional measurements can also prove useful for ordering custom upholstery or for packing and moving individual pieces later. Although measurements are almost always listed online or in catalogs, we recommend bringing a tape measure to stores to verify dimensions in person. Ask sales representatives whether the sofa ships with sections or parts disassembled, or if they can be easily removed.

Measure your entryways

Survey the easiest points of entry into your home, together with any obstacles that could complicate delivery. A steep stairway, a narrow corridor, a low overhanging fixture, or a small elevator can all present insurmountable challenges, even before a delivery makes it to the front door. We found Room & Board’s How to Prepare for Furniture Delivery video particularly insightful for identifying and visualizing obstacles that can get in the way of delivery. Habitat UK’s six-step sofa-fit checklist (PDF) is another excellent resource that can help you determine whether the sofa will fit through doors and hallways, up a flight of stairs (including those with a landing), or into an elevator.

Pick the right sofa for your lifestyle

Once you’ve narrowed your search by style and size, give some thought to your personal seating needs. A pet owner or a family with young kids may have very different needs than a fastidious couple. Think through the following questions to help determine what best serves your lifestyle.

How will you use the sofa?

Be honest with yourself about how you’ll sit on the sofa. In retail stores, we’ve seen shoppers sitting on sofas with tables like they’re upright mannequins, which is likely not the way they would sit or lie on them at home. If you tend to slouch, a daybed or sectional with a chaise will prove more comfortable and won’t disfigure cushions (over time, slouching presses the front of seat cushions outward). If you’re a couch napper, avoid multi-cushion sofas, because they’re prone to buckle and dip between each cushion. If you prefer to sit upright while reading, knitting, or using a mobile device, the more tailored, firmer structure of a mid-century-modern–style sofa or one with an upright back will feel more comfortable.

How many people will sit on the sofa?

Think through how many people will regularly sit on the sofa, but also how they like to sit. For example, if one person likes to sit upright but the other likes to lie across with their head on an arm, and the choices ate single sofas, or two seater sofas, that’s how they should test out a sofa for comfortable width. Larger families or households that regularly host guests will be naturally drawn to sectionals. But to produce a more dynamic and flexible seating arrangement, also consider using two different-size sofas positioned into an L shape, or try a pair of loveseats facing each other.

Do you have kids or pets?

Never underestimate a dog’s, cat’s, or child’s ability to destroy your furniture. Microfiber and leather upholstered sofas are the easiest to clean and maintain. And because both are smoother, they’re less likely to be scratched into remnants by a pet’s claws. Otherwise, stick with upholstery fabrics with high stain protection and a higher rub count. (Room & Board has a great guide to pet- and family-friendly fabrics.) For an added layer of protection, you may also want to consider a sofa with a slipcover. Unattached seat and back cushions will make for easier individual cleaning. If your kids jump on the sofa, stick with a frame that has sinuous springs or poly-webbing supports rather than one with more delicate hand-tied springs. For families with young kids, avoid down-filled cushions, because little feet will likely deform the malleable filling every day. It’s also a good idea to avoid decorative detailing, like tufting buttons or frilly trim; pulling and picking at these will prove irresistible for some kids.

Do your floors easily scratch?

If you have delicate wood floors, carefully consider the legs of your sofa, or console tables. From experience, we know that hairpin legs can scrape wood floors. As a last resort, a well-placed area rug can keep sofa feet from damaging a floor.

[bluekayanite]

Theory: How do the Diamonds use the Moon Base?!

Ever notice that everything in the moon base is waaaay too small for a full-sized Diamond?  From the chair...

...to the stairs...

...to the door?

When I pointed out that Pink’s palanquin looks a lot smaller than Blue’s, a lot of people said that it would make sense if the chair were made for a smaller Diamond, though something about that bothered me.  By my estimates, the chair would still be way too small for her.  Take this picture I made of her based off my measurements:

Unless Pink was as skinny as a beanpole, I’d think she still wouldn’t be able to use the console at that height.  Also, the design of the console looks more “White Diamond”-ish to me, so I don’t think it was just for Pink.  And the bottom floor of the moon base seems to equally portray all four Diamonds, leading me to think the base was for all four of them.

I don’t think the Diamonds would include stairs if they didn’t need to use them (maybe there are limits to the teleporting powers we saw in The Trial).  I also don’t think they'd block themselves out of the upper floors by using tiny entryways - even if they could squeeze into the upper floors, I don't think they'd want to do something so undignified.  I’m not sure even Pink could squeeze through if she wanted.  Plus, I’d think a Diamond would want to use a console herself, rather than asking, say, her Pearl to use it for her.

The only reason I can think of for everything is the base being so small is if, for some reason, the Diamonds shrink while in the moon base.  ...Which, come to think, would explain why only elites are allowed in.

Though that leads me to ask why they would shrink in the moon base.  I figure either it's intentional, or it isn't.  Let’s take a look at the first option:

If the Diamonds shrink on purpose:

The reason for this that seems most likely to me is if the Diamonds’ colossal size isn’t their real size.  I can imagine the Diamonds making themselves bigger for the sake of display, making themselves ‘large and in charge.’  If anyone could maintain a much bigger size than usual for such a long period, it would be the Diamonds.  And while only a Gem’s body is affected if their ships force them into a form, Amethyst has shown that if a Gem shapeshifts, her Gemstone will also adjust in size.

The Diamonds’ bases might be places for them to relax for a bit and recover from maintaining those forms.

This does still bring up a number of problems, though.  For instance, I noticed that in the zoo, Pink has a Diamond-sized bed.

I’m not sure how well even a Diamond could maintain a sized-up form while sleeping.  And I would think that a bedroom would be private enough to drop any disguises.

And while a Diamond might be able to maintain a ginormous form for an extended period of time, it seems like a stretch to me that it would be so easily, and that they would still retain enough power to use their abilities.  And even if the Diamonds want to be ‘large and in charge,’ they wouldn’t need to be that much bigger to make their point.

Basically, it’s an inefficient use of their power, and we all know how big Homeworld is on efficiency.

I guess it’s possible that the Diamonds’ larger size could be natural, and they shrink themselves in the moon base, though I’m not sure why they’d do that.  Even ‘to save resources’ seems like a stretch when everything else that belongs to them is big and showy.

So let’s look at the possibility that it’s not on purpose.

 If the Diamonds shrink involuntarily:

Consider what Pearl and Peridot say about Gems’ forms adjusting to the environment:

“We’re a spacefaring race designed to conquer worlds.  Our physical forms adjust automatically to the gravity of any planetoid.” -Peridot, It Could’ve Been Great “Our bodies are made of light, and usually they form a mass dependent on the air pressure and the level of gravity in the environment.” -Pearl, Adventures in Light Distortion

Mass basically refers to how much raw material (molecules, atoms, or whathave) is in something.  Even molecules typically have space between them, with some substances having more space than others.  When something has less space between the material, we say that thing is denser.

Density doesn’t even need to be at a molecular level.  As an example, foam tends to have a lot of air pockets, so it’s not very dense.  Iron is usually kept solid, and it’s much denser than foam.  A 1-inch cube of foam weighs a lot less than a 1-inch cube of solid iron, because the iron in denser.  If you had an ounce of foam and an ounce of iron, the foam would be bigger, and the iron would still feel heaver than the foam because its mass is packed into a smaller area, even though the two samples technically weigh the same.

That said, to compensate for lighter gravity, they’d have to make themselves denser, but it doesn’t really matter how they do that.  It sounds to me like Gems make up for a lack of gravity by cramming more mass into their bodies.  But they’re that way because the Diamonds designed them to be.

So what if it works differently for Diamonds?  What if their forms do automatically adjust to gravity, but instead of increasing their mass, they compress their existing mass into a smaller, denser form?

It would certainly give them a reason to restrict the moon base to elites: shrinking to a smaller size would probably be so embarrassing that they’d want to keep it a secret from as many Gems as possible.  The less the gravity of the planetoid, the more important this would be.

Incidentally, the fact that Pearl mentioned air pressure could explain another thing that’s been bothering me: the fact that Gems ships and the Diamond base have air in them, despite the fact that Gems don’t need to breathe.  But if air pressure were important to the Diamonds it’d explain why everything spends extra power on maintaining atmosphere, even if they don’t plan on having organics inside.  This theory would also explain why their ships seem to create an Earth-like level of gravity, despite the fact that Gems wouldn’t need that much artificial gravity.

Gem ships and the moon base having atmosphere might actually be a plot point, rather than plot convenience.

 So how much smaller?

I’ll note that scaling works differently in three dimensions than it does in two.  You could fit eight one-inch boxes into a two-inch box.  So even though you might think the one-inch box is 1/2 the size of the two-inch one, it’s actually 1/8th of the size.

If we wanted to do something based in physics, we’d probably want to scale in three dimensions. The gravity of the moon is 1/6th that of Earth, so if that were the case, the height of the Diamonds on the moon would be a little over half (55%) of normal.

But Steven Universe is not exact with physics (by a long shot).  So if we ignored the third dimension and just made them 1/6th of normal height...

They’d be about the size of an average Gem, which would fit with the size of everything in the moon base.  Making everything in the base the usual Diamond size would mean they’d be unable to reach anything, let alone Steven and Peridot.  They’d have to make everything sized for a normal Gem in order to use it.

This explains a lot, and I can’t think of any contradictions.  The idea that Diamonds’ forms shrink with gravity fits!

[mauridianhallow]

A L L O F T H E Q U E S T I O N S

Good shit good shit this took me ages holy hell enjoy you meme loving fucks Q's for you to A Do you have a favourite sweater? I actually do, it's that kinda folded over stretchy grey one I always wear, y'know? I wore it to The 1975 and, from what I hear, it was awesome. (Although I can't remember bc I was Gin Drunk) What’s your middle name? Lawrence...no judgement...Do you still talk to the first person you kissed? I don't, I wonder how's she's doing. Heard she was studying History from her friend I met in a bar one time. Glad to hear, she was nice. Do you get on with your grandparents? I did! Sadly it's been a few years since they passed but I very much did. What was your favourite cartoon as a kid? Hmm, it's a tough one, between the 90's X-Men TV show they played on repeat on Fox Kids or Ben 10 when it wasn't absolute shit like the remake. Yeah I'm bitter. What’s your favourite cartoon now? Archer lol Do you read the news paper? Yeah pretty much every day...I swear I'm not an old man. Who was the last text you sent to? My friend Laura, asking if they'll still be at the park when I finish work. What does the last text you sent say? "Y'all still gonna be there when I get away?" If you could have any hair colour what would it be? Idk I like the one I have. Do you like nature documentaries? Not really my cup of tea to be perfectly honest. What is your aesthetic? Climbing a mountain at a 90° angle in Skyrim on a horse. When did you last pet a dog? ''Twas yesterday. Whose friend’s parents do you like the most? The twins'! They employ me! I literally get paid to hang out with friends some days that's the good shit! Have you ever been on a road trip? I've been on a couple, longest was a drive to Southern Spain from Scotland! Was awesome! Tell me about someone you know called Emma? Went to school with her, cool gal, she saw HP in London and I'm jealous, shoutout to @weewildelassAre you reading a book in english class, what is it? Oh god I'm old. I haven't had or attended an English class in over 2 years. Do you have a favourite Aunt? Well considering she also employs me...hell yeah, shoutout to my Aunt K you legend! Baths or showers? Baths for comfort and treating yo self, or sharing...😏...Showers for quickness and weird snapchats at 3am...😂 Skiing or sun bathing? Sun bathing my dude. Do you kill spiders? Sometimes, sometimes not. Have you ever made an ice pop? I have not. Are you wearing shoes right now? I'm not wearing anything rn. Tell me about you favourite primary school/elementary school teacher? Let me tell you about Mrs. Mary "The Bonecrusher" Highland, and how she was such an iconic, legendary, influential and inspiring woman that she was the person you sent into the bad fucked up schools in movies and have them all pass with straight A's, she ran a tough ship and was slow to praise but when she did, she went all out, and made you feel like what you had achieved was truly a feat. Oh and she encouraged children to learn and think for themselves, genuinely encouraged you when you said you were interested in something even when it went above and beyond the curriculum. She was charitable, friendly, and spoke to you like you were an equal, and a worthy one at that. Mrs. Highland was literally so influential in so many people in my class being successful, free minded, hard working adults that she deserves a goddamn award. And let me tell you another thing, at the end of my First Year in College, I went back to my old Primary School for a teaching assistant internship because I knew the school was becoming a bit run-down and out of control and I wanted to help the way that Mrs. Highland had, and who had they just asked to come out of retirement, come back for TWO WEEKS, sort shit out and then walk away into the sunset like some goddamn Old Lady Teaching Avenger who appears when needs were greatest? MARY FUCKING HIGHLAND, I GOT TO HELP ONE OF MY CHILDHOOD HEROES BE AN ABSOLUTE TEACHING LEGEND AND REALLY INFLUENCE SOME GOOD IN A KIDS LIFE, THAT IS THE SHIT! Seriously though, she truly is one of the good ones, they don't make em like Her anymore. Who was the last person you hugged? I think that would be my mother actually hahah. Do you wear glasses? Occasionally. Do you have a cat? I sadly do not. Do you have a favourite pair of underwear? Not a favourite pair exactly more like a favourite kind?? Next All-Black, that's the good shit, makes my ass look great among other things. What was your last tweet? "How the fuck do you work twitter" about 5 years ago and I haven't used it since. Do you still use Facebook? I do, rarely. Do you like birds? Aye pal birds, blokes, the lot. Who was the last person you called cute? That genuinely would be my niece, or you lol Who was the last person that called you cute? This is a strange answer but a regular in my work. Long story. How did you meet your best friend? I literally turned a corner and ran into a group of emo's in like Fourth Year at High School and I haven't looked back since. Escalators or elevators? Nah m8, trick question, I'd rather take the stairs. Does wonders for the thighs. Are you named after anyone, who? Ahaha yeah my dad, both my granddads, and Saint. Christoper (Catholic mum yo) What was your first url? I have no idea. Autumn or Winter? Winter I can't lie. Do you win at scrabble? I do not lol Put your ipod on shuffle , who is the first song that comes up by? "American Idiot", Green Day. Classic. Have you ever drunk from a mason jar? I have not. Can you draw? Barely even write m8 let alone draw. What was your first profile picture? I think it was Kenny from South Park. Favourite t-shirt? God I have no idea. Best tumblr friend? Shoutout to @bepizzazzed and @double-dorks-beanie and @hesitant-butthole When did you last run? Tonight when as a joke my friends took my jacket and tried to get it on top of a climbing frame? lol I had it back in seconds and decided to get some payback ahah Do you like to paint your nails? Not particularly fussed, not a look I could pull off. Did you ever do something as a kid that got you into loads of trouble? I did more things to get me into trouble as a kid that anyone should ever do. And I still did it. Who is your favourite dog that isn’t yours? Trick question, all of them. Have you ever been drunk? Literally so many times. So many. Have you ever done something you regret while drunk? Some-thing? Some-one? Getting into a slutty dance off with a professional dancer? Stealing a mannequin? The exact words "I can easily make this jump..."? The exact words "Watch this lads"? The exact words "Shots won't do me any harm"? The exact words "Another Venom? Aye no bother!" The exact words "You can crash at mine if you like...?" You get the picture...I do messed up shit I'm drunk, and yet, I continue to do so. Do you want to kiss anyone right now? Ronald McDonald ngl for the sweet sweet invention of double cheeseburgers. Do/did you like you math teacher? I had a crush on both of my maths teachers, Mr. Kelly and Mrs. Hendry, both of which contributed to me turning up to class, but also contributed to me failing said classes bc I was too busy looking at them and being a hormone ridden, horny 16 year old boy, than I was doing maths. Do you often ride the bus? I do, everyday I'm in College. Do you have a fireplace in your house? We do actually it's getting renovated right now. Are you violent when you’re angry? God no! Do you cry when you’re angry? No, I rarely get angry and when I do it can only be described as dry anger. Favourite Harry Potter book? It has to be OotP, fight me. Can you remember your last dream? I can, and let me just say, Chris Pratt, thank you. Do you go to bed early or late? "Do I go to bed?" would be a better question. Do you speak a second language? I speak various levels of different languages. Some if you dropped me in their respective countries I could find my way about, albeit difficultly, and others I can ask for the bar and the bill and that's about it. Who was your first ever best friend? A boy called Dean. Have you ever had an operation? I've had a couple yeah. Tell me about your favourite cousin? His name is Reece and he's a meme loving shit and I love him the whacky bastard. Do you have a piece of clothing that doesn’t even fit you anymore but you can’t bare to throw away? During what can only be described as the Greatest Summer of My Teenage Years; the Legendary Summer of 2014, I wore on my feet almost EVERY DAY a pair of Classic Chuck's, they cost my poor wee mum like £60 the Christmas before but they were too big and when it finally hit summer they fit perfectly. I wore them every time. If you've ever read the book Me Before You or watched the film you'll know what I mean when I say they were my bumblebee tights. Have you ever been in a musical? I played the Cowardly Lion in my school play as a kid. Do you have a porch? I do not. How many times have you watched your favourite movie? At least 100 no joke it has to be. Empire Strikes Back. What do you order at McDonalds? Plain double cheese , small fries, Oasis Summer Fruits and maybe a coffee. Do you get on with old people? Worryingly well. Science Fiction or Romance? Sci-Fi m8. Do you take naps? Anytime I can. How many classes do you/did you take in High School? In my final year I took 3 classes. At its height I think I was doing 9 classes. When did it last snow where you live? A few months back. Does it ever snow where you live? It's Scotland...hahah it very much does. How many months until your birthday? 12 m8. How much charge does your computer have right now? 42%What is your favourite Disney Channel Original Movie? I don't actually think I had one. Sorry. the City or the Sea Side? Jokes on you fool, you can have both. What is your least favourite colour? Beige. Who tf likes being beige. Do you have homework to do? Nah. Are you still friends with your first best friend? I am not. Do you have/are you the gay cousin? I have an asexual cousin, bug more often than not I'm the gay cousin. Do you own dungarees? They can look cute on peeps. Do you like to play sport? I do, not to the extent I used to but yeah. What was your favourite ever Christmas present? My baby nephew. How old are you? Ugh I'm 20. Do you ever use Internet Explorer? Not for s long time. Have you ever had blonde hair? I haven't no. I wanted to but sadly I was a kid. When did you last see the person you have a crush on? Well considering I fall deeply in love with strangers who are nice to me on the train, that question is crazy. Who did you last talk to on the phone? Laura. Pants or Dresses? This question is a lot funnier in the UK and even funnier in Scotland where a man can wear one, but to do so, he's not supposed to wear the other 😉 Do you read fan fiction? Not anymore y'know. What is you’re favourite blog? @mauridianhallow is a pretty cool blog you should check that shit out Do you write poetry? I HAVE written poetry before. Drama or Comedy? How dare you insult The Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt by suggesting you can't be both. Have you ever had a hickey? Perhaps...perhaps I have. Perhaps I cannot remember how I got some of them. Perhaps I should stop buying the ENTIRE bar a round of shots knowing all too well that almost every one of these people will offer to buy me drinks all night and then I won't pay shit for another drink until the night is over. Perhaps I should...I won't but I fucking should. And perhaps this has on certain occasions resulted in hickeys I don't know.

[writerericgreene]

The worms

Young one, I spent days in that tower. There was so much to explore, and so little time. The town near what was once Bahra had no ink, no vellum, nothing to transcribe what was once there, and so many of the scrolls had faded, rotting away, crumbling to dust at the touch. Entire shelves where there was only dust to the touch. 

Every morning I walked over, climbing those tall stairs as the sun was still rising. I would sit for hours, poring over the scrolls, jumping eagerly from one to the next. Even with all that was gone and lost, there was still so much there to discover. 

It was there that I found The Ways of the Great Creatures and Their Taming. It was a strange treatise, written time beyond memory by some scholar, gathering the scraps of information from travellers’ accounts, from the tales told by merchants as they passed across the oceans, through the deserts or the great heights, the peaks that surround Sayf to the West. Tales of mysterious creatures: the worms, the wyverns, the kraken. But others, too, that we had not heard of. The megalith, the great shark that devours ships, its mouth wider than a great colosseum. The Ahool, a bat with wings that span broader than a chariot’s length, flapping quietly through the night sky. The scaly creatures that swim in the swamps, spending hours beneath the water, breathing through the dark gills that flap beneath their necks. 

But so much, young one, was hard to interpret. Imagine reading a scroll where the words have faded until you strain to read them, even in the brightest day. Chunks of the scroll are missing, slowly rotting and crumbling away. But when you can read the words, they write in a world you have never lived in. The author of the The Ways of the Great Creatures was a scholar who lived surrounded by books, able to visit the great libraries of Bahra and other cities. He casually referred to accounts by alchemists, astronomers, navigators, sailors and merchants, to scientists I had never heard of. To try and find these other pieces was a hope beyond hope, but so much was scrambled, simply strewn across the shelves. 

It was in Bahra, too, that I found a history of Muntasir. Strange that it should be there, when so much of the city was gone, and its own library had no copy of the volume. Still, it was there that I first read about the gold mine to the north of Muntasir, that had lead to its very establishment, and that had created so much of the wealth that Muntasir flaunted as it ruled first among equals after the Awhad. The gold that gilded the ancient temples, the gold that bought the soldiers, the merchants, and the priests. The gold that was wrought and hammered into the fabled crown of Muntasir, heavier than any man can bear to stand under. 

I memoized all that I could, committing it to memory. Each day I would return to the town, and they were still grateful enough to share their food with me, the little that they had. Each night, as I walked back, I would contemplate the kraken that lurked beneath those waves. 

When I asked Tawfik, he just shrugged. “It has always been there. It is the guardian of our town. We deliver our dead to it, and it protects us, from the waves, and the dangers that threaten in the water.” 

“What happens if you should fall into the water?”

“Then we are a gift to the kraken.” 

“But it never touches the boats?”

“Never. We paint a symbol on the bottom of our boats, and it protects us from the kraken.” 

I read through The Ways of the Great Creatures, and it was there that I found the answer. It was buried in an account by a sailor who had journeyed far, to a distant land named Hukterre. On his return, he bought with him an account of the great creatures, that they spared the boats who painted giant eyes underneath them before they set into the water. Sailors said that the kraken mistook them for other kraken, sparing their kin, whether out of wisdom or mercy. 

That evening I asked Tawfik what would happen if they took out a boat that was not painted with the eyes of the kraken beneath it. “It would not be marked for protection; the creature would eat it.” 

Others told me that it had happened in their grandfathers’ time; a foolish young man who said that the paintings made no difference, that the creature was tamed, and would not attack a boat. 

“He was a gift to the kraken.” 

A silence settled on the conversation, and the fire sank lower as the embers crackled and glowed.

[cartzypage]

A Few of My Favorite Things to See in Kuala Lumpur When You Only Have A Day

Fred. Olsen Cruise Line’s Black Watch docked in Port Klang, Malaysia

Today Fred. Olsen Cruise Line’s Black Watch is docked in Malaysia and we were able to get out and explore so much in Kuala Lumpur. Kuala Lumpur is the largest city and the capital of Malaysia. We only had one jam packed day of exploring planned in Kuala Lumpur so we hired a driver and tour guide for the day Kernail Singh. Continue reading to see how you can visit some of my favorite places in Kuala Lumpur like I did when you only have one day to visit. 

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Batu Caves

Batu Caves

High on my list of places to visit while in Kuala Lumpur is Batu Caves. The limestone hill is over 400 million years old and the temple within the caves is approximately 100 years old. Dedicated to Lord Murugan, Batu Caves is one of the most popular Hindu shrines outside of India.

Batu Caves

Before climbing up the stairs to the temple inside the cave itself, it was time for a selfie.

TSG Tip: Did you know that this 140 foot high statue of the Hindu deity, Murugan, is also the world’s tallest statue? Made with 300 litres of gold, it cost about 24 million rupees or $6+million USD when brought from Thailand to Malaysia. That’s a lot of gold!

The Stairs

Walking up to the temple at Batu Caves

To arrive at the temple inside Batu Caves, you’ll need to walk up the 272 concrete steps. I freely admit that I’m not a fan of taking the stairs, but I wanted to power through and just get it done. I’m happy to report that I did it without stopping at all and it was totally worth it as I passed everyone on the way up.

Signage inside Batu Caves

I’m a huge fan of interesting signage and the one at Batu Caves didn’t disappoint.

Temple Cave

Panorama view inside Batu Caves

Temple Cave is the largest and most well known of the temples inside Batu Caves. Here you’ll find several Hindu shrines located within the temple.

Batu Caves

It’s hard to describe the enormity of this temple until you’re actually there and can see it for yourself.  Look at the size of the people at the bottom of this picture and how high up the opening to the cave to the outside world is.

View from inside Batu Caves

While the temple is overrun with tourists, visitors can still find a quiet place for themselves to worship or for reflective contemplation.

The view from Batu Caves

The walk down is far easier for most visitors and the view is one that can’t be missed. Where else can you see views of Kuala Lumpur like this?

Monkeys at Batu Caves

Probably the most unexpected part of Batu Caves for me was all of the wild monkeys that roam free. They’re literally everywhere and will jump on you if they have the chance. I saw old ones, babies, and well — gangs of monkeys willing to jump on the unsuspecting tourist.

TSG Tip: Avoid feeding wild monkeys unless you want pics of you getting well, attacked.

Posing at Batu Caves

Since you’re visiting a temple, you should dress with your shoulders and knees covered. As it was crazy hot that day, I was wearing a tank top and shorts, but was able to get a wrap to cover my legs before heading up the steps. What you pay is refunded when you return the wrap at the bottom of the steps.

Ramayana Cave

Hanuman at Ramayana Cave

If you’re not up for the massive climb up the steps at Batu Caves, check out the smaller cave in the same complex called Ramayana Cave. Then stare up at the immense 50 foot tall statue of Hanuman outside the cave, a devotee and aide to Lord Rama.

Ramayana Cave

Ramayana Cave is easy to navigate and tells the story of Rama inside the cave. If you have difficulty walking or have children in tow, this would be the cave to go to instead of Temple Cave.

Istana Negara

Istana Negara – National Palace

For something completely different and unexpected, we visited Istana Negara, which is the Malaysian National Palace.

Gate at Istana Negara – National Palace

As I had misplaced my royal invitation to go inside the palace, I was only able to get as far as the gate, just like every other tourist visiting Kuala Lumpur.

Istana Negara – National Palace

Opened in 2011, it’s the official residence of the monarch of Malaysia. The design of the new palace includes Malay and Islamic elements, reflecting the country itself. If you’re looking for a photo op while in Kuala Lumpur, then you definitely need to stop at Istana Negara.

Tugu Negara

Tugu Negara – National Monument

Our next stop on our Kuala Lumpur was to Tugu Negara or the National Monument, a monument to honor those lost during Malaysia’s struggle for freedom. The monument was designed by Austrian sculptor, Felix de Weldon, who also designed the Marine Corps Memorial in Virginia.

Tugu Negara – National Monument

The sculpture is of a group of soldiers, two of which are down at the base and one is holding the Malaysian national flag. No item in the monument is accidental as each bronze figure is there to depict leadership, suffering, unity, vigilance, strength, courage and sacrifice.

TSG Tip: Did you know that Tugu Negara is the world’s tallest bronze freestanding sculpture grouping?

Merdeka Square

Sultan Abdul Samad Building at Merdeka Square

Independence Square or Merdeka Square in Kuala Lumpur was a quick stop for us for a photo op as the heat was unbearable on the day we visited. It was here in 1957 that the British flag was lowered and the Malaysian flag was raised to signify independence. History buffs will enjoy visiting this area to take in the fresh smell of independence of a relatively new independent country like Malaysia.

Menara Kuala Lumpur

Menara Kuala Lumpur

The KL Tower or the Menara KL is the seventh tallest freestanding structure in the world at 421 metres tall. Construction was completed in 1995, it’s an easily recognizable Kuala Lumpur landmark.

TSG Tip: Did you know that you can jump from KL Tower? Oh I think I’ll have to do that the next time I’m in Kuala Lumpur.

Petronas Towers

Selfie at Petronas Towers with Danielle

Did you know that the Petronas Towers are the world’s tallest twin towers? Standing 88 floors high, the steel and chrome towers are connected at floors 41 and 42.  I was shocked at the height of these buildings, but more so by Danielle photobombing my selfie for a pic of her own.

Pavilion KL

Before we could do any major shopping, Kernail knew we needed lunch and so he took us to the Pavilion KL. This major shopping center, the Pavilion KL or Pavilion Kuala Lumpur, opened in 2007 and has over 500 stores. Their food court, as you can see from the image above from my Instagram story, is one of the largest I’ve ever seen. I was able to find a one restaurant that offered veggie options complete with spicy soya prawn, green beans, and brown rice. So yummy!

Central Market

Central Market

No trip for Danielle and I would be complete without shopping. Kernail made our last stop for the day the famous Central Market in Kuala Lumpur and is located at Jalan Tun Tan Cheng Lock (Foch Avenue) only a few minutes away from Petaling Street. Originally a wet market that opened in 1888, it still stands today in its beautiful Art Deco building.

Inside Central Market

Tourists can find just about anything inside Central Market like clothing. I bought a dress and jumpsuit for all of $23 total.

Inside Central Market

There are souvenirs of all kinds inside and haggling is not only normal, but expected at Central Market. The second floor features a food court in case you get hungry while shopping.

Maneki Neko cats at Central Market

I was ecstatic to find a store that sells one of my favorite things, Maneki Neko cats. I’ve never seen so many in one place.

Maneki neko cats

While I could’ve bought them all, I knew I still had to check my luggage at the airport. Therefore, I limited my purchase to one roly poly Maneki Neko cat to remind me of my time in Kuala Lumpur.

If you’re looking for great bargains of all kinds while in Kuala Lumpur as well as souvenirs, then definitely make a stop at Central Market. My day wouldn’t have been complete  without some last minute shopping here before heading back to the ship.

Saying Goodbye to Kernail

Kernail Singh

Then it was time to pack things up and return to our home at sea. Kernail wasn’t just an excellent driver through the busy traffic of Kuala Lumpur, he was an excellent tour guide as well. If you’re looking for someone who can provide you with everything you need to know during your stay, then consider contacting Kernail.

Kernail Singh MPV Executive Taxi Services kernailsingh1970@yahoo.com

Last Minute Shopping in The Port

Snacks with babies on them or in them?

There were a few shops inside the port where you could buy souvenirs and such, but we were all about buying some snacks to take with us on board. I couldn’t help but snap a few pics of these crisps with a baby on them. Does having a baby on the bag make them taste better?

Final Thoughts

I thoroughly enjoyed my visit to Kuala Lumpur and my only regret is that we only had one day to visit. Having a private driver to take you around a port instead of piling into a crowded coach is not only ideal, but affordable. Don’t think it is? Compare prices and see for yourself. I always say time is money and even if it’s slightly more expensive, you won’t have to wait around for everyone else and you can travel at your own speed. That to me is worth every penny.

Our next port of call is Yangon, Myanmar. Until then — let me know if you’ve ever visited Kuala Lumpur. Maybe you can suggest other destinations in Malaysia that you found equally exciting. Leave your comments below. Discover some other great destinations and travel ideas here on the Travel Shop Girl website.

On my new SPONTANEOUS TRAVEL SCALE of 1-5, with 1 being super easy and spontaneous and 5 being you better plan far in advance, Kuala Lumpur scores a 1 for spontaneous travel as this large city offers so much to do that you’d be crazy not to visit and enjoy yourself while there.

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A Few of My Favorite Things to See in Kuala Lumpur When You Only Have A Day published first on https://medium.com/@GoShopSingapore

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Neutral Christmas House Tour: Entryway and Kitchen

This year’s Christmas theme was all about winter wonderland neutrals: lots of gold, silver, white, and natural wood hues…

Hi folks! And welcome to my little Christmas house tour for 2017. This year, there was a HUGE milestone worth celebrating: my very first time hosting my family for Christmas dinner and opening gifts at MY house. My sister and her boyfriend will be out of town for the 25th, so we decided on an early date as a family. That meant prepping early, deciding our menu, and making sure the house was ready for not only the six of us (Mom, Dad, Em, her bf, me, and K), but the six dogs that are a part of the family, too!

I will happily report that only one of them had an accident (coughcough Buddy), but I’ll get to the actual family gathering later. Over the next three posts, I’ll be breaking down the house decor so you can get the full tour (even if you caught my live Instagram on Saturday night, this one will have much better lighting and fewer wine stains on my lips, ha). Let’s start with the entryway and kitchen.

This post may contain affiliate links — for the full disclosure policy, click here.

Front Door & Staircase

Just going to fess up now: some of these pics were taken as I had all six pups visiting. So things like a muddy front door and fur everywhere are just a given; please don’t judge too harshly on my lack of enthusiasm for cleaning as guests arrived (I have my tricks, but six dogs is a lot of dogs).

Those of you who remember when I first painted my staircase might see a little familiar staging here with Charlie, but that pose is all her! She picks this middle section of stairs as one of her favorite observation spots in the house (her other favorite is right at the bottom, on the dog rug, with her head resting on the window sill and looking out for any evildoing mail carriers).

Confession: because of Charlie’s frequent trips, I had to repaint scratched up spots this year. I’ll have a post for you soon on how I’m planning on keeping them more pristine in the future (some areas just haven’t held the paint well, so that’s going to get revisited in 2018).

Entryway

The entryway is fairly plain right now, but that made a great blank canvas for letting the Christmas decorations shine all on their own. I have a few more plans to really bump up the front hallway’s presence in 2018! Things like adding small shelves for dropping keys, a place for quick shoe storage, etc.

Kitchen

I seem to really like trees whenever I go Christmas clearance shopping (bottle brush trees, ceramic trees, really abstract-looking cones that might look like trees when sitting next to other trees, etc.). I’ve amassed quite a collection at this point (and probably won’t be stopping just yet). I took a few to use around the mantel in the living room, but the rest all went into the kitchen, along with all of the other white, silver, and gold elements I could find from my Christmas boxes that I keep stored in the attic.

(If you’re wondering about the kitchen window fabric or the shade, here’s how I made that a few Christmases ago!)

Speaking of the attic, one of my blog partners this year, Sears Parts Direct, would like me to remind you that going up to the attic for Christmas decor is a great opportunity to check and switch out your HVAC filters (it’s something I do myself because I’m prone to forget, so I actually keep an extra stashed up there ready to switch out when I go up there during the winter — convenient tips and tricks, people, that’s what I’m all about). If you need a reminder system where filters ship to you when they’re ready to switch out, Sears Parts Direct has an automatic reorder program for that here.

The smallest bottle brush trees are new this year, which I found from the Target dollar spot for just a few bucks each. I really wanted more, but they get scooped up so quickly that only the little ones were left by the time I found them (and this was November!). They still made for a nice collection along the kitchen window sill.

Kitchen Bar

The rest of the trees (from places like Joann’s, Target, Michael’s, Homegoods, etc. collected over the years) all went along the kitchen bar area (I thought of actually using this space for cheese & drinks during the afternoon, but decided to use as a display instead). You might also recognize the silver reindeer from previous years’ decor, the gold leaf candles from last year’s NYE crafts, and the centerpiece from my fall tablescape.

Note to self: do not wear red sweaters around shiny objects when your theme is neutrals. It shows up in the picture. I had to eliminate so many shots because of red glare!  (And I realize I could probably Photoshop them out, but it’s a far better idea just not to get yourself into a time-consuming editing process in the first place, d’oh!)

So, that’s about all the photos and all the details that are probably appropriate for one post. I have lots more, so I don’t want to give you just one post where it takes forever for the pictures to load! Come back Wednesday and Friday for more (I can’t decide yet if I’m going to do the dining room or the living room next, but probably in that order), along with a recap of our Christmas celebration. Be prepared for lots of photos of dogs; I thought it best to take photos as the chaos unfolded to show you a “real” view of what our holiday was like. It’s… very real. More soon!

Are any of you doing your Christmas on a different day this year? It seems like our holidays get tossed around a little more with significant others and family schedules; I assume this is pretty normal and will probably continue as we get older.

Shop Neutral Christmas Decor Ideas

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Neutral Christmas House Tour: Entryway and Kitchen published first on http://ift.tt/2qxZz2j

[darwinbigelow]

Neutral Christmas House Tour: Entryway and Kitchen

This year’s Christmas theme was all about winter wonderland neutrals: lots of gold, silver, white, and natural wood hues…

Hi folks! And welcome to my little Christmas house tour for 2017. This year, there was a HUGE milestone worth celebrating: my very first time hosting my family for Christmas dinner and opening gifts at MY house. My sister and her boyfriend will be out of town for the 25th, so we decided on an early date as a family. That meant prepping early, deciding our menu, and making sure the house was ready for not only the six of us (Mom, Dad, Em, her bf, me, and K), but the six dogs that are a part of the family, too!

I will happily report that only one of them had an accident (coughcough Buddy), but I’ll get to the actual family gathering later. Over the next three posts, I’ll be breaking down the house decor so you can get the full tour (even if you caught my live Instagram on Saturday night, this one will have much better lighting and fewer wine stains on my lips, ha). Let’s start with the entryway and kitchen.

Legalese: This post contains affiliate links, aka referral links — for the full disclosure policy, click here. Thanks for the support!

Front Door & Staircase

Just going to fess up now: some of these pics were taken as I had all six pups visiting. So things like a muddy front door and fur everywhere are just a given; please don’t judge too harshly on my lack of enthusiasm for cleaning as guests arrived (I have my tricks, but six dogs is a lot of dogs).

Those of you who remember when I first painted my staircase might see a little familiar staging here with Charlie, but that pose is all her! She picks this middle section of stairs as one of her favorite observation spots in the house (her other favorite is right at the bottom, on the dog rug, with her head resting on the window sill and looking out for any evildoing mail carriers).

Confession: because of Charlie’s frequent trips, I had to repaint scratched up spots this year. I’ll have a post for you soon on how I’m planning on keeping them more pristine in the future (some areas just haven’t held the paint well, so that’s going to get revisited in 2018).

Entryway

The entryway is fairly plain right now, but that made a great blank canvas for letting the Christmas decorations shine all on their own. I have a few more plans to really bump up the front hallway’s presence in 2018! Things like adding small shelves for dropping keys, a place for quick shoe storage, etc.

Kitchen

I seem to really like trees whenever I go Christmas clearance shopping (bottle brush trees, ceramic trees, really abstract-looking cones that might look like trees when sitting next to other trees, etc.). I’ve amassed quite a collection at this point (and probably won’t be stopping just yet). I took a few to use around the mantel in the living room, but the rest all went into the kitchen, along with all of the other white, silver, and gold elements I could find from my Christmas boxes that I keep stored in the attic.

(If you’re wondering about the kitchen window fabric or the shade, here’s how I made that a few Christmases ago!)

Speaking of the attic, one of my blog partners this year, Sears Parts Direct, would like me to remind you that going up to the attic for Christmas decor is a great opportunity to check and switch out your HVAC filters (it’s something I do myself because I’m prone to forget, so I actually keep an extra stashed up there ready to switch out when I go up there during the winter — convenient tips and tricks, people, that’s what I’m all about). If you need a reminder system where filters ship to you when they’re ready to switch out, Sears Parts Direct has an automatic reorder program for that here.

The smallest bottle brush trees are new this year, which I found from the Target dollar spot for just a few bucks each. I really wanted more, but they get scooped up so quickly that only the little ones were left by the time I found them (and this was November!). They still made for a nice collection along the kitchen window sill.

Kitchen Bar

The rest of the trees (from places like Joann’s, Target, Michael’s, Homegoods, etc. collected over the years) all went along the kitchen bar area (I thought of actually using this space for cheese & drinks during the afternoon, but decided to use as a display instead). You might also recognize the silver reindeer from previous years’ decor, the gold leaf candles from last year’s NYE crafts, and the centerpiece from my fall tablescape.

Note to self: do not wear red sweaters around shiny objects when your theme is neutrals. It shows up in the picture. I had to eliminate so many shots because of red glare!  (And I realize I could probably Photoshop them out, but it’s a far better idea just not to get yourself into a time-consuming editing process in the first place, d’oh!)

So, that’s about all the photos and all the details that are probably appropriate for one post. I have lots more, so I don’t want to give you just one post where it takes forever for the pictures to load! Come back Wednesday and Friday for more (I can’t decide yet if I’m going to do the dining room or the living room next, but probably in that order), along with a recap of our Christmas celebration. Be prepared for lots of photos of dogs; I thought it best to take photos as the chaos unfolded to show you a “real” view of what our holiday was like. It’s… very real. More soon!

Are any of you doing your Christmas on a different day this year? It seems like our holidays get tossed around a little more with significant others and family schedules; I assume this is pretty normal and will probably continue as we get older.

Shop Neutral Christmas Decor Ideas

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Neutral Christmas House Tour: Entryway and Kitchen

This year’s Christmas theme was all about winter wonderland neutrals: lots of gold, silver, white, and natural wood hues…

Hi folks! And welcome to my little Christmas house tour for 2017. This year, there was a HUGE milestone worth celebrating: my very first time hosting my family for Christmas dinner and opening gifts at MY house. My sister and her boyfriend will be out of town for the 25th, so we decided on an early date as a family. That meant prepping early, deciding our menu, and making sure the house was ready for not only the six of us (Mom, Dad, Em, her bf, me, and K), but the six dogs that are a part of the family, too!

I will happily report that only one of them had an accident (coughcough Buddy), but I’ll get to the actual family gathering later. Over the next three posts, I’ll be breaking down the house decor so you can get the full tour (even if you caught my live Instagram on Saturday night, this one will have much better lighting and fewer wine stains on my lips, ha). Let’s start with the entryway and kitchen.

Legalese: This post contains affiliate links, aka referral links — for the full disclosure policy, click here. Thanks for the support!

Front Door & Staircase

Just going to fess up now: some of these pics were taken as I had all six pups visiting. So things like a muddy front door and fur everywhere are just a given; please don’t judge too harshly on my lack of enthusiasm for cleaning as guests arrived (I have my tricks, but six dogs is a lot of dogs).

Those of you who remember when I first painted my staircase might see a little familiar staging here with Charlie, but that pose is all her! She picks this middle section of stairs as one of her favorite observation spots in the house (her other favorite is right at the bottom, on the dog rug, with her head resting on the window sill and looking out for any evildoing mail carriers).

Confession: because of Charlie’s frequent trips, I had to repaint scratched up spots this year. I’ll have a post for you soon on how I’m planning on keeping them more pristine in the future (some areas just haven’t held the paint well, so that’s going to get revisited in 2018).

Entryway

The entryway is fairly plain right now, but that made a great blank canvas for letting the Christmas decorations shine all on their own. I have a few more plans to really bump up the front hallway’s presence in 2018! Things like adding small shelves for dropping keys, a place for quick shoe storage, etc.

Kitchen

I seem to really like trees whenever I go Christmas clearance shopping (bottle brush trees, ceramic trees, really abstract-looking cones that might look like trees when sitting next to other trees, etc.). I’ve amassed quite a collection at this point (and probably won’t be stopping just yet). I took a few to use around the mantel in the living room, but the rest all went into the kitchen, along with all of the other white, silver, and gold elements I could find from my Christmas boxes that I keep stored in the attic.

(If you’re wondering about the kitchen window fabric or the shade, here’s how I made that a few Christmases ago!)

Speaking of the attic, one of my blog partners this year, Sears Parts Direct, would like me to remind you that going up to the attic for Christmas decor is a great opportunity to check and switch out your HVAC filters (it’s something I do myself because I’m prone to forget, so I actually keep an extra stashed up there ready to switch out when I go up there during the winter — convenient tips and tricks, people, that’s what I’m all about). If you need a reminder system where filters ship to you when they’re ready to switch out, Sears Parts Direct has an automatic reorder program for that here.

The smallest bottle brush trees are new this year, which I found from the Target dollar spot for just a few bucks each. I really wanted more, but they get scooped up so quickly that only the little ones were left by the time I found them (and this was November!). They still made for a nice collection along the kitchen window sill.

Kitchen Bar

The rest of the trees (from places like Joann’s, Target, Michael’s, Homegoods, etc. collected over the years) all went along the kitchen bar area (I thought of actually using this space for cheese & drinks during the afternoon, but decided to use as a display instead). You might also recognize the silver reindeer from previous years’ decor, the gold leaf candles from last year’s NYE crafts, and the centerpiece from my fall tablescape.

Note to self: do not wear red sweaters around shiny objects when your theme is neutrals. It shows up in the picture. I had to eliminate so many shots because of red glare!  (And I realize I could probably Photoshop them out, but it’s a far better idea just not to get yourself into a time-consuming editing process in the first place, d’oh!)

So, that’s about all the photos and all the details that are probably appropriate for one post. I have lots more, so I don’t want to give you just one post where it takes forever for the pictures to load! Come back Wednesday and Friday for more (I can’t decide yet if I’m going to do the dining room or the living room next, but probably in that order), along with a recap of our Christmas celebration. Be prepared for lots of photos of dogs; I thought it best to take photos as the chaos unfolded to show you a “real” view of what our holiday was like. It’s… very real. More soon!

Are any of you doing your Christmas on a different day this year? It seems like our holidays get tossed around a little more with significant others and family schedules; I assume this is pretty normal and will probably continue as we get older.

Shop Neutral Christmas Decor Ideas

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Read more http://ift.tt/2kIiPZ6 Areas served: Winston-Salem, High Point, Yadkinville, Mocksville, Advance, Clemmons, Kernersville, Greensboro, Walnut Cove, Statesville, NC, North Carolina Services: House painting, roofing, deck building, landscaping, Carpentry, Flooring, tile, hardwood, remodeling, home improvement, interior, exterior

[bespokekitchesldn]

Neutral Christmas House Tour: Entryway and Kitchen

This year’s Christmas theme was all about winter wonderland neutrals: lots of gold, silver, white, and natural wood hues…

Hi folks! And welcome to my little Christmas house tour for 2017. This year, there was a HUGE milestone worth celebrating: my very first time hosting my family for Christmas dinner and opening gifts at MY house. My sister and her boyfriend will be out of town for the 25th, so we decided on an early date as a family. That meant prepping early, deciding our menu, and making sure the house was ready for not only the six of us (Mom, Dad, Em, her bf, me, and K), but the six dogs that are a part of the family, too!

I will happily report that only one of them had an accident (coughcough Buddy), but I’ll get to the actual family gathering later. Over the next three posts, I’ll be breaking down the house decor so you can get the full tour (even if you caught my live Instagram on Saturday night, this one will have much better lighting and fewer wine stains on my lips, ha). Let’s start with the entryway and kitchen.

Legalese: This post contains affiliate links, aka referral links — for the full disclosure policy, click here. Thanks for the support!

Front Door & Staircase

Just going to fess up now: some of these pics were taken as I had all six pups visiting. So things like a muddy front door and fur everywhere are just a given; please don’t judge too harshly on my lack of enthusiasm for cleaning as guests arrived (I have my tricks, but six dogs is a lot of dogs).

Those of you who remember when I first painted my staircase might see a little familiar staging here with Charlie, but that pose is all her! She picks this middle section of stairs as one of her favorite observation spots in the house (her other favorite is right at the bottom, on the dog rug, with her head resting on the window sill and looking out for any evildoing mail carriers).

Confession: because of Charlie’s frequent trips, I had to repaint scratched up spots this year. I’ll have a post for you soon on how I’m planning on keeping them more pristine in the future (some areas just haven’t held the paint well, so that’s going to get revisited in 2018).

Entryway

The entryway is fairly plain right now, but that made a great blank canvas for letting the Christmas decorations shine all on their own. I have a few more plans to really bump up the front hallway’s presence in 2018! Things like adding small shelves for dropping keys, a place for quick shoe storage, etc.

Kitchen

I seem to really like trees whenever I go Christmas clearance shopping (bottle brush trees, ceramic trees, really abstract-looking cones that might look like trees when sitting next to other trees, etc.). I’ve amassed quite a collection at this point (and probably won’t be stopping just yet). I took a few to use around the mantel in the living room, but the rest all went into the kitchen, along with all of the other white, silver, and gold elements I could find from my Christmas boxes that I keep stored in the attic.

(If you’re wondering about the kitchen window fabric or the shade, here’s how I made that a few Christmases ago!)

Speaking of the attic, one of my blog partners this year, Sears Parts Direct, would like me to remind you that going up to the attic for Christmas decor is a great opportunity to check and switch out your HVAC filters (it’s something I do myself because I’m prone to forget, so I actually keep an extra stashed up there ready to switch out when I go up there during the winter — convenient tips and tricks, people, that’s what I’m all about). If you need a reminder system where filters ship to you when they’re ready to switch out, Sears Parts Direct has an automatic reorder program for that here.

The smallest bottle brush trees are new this year, which I found from the Target dollar spot for just a few bucks each. I really wanted more, but they get scooped up so quickly that only the little ones were left by the time I found them (and this was November!). They still made for a nice collection along the kitchen window sill.

Kitchen Bar

The rest of the trees (from places like Joann’s, Target, Michael’s, Homegoods, etc. collected over the years) all went along the kitchen bar area (I thought of actually using this space for cheese & drinks during the afternoon, but decided to use as a display instead). You might also recognize the silver reindeer from previous years’ decor, the gold leaf candles from last year’s NYE crafts, and the centerpiece from my fall tablescape.

Note to self: do not wear red sweaters around shiny objects when your theme is neutrals. It shows up in the picture. I had to eliminate so many shots because of red glare!  (And I realize I could probably Photoshop them out, but it’s a far better idea just not to get yourself into a time-consuming editing process in the first place, d’oh!)

So, that’s about all the photos and all the details that are probably appropriate for one post. I have lots more, so I don’t want to give you just one post where it takes forever for the pictures to load! Come back Wednesday and Friday for more (I can’t decide yet if I’m going to do the dining room or the living room next, but probably in that order), along with a recap of our Christmas celebration. Be prepared for lots of photos of dogs; I thought it best to take photos as the chaos unfolded to show you a “real” view of what our holiday was like. It’s… very real. More soon!

Are any of you doing your Christmas on a different day this year? It seems like our holidays get tossed around a little more with significant others and family schedules; I assume this is pretty normal and will probably continue as we get older.

Shop Neutral Christmas Decor Ideas

!function(d,s,id){ var e, p = /^http:/.test(d.location) ? 'http' : 'https'; if(!d.getElementById(id)) { e = d.createElement(s); e.id = id; e.src = p + '://widgets.rewardstyle.com/js/shopthepost.js'; d.body.appendChild(e); } if(typeof window.__stp === 'object') if(d.readyState === 'complete') { window.__stp.init(); } }(document, 'script', 'shopthepost-script');

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‘Twas the Night Before Christmas (The Ugly D...

Day After Christmas Shopping

Photo Highlights from Christmas

2011 Christmas Card

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from The Ugly Duckling House https://www.uglyducklinghouse.com/woodland-christmas-house-tour-entryway-and-kitchen/

[petraself]

Neutral Christmas House Tour: Entryway and Kitchen

This year’s Christmas theme was all about winter wonderland neutrals: lots of gold, silver, white, and natural wood hues…

Hi folks! And welcome to my little Christmas house tour for 2017. This year, there was a HUGE milestone worth celebrating: my very first time hosting my family for Christmas dinner and opening gifts at MY house. My sister and her boyfriend will be out of town for the 25th, so we decided on an early date as a family. That meant prepping early, deciding our menu, and making sure the house was ready for not only the six of us (Mom, Dad, Em, her bf, me, and K), but the six dogs that are a part of the family, too!

I will happily report that only one of them had an accident (coughcough Buddy), but I’ll get to the actual family gathering later. Over the next three posts, I’ll be breaking down the house decor so you can get the full tour (even if you caught my live Instagram on Saturday night, this one will have much better lighting and fewer wine stains on my lips, ha). Let’s start with the entryway and kitchen.

Legalese: This post contains affiliate links, aka referral links — for the full disclosure policy, click here. Thanks for the support!

Front Door & Staircase

Just going to fess up now: some of these pics were taken as I had all six pups visiting. So things like a muddy front door and fur everywhere are just a given; please don’t judge too harshly on my lack of enthusiasm for cleaning as guests arrived (I have my tricks, but six dogs is a lot of dogs).

Those of you who remember when I first painted my staircase might see a little familiar staging here with Charlie, but that pose is all her! She picks this middle section of stairs as one of her favorite observation spots in the house (her other favorite is right at the bottom, on the dog rug, with her head resting on the window sill and looking out for any evildoing mail carriers).

Confession: because of Charlie’s frequent trips, I had to repaint scratched up spots this year. I’ll have a post for you soon on how I’m planning on keeping them more pristine in the future (some areas just haven’t held the paint well, so that’s going to get revisited in 2018).

Entryway

The entryway is fairly plain right now, but that made a great blank canvas for letting the Christmas decorations shine all on their own. I have a few more plans to really bump up the front hallway’s presence in 2018! Things like adding small shelves for dropping keys, a place for quick shoe storage, etc.

Kitchen

I seem to really like trees whenever I go Christmas clearance shopping (bottle brush trees, ceramic trees, really abstract-looking cones that might look like trees when sitting next to other trees, etc.). I’ve amassed quite a collection at this point (and probably won’t be stopping just yet). I took a few to use around the mantel in the living room, but the rest all went into the kitchen, along with all of the other white, silver, and gold elements I could find from my Christmas boxes that I keep stored in the attic.

(If you’re wondering about the kitchen window fabric or the shade, here’s how I made that a few Christmases ago!)

Speaking of the attic, one of my blog partners this year, Sears Parts Direct, would like me to remind you that going up to the attic for Christmas decor is a great opportunity to check and switch out your HVAC filters (it’s something I do myself because I’m prone to forget, so I actually keep an extra stashed up there ready to switch out when I go up there during the winter — convenient tips and tricks, people, that’s what I’m all about). If you need a reminder system where filters ship to you when they’re ready to switch out, Sears Parts Direct has an automatic reorder program for that here.

The smallest bottle brush trees are new this year, which I found from the Target dollar spot for just a few bucks each. I really wanted more, but they get scooped up so quickly that only the little ones were left by the time I found them (and this was November!). They still made for a nice collection along the kitchen window sill.

Kitchen Bar

The rest of the trees (from places like Joann’s, Target, Michael’s, Homegoods, etc. collected over the years) all went along the kitchen bar area (I thought of actually using this space for cheese & drinks during the afternoon, but decided to use as a display instead). You might also recognize the silver reindeer from previous years’ decor, the gold leaf candles from last year’s NYE crafts, and the centerpiece from my fall tablescape.

Note to self: do not wear red sweaters around shiny objects when your theme is neutrals. It shows up in the picture. I had to eliminate so many shots because of red glare!  (And I realize I could probably Photoshop them out, but it’s a far better idea just not to get yourself into a time-consuming editing process in the first place, d’oh!)

So, that’s about all the photos and all the details that are probably appropriate for one post. I have lots more, so I don’t want to give you just one post where it takes forever for the pictures to load! Come back Wednesday and Friday for more (I can’t decide yet if I’m going to do the dining room or the living room next, but probably in that order), along with a recap of our Christmas celebration. Be prepared for lots of photos of dogs; I thought it best to take photos as the chaos unfolded to show you a “real” view of what our holiday was like. It’s… very real. More soon!

Are any of you doing your Christmas on a different day this year? It seems like our holidays get tossed around a little more with significant others and family schedules; I assume this is pretty normal and will probably continue as we get older.

Shop Neutral Christmas Decor Ideas

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[darensmurray]

Neutral Christmas House Tour: Entryway and Kitchen

This year’s Christmas theme was all about winter wonderland neutrals: lots of gold, silver, white, and natural wood hues…

Hi folks! And welcome to my little Christmas house tour for 2017. This year, there was a HUGE milestone worth celebrating: my very first time hosting my family for Christmas dinner and opening gifts at MY house. My sister and her boyfriend will be out of town for the 25th, so we decided on an early date as a family. That meant prepping early, deciding our menu, and making sure the house was ready for not only the six of us (Mom, Dad, Em, her bf, me, and K), but the six dogs that are a part of the family, too!

I will happily report that only one of them had an accident (coughcough Buddy), but I’ll get to the actual family gathering later. Over the next three posts, I’ll be breaking down the house decor so you can get the full tour (even if you caught my live Instagram on Saturday night, this one will have much better lighting and fewer wine stains on my lips, ha). Let’s start with the entryway and kitchen.

Legalese: This post contains affiliate links, aka referral links — for the full disclosure policy, click here. Thanks for the support!

Front Door & Staircase

Just going to fess up now: some of these pics were taken as I had all six pups visiting. So things like a muddy front door and fur everywhere are just a given; please don’t judge too harshly on my lack of enthusiasm for cleaning as guests arrived (I have my tricks, but six dogs is a lot of dogs).

Those of you who remember when I first painted my staircase might see a little familiar staging here with Charlie, but that pose is all her! She picks this middle section of stairs as one of her favorite observation spots in the house (her other favorite is right at the bottom, on the dog rug, with her head resting on the window sill and looking out for any evildoing mail carriers).

Confession: because of Charlie’s frequent trips, I had to repaint scratched up spots this year. I’ll have a post for you soon on how I’m planning on keeping them more pristine in the future (some areas just haven’t held the paint well, so that’s going to get revisited in 2018).

Entryway

The entryway is fairly plain right now, but that made a great blank canvas for letting the Christmas decorations shine all on their own. I have a few more plans to really bump up the front hallway’s presence in 2018! Things like adding small shelves for dropping keys, a place for quick shoe storage, etc.

Kitchen

I seem to really like trees whenever I go Christmas clearance shopping (bottle brush trees, ceramic trees, really abstract-looking cones that might look like trees when sitting next to other trees, etc.). I’ve amassed quite a collection at this point (and probably won’t be stopping just yet). I took a few to use around the mantel in the living room, but the rest all went into the kitchen, along with all of the other white, silver, and gold elements I could find from my Christmas boxes that I keep stored in the attic.

(If you’re wondering about the kitchen window fabric or the shade, here’s how I made that a few Christmases ago!)

Speaking of the attic, one of my blog partners this year, Sears Parts Direct, would like me to remind you that going up to the attic for Christmas decor is a great opportunity to check and switch out your HVAC filters (it’s something I do myself because I’m prone to forget, so I actually keep an extra stashed up there ready to switch out when I go up there during the winter — convenient tips and tricks, people, that’s what I’m all about). If you need a reminder system where filters ship to you when they’re ready to switch out, Sears Parts Direct has an automatic reorder program for that here.

The smallest bottle brush trees are new this year, which I found from the Target dollar spot for just a few bucks each. I really wanted more, but they get scooped up so quickly that only the little ones were left by the time I found them (and this was November!). They still made for a nice collection along the kitchen window sill.

Kitchen Bar

The rest of the trees (from places like Joann’s, Target, Michael’s, Homegoods, etc. collected over the years) all went along the kitchen bar area (I thought of actually using this space for cheese & drinks during the afternoon, but decided to use as a display instead). You might also recognize the silver reindeer from previous years’ decor, the gold leaf candles from last year’s NYE crafts, and the centerpiece from my fall tablescape.

Note to self: do not wear red sweaters around shiny objects when your theme is neutrals. It shows up in the picture. I had to eliminate so many shots because of red glare!  (And I realize I could probably Photoshop them out, but it’s a far better idea just not to get yourself into a time-consuming editing process in the first place, d’oh!)

So, that’s about all the photos and all the details that are probably appropriate for one post. I have lots more, so I don’t want to give you just one post where it takes forever for the pictures to load! Come back Wednesday and Friday for more (I can’t decide yet if I’m going to do the dining room or the living room next, but probably in that order), along with a recap of our Christmas celebration. Be prepared for lots of photos of dogs; I thought it best to take photos as the chaos unfolded to show you a “real” view of what our holiday was like. It’s… very real. More soon!

Are any of you doing your Christmas on a different day this year? It seems like our holidays get tossed around a little more with significant others and family schedules; I assume this is pretty normal and will probably continue as we get older.

Shop Neutral Christmas Decor Ideas

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[garagedoorsbrighton]

Neutral Christmas House Tour: Entryway and Kitchen

This year’s Christmas theme was all about winter wonderland neutrals: lots of gold, silver, white, and natural wood hues…

Hi folks! And welcome to my little Christmas house tour for 2017. This year, there was a HUGE milestone worth celebrating: my very first time hosting my family for Christmas dinner and opening gifts at MY house. My sister and her boyfriend will be out of town for the 25th, so we decided on an early date as a family. That meant prepping early, deciding our menu, and making sure the house was ready for not only the six of us (Mom, Dad, Em, her bf, me, and K), but the six dogs that are a part of the family, too!

I will happily report that only one of them had an accident (coughcough Buddy), but I’ll get to the actual family gathering later. Over the next three posts, I’ll be breaking down the house decor so you can get the full tour (even if you caught my live Instagram on Saturday night, this one will have much better lighting and fewer wine stains on my lips, ha). Let’s start with the entryway and kitchen.

Legalese: This post contains affiliate links, aka referral links — for the full disclosure policy, click here. Thanks for the support!

Front Door & Staircase

Just going to fess up now: some of these pics were taken as I had all six pups visiting. So things like a muddy front door and fur everywhere are just a given; please don’t judge too harshly on my lack of enthusiasm for cleaning as guests arrived (I have my tricks, but six dogs is a lot of dogs).

Those of you who remember when I first painted my staircase might see a little familiar staging here with Charlie, but that pose is all her! She picks this middle section of stairs as one of her favorite observation spots in the house (her other favorite is right at the bottom, on the dog rug, with her head resting on the window sill and looking out for any evildoing mail carriers).

Confession: because of Charlie’s frequent trips, I had to repaint scratched up spots this year. I’ll have a post for you soon on how I’m planning on keeping them more pristine in the future (some areas just haven’t held the paint well, so that’s going to get revisited in 2018).

Entryway

The entryway is fairly plain right now, but that made a great blank canvas for letting the Christmas decorations shine all on their own. I have a few more plans to really bump up the front hallway’s presence in 2018! Things like adding small shelves for dropping keys, a place for quick shoe storage, etc.

Kitchen

I seem to really like trees whenever I go Christmas clearance shopping (bottle brush trees, ceramic trees, really abstract-looking cones that might look like trees when sitting next to other trees, etc.). I’ve amassed quite a collection at this point (and probably won’t be stopping just yet). I took a few to use around the mantel in the living room, but the rest all went into the kitchen, along with all of the other white, silver, and gold elements I could find from my Christmas boxes that I keep stored in the attic.

(If you’re wondering about the kitchen window fabric or the shade, here’s how I made that a few Christmases ago!)

Speaking of the attic, one of my blog partners this year, Sears Parts Direct, would like me to remind you that going up to the attic for Christmas decor is a great opportunity to check and switch out your HVAC filters (it’s something I do myself because I’m prone to forget, so I actually keep an extra stashed up there ready to switch out when I go up there during the winter — convenient tips and tricks, people, that’s what I’m all about). If you need a reminder system where filters ship to you when they’re ready to switch out, Sears Parts Direct has an automatic reorder program for that here.

The smallest bottle brush trees are new this year, which I found from the Target dollar spot for just a few bucks each. I really wanted more, but they get scooped up so quickly that only the little ones were left by the time I found them (and this was November!). They still made for a nice collection along the kitchen window sill.

Kitchen Bar

The rest of the trees (from places like Joann’s, Target, Michael’s, Homegoods, etc. collected over the years) all went along the kitchen bar area (I thought of actually using this space for cheese & drinks during the afternoon, but decided to use as a display instead). You might also recognize the silver reindeer from previous years’ decor, the gold leaf candles from last year’s NYE crafts, and the centerpiece from my fall tablescape.

Note to self: do not wear red sweaters around shiny objects when your theme is neutrals. It shows up in the picture. I had to eliminate so many shots because of red glare!  (And I realize I could probably Photoshop them out, but it’s a far better idea just not to get yourself into a time-consuming editing process in the first place, d’oh!)

So, that’s about all the photos and all the details that are probably appropriate for one post. I have lots more, so I don’t want to give you just one post where it takes forever for the pictures to load! Come back Wednesday and Friday for more (I can’t decide yet if I’m going to do the dining room or the living room next, but probably in that order), along with a recap of our Christmas celebration. Be prepared for lots of photos of dogs; I thought it best to take photos as the chaos unfolded to show you a “real” view of what our holiday was like. It’s… very real. More soon!

Are any of you doing your Christmas on a different day this year? It seems like our holidays get tossed around a little more with significant others and family schedules; I assume this is pretty normal and will probably continue as we get older.

Shop Neutral Christmas Decor Ideas

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Turn on your JavaScript to view content

You'll Also Love

‘Twas the Night Before Christmas (The Ugly D...

Day After Christmas Shopping

Photo Highlights from Christmas

2011 Christmas Card

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