Move and Shake

Excitement!  Moments ago we just came to an amazing decision! We have been pricing all of our kitchen cosmetic updates for weeks. We were pretty stoked about the pretty new counter tops, tiling our own back splash, learning to tile a floor, etc...but at the same time we couldn't stop wondering out loud to each other how difficult it might be to tear down the half wall in order to make our kitchen bigger,open concept, with our farm style dining table floating in the middle.  The toss up is to remodel the shit out of the house that we live in, planning to stay here for the long haul, or do the cosmetic updates that will sell the house in a few years so that we can upgrade (and find things in the new house to change).  But tonight as I was browsing through local real estate listings...yes I still do that occasionally...hush...I found a home for sale (in our neighborhood) that had the kitchen that I have been daydreaming about, in a house that has a practically identical layout to ours.  It is possible that said kitchen even looked like ours at some point, or maybe it was built that way. Regardless,seeing the photo allowed me to envision exactly what ours would look like if that damned half wall was destroyed, and we added more counter space and cabinetry.  I had to interrupt Kayla from her book to share the photos. In a typical 5 minutes or less brainstorm session we came up with a plan for knocking out a wall, moving a fridge and a sink,expanding the pantry and essentially changing the look and functionality of our kitchen all together.  As we mapped it out from our lazy perches on the sofa, our minds seemed to simultaneously make themselves up.  We will do it.  We will slowly turn this house into  the best space for our personal living habits and we will stay here.  Indefinitely.  It requires a little more patience and money, but ultimately more satisfying in the long run.  In the short run we can still DIY the shit out of our smaller endeavors.  We have a patio to finish, some foundation to stain and some light fixtures to replace.  Move and shake!  Kayla is "nose back in book" and I am signing off for the night.

Peek Sneak

A couple of weeks ago I made the observation that  when we are finished working really hard at work we come home and work really hard at home.  Whether building furniture, tearing up our yard to build a new one, making clothes, purses and/or art, it is challenging for us to just sit and be still.  I thought it might be a nice idea to get out of town for a few days so that we aren't tempted by our house and our insatiable need to DO and MAKE. The month of July is a slow one for the hair business, so we decided to take advantage of it and go on a little vacation.  A belated honeymoon!   We decided on Portland.  Neither of us have ever been, the weather sounds nice, and people that we like tend to rave about it. We plan to have some  good food and wine (of course), and maybe sit and be still a couple of times.  In the meantime, business is still slow, and I have a lot of free time on my hands.  We have been bouncing around the idea of starting a little Etsy store for a while so I thought now would be a good time to start that rolling.  Naturally, our crafts are all over the place.  Our products range from little purses to cool furniture pieces, all made from recycled materials. My eye for finding treasures among other people's trash, picking out materials and coming up with new ideas, coupled with Kayla's sewing and woodworking skills, astoundingly endless reserve  of patience, and an eye for detail makes us a pretty rad and crafty team.  I think turning these passions into a business is the obvious next step.  We started doing this stuff to fulfill our own needs, and the "doing" turned into an obsession.  It makes sense that if we like the stuff, someone else will too, and we can get paid to keep making it. I hope so, because it's fun.

We hope to have our first furniture piece (coffee table) and to launch our first clutch collection in the fall.  Here is a sneak peek of what is to come.  Enjoy your peek and your day!

This clutch used to be jeans and a flannel shirt.



The inside of these clutches have designated slots for your lipstick, credit card, and smartphone!



The floral one is made from one of our leftover wedding linens (that Kayla made from old sheets).  Laundered, of course. The lining, not pictured here, came from a pair of pinstriped trousers.



Here is the base for the new coffee table, made from reclaimed lumber.

Here is the top.  An old window!

I repositioned some art on the wall today and took a photo to share with Kayla.  I posted it here to show you the entertainment center that started the avalanche of refinishing.  I found this monster in the breezeway of our old apartment building.  It had a ridiculous faux wood grain 70s asian inspired laquered finish and shutter doors in the middle.  We took the cabinet doors off, sanded everything down to refinish, freshened up the hardware and turned the middle drawers into shelves for our TV equipment....We need a bigger TV.  Bertie photobombs.



Sigh DIY

  I havent blogged in a while, but we have been busy! Business on the DIY front is strong.  Hot damn, it's been hot, and the heat has cooked our brains into overload.   The best thing to do is to stay inside, blast yourself with artificial coolant,  busy yourself with your favorite indoor activities, and make plans. Plans to do this, plans to do that...and wait.  BUT! The last two days we have gotten sweet relief from the heat.  While we haven't finished a single project (blame it on the heat, blame it on our shared OCD brain), we have several that are underway, and this weekend's cool front inspired us to make progress where progress was long overdue.  The gravel patio that we started and abandoned weeks ago made some headway yesterday.  We got the border put in, levelled the ground and laid down the paver steps.  While we were working, the wind started blowing and  the temperature dropped a good 10-20 degrees.   As we labored, a few raindrops came down.  The drastic temperature change, coupled with these heavenly drops was recipe for mad abandon of fatigue and a drive to delve into our work with a new sense of inspiration and energy.  We knew it was only a matter of a day or even hours until the sun punishes us with her heady heat again.  We had to act fast!  We got excited.  The dogs got excited. We had to wet the dirt to get the patio border in the ground, so there was mud everywhere, and Bertie and Marybelle appropriately got muddy as hell.  At the end of the day we got this (pictured below), and Bertie and Marybelle got baths.

Major improvement from a few weeks ago.  Where you see dirt, soon there will be gravel, eventually a pergola to cover the slab, which may or may not eventually be stained for a more polished look. 


Here is what else we have been up to lately...

Last weekend we bid farewell to some good friends that I used to work with in a salon.  They sold their home and moved to be closer to family.  We had a nice coffee party and when we left, they gave us an iris from their garden to plant in ours.  Instead of just potting it, we braved one of our hottest days of the summer thus far making a nice new bed in the shade to plant this iris, who had made her home in a pond of water before.  We vowed to baby this girl so she can survive her new digs. I have been watering her at least once if not twice a day, and so far she is doing okay, a little shocked, but Oka-ay...ehr, I have hope.

When we are in moving/shaking frenzy mode (when are we not?), we sometimes like to scour Craigslist to find free treasures to improve our home environment.  This week we came across an ad for free wood at a curb that was in our neighborhood,so we drove over (in two trips) and scored some reclaimed lumber.  Kayla is using some of it to build a badass coffee table (more on that later), but we used these cute wooden frames to start some new raised garden beds in our lawn.  Here they are...

 We are using the lasagna gardening technique.  Instead of digging up the grass or killing it with chemicals, we just laid down the frame, threw several layers of newspaper and put wine bottles on top in order to hold them down until we get around to coming up with some dirt, mulch, and plants to fill in the beds properly.  In the meantime, the grass will die and the newspapers will slowly decompose, eventually becoming compost for our future grub.

I believe a collective prayer has been answered.  It rained early this morning.  Real rain,as in water falling consistenly from the sky, complete with dark gray clouds.  It helped set the paver stones into our patio area and cooled us down to a delightful degree.  More important, it set the tone for a cozy, romantic, deliciously quiet, but productive day. We didn't have to run the AC at all, spent the entire day puttering around the house, sewing pillows, hemming curtains, touching up paint, making things,  etc.  Come dinner time, the magic reigned and we spent a good hour outside having dinner, chocolate and wine, and dreaming of projects to come, not sweating our asses off and not warding off flesh devouring mosquitios.  This phenomenon in the end days of June, early July in Austin Texas is something to Soak. Up.  We did! 

Ugly Ducklings

We have entered into the days of consecutive upper 90's and 100 degree days in Austin...which means we haven't finished our gravel patio. We will finish it soon, but I suppose we needed a break (and I need the use of my shoulder for work).

Meanwhile,we have been watching A LOT of HGTV, DIY and Food Network shows. Kayla is drawing a lot of inspiration from the food shows, so we have been snacking on some major deliciousness. How about a grilled peach dessert with greek yogurt,fresh mint,and crushed pistachios?









On the DIY furniture front, we acquired two new pieces of furniture that have become new projects (our ugly ducklings). About two weeks ago I found an old dresser on Craigslist that needed some love. We have had on our radar a piece that would complement the big 70s dresser that we refinished and purposed for our entertainment center in our living room. This one was a perfect match in size and style to the one that we already have. It will serve as a buffet for the dining room.

Here she is before (with the drawers pulled out).



Here she is after! The middle cabinet will eventually open up to hold a wine rack and wine glasses. Above the buffet, Kayla will build a hutch to display our white wedding pottery. More on that later.






A few days into the buffet refinishing project, a friend on Facebook posted this charmer and we had to pick it up, even though we don't have a real use for it! We don't want to mess with it's beauty too much, but my vision for it is kind of French/Old Hollywood. Replacing the legs with some heavy ornate brass ones,add new hardware, touch up the stain, fix and lid, and voila! It will be a modern piece without sacrificing it's integrity. I will post more when we get around to working on this baby.

We worked on our landscaping project for the better part of the afternoon. We got some landcaping stones from our friends who are moving out of state soon. We were able to build this cute little bed next to our existing patio with the stones that we resourced. It inspired us to go ahead and continue our original plan of making a gravel patio on one side, only we will wrap it all the way around our existing patio slab to the other side, meeting up with the bed that we built today.

Once the bed was finished, we started clearing the grass to prepare for the patio. By the end of our work session I had a sunburn, calloused palms, a blister that popped immediately and barely a quarter of the patio area cleared. Here is what our construction zone looks like.

Big Picture: Imagine a white gravel patio swarming from the edge of the new bed all the way to the end of the house on the left side. I envision a flowy, curvy border.

After showers and rest we headed over to the new Kava Bar in our neighborhood to meet our friends. Interesting concept for a business. They only serve Kava and tea. They recommend three cups of kava (served in a coconut shell, alongside another coconut shell filled with pineapple slices). You drink the first one quick, then the second, then sip the third. We got numby mouths and felt very giggly and utterly relaxed. It was a good time.