Home Tour?

Do you want to see more of our place? I constantly feel like a home is a work in progress, but sometimes it's fun to envision where my friends live before I get to come visit/crash/stayfor3weeks so why don't we work from the top down.

On the third story, there are two bedrooms, stackable washer/dryer, and a full bathroom with a big tub that we never use (unless you count it as a place to stick a drying rack for some laundry), a shower stall, and two sinks. Hmmm...haven't grabbed a photo of the bathroom yet.

A before of the office/craftroom:

Forgive the wonkiness, this may have been my first panoramic photo on my phone.

And after:

Ahhh. Much better.
Three walls in Benjamin Moore Weimaraner and one chalkboard wall (thanks, JO!).

The bathroom is in between this room and our bedroom...is that called a jack & jill bathroom?

And we made only one big change in the master bedroom:

Old bed.

New bed.
Ahhh. Much better.

The dog approves.

And there are two of these closets side-by-side in this room:

You already saw this, but my side was a little photo shy at the time of publication.

And that, my friends, is the third floor of our place in Seattle.

Home is Wherever I'm With You.

What's that you say? You want to know more about this place we live, the magical place of tire thievery? 

While I was out in California, Jamie had to come down to Providence to find us a place to stay for the 12 week internship he was due to start just after Memorial Day Weekend. The rental market is...interesting...with few options for subleasers and the lack of familiarity with the area made it that much more confusing. Lots of pic texts and links to craiglists back and forth with Jamie heading down one weekend to see the places in person. At the last second, he managed to find a one bedroom place that accepts dogs and had a parking spot (although, we may have wanted to consider a locked garage...).

4-unit building in College Hill.

We like the landscape architecture graduate student we're subleasing from and while every bone in my body wants to rearrange furniture, hang different things on walls, repaint, renovate the kitchen, install central air-conditioning (and on and on), I'm happy to have a comfortable place for our temporary home. It was pertinent to have an already furnished place as we're keeping our place up in Hanover and in no way did we want to move our furniture for such a short period of time (plus, I might have shaved all of Jamie's hair off if he made me pack everything up again so soon). 

Living room with back to front door and entertainment center.
I took the liberty of putting a high-class-slipcover on the sofa. 

It's roomy, already had cable/internet set up, and we're within a couple of blocks of the main row of businesses catering to Brown University and RISD students. The third story gives us lots of privacy from pedestrians and good light during the day.

He has all the necessary kitchen amenities (we're not talking william-sonoma specialty items here), but the combination of restaurant deprivation this past year in New Hampshire and soaring New England heat and humidity, we're not exactly getting a lot of use from this room. The blender (his) and coffee maker (ours) are the most highly used appliances. Speaking of, anyone have good cold blended recipes?

On warm nights, we run the window air-conditioning unit while keeping the fan directed on our faces.

Stuff/Art on mantle=not ours.
Doesn't that mantle guy look like the Project Runway winner from last season?

Nothing interesting to say here.

And there you have it. Our temporary home in Providence, Freaking Rhode Island (FRI)!

This would save so many minutes....

This nightstand would come to Jamie's rescue.

source

Also rescued: 

• gratification of the first time climbing into bed at the end of the night;
• deep sigh signifying restful sleep to come;
• harmless-but-annoying thwack from my side of the bed;
• not-as-much-nice-as-menacing glare;
• nightly, "hey, dude. where's my water?"

Look, spaghetti arms...

I've already shown you a glimpse of our new hampshirian (?) backyard:

We have been LOVING these fields. They've led to many romp sessions with the dog, we've cheered on our friends playing FutbolFriday and SoccerSunday, all the while wearily eyeballing that indoor ice rink at the far left-hand corner of the fields (winter is NOT coming). When we finally make it back inside, Hudson camps out by the backdoor, eyes constantly pleading us to take him back out...he loves it. I feel like all this green has got to be good for our eyes + sanity; balancing out the hours spent in front of computer screens, books, and the ever-popular tv.

As if this isn't enough, we can take a 2 minute stroll to the other side of our graduate student complex and end up, mouth agape, staring at this other corner of our backyard:

It's like a scene from a movie.

Can you tell which movie I'm thinking about?

No?

What if I remind you of a Facebook Status I threw down last year?

----------------------------

Leslie K how did I never realize that _____ _______ was a period piece.

literally thought it was set in the 80s...until today.

July 31, 2009 at 6:55pm via Facebook for BlackBerry

----------------------------

I'm talking about one of the best dance films of all time:

p.swayze and baby dance it up on a bridge.

Yup, we literally live in one of the scenes from DIRTY DANCING, Y'ALL.

And because I'm a on a movie re-creation kick:

"Sure, Neil. No problem. We'll end the season with the pachenga."-johnny

Time Waster.

There it hung— a bicycle built for two, an exclamation point to her lonesome heart.

This site has me cracking up today: unhappyhipsters.com

Planter Shopping with Jen.

I mean.  REALLY?

Is this planter for real?

We found this planter in a funky furniture store in Hayes Valley and I got the biggest kick out of it.

Check back with me after I've been held up.

Might not find it quite as amusing.

The old man is snoring.

This was yesterday:

It was POURING.

A small waterfall formed around the motorcycle across the street.

We have a pretty steep grade and LOTS of natural drainage that would usually prevent such water accumulation.  It was just coming down so hard that the steep street was able to hold a couple of inches of water.  Reminded me of that year it rained so hard that our street flooded in Sacramento and the cds inside Devon's car ended up floating in a foot of water.

It was dumping buckets out there.

Motorcycle ended up losing the battle to the waterfall.

Luckily, I was home to bring the plants in from the downpour.

Wall Post...and I'm not talking about Facebook.

remember when we were going through some kitchen changes?
well, we still had some issues with the right wall.

what it looked like before...yaaaawn.
cluttered, boring, yuk.
ugh. such a weird wall.
that's the entry door on the right.
we painted the left jut-out section, but left this part white.

and then i got inspired in an ice cream shoppe.
i liked those frames with words in them.
i raced home and we printed up some of our fave mantras.
spray painted some frames.
gorilla glued the heck out of them and used tape to "clamp".
(yay for gorilla glue, btw!)
tada!
much better?

~then, yes devon, we finished our ice cream. :)~

Antique-tack-toe.

There's this antique store down the street from our place. It sat there, inviting, but unvisited by me for years. Then, all of a sudden, I stepped in and became immediately addicted. Old school fans, filing cabinets, lighting, piggy banks, HUGE lamps? I wanted to bring all of it home.

Now, my experience with "antiquing" and thrift stores is mixed at best. I grew up in strip mall county with our nation's highest grossing shopping mall (revenue of about 1.5 billion dollars per year). My thrift store went by the name of Urban Outfitters and otherwise we drove up to Venice to stare at old hats and shoes. Then camp happened and I got my hands on some beautifully "unique" tees and other random goodies; triggering a small, but distinct love for this ritual.

Don't worry, folks. I'm baaaack.

Ohmega Salvage

2407 San Pablo Ave
Berkeley, CA 94702-2010
(510) 843-7368

toilet tank tops.
aren't they beautiful??
weird thing is, i totally needed to pee.
reminded me of Big.
should've picked them up...wish they weren't $135.
faux George Michael sighting.
his name was sergio...i kept calling him sergeeorge michael.
my booty.
colors to glaze your clawfoot bathtub.
tons of windows and doors.
jumping for junking!
REALLY should've brought this home.
homage to my roots.
lines were too long because of the back-to-school sale in Oakland thrift.

Stay tuned for our BEST find of the day!

Book 'em...danno.

Yup. I'm on a home improvement roll.

couple of ikea bookshelves.
bleagh. bleagh. bleaaaaaaagh.what looked like a tan in a spray can*,
turned out to be a pretty sage.
((*hehe, i should've used the word 'beige' or something))it opens up the hallway so much!
now if only i could paint the molding...and doors...and walls.me + spray paint = woah.

Off to Honolulu and Maui tomorrow. Gone for a week. Only will a transpacific plane ride keep me from continuing to paint EVERYTHING in our apartment. It's transpacific, right? I can call it that?

Screw Ambien, Get Yo'Self These Pillows.

*Based on the initial comments, I'll add some more "instruction" and detail on how I did these! Holly, I totally thought of these in my head, but there's no guarantee that I didn't see it somewhere first (double negative!). Let me know when you guys start doing your own stuff!

Freezer paper stenciling action has returned to the craft room, folks. In full force. This time, instead of tracing onto the freezer paper, I just sent it directly through the printer! Ha, skipped a step. Take that, freezer paper. Here, I'll take you through my recent fun-times:

You can easily trace images onto the non-shiny side of Reynolds Freezer paper
or, as I did, draft an image or text on your computer. And get ready to print directly.
Cut the Reynolds Freezer paper to 8.5" x 11" sheets.

Carefully feed it through to minimize a paper jam session.
I used a landscaped 288pt Impact Font.
Cut out all the black portions of the paper. You're creating a stencil of sorts.
Toss the black parts away , but don't forget to hang onto the center of letters, etc.
Like the middle of the "g" above. See the little doo-hickey? Hang onto that. You'll need it.
Iron it onto material well.
Don't forget the doo-hickeys.
Waxy side down. The wax creates a seal on the fabric so none of the paint will go there.
If you get a good seal down, it won't leak through AT ALL.
Fabric paint the heck out of it.
You could easily take artistic liberty here by going with more than one color, a pattern, whatever. I tend to stick with one color straight from the bottle or one I blend. Works better for me. UNLESS, I do sunshine. Then I do a radiated lighter-to-darker color.
I've tried acrylic + fabric medium (a liquid additive), but not a fan (too hard).
Tulip is a good, soft brand. It makes the painted sections not feel as much like paint and is readily available at most craft stores.
Wait until dry and peel off.
Play with this part. Sometimes I wait until REALLY dry, sometimes I don't have patience.
Either way, sometimes I get leak throughs and sometimes I don't.
I've figured out the perfect time for the amount of paint layers I do, but you should play with your own technique and fabric material.
Tote bags, for example, don't get a good seal for me. Has too many little ridges, like a ribbed tank top. Blah.
Iron for 3 minutes to set the color. -important so it doesn't wash off.
Throw on bed and marvel at your handiwork.
Can't wait for bedtime.
Zzzzz.
hope the additional language helped!

Digitalis Verdente

The dog and boyfriend are alive and well, fyi.  All of the other living things in our place, however, have not been so lucky.  Over the last few years I have killed 4 indoor herb gardens, several flowering bushes, succulents, big tress....seriously, why can’t I keep a plant alive??  Even the aerogarden has a disabled pod, robbing us of delicious indoor-grown basil.  I can’t even grow schizz in an AEROGARDEN??  omg.

After the last two plants croaked when I tried to repot, give them sunshine (on a rare 90 degree day), and feed them fertilizer in the same day, I realized a huge self-intervention had to be enacted.  I had finally come to terms with my gardening inadequacies many, many years of denial and knew something had to be done immediately!  For the sake of all plantkind. It was high time to get myself over to the infamous Flora Grubb Gardens.

This magical place is located in the south area of San Francisco, in the heart of an infrequently visited industrial area of town.  Well, I assume it frequently visited by vegetable trucks and cement mixers, but not so much by folks like me.  Flora Grubb has popped up all over the design blogs I follow as the forefront of urban gardening here. 

Named for its co-owner (could she have gone into any other business?), Flora Grubb is not only one of the grooviest, most sustainable, most-forward thinking nurseries on the planet, it is one of the greatest places around just to hang out. --sunset mag.

The 2,800 square foot Mediterranean-style plant and garden accessory Mecca focused on water-sparing options for landscaping leaves even garden-less wanna-be green thumbs like me drooling. Lush succulents, vacation-inspiring palms AND a divine boutique coffee shop IN the store—what’s not to love? It’s pretty much my description of heaven.  --designsponge

I pulled up to Flora’s midday, choosing to forgo a real lunch for some contemplative garden time, hoping to snag a quick tutorial on how to not murder living things.  Boy, was I in luck-o-roonie!!  Mr. Hank came to the rescue and helped identify what my weaknesses were: not remembering to water or somehow watering too often, leaving plants outside during inopportune times, using miracle grow (*gasp*gasp*), and much ashamedly looking for guidance at home depot.  Apparently, this self-proclaimed gardening dummy was foolish in thinking she could get the enlightenment she was looking for at home depot.  Nope, instead, Mr. Hank patiently walked me through their entire garden, let me draw out plans for him to get a general idea of what I wanted to pull off, and kept in mind that he had to keep everything as easy as possible.  

I needed strong wind-proof plants that would be ok with spotty watering, inconsistent sunshine, and that would be proportional in the space I was trying to work with.  Hmmm...seemingly impossible, right?  Like I should probably have just tried to find some fake plants or something?  Ha.

Instead, he threw in bags of organic soil (two different kinds), walked me through the repotting process, helped pick out some planters, full-on instructed me on the minimal steps of care, and guaranteed that I could bring everything back and he would try to fix them for me.  It was like he was offering free clinic hours!  The “guarantee” was contingent on my bringing it in for care before it was “too late”, but I feel that phrase may be relative...right?  I guess I could have clarified what he meant by “too late”, but c'mon, I didn't want to be restricted in anyway!

Regardless, I am thoroughly in love with this place and the staff is spectacular.  They are made up of mostly horticulturalists, landscape designers, artists, and are all teachers of their craft.  In.love.  Some cutie-pies there too, for those who may be on the hunt!  :)

Let me know if you’d like me to take you over there.  I’m sure by that time, my plants will be desperate for me to bring them back for some Hank loving.