Do you see what I see?

No? let’s get a little closer…

See it?

A hinge!!!

So close…so close!

Our 2nd Year in Pictures

It’s already November and I’m finally getting around to doing our year in pictures.  It was a long, trying year, but we had fun and continued live life and be happy in our marriage.
Lets start off where we ended last year:

September:

1st anniversary in Gainesville

October:

Halloween-Dunkin’ Donuts

November:

Thanksgiving in Michigan (1st time in 8 years!)

December:

Christmas in Florida

January:

Amelia Island anniversary trip

February:

Sunday afternoons…

March:

Brewers Ball-Tampa (we snuck in!)

April:

Adam worked a lot…
Stephanie had lots of free time…

May:

Houston, here we come!

June:

Chicago IL

July:

Weekend Ultimate Trip to Atlanta

August:

Michigan Trip

September 2011,

North Carolina Trip & Married 2 years!


wow! we sure did travel a lot!

Turning over a old Leaf

Adam brought home a box of these ugly wood napkin rings when the Ice Palace was getting ready for renovations.

At first I complained that he was bringing more crap into the house, but then I figured maybe they just needed a face lift. So we put them into our overflowing extra WIC (walk in closet) and forgot about them.
That is until we decided that we were hosting thanksgiving! Recently I pulled them out and decided it was time for their makeover.  A trip to Home Depot and a can of spray paint later and we have much better napkin rings!
Hello 2011 goodbye 1993!

We decided to use Oil Rubbed Bronze, but had also considered Matte Nickel since our china has a platinum band.  I Think they look great with the napkins I made with our left over fabric from the table runner.

I was afraid the chunky wood would look too casual on our China but the paint really dressed them up they look seasonally appropriate on our china.

Oh! and that is a bread plate! not a dinner plate-they’re not napkins for giants!
Thanks Adam for brining home those free ugly wood napkin rings…I love them, now.

Big Birds New Dress

I spent most of a Friday night working on my bridesmaid dress for Tara’s wedding.  The pattern I had chosen looked pretty simple.

The fabric she had chosen-not so much.

In anticipation of dealing with the fabric and wanted the bodice to have a nice structured look and feel I chose to add fusible interfacing to the material.

Problem no 1 arose when I ran out of my usual interfacing which has a cotton backing.  After some digging I found some more, but it was stiffer and had a poly–ish backing. But since I didn’t feel like driving the 20 or more minutes to Joann’s I figured I’d just use what I had.

Well the interfacing wasn’t sticking very well and the more ironing I did the more the fabric ‘stretched’.  I also found a crease down the center of the bodice that I couldn’t iron out…

But after about 3 hours worth of work, I finally had a dress that was as done as far as I could go. I will need to have the dress on  to do the hem and zipper so that it fits. Mom comes in a few weeks-so she can help.

The dress turned out ok. I still need to make the sash, but I also realized I had cut the fabric wrong and didn’t leave enough length for the entire piece…so I’ll have to put a seam in it. Oh well.  The best part is I only had to pay $92 for this dress and I can be big bird for Halloween next year! I hope Adam want’s to be Oscar.

The End…Tables

I don’t believe it…but Adam has built and finished the end tables!!  The dining table on the other hand…is slowly getting there…over a year later!
Good/Bad Adam hasn’t been working at all the last few weeks at SpaceWerks, so he’s had time to work on stuff around the house and use the machines at space works to build the tables.Another plus, He was able to get most if not all the wood for free by using ‘scraps’ leftover at SpaceWerks. 
He used Walnut plywood for the tops of the table and poplar for the portions we were painting white.  The glass for the shelves he ordered from a local glass place.  Once he had all the pieces cut he brought them home and started to put it all together.

We used Acrylacq, the same stuff we used on our dining table, on the tops.  Adam kept saying how much he loved the way it brings out the beauty of the wood. And it does and finish's with a nice not to shiny shine.
After four days of clamping, gluing, staining, painting he finally sent me a picture of the finished product.  I couldn’t wait to get home and see it in person. 

He did an awesome job. 

I’ve had this pair of lamps since Adam and I first started dating. They were my grandparents and I found them w/o shades in the back of a closet. Knowing granny they were probably a $2 thrift store purchase, but I just loved them and their retro look.  So for $50 they were packaged up and put on an airplane.  Adam re-wired them for me a while back and we’ve been using one in our living room while the other sat on the floor in the guest room. But now they each have their own modern table and bring a nice glow to the entire space!

I love how the room is starting to feel cohesive and planned vs. thrown together.  It feels…grown up. And it’s about time.
It is so fun to see something you designed become reality. And in my job you’d think that happens a lot, but in actuality I’ve only seen a handful of the projects I’ve worked on actually become built…it’s the nature of the business.
Someday Adam and I hope to have the space, time and money to do this more seriously and maybe even start a business…but for right now I’m going to enjoy our new tables and my grown up room.

Playing Around

After deciding to keep a few of the fabrics they were just lying around the living room.  I would walk in and look at them, pick them up, refold them, hold them up against the back drop of the room.

And one day I decided, after spreading it out, that I would slip the black and white fabric under the glass of the table. Just to see what it would be like if I covered the entire coffee table.

And it wasn’t horrible. It wasn’t great either. But Its still there, under the glass.  Maybe I’ll try a different fabric…or maybe I’ll just be lazy for now. Ya, I think so.

Pillow Talk

We have been loving our new living room furniture! On top of some re-arranging and adding some new custom pieces I’ve been looking for fabrics to make pillows for the couch and chair.  Originally I was also going to slip cover the coffee table, but after a few weeks, I’m getting used to the table and we’re going to stick with it as is…for now.

I began my fabric search at fabric.com and found a bunch of prints I liked.  I had decided I wanted use the pillows to pull in green from the lamps and some of my pottery pieces in that room.  But I also wanted strong black and white graphic prints.  Not knowing and feeling what exactly the fabric was I ordered 8 different 1/2 yard pieces.

I Loved all these prints…but knew that I would have to choose which to use.  The 1st one-the green was off.  The 2nd one wasn’t upholstery fabric and the print was tiny.  The 3rd Was a big contender.  4th-the blue was off and it also was too light weight of a fabric-as was the middle one.  the solid green Almost made the cut, but in the end the green was just a little off.  The bottom Gray is one of my favorites-It’s a Dwell print (a fancy design catalog archidorks like me like to peruse). The last one on the bottom was the one Adam disliked the most. But it was the one that looked the best.

The print on it is large and the color blue is almost a perfect match to the walls. The green is soft and spring like and the fabric almost has a sheen to it. 

But problem is…we can’t just have one print.

I quickly tried mixing and matching and just couldn’t find two I liked together.

I also deiced that as much as I loved the Mint Julep I wanted it to go on the chair as a little lumbar pillow.  I think it helps with the fact that the chair cover is natural and not white.

So I went back to the website to see if there were any “coordinating” fabrics for our Waverly Mint Julep fabric.  Luck would have it there were some…but only one that really had the colors I was looking for.

It was perfect. It had various shades of green and some blue…but it wasn’t as graphic as I’d hoped for.

So I kept looking. 

Finally I decided on these 4 fabrics in addition to the Mint Julep.

From there I played mix and match to find what 2 I liked.

Finally after talking with Adam I threw out the the white lattice feeling that the colors were just off. And we both decided on the striped (which I’ll sew into a square) with the multi-color fabric. 

And just to be safe I ordered and 1/2 yard of the green and white I beam print…just in the off chance something doesn’t work. And Luckily Fabric.com will allow returns (with free shipping) on the fabrics I didn’t want to keep! (I kept the dwell and the black and white print)

So that’s where we are for now with the living room. Adam is busy finishing up the end tables. We had a productive and busy weekend. More on that to come.

K-9 Santa

Well Christmas came early for the doggies in house! For a while now I’ve been wanting to get Gretta a dog collar. (I had yet to buy her anything!)  And I decided I wanted to get her a Western Michigan collar. (My Alma Mater) But I hadn’t had any luck finding anything…I checked both book stores and google, but nobody carried WMU.
Then Adam got into the search and the 1st webpage he tired had it!

Well as I was getting all excited I had found Gretta her new collar I realized that there were two dogs in the room with us who could use new collars too. (have to be fair)
So we started looking for NCSU (Adam’s Alma Mater) And then I realized Bruiser should have an NCSU collar because he’s from North Carolina, Gretta is from Michigan so she gets WMU and Jordan, well she’s from Florida, and wouldn’t you know it, but this chick went to USF! So Jordan got a University of South Florida collar rounding our all of our colleges.
So of course, when the collars came in this week I couldn’t wait until Christmas to give them to the dogs-so they got them early. 
Bruiser is still getting used to his (as it’s a bit bigger than his old one).

Gretta will get hers after thanksgiving, when my parents come down. My dad said that she has to wear a blaze orange one so that hunters and drivers can see her-but I reminded him that she IS orange. But for safety's sake maybe she’ll wear just for game days and special occasions.
I’m usually not that big into college gear, but this  was fun and it’s nice that each of the dogs are representing their home state and the schools that took all of our money !