Painted Ranches in the ‘Hood

05/31/2010

I live a neighborhood loaded with brick ranches – red brick, pink brick, orange brick, gray brick, smooth brick, textured brick. You name we have it.

But thankfully (in my opinion) we also have some painted brick houses. (And we almost had one more. But then the flood swallowed it.) I’m a big fan of paint and if done right it doesn’t harm the lifespan of the brick – just adds a little more personality. And it breaks up the monotony of brick, brick, brick. I like being able to tell people “it’s the green house; the only green house on the street.”

A few days ago I asked Jason to drive me around so I could snap pictures of some of the other painted brick houses within a few blocks from our little mid-century brick ranch.

We saw some blue and gray-blue:

Some taupe and warm gray:

Some cream and white:

And some green and olive:


Phone Photo Friday

05/28/2010

Does anyone else see an abstract garbage-art bride? Or is the heat getting to me …


A Typical Evening

05/27/2010

I imagine other people have typical evenings like this: come home from work, eat dinner together, watch some TV, go to bed.

I’m not sure if Jason and I have EVER had an evening like that. We’re always running around doing this or that … working late, running to the hardware store or grocery store, doing freelance graphic design or music recording projects. Sometimes we eat dinner together but it’s often at 8 or 9. And maybe one night a week we catch up on our favorite shows through Hulu (24, The Office, Modern Family). Our wind-down-relax time rarely starts before 11pm.

The other night I was thinking about what a “typical” night looks like for us and I decided to snap a picture of what we were both doing right before our late dinner break.

Jason was installing a new bowl sink in the guest bathroom. The teal glass one was pretty but impractical – it has about 7 chips in after 3 years. (Only one of which was made by Jason or me.)

I was cutting and packaging wedding invitation orders for my etsy shop.

Will we ever have simple evenings and neat-and-tidy lives? Probably not. That’s why I’m one good beach vacation away from a quarter life crisis.


Upside Down Right Side Up

05/26/2010

This kind of graphic design just intrigues me. Wonderful DVD cover for one of the most quotable movies from the 80s – The Princess Bride!

I saw this here.


TN52 Yard Sale Booty

05/25/2010

(ya know, like pirate booty)

On Saturday we got up at the butt crack of dawn and headed out to the TN 52 Yard Sale extravaganza with Leila and Jeremy and Jason’s mom. It’s 95 miles of yard sales; I think we probably hit 10-20 miles of it.

We found all kinds of different mid-century modern and vintage treasures and managed to spend the rest of the profit from our own yard sale the weekend before. I’ll let the pictures do the talking but I’ll just say I’m most excited about the chair I spotted from the street as we were driving past one of the last sales and the owls – just because I think they’re adorable. Oh, and the tea and coffee canisters, too. It’s so hard to choose a favorite!

It seems like everywhere we go we find Homer Laughlin Co. Gold Cortez (or Sheffield Granada Green) pieces. (above)


Scootin’ to Loveless

05/24/2010

Wow – what a great big busy fun weekend we had! I have lots of photos to share of our mid-century modern finds from a big string of yard sales we went to on Saturday. But first here are some photos from Friday night.

Our dear friends Leila and Jeremy (the ones that lost their home and almost everything in the flood) keep asking us to ride scooters with them.

It’s really not fun at all. But since we know they’ve been through a lot lately, we always agree to go along for rides whenever they ask.

And we pretend we’re having fun. You know … to be polite.

I think they’re hoping that we have so much fun that we buy our own scooter.

Those stinkers! We don’t have money for a scooter right now!

Stop trying to tempt us! It’s not going to work!

Friday we rode out 20 miles to Loveless Cafe and ate all kind of delicious Southern cookin’. Again, totally not fun at all but we’re willing to do our part to help Leila and J get their minds off of their situation. Cuz we’re such good friends …


Phone Photo Friday

05/21/2010


Our Garden – May 2010

05/20/2010

May is a beautiful time of year. I feel so blessed to have such loveliness around my home and my wonderful husband who loves to garden (and is teaching me to love it too.)


Homework

05/19/2010

Photography student Cristin Durning from Watkins College of Art & Design (my alma mater!) took some excellent photos of our home for a school project.

There are a few more on her portfolio website.

All photos © 2010 Cristin Durning.


Thank You…

05/18/2010

to Violet of Viva la Blogette for featuring one of the wedding invitation designs from my shop on her blog today!