Treasures in the Attic

...Or rather the rafters of the garage, which is where I found this old wood and wire birdhouse.

I oiled it up to give it some luster...

And for now it lives in the porch with the plants... sort of a summer conservatory.

Notebook

Most new "consultants" would invest in one of those adult Trapper Keepers - the leather-bound kind with lots of pockets. I did not do that. I made this notebook from some wrapping paper that I'm pretty sure came from Elana. Someone had given me pieces of the Levenger "Circa" system ($74 for a notebook?!) so I used them to make my own.

Glorious Glow

Me: You can't tell the difference, can you?

Husband: It's... subtle. 

This is how you know that the dining room paint job that took three days to complete is never going to be noticed by anyone. But it was worth it. Cracks had formed on one wall and on the ceiling (normal "settling" of our 100-year-old house). We had them patched. The previous yellow had more mustard tones, so we opted for "glorious glow." And the requisite ceiling painting, of course. 

The biggest difference is that we have use of our dining room again. I taped and moved the furniture a good month ago. Yes, it's awesome living with me and my "projects."

Baking Bread

My friend Lauren has two little kids and bakes bread all the time. Whaaa? The day she sent me home with a hot loaf, I asked her how this worked. She explained this system of keeping dough in the fridge and pulling off a hunk, letting it rise on the counter, then throwing it in the oven. It's all in this book. And it really works. We've had fresh baked bread three times this week. Killer.

Ice cream experimentation

Last week we tried recipes for salted caramel ice cream and Kir Royale sorbet. Yum.

String lantern

File under Works in Progress: The front porch. Someday we will give it color and style...

For now we've added this string lantern, found (thanks to their excellent Facebook site) at a vintage store called Find Furnish.

A new living room

The color is called conch shell, but while painting I decided the best description would be white lady's foundation, (or "pancake" as Ben likes to call it).

I even painted the ceiling (cringe). We'd had it repaired years ago and never painted over the patch. Tip: If you have to paint a ceiling, paint it before you finish the walls. It's harder to edge cleanly on the ceiling. And get ready for some serious paint spatters in the face.

I didn't remember to take any good before shots. But it was RED, my friends. We're talking a-primer-and-two-solid-coats-later kind of red. Or what I also like to call "It's 2001, y'all" red.

We're still recasting the room's details based on the new color. The two prints you see in the first photo are both maps of the city of Minneapolis. On the left: a remarkably detailed paper-cut by our friend Ochen Kaylan. On the right: an Ork neighborhood map.

We've had the yellow porcelain lamp in the basement for ages; I finally took it to our lighting store to find a shade and they gave us a finial to match. Our best Craigslist find to date is this rosewood credenza with tambour doors that we've transformed into a media cabinet.

Next up: The dining room! It's looking a little green against conch shell. Stay tuned.

Wall Art: View of the Pacific

photo 1 - color
photo 2 - old school
photo 3 - gray scale
photo 4 - vibrant
I took this photo of Elijah overlooking the Pacific ocean on our west coast trip last summer. The original photo was very blah, so I tried to bring out the sky and ocean and make the grass brighter (photos 1 and 4 show this best) but included an old school and grayscale option for comparison. I would like to print this out as wall art, perhaps on canvas or maybe framed by a natural driftwood-esque frame. Which version do you like best?

New Portico

Our house is in desperate need of a new portico and door so combining the forces of Pinterest, Photoshop and Google street view, I came up with the following. We would love to repaint the house, perhaps to a darker gray, but probably will leave it as is. Given the light gray color, I think the navy window and shutter combo looks great, especially with the pop of yellow in the window boxes. What do you think?

Tackling the basement

Before...

And after...

And the labeling. Be still my heart.