sister conversations

Today I was chatty chattin' with my sister on the way home from work and somehow we ended up talking about birth weight which led me to sharing with her that at one point early in my life I believed that when I was born I weighed 8 lbs 7 oz. Only later in life (read: middle school or early high school) did I receive clarification on the issue. The truth was, I weighed 7 lbs 8 oz., and for some reason, this was both a relief and a source of great distress for me. I had shared this false and robust information to countless of my friends, only to find out that I was a normal, smaller sized baby.* (Having a little sister who weighed a mere 6 lbs 4 oz. at birth is a lot to live....down to?) I genuinely felt like I owed it to those people and to my reputation to go back and inform everyone I could think of about my correct birth weight.

After I told my sister this she responded with the following:

"Yeah, it's kind of like when I found out a couple years ago that my half birthday is actually June 5, and not on Cinco de Mayo like I always believed. I guess I could have just done the math, but you know."

*I know now, being an adult, that 8 lbs 7 oz is not abnormal. Please keep in mind that the girl feeling those feelings was young and without birthing experiences of her own to draw from.

fun with poses at work!

Long time no blahg.

To break up the monotony of not blogging in quite some time, I've decided to post a couple photos of me doing dumb things at work:

I call this "A Penny for Your Thoughts":


And this is "Art of Cube":

Hope everyone had a great Easter!!

On my turntable....

DFSG Wintery Mix 10-11:

1. Doll is Mine - Blonde Redhead

2. Wolves - Phosphorescent

3. Fake Empire - The National

4. Helplessly Hoping - CSNY

5. Winter Winds - Mumford & Sons

6. I Am On Your Side - Ryan Adams

7. What Light - Wilco

8. Fidgeting Wildly - Centro-Matic

9. Still Afraid - Bosque Brown

10. I Believe, I Believe - Murry Hammond

11. Lovely Day - Bill Withers

12. I'll Believe In Anything - Wolf Parade

13. All Thoughts Are Pray To Some Beast - Bill Callahan

14. Heartbreaker - The Cardigans

15. Bruises - Chairlift

16. It Aint Easy - David Bowie

17. A Black Wave is Comin' - Doug Burr

18. Home - Edward Sharpe & The Magnetic Zeros

19. What a Day, What a Day, What an Interlude - Castledoor

over the river and through the woods...

Hipstamatic edition.

Last weekend, the husbo and I drove up to Kansas to visit my mom, sister, uncle and grandparents and split the difference between Thanksgiving and Christmas. I've always loved my grandparents' house - from the decor to the layout to the exterior - just about everything. But I think as I've gotten older and now have a house of my own to decorate, I've come to appreciate it way more...and to see how, though our style definitely incorporates more modern elements, there are definite similarities in aesthetic.

Here are some of my favorites:

My mom cross-stitched the piece hanging on the wall behind the old fire extinguisher turned lamp...

Favorite place to hang out as a kid. So many moving pieces...



Canes galore...

Get your education on!



Vignettes...



She sits, therefore she is...

In the key of C minor...

To catalog or not to catalog...

All year round, folks...


And non-hipstamatically...

Sigh.

grocery sexism anecdote

Having Mondays off, my beloved K-Ho often takes care of running errands or doing things about the house on this day. Today we're having some good friends over for dinner, and Kevin was in charge of going to the grocery store for "our" famous chili recipe that is actually not "my" recipe at all.

So we're talking on the phone and he's telling me how amazingly cheap all of the stuff was, and I asked him if he had trouble finding the chili seasoning since our usual grocery store is in the middle of a remodel and who KNOWS where they'll decide to put the seasonings! He said that he found it will relative ease, but that while he was looking for it he overheard two women talking who did not notice him standing there. They were joking amongst themselves how funny it is around the holidays to see men shopping in the grocery store who clearly have no idea where to find anything.

Kevin promptly cleared his throat, walked up to them and said,

"Excuse me ladies, can you please tell me where I can find the groceries?"

dining room before & after

Okay! After a "long and grueling" process comprised mostly of me finally just rebooting my iPhoto.....my before & after pics finally showed up! Here are some before shots:

Sans furniture:



Looking from dining room into our living room:

We were thinking that since we have our cute little chair rail that we might try doing a different color on top and on bottom - LOOK OUT - we're crazy! Who knows what we'll do next! We had been on such a roll with the den and the kitchen and wanted to get our paint on again while we were in the zone, so we picked our colors and I went to the store one glorious Saturday. I wanted the top color in the dining room to be the same color we will end up using in our bedroom - a light gray leaning more towards the blue end of the spectrum than the brown. Since this is a dining room where food will be eaten (and occasionally thrown), I was thinking that it might be a good idea to get a satin finish for that room rather than flat like we'd done in the other two rooms. This is what I call Mistake #2. Mistake #1 was my overconfidence in my new abundance of painting experience (one large wall) to the extent that I didn't think I needed to tape the floor boards or chair rail. I love those new edgers, but in my experience they do NOT eliminate the need for tape if you want to do the most clean paint job you can. NOTED!

I started with the bottom, darker section of the dining room first (dark gray), and I notice as I'm going along doing the edging that 1) Man it probably would have been a good idea to tape, and 2) this paint isn't drying as seamlessly and magnificently as the other rooms we did. Hmm....and it looks a little shinier than I imagined....Hmm. NOT COOL. I went ahead and finished the bottom section, Kevin came home and lovingly confirmed my suspicions. It was looking like crap. So before we proceed, Kevin patiently and manly-ly (shh) taped off all the top section and we decided to do the top using the flat gallon we'd purchased for our bedroom and just exchange the satin gallon for another flat version since we hadn't opened it.

NOTE: Sherwin Williams has great paint, and I'd been able to get all the paint we've used thus far at deep discounts, but they have really inconvenient hours and a horrible return policy - in that they won't do it if they've colored the paint. While I'm really glad to know that if I happen to buy 10 gallons of UNcolored paint I can return it no problem (???), it was irritating that we had to wait two more days to go and talk to a manager before finally getting an exchange. I think we'll be Home Depot paint customers from now on.

We also bought a flat half gallon of the same paint color we'd used on the bottom, so we could sand and paint back over it. What we thought would be a one day job turned into four, but at long last we finished!! Here are some after pics:




And with a little floral styling:

We still need to put more stuff up on the walls, but I already think the house is looking so much cooler and so much more "us" with all this paint! Who knew!

I'll make sure to take more "during" pics when we do our bedroom! PAINT!

Paint Colors:
Below Chair Rail - SW Wall Street
Above Chair Rail - SW Evening Shadow

snafu!

This morning it was made clear that my camera & computer are in cahoots against me to sabotage my before and after documentation. Boo for malicious cahoots! Boo I say! I uploaded the pics to my computer and at the very end of the importing process, iPhoto "unexpectedly" quit, deleting the photos from my computer AND MY CAMERA! What?! Irritating! So I've contacted iPhoto help and they're supposed to give me a call so we'll see if they can help me restore my precious photos!

In the meanwhile, here's a photo of the sweet hound we'll be dog-sitting this weekend for our BFFs. I present to you Sir Charlie Technology!

more before and after coming soon!

We just finished painting our dining room yesterday (with a couple minor flubs along the way that extended the process). HUZZAH! I have to get the right lighting to take an after picture this evening with my good camera and I'll post for you to see! For now, I'll leave you with this lo-res before picture from my phone:


I have a better before with my "good" camera as well, but hopefully this subpar shot will leave you wanting more....right? RIGHT?!

Stand by for full post with good pics and details on our little mishaps....

paint crazy

Recently having been inspired by several friends as well as Apartment Therapy, we decided to start painting the interior of our house, one room at a time. Sherwin Williams was having a big 40% off sale last weekend, so I figured then was as good a time as any to get started.

The house we just purchased was a flip by the realtor who sold it to us, so originally we thought we wouldn't need to paint until the walls got dingy because they looked so nice and new. Once we started decorating, however, I quickly realized that if your walls are painted, you don't need as much decor on the walls to make it feel decorated, and less decor = less work. Nevermind the fact that we still have thousands of things to put up on the walls...

I decided to start looking at Sherwin Williams' paint colors online, which really is of no real value other than getting me pumped up about painting, only because the colors on your screen are not the same as the colors you actually get in the store - just go to the store! They're everywhere! I went to SW last Saturday and literally sat in the store staring at paint samples with a blank look on my face for an hour and a half! Staring! The only thing that kept me from feeling too self conscious about it was hoping that I'm not the only one that is so indecisive about choosing colors. The guy who checked me out at the end confirmed my suspicion, when in an effort to make myself feel less creepy, I asked him if there were others out there like me. Shwew! Not creepy, just meticulous. Or at least that's what I kept silently telling myself.

I finally chose my colors (one for the den and one for the kitchen) and pick up a few supplies since all their paint supplies were 35% off, and I headed home to begin the transformation of our lovely little home.

Kevin knew that I was purchasing paint, but what he did not know was that I was planning to surprise him by having the den painted by the time he got home that evening. Our den is the product of a garage conversion, and it's probably our favorite room in the house. It's huge, so we decided on just doing an accent wall and go from there. I picked a deep brown - much darker than Kevin and I had originally agreed upon (zoinks!) so I was hoping he'd like it...

Here is a semi-before picture (pardon the mess, I had to shove all the furniture around to make room for the tarp and such):

I had already started edging when I thought to take a picture...

Here is an after picture (note: furniture still not back in place because I had to wait for Kevin to help me move it - the tv is a giant dinosaur of a thing on top of that heavy piece of furniture and while I managed to ooch it out from the wall, I couldn't get it back):

This picture doesn't really do it justice. It looks BEAUTIFUL! I want to be in that room all the time! Especially now that we have the furniture moved back in place.

I strategically left the house when I knew Kevin would be getting home because I wanted to see if he would call me or wait until I got back - a good gauge for his level of thrilledness (shhh). Sure enough, he called me while I was picking up some food for us and left this message:

"BAAABE! IT'S BEAUTIFUL!!!! I LOVE YOU! I'M CALLING YOU BACK RIGHT NOW!"

I wish I could attach audio because it is a hilariously adorable message!

Then on Monday, Kevin decided to tackle the kitchen by his lonesome while I was at work. He did a glorious job in a room with many more corners and crevices than I had to deal with. Here are a couple of pictures of the finished product:




I LOVE IT!!! The paint is completely changing the feel of the house and giving it so much more character!!

Last night, after I got home to witness Kevin's glorious adventure in painting, we decided to go to Garland Road Thrift to look for frames and to see if we could find any cool chairs to use as extra dining room chairs for when we have people over. Instead we found this:


I instantly fell in love and it was FOURTEEN DOLLARS. That's it!! I instantly knew where I wanted to put it in our house and I remembered that we had some leftover paint from a previous project a while back, and soon enough, we were leaving the store with it, a frame and several National Geographic Magazines from the 70s.

We got home, got to sanding, and before the night was through, we had this refurbed (new word, get over it) beauty:


I think it looks exactly like I hoped and I love the way it looks up against the new chocolate wall in our den!

It feels so good to see the house really coming together! I think next up is picking the perfect gray color for our bedroom...

a sucker for your marketing

Last week (was it last week?!) I got to take a trip up to NYC to play a show with Miss Sarah Jaffe at the Living ROom. It was a blast! I stayed with my bestie Julie in Brooklyn (more pictures of that coming soon) and the venue was awesome. The entire trip was awesome.

Sarah just sent me the link to a video shot of one of the songs we played. It was a new song we'd never played before and she taught it to us during sound check. I think it's an awesome video and an awesome song by an awesome songstress and I wanted to share it!



I love music!

things I wish I'd thought of part 1

THIS is one of the most amazing and awesome ideas ever!! So cute, and I'm not gonna lie, I might steal the idea. Except that I might also lack the motivation and drive to actually do it.

Here are a few of my favorite entries:









Adorababy!

usps

I really love this font. Can any of my designy friends tell me what it is?


(Jenae I stole the image from your blog, hope that's okay!)

"clementine" cover

Sweet Sarah Jaffe posted this today and I can't stop listening to it. A really good cover can really make your weekend.


*smile*

catalog living

Thanks to J-Ro for the inspiration for this. Just found a hilarious new website that I'll be obsessively RSSing...if one can do such a thing.

Catalog Living.

I LOVE humor like this! It reminds me a lot of Unhappy Hipsters.

Hours....I could waste hours.

whilst

I have just had a small, but satisfying victory today. Let me give you a brief history that is actually so brief it doesn't justify my calling it out as a history to begin with, but I digress.

I have always enjoyed the word "whilst". I enjoy seeing it, I enjoy writing it, I enjoy saying. Speaking of saying it...I have ALWAYS, ALWAYS pronounced this word as though I were saying "while" and adding an "st" at the end. No question, right? It's a different way of saying the word while, so why would it sound any different?

I'll also take a moment to say that I don't question myself too often when it comes to pronunciations. I have my weaknesses and I have my strengths, and pronunciation is definitely one of my strengths. My parents taught me phonics and the rest was history. It didn't hurt that I worked at a credit card bank as a telemarketer for FOUR AND A HALF YEARS, and had to read each person's last name CORRECTLY as it popped up mere milliseconds after the person answered the phone, lest I be immediately deemed a worthless excuse for a human being were I to pronounce it wrong and be trying to sell them something. Let's just say I love being hung up on. (I was actually a really good salesperson and made quite a bit of money, but it sucked the life out of me and subsequently I have avoided any career path that might in any way lead to sales, but that's another post that I may or may not ever write.)

Meanwhilst... (see what I did just then?) I have heard people use the word whilst quite frequently lately and they have ALL been saying it with a short "i" sound. Like...will...st. The first time I heard it pronounced that way, I was like, oh well, I'll just rest in the satisfaction of knowing that I know how to pronounce that word, and not everyone can be as pronuncitorally (don't look it up) gifted as I. But then I started hearing it more and more and more, and I started to question myself, but was never in a situation where I could easily do some research.

Today provided that opportunity. I was reading a document at work that used the word "while," and that was all it took. I was a'researchin'. And much to my glorious delight....I was correct!! I even tried to look up British pronunciation in case my fellow Americans were just trying on some foreign pants for size, but no!

See here and here and here and so on and so on.

It's not as much "Ha ha! Suck it, I'm right!" as it is, "Cool! I was right! Goooooo Phonics!" and whilst...ahem....I wasn't hooked on said phonics per se, I embraced them just the same.

In the famous words of the BEP.....Tonight's gonna be a good good niiiiight. Oooh Hooo.

work shenanigans

So it's Friday (holla!) at work, around 3:54pm, and I'm getting antsy because it's about to be the weekend, what what! I get up to forage for some gum and decide to stop by my sweet little mailbox in the supply room at work, and I find two things.

1. a magazine that I don't read or subscribe to, but continue to be responsible for.

2. this:


Now instantly I'm irritated, because if something was so "urgent" why not just bring it to my face, can I get an "amen!"? So I'm flipping the envelope over to open it, grumbling to myself all the while and hoping I haven't missed some deadline because someone couldn't walk a few feet over to my desk to deliver such an urgent message. I open it, only to find this:


I started laughing so hard!!

Conclusion: I love Rhealyn Carter and no one can tell me I don't!!

Happy Friday!

a little homestead update

I've been way out of the loop and I definitely experienced a Project 365 FAIL. Turns out, buying a house and working and trying to do music = NO FREE TIME AT ALL.

In lieu of a crazy word-filled post, here are a few pictures of our house adventures thus far. We're still in the process of moving out of the apartment - have to be out of there by May 31. We're moving as much little stuff as we can over there and we'll let movers do the bigguns. I LOVE our new house and can't wait to actually be living there.

This kitty has been our friend since the first day we came to look at the house:

Practicing in a completely empty house = magical acoustics:

First encounter with this previously very shy feline that lives two doors down. Adorbs:

First dinner in the new house - Keller's. Perfect perfect perfect:

K-Ho likes to send me progress pics of how he's doing with the house/apt during the day. I love his little status updates....let's just say the top of our closets were a hot mess this morning....now - all gone!

Kevin, trying on...er....out our new shower curtain:

I love my husband! We haven't been able to take anything really big over to the house because none of the many many windows have blinds, so we've been taking things over and hiding them in closets, etc. He took yesterday and today off work to do house stuff and sent me this glorious picture with the caption, 1 down, 9 to go! I didn't even know he was planning to go buy them today!

Can't wait to be there full time!!

everlasting arms

My sweet friend and fellow musician Mara Miller alongside Josh T. Pearson in Paris. I LOVE this video so big.

sxsw

SXSW was awesome. I went down solo this year because Kevin was busy being the responsible breadwinner and working up a storm back here at the homestead. I went down to play shows with Sarah Jaffe, four to be precise, and just hang out and see some great music. We had our first two shows on Thursday, so I headed down Thursday morning, and after a surprisingly smooth experience getting my wrist band, I started the glorious process of trying to find a parking space...

I FOUND ONE! I found a gem of a parking garage that was fairly central to everywhere I had to go that weekend, so I parked there every day. Glory & praise be to San Jacinto & 9th! $8/day keeps the stressful parking process away!

The first show on the list was an afternoon party put on by Little Radio at a venue called Red Eyed Fly. This band I'd never heard of called Shadow Shadow Shade played right before us and they definitely made a fan out of me. I love lots and lots of harmonies and boy did they give them to me. They were super fun and made me wish I was on stage singing with them. Aces!

While they were finishing up and we were getting ready to load our stuff on stage I looked over and saw a man sitting on the back porch of the venue reading an article that inspired me to creepily hover over him whilst trying not to create a shadow and take a picture:


Adorable! He was doing his research!

After the show we trekked over to St. David's Episcopal Church of Austin to get ready for our showcase that evening, which happened to be one block away from my much coveted parking spot! We played that evening after Sharon Van Etten, who I'd never heard of before, but whose voice made me want to cry - in the best way. Her voice was phenomenal and the church sanctuary acoustics seemed to perfectly compliment her style. Beautiful!

Brooklyn Vegan even featured our showcase in their Day 2 in Music & Review. Woohoo! Great pictures and I couldn't believe they chose us alongside peeps like Band of Horses and Broken Social Scene!.

After we played, I went with my friend Lisa to see Kashmir at Maggie May's. The are a Danish band that Kevin & our friend Dragan are both really into, and they were fan-freaking-tastic! Incredible music and great stage presence. It was a great way to end our first day.

Friday was my "day off" so to speak and the festival was my oyster. As good fortune would have it, my dear sweet friend Julie was in town from Brooklyn. She does "web stuff" for Doctors Without Borders up in NYC and got to come down for the interactive portion (read: Nerd Fest - her words not mine) and decided to stay for the music, so we got to hang out all of Friday. I loved seeing her and I miss having her around.


We hung out all day, went to see a fun outdoor show across I-35, then trekked back, got some street food, then headed back to see Cymbals Eat Guitars play at Emo's tent stage. They were fantastic and we stood right in front of the sound guy and had great sight lines.

**cue cold front that swept blusteringly through the city while we slept, only to mock our lack of socks and heavy coats the following morn

Saturday we had our first show at 1pm for the ReadyMade Magazine Party at the Palm Door, which is a beautiful venue. We played with Anais Mitchell, a wonderful folk singer/guitarist who sounds a little too much like Joanna Newsom, but who has hooked up with some major players (Ani Difranco, Bon Iver, The Low Anthem, and more) on her new folk opera album, Hadestown.

Then Sarah, my friend Paul and I walked the many many blocks with our instruments and new tote bags courtesy of ReadyMade to our final venue, where Sarah and I were left to do a duet set since our drummer Jeff had to skedaddle and our guitar player Robert had his own set to do. We played at J Blacks, a great venue (upon looking up the link I just realized that there is a J Blacks in Dallas as well), along with Denton's Seryn, Fort Worth's Telegraph Canyon, and Dallas's Doug Burr.

A great way to end a great weekend. Until next year!

news

There's no hiding the fact that I'm way behind in both uploading my daily pictures as well as blogging about them. Between increased responsibilities at work and buying a house (what what!!) personal down time has been a luxury these days. In the interim, I leave you with this-