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Personal

housekeeping

By | Personal | 21 Comments

i LOVE a good before/after comparison- haircuts, furniture or a nose job– it’s just interesting! so i have totally let myself down in forgetting to take before shots for almost every single house project we’ve attempted. we’re usually about half way in when i pull out the phone to snap a few in progress shots- but thankfully we’ve at least done that a few times and i’m excited to have some documentation to share!

ok, let’s break from the house thing to talk about something- i know the issue is pretty split, and i don’t want to offend anyone, but really- i do subscribe to the theory that the best camera is the one that’s with you- so for us, that makes our best camera an iphone. we have it everywhere we go and we capture life and create art with it all the time. we play with our images with a few different apps and then we usually twitter to share them with all of you! we do love our schfancy dslrs but most of our day to day images happen with the phone and we are totally happy with that! we get asked a lot- do you make a picture every day? do you practice shooting? and i guess the best answer is yes- we practice, yes, we shoot daily- just with a phone! to quote the pioneer of it all, chase jarvis, ‘inherently, we all know that an image isn’t measured by its resolution, dynamic range, or anything technical about cameras or photos. An image is measured by the simple—sometimes profound, other times absurd or humorous or whimsical—effect that it can have upon us.’ thanks, chase, for justifying the iphone pics i’m about to put up. i agree with you and support your vision. ;)

when we moved into our house in july we found it completely empty and rather clean. we cheerfully began to move our furniture in and finally, to move the few little hand tools we had into our basement. we pushed the door open into the musty basement, flipped on the single bare bulb (much like a cartoon basement would have) and let our eyes adjust. seems when they moved out they didn’t bother to empty out the basement! it was among the old paint cans and broken windows that we found two pieces of ugly furniture covered in dirt, spiderwebs & something that looked like rat poo. i googled it. anyway, we just turned around and walked out- leaving our tools right by the door- the basement a project for another day. well, the day for basement renovation has not yet come but we did jump back in there a few weeks ago to pull out that old ugly furniture! we blasted it with a hose and stripped years of lacquer off to make it our own. free decor? i like it! now to figure out what to put in the empty spaces we created when we added the new bottoms!

and i leave you with a stressful image of our most recent project- the back yard- it has only begun!

and since that wasn’t such a happy ending- i will add this picture of our stella:

kate’s birthday is today!

By | Personal | 12 Comments

fact- i have the most talented, caring, lovely and beautiful wife in the world. everyone be sure to wish kate a happy birthday if you haven’t already- feel free to leave a comment here on the blog as they go straight to her email, @ her on twitter or facebook her!

this is from one of our days off when we used to work at a camp in north carolina. we’d been dating for about 6 months, she’s awesome:

making a house into a home

By | Personal | 5 Comments

it is a blessing that matt and i are afflicted with the same obsessions (passions?). photography, culture, food, craft, etc and now- architecture. we bought our little two bedroom, one bathroom house this past july as the cornerstone of our 5 to 7 year master plan but once we moved in, a love for our little pocket of the city grew- and we gleefully pushed our little plan off a cliff. we were instantly intrigued by the beauty and possibility of old homes and at the recommendation of some of our most brilliant friends and family members we bought a couple of books to learn about the theories of making a ‘home.’

and now we’re pumped! to say the least. we share new ideas most days at breakfast and usually also after matt gets out of the shower- where he does his most creative thinking, of course. ;) we end up walking around the house with our arms spread out roughly measuring and plotting new windows and nooks. we are lucky that we have such a sweet little floor plan to build our ideas upon and create new efficient spaces perfectly suited to our way of living. of course, it’s all just dreams and speculation right now as we save save save to finance this thing but that’s okay- since our ideas change daily getting started now might stifle the more creative ideas that could come later. that being said, we’re having an awesome time spitballing crazy dreams for stairs and ways to bend natural light to our advantage. we’ve started home inspiration folders and we’re always looking for new blogs and websites with a nod toward the renovated and customized old home.

anyway, we’re excited to chronicle some of our house projects on this blog! hopefully, this is the start of moving back to more personal posts in general because this year we’re determined to have a bit of a life outside of our business. :) it’s not easy because we do love our job so much- honestly, i run straight to the computer every morning to see what new, exciting emails we’ve gotten from all of you while we’ve been asleep! but we’re starting to learn to balance other things we love with our business, like sunshine and other people and architecture and thrift stores ;) and we’re planning on 2010 being a fulfilling balance of our passions. so, here’s to 2010, may it be epic!

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