Antique Finds February

Posted by Amber in Antiquing on February 5, 2013  ||  14 Comments

We headed out this weekend on an unsuccessful journey to find a bed for Ramona. A typical weekend these days. We were all over North Texas antiquing at a few of our favorite places and some new ones, so let’s bring back our little regular post about Antique Finds.

First stop Weatherford First Monday Trade Days…

I spied a few milk bottles around the flea, but they all seemed a tad over priced. Finally we found a dealer with a good selection and reasonable prices. We bought a huge jug and some milk glass bottles that are actually marked which makes them cooler than reproductions. We took them all for $12.

Nick wanted this cactus for his office. It was $10 and will hopefully stay alive. (Yes it is possible to kill a cactus in this house.)

Next up the spoils from Burleson Antique Mall (a new one that’s awesome but there’s lots of breakable merch and small aisles so leave the kids at home)…

Nick is a coffee maven. It’s a serious passion of his, so he was drawn to these old coffee cans from a roaster in Beaumont, TX. They have great typography and color too. Hopefully we will plant some succulents in these babies and style the kitchen. They were $8 a piece originally, but the booth was having a 25% off sale. We got both for $12.

There were a ton of these black and white landscape photographs with the mat for $5. We picked 2 that we won’t frame for another 4 to 6 years. The photographer’s name is written on the mat, but I haven’t googled to find anything more about them.

Off to Benbrook Antique Mall (one of my favorites)…

I think the realization that we weren’t going to find a bed was sinking in, so I bought Ramona books instead. Fair trade.

She loves the Horton Hears a Who movie, so I’ve been wanting to get her the book anyway. $10

The Cinderella book is copyright 1935. It has amazing illustrations. There was no way I was leaving without that. $5.59 (there was a 14% discount…apparently it was their 14th birthday)

The Three Bears book was given to Judy Feldman from Mrs. Trawick on 6-2-69. That means nothing really except it’s a classic end of school year book that has illustrations and colors that scream mid century awesomeness. $3

Finally Ties to the Past (we’ve been wildly successful here in the past and it was the beginning of the month so everything is 30% off)…

The date of this magazine is 1912. The cover is amazing. I haven’t flipped through it yet because it’s in a frame. I’d like to see if I can remove that address label. $7

These lights are so much prettier in person. Nick thinks it should be fairly easy to wire these separately, so you can have 2 hanging pendents. I can see these over a kitchen island or being used as lamps or bathroom. Obviously we won’t hang them in this house since we’re moving (fingers crossed).

Clearly the thing to do when you are moving is to buy a light fixture. It was $35. I know we will buy or build or renovate wherever we wind up next, so I know these will be used.

There you have it. All the stuff we bought because we couldn’t find a bed. The thing about making your space look eclectic is actually collecting things, so we stockpile until we are ready to assemble them into a space. This is why Emily Henderson always has amazing rooms, because she has storage units full of flea market awesomeness that she can incorporate. We don’t have a storage until, but we have small piles tucked away all over the house. Nick has an epic man office collection going right now if only he could claim a bedroom as his own…

Tagged As , , , , , ,

Poppin’ Some Tags

Posted by Amber in Antiquing on February 1, 2013  ||  20 Comments

Young House Love is hosting a Macklemore Thrift Shop Challenge because it’s hilarious and an anthem of sorts. Originally this was going to be a team challenge. You know Nick and I thrifting together and skipping through the fields with our finds after. Then Nick spent a whole $20 on himself, so I had no choice but to spend my own $20. This is how it all went down.

Here’s Nick the dashing husband modeling his $20 (#baller) in front of Goodwill. This is what all married 20-somethings do before they hire a sitter and have a date night. Totally normal people.

When Macklemore was talking about luggage, I doubt he had this vintage beauty in mind. It was a gorgeous tan leather Samsonite. However it did reek of smoke like most classy things from the 60s. (I only know this because I watch Mad Men.)

Nick stumbled upon some moccasins at the register. Left us wondering if some other blogger had been there before us. I did check for the tell-tale signs of a bloggers on a thrift store challenge, and none were to be found.

Ironically while we were searching for a broken keyboard, Nick found this Casio that he has wanted since his last one tragically left Wills Casa Uno. Giddy doesn’t even begin to describe his reaction.

It was $20, so that pretty much ended the search. It’s insane that we would even find something he’s wanted for 8 years because of a Macklemore lyric and a YHL challenge. Life is weird.

Also he isn’t totally crazy, these Casio MT-40s go for around $150 on eBay. Although this one sold for $325. Yes ours came with a case too.

[Nick Edit: If you’re interested in what it sounds like, here is a good YouTube video of one. Be on the look out for my synthesized dance pop album dropping at a thrift store near you… real soon]

My turn began with a nervous smile outside Thrift Town. Always a good sign.

I actually liked this London Fog big ass coat with its nice plaid lining, but it was a Men’s XL and may or may not have smelled like piss. (Thanks again Macklemore.)

Here Nick tries to “take your grandpa’s style.” It really takes on a whole new meaning when you involve a hoveround. I was less impressed because I felt somehow he is going to spend my $20 on something for himself like this maybe…

Nick says his mom had this (MIL if you are reading this, those are his words not mine). Nostalgia isn’t going to make me give you a penny of my $20 babe. Sorry.

Here is what I found. The ribbons were grouped together in bags, so I bought them as a set. The set of 3 with the blue floral and coralish polka dot ribbon was $2.99. The milk glass vase (!!!!) was $5.99. The orange ribbon set with knit chevron pattern was $1.49.

The ribbons joined my stack of vintage ribbons that I hoard with zero intention of using. Someone help me I clearly have a problem.

I spent $11.33, so I guess I could have bought Nick his prenatal buns of steel video. But I didn’t. Because I’m mean. I would have shopped more to spend that extra $8, but it was almost closing time. The employees were literally on the intercom counting down the minutes and seconds for us.

Can’t wait to see what everyone else found over at Young House Love.

Tagged As , , , , ,

Monthly Challenge: February Connect

Posted by Amber in Side Note on January 31, 2013  ||  2 Comments

The monthly challenge for February will be connect which is funny because it’s the exact opposite of unplug. You can interpret it however you want, but here’s my plan on how I’m going to connect this month.


via

1. Send letter/cards in the actual mail.

Who doesn’t love to get a card or letter in the mail? Plus I have really cute Rifle stationary that should be put to good use. It’s Valentines this month, so I even have a good excuse to send people cards!

2. Call my loved ones.

Basically I’m going to make a conscious effort to connect with my family who I don’t talk to often enough. Friends too! Think about how often we get busy in our lives and forget to check in with people we truly care about.

Of course calls and such will have to be made on Ramona’s school days or naptime. I’m still keeping up with my unplugged goals.

Feel free to join in. You can connect in whatever way you want. Katja is joining in, so check to see how she is going to interpret connect for February. (She also made our graphic, so a big thanks to her for that!)

There are no tags for this post

January Goal Check

Posted by Amber in Side Note on January 31, 2013  ||  2 Comments

1. Give handmade gifts.

We had 3 birthdays this month, so congratulations to myself for keeping the goal this month.

  • Bow tie for a toddler made with this Prudent Baby tutorial (I made the double fold bow tie). Unfortunately I had to modify the tutorial a bit because I could not find a set of bow tie accessories. I just used velcro instead. It worked, but still not as cool as a clip and slider.
  • Go Green tote with a hand painted heart on a reusable Muji bag. I filled it with several different eCloths. It’s for my mother in law because she keeps a spotless house. (I also bought some eCloths for myself, and I’m really enjoying them so far.)
  • DIY Doll Diaper Bag for my niece since all dolls need diapers, wipes, and burp cloths to be cared for properly. (This post is also the one in which I reveal Ramona’s incredible modeling talent.)

2. Read.

I only tackled 1 book this month – The Digital Mom Handbook. If you are a blogger, it’s a good read. Here are a few things that struck me:

  • “Women honestly grappling with the balance between being a fully present mom and a women with other passions” – Kristen Howerton
  • On writing hoping that someone reads: “It’s like going to gym day after day trying to get in better shape.”
  • “Your blog is your platform. It’s your home online. You have the ability to do with it anything you like…The canvas you create is your own.”

3. Document my life.

I was supposed to write 1 life post a week. January is a 5 week month, and I’ve written 3. I have 3 things I have written down to write, so I should just write them. This was the same goal that I struggled with all last year. It’s hard when I feel like I write a mini diary on instagram daily. Just a note life posts don’t show up in your RSS feed, but I’ll post them on facebook and twitter with a disclaimer that it’s a life post. Also we are now on vine. If you want to view videos from us, find Wills Casa.


via

4. Monthly Challenge: Unplug.

The challenge was to limit my digital use during specific times/event. (Read more details here.) Of course I wasn’t 100% successful. I am going to continue being semi unplugged. I found that I’m way more productive when I step away from my computer. I know shocking. I’m going to put a timer on to manage my digital breaks to avoid that cycle of checking everything over and over. I am a night person, so I feel like I’ll get just as much accomplished online after Ramona goes to bed as I would otherwise.

I’ll share February’s challenge with you later today. I feel like you’ve read enough for 1 post! Here’s a roundup from Katja for the people who participated in unplugging!

Tagged As , ,

Mini Update to the Formal Living…

Posted by Amber in Formal Living on January 30, 2013  ||  10 Comments

Because I’ve proved yet again that I kill plants, the formal living room got a new addition this weekend.

Michelle asked us to join in a blogsphere paint roundup. Go check it out here and see what colors bloggers are loving in their homes. Awesome right? What wasn’t awesome was this guy.

He’s been on a slow decline. At one point I actually thought he was thriving in our house. Then he got sick. And died. I thought I can’t take a picture for Michelle with a dying plant, so off to Home Depot we went. (Thank you Michelle for making us rid our house of this dying thing.)

Home Depot had Fiddle Fig trees for $15. I have been wanting one since we got the planter, so it worked out perfectly. (Ignore the piles of mess in the garage. I’ve been purging around here but won’t bored you with it.)

We are thinking that the reason 2 plants have died in our Modernica Planter is because of a drainage issue (#shifttheblame). This time around we got some pond pebbles to hopefully alleviate that problem.

Put a little soil buffer before you put your plant in. (Take note of the cute husband’s shoes. Also planting in white tennies probably isn’t a smart play. Yes that is the correct plural of tennis shoes. I googled it.)

Next we put our Fiddle Fig in the planter and covered it with soil making sure to pack it down.

And there you go. A healthy for now Fiddle Fig for our formal living room. Even if it’s the planters fault for killing our plants (99% sure it isn’t), I am obsessed with the Modernica. It’s so simple and beautiful.

Stay tuned to see what gets planted next in about 3-4 months. I kid…but seriously just wait.

Don’t forget to go to Michelle’s to check out paint and get the details on our living room color and why we love it.

 

Tagged As , ,

DIY Doll Diaper Bag Gift

Posted by Amber in Gift, Sewing on January 29, 2013  ||  12 Comments

I challenged myself to put a little handmade into every gift I gave this year. I am 3 gifts into the year and feeling great that January is behind me. I approached this goal thinking I wanted the gifts to be handmade but still substantial. Yes it takes an hour to sew/craft 1 thing, but you can’t just give 1 thing (unless it’s epic in which case it probably took you longer than an hour anyway).

I decided to combine several sewing projects to create a handmade diaper bag for dolls (well the bottles weren’t handmade but whatevs). The gift includes a bag (duh), burp cloth with bottles, diapers, and wipes.

A quick thank you to Ramona for modeling for me. Yes she came up with her own poses.

First the bag tutorial is the child’s messenger bag from One Yard Wonders. I used green denim for the outside and pink polka dot lining. The cut for the strap was supposed to be 30″, but I cut 28″. You can see where it falls on Ramona. (She is about 38″ tall.) Just a few tips when tackling this bag:

The bag is actually deeper than it looks here.

  • Line up the pocket on interior piece with the flap on the exterior piece. Once everything is finished, your pocket will be on back of the interior.
  • Make your 4″ opening to turn the bag ride side out in the front. When you top stitch you won’t have to deal with the opening and the flap.

I also recommend you skipping out on the velcro for the bag. It’s just easier for toddlers to deal with getting things in and out of the bag without the velcro. Also you get to skip that step making it easier on you.

I found this cute tutorial for the diapers and wipes. I think 2 diapers is plenty for a doll – 1 dirty and 1 clean. I used felt for the wipes case, but fleece for the wipes. I cut 5 wipes, and Ramona uses every wipe every time.

We are working on scanning in my template for the diapers so you can download it and skip out on that bummer of a task. I’ll update it here and post on facebook and twitter once we make it happen. The diapers are incredibly easy to make, but creating a template is never fun.

The burp cloth is just a 9×13 scrap of Liberty fabric and fleece. Pin the right sides together leaving a 2″ opening. Sew. Clip corners. Turn fabric right side out. Press. Top stitch. Easy.

Add baby bottles, I got mine at Target. Ramona has these ones from amazon (they make noise too). Now you can feed, burp, and change your doll.

How sweet is this picture? It melts my heart.

Well friends that is how you do make a little girls dream come true and keep your handmade gift goal. The diaper bag was actually for my niece, but Ramona has too. (Of course she does she’s an only child.)

DIY-Doll-Diaper-Bag

Tagged As , , , , ,

Home for Sale, Still (Part 3)…. What do we do now?

Posted by Nick in Side Note on January 28, 2013  ||  12 Comments

Welcome to Part 3 of the series in which we chronicle our journey selling our house.

In Part 1, we talked about getting some bad news on (what we hoped would be) our next home. Part 2, we discussed the reason we think the house hasn’t sold yet. Today, I’m going to lay out what (we think) our options are at this point…. And there are a few.

So starting off, after the other house sold, the big question we had to ask ourselves was “Do we still want to move?” We’ve surprisingly wavered quite a bit on the topic lately. Mainly we hope to have another child soon, Wills Casa Dos only has 3 bedrooms means that my office will get displaced once we need another nursery. I work from home often, and I need a quiet place to get work done. It’s more of a layout issue than anything. The house is just under 3000 sqft, which should be plenty of room for 4 people. It’s comes straight down to the number of bedrooms. We could move the office into the master and still have room for Amber’s craft corner in there, but I’d rather not work where I sleep.

I feel like moving is the logical next step for us still. The problem is that we don’t know where we would move if our sold now. After a lot of late night conversations (which never ended up nearly as romantic as I would have hoped), we basically decided that we have 3 main options at this point:

Downtown Fort Worth ain’t too hard on the eyes. (via)

 1. Wait for something in a neighborhood we like to pop up – This one definitely requires the most patience. The problem is we need our house to be sold, or at least under contract until we feel comfortable making an offer on another. The neighborhoods we like (near downtown Fort Worth) generally sell extremely fast, so we need the ability to strike quickly once another house we love pops up. The problem is the limbo time between our house selling and another one that we love popping up. Who knows how long that could take. It may never happen! (Ok, so that was a bit over dramatic)

Could we build a house like this for around $37k? Stop laughing, I was serious. (via)

2. Buy some land, hire an architect and build something wonderful – This one is really intriguing to me, but is the one that we’ve pursued the least of the three. If we did build, we would probably skew a lot more modern than in any other cases. Clean lines. Walls of windows. You guys know the drill. The problem is that neither of us have any idea of the ballpark cost for us to build something that we’d love. It may not even be a viable option once we get a quote.

 Maybe we’ll just live out of one of these guys for a little while. (via)

 3. Do something crazy – This is where it really starts to get interesting. Amber and I have been throwing tons of ideas into this bucket. All of them exciting, none of them conventional. What if we bought an airstream and just lived in it for a year and traveled around the country? Took an old barn and converted it into a place for us to live (a la Sarah’s House)? Move somewhere completely different for a couple of years (probably not that crazy for most, but most of our family is here and we have no real reason to move other than being spontaneous)? Or something crazier? All of these sound like a lot of fun. All of them are a little crazy. We’re still pretty young (I’m 27. Amber’s 28.) and if we were to do something like this, now would be the time.

So stepping back from the situation and evaluating our list of options as best I can, my answer to the earlier postured question “Where do we go from here?” would be a simple shoulder shrug and a mumbled “uh…not sure.” And I think I’m okay with that.

The first order of business is getting our house sold. After that, we’ll look at all the research we’ve done on these options (it will probably be a ton by them) and figure out what works best and makes us the most happy. I’m not going to lie, operating without a plan is a bit frightening, but it’s also extremely exciting. It feels like we’re at a fork in the road with no wrong paths. We’ll just have to see where this thing takes us.

Tagged As , ,

Giveaway Winner: $50 West Elm Gift Card

Posted by Amber in Uncategorized on January 23, 2013  ||  5 Comments

First thanks to everyone who entered and supported us this year while we figured out this whole blog thing. You probably didn’t even read that because you’re already scanning to see if you won, but seriously we love you.

And the winner is…

Comment #64

You may be a stalker, but it also won you a gift card. Probably worth it then.

 

There are no tags for this post

Home for Sale…Why (Part 2)

Posted by Amber in Side Note on January 22, 2013  ||  12 Comments

As promised we are going to delve into why the Wills Casa is still on the market. Obviously the winter months are slower for real estate in general. Thanks Christmas. However North Texas real estate is pretty hopping, so even with it being slow it isn’t dead. I’ll relay the main reasons why we are still on the market based on all our showing feedback.


via

1. Busy Street.

We don’t live off a 4 lane main road or anything, but our street is slightly busier than a typical residential area. It has had relatively no effect on us for 4 years, so it isn’t a big deal to us. However it is a big deal for buyers, but it’s something we can’t change.

Our neighborhood is very quiet (and very old which we like). A buyer will eventually realize this.

2. The backyard.

I cringe when I see this comment. My backyard is not small. It’s a weird shape thanks to the lot. Plus we have a pool, so there isn’t a ton of grass (enough for 2 labs though so we are doing alright). Again there is nothing we can do to change the size of the backyard. However we could make it look more appealing. It is definitely a backyard for parties, but it doesn’t read that way now.

This is half of the backyard when you walk out the back door. The grass is past the pool and along the side of the house.

The privacy of the backyard has come up as a concern too. We live on a golf course. Not all of the backyard sits on the course which give you more privacy than you would expect from a golf course lot. We are on a tee box, so we don’t even have to worry about people pegging the house with balls. This is the view over our back gate. Yes we just go out our backyard to walk the course at night. It is probably going to be the thing I miss most once we sell (that and my floors) which is why I’m stunned that this would be an issue with people.

 

3. Master bath.

Surprisingly only 3 people commented that the master needs to be updated. It isn’t quite as terrible as it shows in this picture, but it isn’t pretty. It’s huge though (again doesn’t look like it in the picture but trust me). Most of the homes in our area are plagued with ugly master bath problems too. We priced it accordingly.

50% said we are priced right. 50% said we are somewhat overpriced – and most of those said they were also considering the property. We have had a buyer say they wanted to make a contingency offer. Basically once they sell their house, they move forward with the purchase of ours. We will get back to y’all on how that plays out. Nothing is official.

Obviously we can’t leave our dogs at home during showings because people need to see the backyard/pool/golf course. Our neighbor told us we were welcome to put Faith and Sara in his yard for showings. Only problem is the dogs can see our yard from his. When the people came out to look at the backyard, the dogs went nuts, managed to get back into our yard, and chase the people down.

Can you imagine how terrified those people were? I can’t help but laugh. Sorry buyers. Their feedback was “don’t like the neighbor’s dogs.” Our realtor called and explained those were not the neighbor’s dogs, but the damage had already been done. Our girls are sweet, but don’t mess with their backyard.

Tagged As ,

Home For Sale…. Uh, still (Part 1)

Posted by Nick in Side Note on January 21, 2013  ||  11 Comments

I was hoping that by the time I got around to updating you on the status of selling Wills Casa (Dos), we would be announcing that it is under contract and that we have made an offer on the house that we’ve been eyeing for about 6 months.  Unfortunately that’s not the case. The whole selling process isn’t going exactly how I envisioned. I also don’t have a six pack nor a pet zebra, so I’m fairly use to the visions for my life not coming to fruition.

This is where the story takes another wrong turn. The house that we had already moved into in our heads (a dangerous game of counting the chickens before they hatch, we admit) has accepted an offer and has moved into “PENDING” status waiting to close. This news was met with shrieks towards the sky, questioning God in a Job-like “Why hast thou forsaken Wills Casa?” The night we found out was filled with smeared mascara tears and a whole tub of Blue Bell eaten with the emotional vigor of a spurned lover. Amber was pretty upset too.

After we got that out of our system, the only thing we could do was try and plan our next step. There were some long, late night discussions in which we talked through all the various scenarios we had in front of us. We needed to decide if we still wanted to sell or if we should pull the house off the market and wait for another house we love to appear. It didn’t seem that farfetched since we fell in love with about 3 houses in 2012. In the end, we decided that the best thing was to stay the course. We want to be able to strike quick when something opens up, so getting our house so is the best plan for us.

I think that with the selling of our house taking longer than we envisioned, we had started to emotionally detach ourselves from the other house. As the weeks turned to months, the realization set in that we probably wouldn’t be able to purchase it. After a 3rd time touring it (during a recent open house) it had lost some of its luster as well. The warts were definitely protruding more heavily than any other visit and the magnitude of time and money that would be required to get it where we wanted began to weigh on us. So it selling, in some way, has been a bit of a blessing. Amber Edit: Unless it comes back on the market, then we are all over it again.

In Part 2 of this post, we’re going to look at why our house hasn’t sold yet. And in Part 3 we’re going to discuss where we go from here. Stay tuned as we continue to give you more information on our real estate journey than you care to know. Until then…

Tagged As , ,