OUR HOME // living room progress

Back in July I painted half the living room white.  I was tired of the beige and wanted something fresh and crisp.  At the time, though I knew I wanted to paint my big wall something fun, so instead of taking the time to paint it white, I left it beige and proceeded to ruminate on what color I should paint it for months... and months.  I knew that I wanted something that would compliment the chartreuse in the kitchen because you see that wall through the doorway, so I didn't want a clashy color.  After some thought I ended up just going for another chalkboard wall.  After I painted that wall I realized that the majority of the walls in our house are black.  The exterior is black, living room wall, kitchen wall, most of the bedroom, and the wall in the bathroom is off-black.  I guess I just really like black walls.  I'm really in love with it though.  We also rearranged the living room a smidge.  I think I like

the other layout better

, but it's nice to switch things around and this is the layout we picked when we moved things around to fit our Christmas tree in the corner (where the black cabinet is now).  I'll probably move things around again in a couple months.

I took down the bunting that had been up for about a year.  I'd put it up for our housewarming party and just never took it down.  I loved it but I wanted to see what it looked like without it and I like it just fine.  It was fun, but I think it makes the room feel a bit taller without it.

One of my other favorite changes is the turquoise door.  When I painted the wall white, the door kind of just disappeared and it felt very stark and plain.  The other side of the door is orange, so I figured it needed an alter ego equally as bold.  We have quite a few turquoise elements in the room, and I love the color in general, so it was the perfect choice.  The nice thing about painting a door is that it's a super minimal investment (all you need is one or two coats, and you'll only need one of those tiny sample sizes from home depot, which is like 3 bucks I think), and it gives you a big impact.  

The wall next to the door always felt really empty to me, but it was an awkward place to hang any art, and when I found

these little diamond wall hangings

at Modcloth I knew they'd be just the thing to fill the space and add interest, while still keeping things light.  The cool thing about them is that you can snap them together to make them into full diamonds that you can hang or put on a table as a little sculpture piece.  I put up three halves on the wall and snapped one together to put on the table by the hanging plants.

Another favorite improvement is the plant life.  We used to have a palm in the corner where the hanging plants are now and I killed it.  I killed it dead.  When I found the macrame hangers at the thrift store I knew exactly where I wanted them to go, but I also knew it would involve keeping living plants alive.  So far so good!  I love how they fill up that corner and add height and dimension.  

I'm currently in the process of building a rolling island for our kitchen and it's going where this black cabinet used to be.  I figured moving the bar to the living room made plenty of sense and I love it against the black wall (though it was against a chalkboard wall in the kitchen too).

I tried to link to most everything, especially new elements, below, but I probably missed some stuff, so let me know if I didn't mention something and you want to know where it's from.  A lot of stuff is old or thrifted or handmade.

couch + pillows + side tables/ikea :: lamps + bar cabinet/target ::

phrenology container

+

diamond sculpture

-wall hangings/courtesy of

modcloth

:: coffee table/

diy

:: macrame plant hangers + chairs + globes + booze caddy/thrifted

we laugh at danger and break all the rules

Dan and I headed up to Seattle last night to go to the Against Me! show at the Neptune theater and I brought my camera along with my 90mm lens to sneak a few shots of the band before I hopped in the pit to scream my lungs out.  Against Me! is definitely the best live band I've ever seen, but I think I might be getting too old to rock out in the mosh pit, though, I woke up with pretty much every muscle in my body aching.   We got there a few minutes early and grabbed a couple drinks at the bar across the street.  I surprised Dan with VIP tickets that got us premier seating and special access to the bar, which ended up being super nice.  We sat next to some guys who were also from Tacoma, so it was fun chatting with them during the opening bands.   After the show we were wiped out and starving so we drove to Dicks and got two burgers, two fries, and a strawberry shake to revive ourselves for the drive home.  There's nothing like scarfing down fast food and unwinding after an awesome rock show.

the last great race

Growing up in Anchorage, the Iditarod was a big event every year.  We'd go downtown and watch the ceremonial start on 4th Ave, packed behind the fences cheering on mushers.  One year my dad's coworker mushed in the race and my Dad was a dog handler for his team so we got to hang out behind the scenes and went out to Willow for the restart.  When I was seven, my Dad and I had a hair-brained idea to serve the mushers espresso on the trail.  My parents had gotten into espresso in the mid-90s and bought an espresso machine to make coffee at home, and somehow we thought it would be fun to serve fancy espresso out on the most rugged of arctic races.  We picked Finger Lake as the checkpoint where we'd set up.  As the race progresses the mushers get more spread out, so picking a checkpoint early in the race meant that we'd get to offer all the mushers our services without having to be there for a week.  We had to have a clever "business" name (though we weren't charging any money to the mushers, and any tourists who wanted coffee paid on a donation basis), so we decided to call ourselves "Airborne Espresso" which was a riff of the air cargo airline, Airborne Express.  We thought it was pretty damn clever, but Airborne Express did not and forced us to change our name after the first year, so the subsequent years we went by "Idita-espresso."  Not quite as clever, but it did the job.

We flew out there to set up the day before mushers started arriving, pitched our tent, pulled all the espresso equipment and generator out of the plane, put up the table where we'd be slinging 'spro, and settled in for the night.  It'd frequently dip well below zero, so my dad had built an insulated box to surround the espresso machine so it could keep the water hot enough in the tank.  We lit up the kerosene stove in the tent and heated ourselves some beanie-weenies for dinner before settling in to sleep.  Depending on how fast the mushers were running some would get in to the checkpoint in the wee hours of the morning, so my Dad tracked the front runners and woke up early to catch the first mushers in.  I, on the other hand, have always been a night owl and a sleeper-in, so I usually missed the first few and dragged myself out of my sleeping bag much later.

After our first year, we learned that most mushers preferred hot chocolate, but were pretty flabbergasted at our offer of a vanilla latte or mocha.  Tourists, on the other hand, were huge fans of our fancy coffee, which was still a relatively new thing as the Starbucks craze hadn't quite taken hold just yet.  We were interviewed by the Anchorage Daily News and were on a few news stations.  Apparently a dad and daughter selling fancy espresso in the middle of the Alaskan wilderness wasn't too common.

We did this for a few years and it's still one of my favorite memories from childhood.  I was hoping to get out to Finger Lake again when I was up in Alaska for the Iditarod this year, but I wasn't able to swing it.  Maybe Dad and I can bring back Airborne Espresso now that Airborne Express doesn't exist anymore.  It sure would be fun to do it again, and there are still some mushers running that ran 20 years ago when we first started our crazy idita-espresso scheme.  And hey!  Now I can totally barista.  Back in the day I was on coffee delivery duty and my dad was the barista.  Maybe someday.






So many memories flashed back to me while shooting the teams whooshing past, through the trees.  I sat next to kids with dog booties clutched close, sacred treasures, watching teams go by and cheering on their favorite mushers.  They'd yell, "booties!" and the musher would toss a few booties their way, like candy from a parade float.  I realized that I still have my dog bootie treasures from when I was a kid, and I found them, squirreled away in storage, later that week.  Precious Iditarod memories forever preserved.  It was so special to see a whole new generation of kids experiencing the thrill of watching dog teams whizz by, a thousand miles to go.  Maybe someday I'll get to bring my kids to the Iditarod and they can start their own collection of dog booties.

those anarcho punks are mysterious

Tomorrow Dan and I are headed to an Against Me! show and as I walked Dusty yesterday I was reminiscing about the last time we went to an Against Me! show together back in 2007.  For a second I thought that my math had to be wrong.  It couldn't have been seven years since then, but yes, 7+7=14.  Seven years ago we met up in Seattle to see Against Me!  20-year-old versions of us.  Dan with his scruffy hair and me with my rainbow streak.  He was my best friend and I was hopelessly in love with him.  We were both still in the process of becoming the people who'd eventually promise their lives to one another.  It would be three years before we found ourselves gravitating towards one another, thousands of miles apart, talking on the phone, texting, and facebooking.  It's a little bizarre to me to think that we've already been in one another's lives for almost 9 years.  Has it really been that long?  From the moment I met Dan he's been one of my favorite humans and I can't begin to express how thankful I am that I get to share my life with him.

It's fun getting to see a band that so permeated the beginning of our friendship.  Dan was the one who introduced me to Against Me! and hearing those old albums takes me right back to freshman year of college.  Against Me! has changed over the years and so have we, but I'm so excited that we get to go see them again.  And this time I can totally make out with Dan after the show.

choosing to leap

I've been becoming more and more of a neo-hippie over the last few years and I think it might be manifesting in my clothing choices now.  One of my favorite things about personal style is that it's constantly changing with me.  I think a lot of people think that fashion is serious, but for me clothing is almost always a way for me to play.  Playing with shapes, proportions, patterns, colors.  Playing with how I feel that day, how it wants to manifest in what I put on my body to express those feelings.   I've been thinking a lot about where I want to go next, not necessarily physically because even though I'd love nothing more than to hop back in the Winne and drive into the sunset, we've built a little homestead here and at least for now I've planted some roots.  I feel like the last big passion project I embarked on was my Winne trip, though.  I've been bobbing around, trying this and that, but never diving into anything headfirst with reckless abandon.  In many ways I feel like I'm probably afraid of failing, but I also don't know if I've felt the same draw to anything else like I did with the Brave trip.  What do I jump into next?  I've been standing on the edge of the cliff seeing different places to leap, but never feeling certain enough, or brave enough to close my eyes let my toes release from the precipice.  What's next?  I walk up to a cliff, look out into its void, and I can't decide if it's a void I want to commit to, and wander off to the next cliff to see if it stirs some passion in my soul.  
I'm afraid that I'll spend the rest of my life wandering from cliff to cliff, never releasing into the unknown.  I'm afraid that I'll leap off a cliff, thinking it will suit me, only to find out halfway down that I'd really had rather not leapt.  


top/vintage :: pants/courtesy of modcloth :: hat/courtesy of tittle millinery necklaces/courtesy of adorn by sarah lewis + via craft fair