A Temporary Move

Today we are moving from our loft apartment to a little rental house in a nearby historic neighborhood.  We hate to leave downtown, but we will be back... soon, I hope.  In fact, this move is the repercussion of our trying to buy a space downtown to turn into a live/work -- Unit A.

It boasted 14' ceilings, fantastic brick walls, and a ton of well-detailed windows to the sidewalk. So sure it would work out, we decided to go ahead and put in our sixty day notice to end our apartment's lease.  I even did some architectural photography of our apartment for the owner to aid them in finding a buyer. Our plans for Unit A were thwarted, however, when the owner decided to increase their asking price by fifty grand.  It was a fun design project, nevertheless, and eventually it could work out.  Here are some drawings of how we would have turned Unit A into a tight 2 bedroom condo with a small retail space to the street (the kids would even have a lofted play space):

After Unit A fell through, we had to find another place to live while we await the right opportunity to arise downtown.  Brooke quickly found a small, cute square house in Cloverdale, still biking distance from work and walking distance from some restaurants and shops.  Better yet, it has lower rent, no lease requirement, and no deposit.  I'm hoping this is part of God's plan for us to find our place in downtown, but I am trying to be patient.  In the meantime, I am really going to miss our casual family walks to 2Cities church, the Riverfront, the Biscuits baseball stadium, and all of the fountains around downtown.

Recent Work: Part 4... cupcakes

I had the pleasure of making baby shower invites for our friend Ashley, who happens to be our go-to gal for fabulous cupcakes.  So referencing pictures from some she made for Olive's birthday party, I illustrated them in the style you would find in children's books from the 60's; that is, line drawings in ink imperfectly filled with harvest gold, rosey pink, minty green, and the like.

Also, I decided this time to take advantage of the back of the card with a busier pattern, also drawn and colored in the same manner.



The Square House

It's official. We're moving to a little house not too far away. The feelings about the move are bittersweet. We have loved living here. It has been a fantastic experience- one that we hope to come back to as soon as possible. We're just waiting for the right building to open up! In the mean time we found a cute house to rent. It has a lot of great things about it, but one of our favorites is what will be Noah's room:

It has these awesome built in bookshelves and the walls are the original wood slats painted white. So dreamy.

Recent Work: Part 3

I've completed a prototype for a new mobile.  I am pretty satisfied with it but still unsure if I want to offer it on the shop or not.  The main issue is the metal wire.  The mobile I currently offer is light enough that floral wire does the trick, but for this one I had to resort to piano wire... which is pretty difficult to bend into a smooth curve.  I finally made a jig out of a washer and random metal fastener I found in my toolbox to keep the loops consistent.

The main objective with this little experiment was to balance objects of equal size in a dynamic and seemingly precarious composition in space.  It would definitely be more successful with more pieces, consequently with more chances for long cantilevers.  Maybe sometime I'll get around to expanding on it.

Olive's First Birthday

Our baby girl turned one a couple of weeks ago! We had a fun, quaint little party for her here at our place. We are so thankful for her sweet little life.

Nick made the invites and party hats, I sewed the bib, and my grandmother knitted Olive's top. The awesome mini strawberry cupcakes were made by a very sweet and talented friend, Ashley.

Recent Work: Part 2

A while back, Brooke put together a wedding shower at our place for a couple friends of ours... so I had fun with the invites. Pretty simple; I mainly played with mixing typically formal typefaces in a playful way that would match this fun yet tasteful couple... and then, of course, I threw in some ring-bling for Mallory.

At one point during their wedding reception, Brooke came to me panicking because she couldn't find Noah. We found him in a room, workin' it in front of the camera with the bride and groom... typical:

Recent Work: Part 1

I have been meaning to post some little projects I've done these last few months. I'm so far behind on that that I now have enough to post it as a short series; so here's part one.

The program: book storage (high-parent's, low-children's), object display, and workspace for Noah. Atop of that was my desire to play around more with metal rods that I had begun working with in my Interior Architecture thesis project.  So I got some off-the-shelf brackets that I painted to match the wall, two depths of poplar and a block of aspen that I finished with linseed oil, and metal rods I bent into two different types of bookends.

Noah has definitely made good use of his desk. It is so sweet to see him sitting at his chair concentrating on his own art.

Family Pictures

A couple of weeks ago we had our first ever professional family pictures taken by the lovely Little Acorn Photography. You can go here to view the pictures. I am so happy with how they turned out. It's going to be difficult deciding which ones to order...I want them all!

I am so happy we decided to have these pictures taken. They did such a great job of documenting us as a family. I will cherish these pictures forever!

By the way, if anyone needs pictures taken you should definitely check them out. They are very reasonable, but more importantly they do a fantastic job!

Stockings Made With Love

This year we decided to make stockings for Noah and Olive. Since this is Olive's first Christmas she didn't yet have a stocking, and Noah, up until now, has had a miniature stocking. So, we thought it would be a special thing for them to have stockings handmade by their mom and dad. Hopefully something they'll cherish as they get older.

Noah's is made with a grey herringbone-type material on the outside and a fun Christmas-y plaid on the inside that folds over the top. We liked the fabric combination because it is masculine and something that will grow with him. Olive's is made with linen for the outside and a fun red and white gingham on the inside. We also did a cute applique on hers with a mustard felt. Nick designed the pattern of leaves and berries for the applique and I stitched the branches with grey thread. Her's too will be one that can grow with her. I'm thinking about hand-stitching their names somewhere on the stockings. I just haven't figured out where yet.

Fun Thrift Store Find

Last Friday I found this chair sitting outside at a local thrift store. It caught my attention right away. I knew we had to get it when I saw the price tag said ten bucks! It's in pretty good shape; the only noticeable wear on it is on the edge of the arms. It had a skirt around the bottom of it that Nick ripped off to expose the pretty wood legs underneath.

Inspiration for an Upcoming Birthday

Our little girl's first birthday is just a couple short months away, and with Thanksgiving and Christmas in between I know we are going to be busy! So, I've begun planning it already. This post is really more for me to put my ideas down on paper...er, the screen, but you know what I mean.

So, here goes. For colors I really like orange, pink, and teal. I found this adorable felt garland on etsy and think I'm going to make one myself.

I also love the pink and orange rock candy and the ribbon tied on the cake plate in this cute display.

I've asked my grandmother if she could knit a replica of this oh so cute cardigan. I think it would be perfect for Olive to wear with a long sleeved onesie and some leggings underneath!

I adore these tissue poms (and I already have some in our house in different colors), but I'm just wondering if they would be too much since we'll already have the garland.

I'm thinking these invitations would be too cute!...or at least something similar that Nick could come up with.

I love the patterns on these pinwheels.
We'll just have to see how it all comes together!

What a Hoot

We made this little guy for a sweet friend's baby shower. And now I want to make the kids each one for Christmas...and then maybe start selling them in the shop. He was so much fun to make and super easy too. And a really good use for scrap fabric.

Hope everyone's having a fun, sugar filled weekend. I'll give you a hint about what the kids are going to be dressed as for our church party tomorrow night...characters from a Grimm's fairytale. I'm kind of excited about it. Now we just have to finish their costumes!

Fun at the Fair

We went to the Alabama National Fair a few nights ago. It was the kids' first time going to a fair, and they had so much fun! We all rode the ferris wheel together and some other rides, watched a horse and a wolf show, walked through the petting zoo, and watched the circus performance-which was great! This fair was the best one I've ever been to. I was very impressed.

Nick and I had fun reminiscing about going to the fair when we were kids, and it's fun that we got to experience it with our own children!

A Sister and a Brother

These are pictures of Olive and Noah both at eight and a half months old. Can you tell they're brother and sister?

New in the Shop

We have recently added fabric scrap bundles to our shop. I saved every bit of scrap fabric for the last two and a half years in hopes that I would find some use for them. I have buckets full and have not done anything with them. So, I thought we could try to sell scrap bundles of coordinating fabric in our shop. It's a nice little bundle- the sizes of fabric are all different, but there's enough in the bundle to do some applique or some nice small scale patchwork quilting, or to even make some home made hair ties...the possibilities are endless. The best part is the bundles are only four dollars, and they come in a cute little cellophane bag all packaged up and ready to ship!

Practice Makes Perfect

I bought myself a little present at the store the other day...a cupcake decorating kit. It came with four different icing tips and eight disposable icing bags. I don't even know if I'm using the correct terminology, but hey, I'm new at this.

I've been starting to think about what I want to do for Olive's first birthday party. I know it's still more than three months away, but I like to start planning early. I had a lot of fun making Noah's birthday cake, so I decided that I want to make cupcakes for Olive's first birthday. And, I want them to be cute! I gave it a trial run for my ladies' Bible study, and this is how they turned out. Remember, this was my very first attempt!

I know I'm going to have to practice some more, but I guess it's a good excuse to make cupcakes!

Live/Work

Nick and I have always wanted to have a live/work space. It would be fantastic to be able to have our shop in the bottom floor with some great store front windows and then just walk upstairs to our living space. Well, we've been looking around downtown since we moved here trying to find a building that we could do this in and have been dreaming ever since. Here's a few pictures of some of the buildings.

We looked inside the second one today, and it was amazing. Nick and I couldn't stop talking about the possibilities for this building. It also has a gorgeous courtyard in the back and some amazing sky lights. We'll see...

A Beachy Birthday Cake

For Noah's third birthday this year I decided to make his birthday cake. I have always admired the way my Nana always made her children's birthday cakes- and they were always super cute and creative. I found my inspiration cake (because there's no way I would have come up with this myself) in a Parent's magazine. It was in a Luau party guide- perfect since we were having his birthday party at the Splash Pad. Here's how it turned out. It's obviously not perfect, but I was happy with it!

And, here's how I made it:

1. Make a cake! I used a box mix, duh! Separate the batter into two round cake pans and a small oven safe bowl (for the island). Let cakes cool completely before icing.

2. For the icing, again I used store bought icing because it made my life that much easier. Tint about 2/3 of the icing aqua blue, and the rest divide and tint into colors of your choice (for the swimsuits on the bears and the piping on the huts).

3. Once the cakes are cool, ice the first layer, then put the second one on top and ice that one. For the island you can ice with white icing or tint it to match the brown sugar. Sprinkle the iced island generously with brown sugar to look like sand. Note* The instructions said to use crushed shortbread cookies, but I forgot to buy those, so I improvised and used brown sugar.

4. Place the island on top of the cake and use remaining blue icing to make "waves" on the edge of the island. This helps blend the island in with the rest of the cake.

5. Decorate the cake! You can use colorful icing to put little swimsuits on the teddy grahams. For the huts, stick starburst candies together in the shape of a hut, and for the roof, use mini shreaded wheat cereal and finish with piped icing. Use peach rings for floats, swedish fish for fish, round peppermints for a beach ball, and jelly beans and nerds for the under water rocks along the bottom of the cake. I used green twizzlers and cut them into the shape of sea plants for the bottom of the cake as well.

This is a really fun cake to make with your kids. Noah had a blast helping me make it/eating all the candy while helping me make it. The only downside to it is you're left with all that extra candy...

Three Years Old

Today my little boy turns three years old. Wow. On the anniversary of his birth I think back to the day that my whole world changed and I became a mommy.

I am so thankful to God for you, my sweet Noah. You are such a blessing, and I pray every day that your life will be filled with good things, that you will love God and serve Him, and that you will grow into a strong, upright, kind, gentle, encouraging, loving person. Mommy and Daddy love you with all our hearts.

At the Lake

We had a wonderful time at the lake relaxing, boating, swimming, skiing, tubing, kayaking, playing games, singing songs, and catching up with family. The kiddos did great traveling- two plane rides to get there plus four hours of driving. Be on the look out for a future post about tips for traveling with two children under the age of three.

I always have so much fun with this side of my family. They are so full of energy, life, and creativity.

There's always fun to be had at the Lake!