the third and final part of our tour of homes series covers our kitchen and back deck. we’ve done a lot of work on our kitchen over the last year. we tiled our kitchen floor, added a backsplash, repainted, recovered our kitchen chairs, and added new roman shades to the windows. we plan on doing posts on our renovations, so we won’t get into too many details on the upgrades right now.

again, all of the photos were taken by our friend miguel martinez!

– ryan & gub

we are very excited to be a part of the kirkwood tour of homes! our home is one of only eight houses on the tour, so we feel honored to be asked to participate. the tour is part of the 8th annual kirkwood spring fling, which is going on this weekend in historic kirkwood. the festival also features a 5k race on saturday morning and an open air artist market with a ton of vendors, good eats, and live bands. admission to the festival is free from 10am-7pm on saturday at bessie branham park. tickets for the kirkwood tour of homes can be purchased at the festival or at local kirkwood businesses.

after the festival we hope post regularly again, we’ve spent all of our free time fixing up the house.

– ryan & gub

kirkwood spring fling
2051 delano drive ne
atlanta, georgia 30317

tour of homes
saturday, may 15th, 2010
sunday, may 16th, 2010
from 12pm until 6pm

5k race
saturday, may 15th, 2010
starts at 9am

artist market
saturday, May 15th, 2010
from 10am until 7pm

we have been going to a family friend’s beach cottage at holden beach, nc since 1997. it is definitely one of our favorite places to visit! the cottage has belonged to our friend’s family for several generations. it still has a lot of the rustic antiques from when it was originally furnished. it is such a cozy, quiet little place. we love it; especially in off season.

ry and I were lucky enough to celebrate mom and jim’s 25th wedding anniversary at the cottage the first week of april. we enjoyed an amazing week of lounging, reading, cooking, eating seafood & goofing off at the beach. ryan even got a kite and some new sunglasses. yay!

holden beach is located midway between wilmington, nc and myrtle beach, sc — about 40 minutes from each. the town is situated on an atlantic coastal barrier island, facing south onto the long bay region of brunswick county.

holden beach also has an amazing turtle watch program. the site has a story about conjoined twin loggerheads hatching there in 2009!

check out the holden beach town hall web site!

– ryan & gub

we went to a really great fabric store in atlanta yesterday called whipstitch. it just opened on the west side near octane coffee. it’s billed as atlanta’s only in-town sewing lounge and offers amazing fabrics, sewing supplies, books, and all types of classes from beginner to advanced.

we’re very excited about a hip in-town fabric store with a great selection of designs you can check out in person! no more looking at small pictures on reprodepot or etsy to decide if a fabric or its color will work. plus no shipping fees!

we’ve been wanting to recover our kitchen chairs for a while but haven’t found the right fabric. the selection at whipstitch is fabulous though and it didn’t take us long to find what we were looking for.

– ryan & gub

whipstitch

1000 marietta st, suite 102
atlanta, ga 30318
404.897.1114
info@whipstitchfabrics.com

we recently tilled our garden! we rented a tiller from home depot for 4 hours, which was super easy, and got our backyard ready for spring planting. our garden plans are moving along and we hope to finish planting this week.

we realized our backyard was full of tons of random debris while tilling. we found rusty nails, roofing tiles, concrete, bricks, tools, and lots of other junk.

– ryan & gub

gub and i were able to get away for a few days and went to holden beach, nc. we took an afternoon and visited a few nearby lighthouses, which was a blast!. first we went to oak island lighthouse on caswell beach and then took a ferry to bald head island to explore old baldy lighthouse. the ferry departed from this cute little town called southport, nc, where a bunch of dawson’s creek episodes were filmed. the whole area had a new england feel, especially caswell beach and southport.

you could see what’s left of price’s creek lighthouse from the ferry ride, although that’s as close as we can could get. we weren’t able to see the inside of oak island lighthouse either, it required reservations, but we were able to climb to the top of old baldy lighthouse for a great view of bald head island!

we were very excited to learn bald head island and old baldy lighthouse were used for the beach scenes in weekend at bernies! we have since re-watched and confirmed that the beach scenes were in fact filmed there.

– ryan & gub

we celebrated easter by spending a fun morning drinking coffee and dyeing easter eggs in our new yellow kitchen. there will be a blog post on the kitchen re-do later, but here are the steps we took to create our colorful and recyclable eggs:

– hard boil eggs
– set up easter egg dye kit (we used a cheap grocery store paas kit)
– add stencils and resists to the eggs*
– stir dye bath and carefully place egg in the dye
– leave egg in the dye for 5 to 10 minutes (lighter colors take longer)
– remove from dye and remove stencil or resist
– place eggs in basket or nest (we used shredded paper scraps for our grass!)

*we created leaf stencils by picking small leaves from our yard and placing them on the egg. we then tightly wrapped panty hose around the egg and secured with a rubber band. small, thin leaves with few veins work best for the stencils. we also used electrical tape to add stripes and lines to the eggs.

yay easter!

deviled eggs for dinner!

– ryan & gub

spring is finally here! we’re excited about the warm weather and spring blooms. here are some photos of the japanese magnolia in our front lawn. it was a valentine’s day gift from gub a few years ago.

– ryan & gub

today is the 6th anniversary of our first date! how time flies. to celebrate, here is a time-lapse of our wedding ceremony up in the georgia mountains!

– ryan & gub

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last december we went to our friends doug & lizzy’s wedding in florida. it was a nice celebration with our good friends. doug is currently studying organic farming in england and lizzy recently graduated from edinburgh college of art. so sadly, we rarely see them these days. at their wedding, we enjoyed meeting a lot of their great friends from england, scotland, ireland, and germany.

many of the edinburgh folks either worked for or played in bands at the wee red bar, which is the bar/club on the grounds of the edinburgh college of art. my brother and i worked for the club downunder, the campus bar/club at florida state university, so it was interesting to hear about the scottish equivalent. the wee red bar has been open for 20 years and is a happening venue in edinburgh. they feature both local bands and national acts, art brut and green day have played there.

the wee red bar recently put out a dvd called the art school dance. it was filmed over two days during edinburgh college of art’s centenary year and features twenty live performances by students, graduates and friends of edinburgh college of art. both the dvd and its packaging are really great, be sure to check out the trailer below.

– ryan & gub

wee red bar

edinburgh college of art
lauriston place
edinburgh EH3 9DF
united kingdom
+44 131 229 1003