Photo of the Month: May

Congrats Dave and Casey! We are so happy for you!

Sometimes the good news is that you’re an idiot

I always get on Drew’s case when he makes a comment about “women drivers.” Now I will never live this down…

I left work today and headed towards Christiansburg to pick up a few things for our trip this weekend. Just as I was about to exit the bypass my check engine light started flashing.

Noooooooooooooooo! This is it. My car is finished. The mechanic warned me last time that if that light starts flashing it’s bad news. I am about to witness the death of my little red Jetta. It’s old and cantankerous and on its last leg.

But I love it so!!

My stomach sank. Nothing happened when I pressed the accelerator and I slowly and sadly rolled to a stop on the side of the exit ramp. The engine died. It wouldn’t start. And we just put all that money into Drew’s car. Nooooo! Sigh.

I called my dad who loves me a lot. He said he’d come get me. I called the mechanic to see if the wrecker was available. It wasn’t. Great. Just my luck.  He gave me another number to call, but I decided to wait for Dad to get there. Maybe we would be able to push it off the exit ramp and into a parking lot somewhere.

I sat. I waited. An RV that seemed to be having problems was stopped in front of me on the exit ramp. Weird. I watched the guys who were working on it finish what they were doing and, like true gentlemen, back their truck up to where I was sitting. The driver got out and I rolled down my window and told him what happened. It took him about two seconds to diagnose the problem.

“Is there gas in it?”

“Um, I’m pretty sure I have half a tank.”

“Crank it.”

I did as I was told while my mind worked furiously, trying to remember the last time I actually looked at the gas gauge. I couldn’t. The needle didn’t budge up from the red line. There wasn’t even a tremor.  Really!? I  tried again. Nothing. Oh my gosh. Please tell me this isn’t happening.

“Does your gas gauge work?”

“Um……….yes.”

“It’s out of gas. I’ll see if I have some with me.”

Then it hit me. In full force it hit me…I am “that girl”. You know who I mean. That dumb blond(ish) girl who knows NOTHING about her car and seems to lack all ability to apply rational thought to problematic situations.  Not only did I run out of gas on the interstate, but it didn’t even occur to me AT ALL that this may have been the issue. WHAT is this guy thinking right now!? Oh geez…I just called for a wrecker! A WRECKER!

I had to work hard to hold back the hysterical laughter. YAY! My car isn’t going to die! I’m just dumb!! Soooo dumb!!

He didn’t have any gas, but just then my dad pulled up and we got everything sorted out. (I should mention here that my dad’s impression of Homer Simpson’s “D’OH!” is a dead ringer.)

Whlep. Put this in the “things we look back on and laugh” category. Excuse me a minute while I scrape my pride up off the asphalt.

The worst part about the whole thing was my complete and total obliviousness. I have never run out of gas before. Ok…maaaaaaaaybe I’ve coasted into a gas station or two in my day, but in those situations I always knew that I was in trouble. This time it didn’t even register.

Zip. Zilch. Nada. Nothing on the radar there.

Does that scare the bejeebers out of me? Let’s just say I’ll be obsessively triple checking things for weeks…

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Afterward I thanked God that the wrecker was unavailable. I can only imagine THAT conversation…

Black Dog Salvage: the overwhelming warehouse of awesomeness (and other things)

STOP THE PRESSES!! I now know what I want to do with my life. Probably. I might also like to be Jack Johnson. Or Antoni Gaudi (only not dead).

Salvage! How I’ve managed to live in this area for so long unaware that a salvage shop of this caliber existed is baffling to me. Black Dog Salvage is located in the Grandin area of Roanoke and, folks, this place is huge! They have all kinds of scrap material. I was practically giddy when I discovered the stacks of tin tile and a room FULL of old doors. I love tin tile! And old doors. Old doors are great. I also found a pair of two giant metal giraffes that I knew I must have! Drew said no, but believe me, they were amazing.

In addition to raw materials they also sell custom made pieces (little too pricey for us poor twenty-somethings, but beautiful!) and display/sell great work from other vendors in the warehouse.

Bottom line: if you’re looking material for your next project or just a little inspiration this place is well worth the visit.

You can check out their website here, and their blog is great.

And if you get hungry you can find The Isaacs Mediterranean Restaurant just around the corner. Delicious!

Last but not least, one of our favorite spots a little closer to home is The Upscale Attic consignment shop in Christiansburg. Here they buy and sell great stuff. They also keep a contact list of people who are looking for specific pieces in case you want something they don’t have at the moment. Prices vary, but they drop the longer a piece has been in the store.

Sorry no pictures. I forgot to take my camera. Shame on me.

Projects update: Part 1

For some reason when I woke up this morning the fact that I’m behind on things here hit me smack across the face, and I thought it necessary to scramble around the house and take pictures of everything.

So without further ado,  here’s a lot of poorly photographed/documented projects that may be explained in further detail later.

The wooden boxes:

Sometimes we come up with our own ideas around here. Sometimes we steal them. This idea was officially stolen from here. Still a work in progress. Drew’s sorta on a rustic wood kick.

He also made this shelf:

We found the little candle holders at the thrift store and painted two of them green. I’m not usually a huge fan of using words as decoration, but in this case I figured I can always just turn them around if it weirds me out.

The Chair:

Thrift store find!

The Cabinet:

Craigslist.

The Trellises:

These have been a work in progress since last year. We are planning to paint the box and plant climbing flowers.

The calendar is coming along too. I am in the process of adding photos and magnets.

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BUT WAIT!

What’s this!? In a sudden turn of events we now have

antique blue Ball mason jars with old metal lids!! FOR FREE!

It just so happens that I was at my in-laws the other night and we got to talking about how I’d seen some jars in Goodwill and fallen in love.

Then my Mother-in-Law said, “You mean like these?” And she reached into her magic hat and pulled them right out.

Amazing.

Ok…it was actually a shelf in her basement, but it seemed magical at the time.

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Yay!

A Beef

Tonight I experienced complete roller-coaster moment in Goodwill. I went in to scope out the furniture, but while I was perusing the matchless headboards and footboards something sparkly caught my eye. There they were on the top shelf: four beautiful antique blue Ball mason jars with wonderful metal lids. Like this:

It seems someone didn’t understand their awesomeness and donated them. Elation! I bet they’re only like $2!! Buuuuuuuuut no. Apparently someone at Goodwill did understand, and priced them accordingly. Over $16 a pop. Yeeeouch. Just a little too much for me to justify paying for pretty glass. Bummer.

Speaking of steep prices, WHO is pricing things at the thrift store these days!?!? It’s starting to get out of hand. $75 for these two metal shelves? Um, no thank you. Wait…you mean $75 EACH?? BARF! Don’t they know we come here for cheap treasure?

Ok. I’m done. For now. Time to go tinker in random things.

How to redecorate your kitchen in a less than a millisecond

Simply put, today was awesome. We spent the morning wandering around some sweet salvage and consignment shops in Roanoke, and the afternoon hanging out with family and prepping our garden bed to plant tomorrow. Up until this evening I’d been wondering how to fit it all into one post when I walked through my parents front door and it all went out the window.

Fact: espresso can be a scary business. A couple of months ago I gave my brother a moka pot (stovetop espresso maker).

I won’t get into how it works except to say that it uses lots of pressure and heat. You can read about it in more detail here.

These things can make great coffee, but you have to be careful with them because they can and will blow if not used correctly. I alway walk on eggshells around mine. This is mostly thanks to my college Italian professor, who instructed my first semester class on how to use one…in Italian. Not a whole lot actually stuck at that point, but I did remember the word “esplode” and the hand gesture that went along with with it.

Tonight I found out exactly what “esplode” looks like.

I walked into my parents kitchen just as my brother, Chris, was pulling the moka pot off a red hot burner. He started to say, “If steam is coming out the emergency valve that’s probably a bad thi…”

PHHHOOOOFF!!

In a fraction of a second the entire contents of the pot exploded all over the room as we hit the deck. I stared at my brother, who was laid out on the floor with his entire right side covered in hot water and coffee grounds. It was one of those horrible moments when you wonder if it’s all going to end up in ambulances and medical bills or hysterical laughter.

Thank God he was fine. And we laughed.

Then we all got dishrags and Mean Green and proceeded to clean coffee out of EVERY NOOK AND CRANNY in the kitchen.

Seriously. It was everywhere.

*NOTE: This is not a normal occurrence. You don’t have to live in fear of your moka pot as long as you use it correctly. We went around blaming it on bad coffee, too much water, etc….come find out, he forgot to put in the strainer. Oh well.

Distressed

It’s the new pink. Perhaps. I usually fall into the “Late Majority” on the Rogers Innovation Adoption Curve so maybe I’m not exactly an authority on the subject. Or any subject for that matter. But I think it’s interesting and is fun to do! So here’s the latest project.

I stumbled across this thing in the thrift store and was attracted to the lil six-knobbed drawer. I know. I’m weird. Drew was not so enthralled, but because he’s great he went along with it anyway.

Believe it or not this is an improvement (I didn’t get a true before picture)! It had this boxy wooden brace around the bottom of all the legs that made it look very chunky and heavy. My dad helped me do away with that and we all pitched in to reshape the feet. But mostly Dad pitched in. He’s good at those things, and I think he was afraid we would leave it sitting in his workshop indefinitely. Smart man.

We talked about distressing the wood, but the only parts that are truly solid wood are the legs. So that was a no go. After brooding over what to do with it for a few weeks I finally decided to go with my gut and paint it green. Bright green. Two shades, in fact. I promptly informed Drew that we needed to go to Lowes and bought the first two chips I picked up (gut thing again…might as well go all the way).

Here’s the first coat.

The motive behind using different colors was to get a more varied look. I used the lighter green color to highlight specific areas that would show through the darker green instead of the wood when I distressed it.

Then I painted another coat of the darker green over top of everything and set to distressing with steel wool and sandpaper. You can also use wax to rub down the places on the lighter color you want to show through before painting on the topcoat.

Here it is almost finished.

It needs a little more on the legs and body, but I’m happy with it so far. Drew said turned out good…surprisingly.  Haha.

But does it belong in our living room?

Meh. Time will tell. Sometimes I fear we may be heading the wrong direction. It’s starting to look like an Andes Mint in here.

Photo of the Month: April

April was fun. Why? Because for the first time since 2006 I got to go back to camp! And with an awesome group of girls, to boot!

Here’s Tessa being awesome.

Camp always makes you a little weird. If you’ve ever been you know what I’m talking about.

I Asked the Lord

A friend shared this with our Thursday night group. Just wanted to pass it along.

I Asked the Lord

John Newton

I asked the Lord that I might grow
In faith, and love, and every grace;
Might more of His salvation know,
And seek, more earnestly, His face.

’Twas He who taught me thus to pray,
And He, I trust, has answered prayer!
But it has been in such a way,
As almost drove me to despair.

I hoped that in some favored hour,
At once He’d answer my request;
And by His love’s constraining pow’r,
Subdue my sins, and give me rest.

Instead of this, He made me feel
The hidden evils of my heart;
And let the angry pow’rs of hell
Assault my soul in every part.

Yea more, with His own hand He seemed
Intent to aggravate my woe;
Crossed all the fair designs I schemed,
Blasted my gourds, and laid me low.

Lord, why is this, I trembling cried,
Wilt thou pursue thy worm to death?
“’Tis in this way, the Lord replied,
I answer prayer for grace and faith.

These inward trials I employ,
From self, and pride, to set thee free;
And break thy schemes of earthly joy,
That thou may’st find thy all in Me.”