happy monday

we spent our weekend working on our casa, making room for the new baby (no worries, folks, it plugs into the wall), frying fish with the hanks family, and doing a Sunday photo shoot with an aspiring country singer, Catherine Kimbro. all in all, a win.

knobs and pallet wood

You probably already know by now that I'm on a serious pallet wood kick. Maybe I'll get over it soon but for now it's free, easy to find, looks cool, and generally doesn't smell too bad. This is the latest installment in the apartment.

Our coat rack was pretty overworked so I came up with this simple alternative. I used various knobs that Sara's had on her dresser growing up, a piece of pallet wood cut to the size I wanted, two small pallet scraps to lift the piece off the wall a smidge, and some screws I had laying around. I took some of load off the coat rack and it really helped balance the room.

Time: 30 min.

Cost: $0

re-furb : wall gallery

I created this little gallery of 24 candid photos from our wedding. They bring a smile to my face every time I look at them. We'll put more formal photos up elsewhere, but for the living room I wanted something really fun. The decorative wood pieces are a find from our honeymoon -we brought them home from KC's uncle's furniture restoration shop in Riga, Latvia.

furniture re-furb : dining room table

So you might be asking yourself, 

at what sort of table does this couple dine?

Well maybe not, but here it is. Like pretty much everything else in our apartment, it's a hand-me-down to which we added our own little touch. We got the table from Pete + Glo. It was the right size for our dining room and I liked the architecture of it, but the finish was a little icky. 

After using a heat gun to strip off the waxy coating, the wood wasn't in great shape to just do a stain, so we decided to paint it. KC came up with the idea for the place settings, and I painted the sort of reverse-stencil tediously, with help from my mom of course. 

october eats

Wednesday night : KC made pizza with tomatoes, mozzarella, and gorgonzola. He made dough from scratch. It was pretty perfect.

Thursday night : KC wanted tuna boats; I was hesitant. It's not my favorite meal, and last time we made it, it wasn't great. But this time we used wheat buns and added swiss cheese, tomato, and spices. I made a salad of baby spinach, white nectarines marinated in balsamic, garlic + olive oil and feta.

{above: kc's tuna boats}

{above: those are nectarines, not potatoes- I promise}

Tonight : beer brats. Num num.

we're learning

dish soap ≠ dish detergent

so we're back...

....and we've been back. but it's been crazy!

we got back from our honeymoon on August 26th and things have been nonstop since. sara started her full time job at Razorfish as a designer. that and being a full time hot wife has been keeping her busy. as i type this she's organizing the apartment and taking care of business. i have a sexy wife.

i've been doing all sorts of small stuff, but considerably less than sara. we returned to a nice clean apartment with fresh flowers and some good food compliments of momma hanks. buuut the next day we were treated with some nice flooding in our office and waited a week before someone came to clean it up. we learned a lot about the staff here with that situation.


there have been a number of issues with the apartment and it's been quite frustrating. sara has been here 2 months and we haven't been able unpack things yet because of floodage and maintenance issues. looks like we may have wait a bit longer to get our office together because it flooded again this evening. boo. this is our temp office.....the power cord keeps getting yanked out:

on some good notes: i've been playing more which has been great. i've really missed how much i used to play so that's been a plus. my brother and brenna got a new puppy named Emo. cool mutt. we got to meet him at a family get together right after we got back. we ate good, celebrated my dad's birthday (officially a senior citizen), and had a good time.



{momma hanks can't handle Uncle Jerry's Forest Haus pepper sauce!}


my next pallet project (i'm obsessed): bookshelves...


lot's more coming from our trip, buuut first watch out for a super cool post from sara tomorrow. a lot of you have been waiting for this one....