TV Tricks

Posted by —

5

For better or for worse, in American culture a sign of status, wealth and “making it” is getting a large flat-screen TV. I remember fondly the day Heath and I maneuvered our way through screaming babies and angsty teens at  the local Walmart at 9 p.m. on a Saturday to pick up ours after I got myself a Big Girl Job. “Yeah,” we thought to ourselves. “We’re doing alright.”

The funny thing is, while every blue blooded American is expected to have a flat screen, most designers tell us not to display it.“A Television should never be the focal point of a room.”  and “Overtly displaying a large flat screen is tacky.”   What gives? First you tell me I have to have one, now you’re telling me it’s lame. Not cool, society.

I wouldn’t normally give too much thought to this conflict of interest, opting instead to take on Eric Cartman’s “Whatever, I do what I want” mentality, but the problem is that I really have no idea how to gussy up the vast wall of nothingness behind my television.

It’s the antithesis of good design. In fact, it’s no design at all. It’s just there. This big black box in front of a big white wall. Uninspiring.

I can’t mount it over a fireplace (we don’t have one) or buy some ridiculously expensive piece of art to put behind it, but I can create a photo wall to bring some semblance of character to this otherwise drab portion of the doodle kingdom.

I suppose this weekend I will be whipping out the hammer and nails. Expect the “after” photo in the near future…

Port Probs

Posted by —

1

When we bought out shiny new house in October, a shiny new carport came with it. We’ve never even had a driveway before, let alone a carport, so we were pretty excited about the upgrade.

The only problem with the pseudo garage is that it makes me feel a little exposed. Our side entrance to the house is visible from the street, and because of the unique lay of the land, many folks confuse it for the front entrance; and I’m just not crazy about strangers sneaking up on me while I do dishes in the kitchen. (I much prefer being startled from the comfort of my living room.) What’s more, is the carport is where we keep our recycling and trash bins as well as few other household do-dahs, and I’m sure our neighbors aren’t 100 percent thrilled with staring at our garbage receptacles all day. Some sort of privacy screen is in order.

A glance around the hood told me this is an issue our other neighbors have as well. Many of them created carport enclosures with corrugated metal or wooden lattice, but I see something grander on our horizon. A little internet research got the wheels turning…

Kara Paslay Designs had this nifty idea for a carport concealer, that I feel is pretty doable.

A scene featured on Danger Garden used stain glass as a privacy screen.

Mid-Century Living has a wealth of information when it comes to designing carport covers that fit in with the style of our house.

I’m not entirely sure where building a carport privacy screen falls on our list of priorities, but it has officially made the new home to-do list.

Fencing

Posted by —

7

Handyman Heath has struck again, this time leaving a beautifully constructed horizontal cedar fence in his wake.

Yes, while I was spending my Friday night gallivanting with girlfriends Heath was getting acquainted with a handsome set of post hole diggers. Twenty four hours, three 2-foot holes, 240 pounds of concrete and $270 later we found ourselves the winners of a sort of fencing match.

It was our (Heath’s) first attempt at legit fence construction, but the final result couldn’t be more beautiful. Before the fancy fence, a significant portion of our backyard was visible from the street, as a 3.5-foot chain link fence didn’t lend us much in the way of privacy. And while I do post photos of our backyard for the world to see on this magnificent creature we call the Internet, I felt funny about so much of it being on display to every passerby in the neighborhood at any time of day or night. So after a bit of eye lash batting and finger hair twirling, I convinced Heath to gift me with this enchanting piece of back yard privacy.

Heath considers himself a novice craftsman, but proved to have a knack for fence building. To other “fencers” he offers this advice:

1) Keep a pickaxe handy. Blackland prairie soil (what we have here in Austin) is not easy to dig into. It’s hard and it’s thick, and you will save yourself a lot of trouble if you have the right tools. In this case, a pickaxe was the ideal weapon for tackling this muddy mess. Plus swinging a pickaxe back and forth is an easy way to get instant street cred on the East side.

2.) Make sure the faces of the fence post are even. While everything may be nice and level, the faces of the posts have to be flush with one another. Otherwise, you run into trouble when it comes time to put on the horizontal planks. A difference of an inch or two between the faces will result in a wonky, bendy-looking fence, which doesn’t inspire a lot of confidence.

3.) Check that the wooden planks you select for the fence aren’t warped. This one got us a couple of times and forced a few unexpected return trips to Home Depot. A warped board will affect the leveled appearance of the fence. Instead of clean, even lines between each slat, you will wind up with variation that can diminish the entire clean and streamlined look of the project.

Building the fence was a big piece of completing the back yard puzzle, and while it will probably never be “finished” this, along with some extra weekend gardening, made the new house feel a little more like home.

Heath picked up these concrete pavers from Gramps after a recent trip to Denton. I wasn't sure how I wanted to use them in the yard but finally settled on burying them as a type of garden border.

Silver Cassia shrub purchased this weekend from The Natural Gardener

The air conditioner got a make over with these concrete blocks and bright planters.

Moss Phlox

The windows hanging in the back ground were found as garbage on a neighbor's curb.

Frannie Sue isn't allowed out of the coop while we still have chain link around the yard. She's hoping this "building tall fences" trend continues so she can have free range of the yard again.

The veggies at the new house finally start to take shape.

The entire front of the house has a planter that's quickly filling with anemone-like succulents.

The vegetable garden slowly taking shape.

La Condesa

Posted by —

2

I COULD go to trendy new restaurants soon after they open and THEN blog about them, but I much prefer waiting a few years until everyone already knows how awesome Eating Establishment X is, and then write about it like I’m the first to know. I’m talking, in this case, about La Condesa.

I ventured to the downtown TexMex restaurant for lunch recently and was pleased to see the hype wasn’t for nothing. I have no trouble believing this place will be a regular contender when the mister and I find ourselves in the “where should we go for date night” predicament.

Right off the bat I liked La Condesa for the location (across from Austin’s super cool City Hall, The W Hotel, Moody Theater and Lamberts). At night the trees light up and the people watching is superb. So kudos, LC, for picking out some pretty prime real estate in which to serve tacos.

Besides being situated in the heart of mucho A-town action, the architecture and interior design is jaw dropping, astounding even. You could sit inside and stare at the textured walls, vibrant murals, swanky lighting, everything…before  you realize it has been 10 minutes and you haven’t even opened your menu. I’m not overselling either. In fact, the restaurant won a people’s choice restaurant design award from AIA Los Angeles. Pretty nifty.

If you weren’t already intrigued, allow me to go on. I’ve always heard you can tell how good a TexMex restaurant is going to be by the chips and salsa. Perhaps forecasting this very school of thought, the brains behind the La Condesa menu offer not one, but four salsas on which to over indulge before your meal begins. There’s a classic salsa roja, as well as a fresh and creamy avocado tomatillo, chipotle salsa and a super spicy but delectable option. Four salsa choices AND a generous helping of warm chips. Don’t mind if I do.

The main meal itself (fish tacos, my go-to taco when breakfast tacos aren’t an option) was splendid as well. The serving wasn’t too massive, but was still plenty filling and the tacos themselves really hit the spot. The best part about the entree, however, was the extra tortillas that come with the meal. Some places (no names) up-charge for extra tortillas (not cool), but La Condesa included two additional corn tortillas right on the plate, just like that. It was an unexpected treat and came in handy for scooping up extra salsa, black beans and rice. It’s such a small thing to do, but that alone would have tempted me to return for another visit.

By lunch hour’s end, I had been converted. The tasty array of  salsas, visually entrancing atmosphere, and surprise bonus tortilla had me singing the praises of La Condesa to anyone that would hear it. Unfortunately I can’t speak on behalf of their margaritas. I guess I should return for happy hour in order to tell that tale.

Yeah, I’m practically a celebrity.

Posted by —

2

“Beep Beep”

What was that?

Oh that? That was just the sound of me tooting my own horn because…

The January issue of Austin Monthly came out and I helped write the cover story! It’s my first cover story since I officially retired from the exciting world of news reporting and it’s nice to know that people who aren’t directly related to me actually enjoy reading what I write.

But wait, there’s more! In the mail last week I received a shiny new copy of Forty Acres of Fun, a new book published by the UT Co-Op which features funny short stories about life on the University of Texas campus. And who’s name is that on page 131? Yep, it’s mine! This may very well be the one and only time I get my words published in a book, so please excuse me for shamelessly plugging it on this blog.

Thanks English teachers for book learning me real good.

Hook ‘em!

Going Gray

Posted by —

2

This weekend I finally decided on a color to paint the office. Glorious Gray!

It might seem slightly pointless to change a wall from one neutral color to another, in this case beige to gray, but I love the feeling of calm a gray room brings on. Plus the beige walls paired with the beige carpet had me feeling like I lived in a beige cloud, which just isn’t as cool as it sounds. I was also inspired by some of these images that show how gray can make all of the other colors in a room seem a little more vibrant.

It’s not ready for any magazines yet, but I’m pleased with how the new color turned out and look forward to many days of curling up with book in my gray getaway.

Before…

After…

Before…

After…

Before…

After…

 

Ski

Posted by —

1

I’m not a skier.

My friends and skiing compadres told me that when I was 15 just after I mistakenly darted through a half-pipe at 90 miles an hour, narrowly missing my fellow terrain park ski bums. That was fine with me. As far as I was concerned I could go the rest of my life without setting foot or ski on another slope. Texas has a shortage of snow-capped mountain peaks anyway, so what did I need to know how to ski for?

As it turns out, when your buds Maranjanark offer up their family’s condo in Vail for a long weekend of gratis mountaineering, you don’t exactly turn them down. So, away we went with a few other snow-loving Austinites for a post-Christmas friend trip to the great state of Colorado.

I’d had one other brush with Vail before taking off. A summer Vail vacation with my family when I was 13 was pretty enjoyable until a 40-year-old naked male sunbather opted to position himself right outside our condo window. Heath knew only that Vail was “where rich people go to ski.” So that’s what we were working with. Vail: a destination for the wealthy and naked.

The trip to Vail proved neither pricey nor scantily clad. The little mountain town does rob you blind with $100-a-day lift tickets, but that was about as bold as we got when it came to emptying our wallets. We saved a chunk of change by cooking at home rather than shelling out dollar after dollar at over-priced downtown restaurants. (Like seriously over-priced, we’re talking the neighborhood of $9 for a warm Bud Light…cruise ship expensive.) So rather than wine and dine in town, we munched on breakfast tacos by Nick, Mark’s meatloaf and Jaime’s Oreo cookie balls. At nights we drank boxed wine on the couch and enjoyed locally brewed beer over riotous games of Things. Perhaps it’s not how the rich and famous (and naked) do Vail, but it is how we rolled on this particular MLK weekend.

We did live it up too, of course. There was mountain skiing (no half-pipes this time), ice skating, gondola riding, snow tubing, city walking, photography jaunting (I feel like Vail is a place people “jaunt”), snow ball throwing, salad bar cruising, brewery touring, Australian tourist meeting and even heated pool swimming.

We packed a lot of living into 3 days of vacation, but as all trips by privileged 20-somethings go, it was the company and conversation, not the location, that made the weekend getaway one for the books blog.

You are what you eat

Posted by —

6

To start the new year off with a bang (and to undo some of the damage we inflicted upon ourselves over the holidays) Heath and I vowed to go on a two week binge of micronutrients. No savory poultry, no delectable cheese, no fluffy breads or creamy desserts or salty snacks. Just a lot of this…

this…

this…

and this.

Think blueberries for breakfast, salads for lunch and veggie stews for dinner. Snacks of Hershey’s kisses have been traded for fistfuls of Craisins, and desserts of red wine are being subbed out for freshly squeezed OJ. The dining  table is topped with celery and salsa instead of chips and dip, and a shiny, substantial juicer is taking up valuable real estate on the kitchen counter. Overhaul indeed.

The fruit/veggie cleanse/fast was inspired by some friends who endured a juice fast (and swear by its powers) and further spurred on by agenda-pushing documentaries like Food Inc., Supersize Me and Fat, Sick and Nearly Dead. We realized over the last few months we ate far too many processed Cheez-Its and far too few fresh spinach salads. We wanted to do something that would make us more conscious of what we put into our bodies and perhaps influence our future eating habits. Boy has it.

It’s day 10 of vegging out and here’s what we’ve discovered:

-It’s nearly impossible to dine out. I’ve heard vegans make this complaint before, but didn’t understand just how saturated modern menus are with the things we have declared temporarily forbidden. You can be hard pressed to find a salad without cheese and croutons or a soup made without chicken broth. The diet has certainly pushed kitchen creativity to the limit.
-Fresh foods–turns out they really do keep you fuller longer.  On lazy days, or days where I thought I earned a treat, I’d be known to grab a breakfast taco or two to start the morning. About 4,000 calories and 2 hours later I’d be hungry again…and usually for something equally greasy and icky. But on the fruit/veggie diet I can stay full for hours on a freshly blended smoothie or guac salad. It really gets you thinking about how your body digests food.
- I really miss cheese. I miss bread and eggs and fish too, but cheese…that’s the kicker. I know cheese rounds out the the top of the list of foods that are pretty horribly unhealthy, but I can’t help but fantasize about chomping down on a slice of cheesy goodness. I have even dreamed of swimming through pools of queso. It’s been the hardest habit to kick, hands down.

With 4 days of apple juice drinking, pistachio snacking and salad munching left, I feel pretty good about the whole experience (and by “pretty good” I mean, confident I can survive the remaining days without cheese). I know we are no heroes; we didn’t endure a month of vegan-ing, or a 60-day juice fast or 2 week Master Cleanse, but we did find a way to incorporate more of the good stuff into our routine and think differently about how the food we eat affects our mood, mind and waist line. I think it’s the beginning of a major diet overhaul and hopefully a longer life.

Phase One = Complete

Posted by —

8

Fancifying the kitchen is a three-step process. When we moved in, the kitchen looked like this.

 

Please note:

  • the dated knotty pine
  • the old fashioned black hinges
  • the bland countertops/backsplash
  • the aged cabinets
Not ideal for the modern, color loving family we are. A plan must be developed. Why not exchange the drab countertops from this…
to this…
Beautiful, bright, white quarts countertops….muah. It’s so crisp, so clean, so shiny and pretty and happy. I lust for them. Durable, practical, life changing. It’s not exactly normal to have a crush on a countertop but never you mind. The counter tops will be changed. As will the backsplash, from “landlord neutral” to fantastic blue subway tile.
Imagine it. The shiny white surface surrounded by iridescent blues and rich wooden cabinetry. It looks good, feels good, heck…it smells good. It is a far cry from the original. Despite at first HATING the knotty pine (and blogging about it here) I ultimately decided to keep it.  One reason for keeping the O.G. cabinets is to salvage something that is perfectly functional. No “out with the old and in the new” for this little lady. I wanted to keep something in that kitchen legit—in true 50s era style. The other reason for keeping the color was rooted in me wanting to prove the internet wrong. Search after search would furnish results which would have me believe that no one in their right mind would keep the knotty pine look in a modernish kitchen setting. CHALLENGE ACCEPTED. So phase one does not include demolishing the worn but still in-good-condition original cabinets.
Instead, it consists of doing some stripping, sanding, staining and hinge replacing. Switching out hardware like this…
For this…
Resulting in something like this…
It’s a look that’s a little old school and a little modern; a little eclectic and a little chic. So we spent the winter break refinishing the wood and bringing the fixtures up to the 21st century.
It wasn’t easy and we are still cleaning up saw dust, but what a difference a hinge can make! We are thrilled with the glossy new stain and shiny metallic hardware that now adorn our kitchen. Only two steps to go until the kitchen transforms into my cooking fantasy.

Happily Handmade

Posted by —

2

Handmade Christmas gifts are the best. I like to give ‘em, I like to receive ‘em. Something about putting the finishing touches on a mediocre craft and boxing it up to distribute to family who are obligated to love it just feels über Christmasy. This year I was lucky to receive my fair share of handmade trinkets and goodies.

A favorite might have been these ornaments my mom made to resemble Stella and Wyatt. Our tree was lacking in doodle-themed ornaments–something that clearly had to be remedied. See the resemblance?

My sister and brother-in-law, of StormulaOne Photography fame, put together these coasters featuring his photography. I’m a big fan of his work, so getting to glance down at mini prints of his photography on my coffee table is really exciting. I might have to commission more.

Heath’s mother made this reversible hobo bag that I can’t wait to use as a travel pouch.

And of course, let’s not discount all the jellies, jams and baked goods from my mother and from Ranjana that will carry us into the new year.

So, too soon to start working on next years gifts? The wheels are already turning.