to watch.

Are you all watching The Handmaid's Tale? Ben and I started watching last week when we had nothing else, and wow, it is good. And talk about timely, it definitely hits close to home. The acting is fantastic and while I know I read the book a long while back, I don't remember much of it, and the storyline will hook you from the start! We would both recommend it, just brace yourself!

Oh yeah, and if you don't have Hulu, you can sign up for the first month free and binge like we are!

hamilton.

For Christmas, I got Ben tickets to Hamilton through a special Facebook offer and we went this past week! Full disclosure, I figured it would be entertaining enough, but was skeptical it would live up to all the hype. But wow. I was wrong. So very wrong.

Hamilton was brilliant. It lived up to and exceeded everything I had heard. Lin-Manuel Miranda is our modern Shakespeare, not to mention the choreography and set were both shows in and of themselves. The morning after I bought the full album and have been listening to it on repeat since. If I could go back for another round tomorrow, I would be there in a heartbeat. A couple months ago, I listened to this Fresh Air interview with Lin Manuel Miranda, and now I am finally reading and watching everything on the musical I can get my hands on...here are a couple good ones in case you are interested...

• Back in 2009 when Miranda visited the White House (I should have appreciated this more at the time!)
• CBS Sunday Morning
• When they went back to the White House in 2016
• The Atlantic - How Lin-Manuel Miranda Shapes History
• SFist Review of Hamilton
• Carpool Karaoke 
• Tony Awards Performance

heath.

We love Heath! Hannah and Jordan gave us a bowl from Heath years ago and we have loved it so much and over the last couple of years we have collected a couple different serving dishes and pieces. They make simply beautiful pottery. It is heavy and thick and the style is perfectly San Franciscan. And now that we are in SF, we live just a couple blocks away from their store and factory in San Francisco.

Ben's Mom was in town last week and stayed the weekend, and on Saturday we drove over to Sausalito to the Heath Factory and Showroom. We took a tour that turned out to exceed all our expectations and we learned so much about the company that made us love it all the more if you can believe it! It was founded in 1948 by Edith and Brian Heath and Edith was the trailblazer, feminist, environmentalist and artist behind the pottery and design. She sounded like quite the eccentric and brilliant artist. It was such a cool behind the scenes look at how they make their pieces.

If you're looking for a great wedding gift - this is one of our favorite things to give and we would definitely recommend it!

pattern play.

I just love tile so much. And the tile work and patterns in Bangkok at the Grand Palace and Wat Arun were gorgeous. I couldn't get enough of it and just love the way they layer patterns over patterns. I like to think one day in a dream house, I would be bold enough to play with pattern and color and shapes like this. Though my tendency is to end up in the world of simple, white subway tile!  I took so many photos of the tile work and this is my one and only outlet for them, so enjoy....

caked.

Remember last April when Ben and I went up to Lancaster for the weekend? While there we popped into a couple very odd thrift stores...if you need a refresher - click here....anyway, in the first thrift store I picked up this cake plate for $3. My plan was to find a candle stick or base to attach, paint it all to match and make into a cake stand. That may still happen...but for now, I did a quick paint job to make the plate more interesting - since I never found the right base! Here is the before....

Pretty, right? In a Grandma kind of way. I did this a couple months ago, and can't remember all my thinking, but I took blue paint to it...paint that works on porcelain.

 After 2-3 coats, I put it in the oven for a half hour and there you have it. Bright and blue!

dresser finale.

It took me a bit longer than expected, but over the weekend I finally finished the dresser drawer project that I had posted about in March (click here if you don't remember). The project itself was straight forward, trace and cut wall paper to fit the sides of our dresser drawers. I loved the floral design from the original link and inspiration, but Ben thought it was too feminine, so I went with a pattern that is more geometric and neutral. My only tip for the future is to start with the sides of the drawers that you won't be seeing as much since there tends to always be a learning curve with these projects. Obviously you want the sides that will get the most visibility to be the best. In any case, here is the short of it....

I bought sample wall paper sheets from Spoonflower. They are just $5 and I didn't need a big roll of wallpaper for this. I then traced the sides of the drawers on the wallpaper...

After, I used a box cutter to carefully cut out the tracing...

I used this Zinsser SureGrip Adhesive mixed with water to glue the wall paper down on the drawers. Admittedly, I struggled with the air bubbles and because the surface of the drawers are not smooth, there are definitely wrinkles, but frankly, not many people are coming over to pull out the drawers and really it is just me who will notice the minor imperfections....

And here are the final results....

Not bad, right? I like the peaks of the design when the drawers are open and the colors blend well with the rest of the bedroom, so all in, it was worth it!

fortune teller.

My sister and Yuri crack me up sometimes. I love them. They add randomness into my life that I really don't get from anyone else. For my birthday, they sent me home-made fortune cookies. Dipped in chocolate! I am not sure why fortune cookies...but they wrote out the fortunes themselves. We couldn't get a lot of the fortunes out of the cookies because of the way they baked but Olivia sent me the list this morning and they made me laugh out loud.

boxed up.

Ack! You know what else December means? It means I have not made much progress on all my dreams of DIY projects this fall. I haven't even ordered fabric swatches for the headboard (click here for the post) and painting is a slow slow process. Nevertheless, I have been able to tackle some smaller tasks - things I could get done in an afternoon here and there or in bits at a time. The projects are all in different stages of completion right now so I can't show you most of the DIY going on...but I did decide to use some left-over fabric from the folding chairs to recover this box for jewelry organization.

Here is the before...

 Then when I stripped off all the old fabric...

And here is the after...

golden touch.

I forgot to mention that while spray painting the pumpkins in the backyard, I discovered spray painting leafs! I love the way they look, don't you? Not sure what to do with the idea, but I love it for a centerpiece or for entertaining...stay tuned!

pumpkin time.

It was a beautiful beautiful Sunday here in DC. I wanted to escape into the quiet for an hour or two and so I decided to paint pumpkins. Naturally.

Here's the thing. I am not big on Halloween. We actually didn't celebrate Halloween growing up and maybe that is why I am really luke-warm about it. But, I am big on being the popular house on the block and I do like pumpkins. While I don't have time to go all out like I would like to, I am working on small touches now to at least put on Halloween. I can't wait for trick or treaters!

Last weekend when my Mom was here, we took advantage of the car and threw a couple pumpkins in while we were at Whole Foods....

I circled them this week and decided they should be painted. My initial plan was the smaller chevron painted pumpkin and for a larger black pumpkin with gold dots. Turns out - and tip for all of you - spray paint is fine for one coat but when I taped on top of the black paint it pulled it all up. So, I ended up spraying it black again and just painting white stripes on it to call it a day!

crafty bastard.

I swung by Union Market this morning to check out the Crafty Bastards Arts & Crafts Fair. There were three big tents taking up the parking lot packed with vendors. The Fair goes through tomorrow so it is worth checking out if you are in the neighborhood. I picked up these bowl covers that I love from Chez-Sucre-Chez. Going to make good use of these when we eat outside and for picnicking - because we should picnic more!

board it up.

I have spent a lot of time laying in bed staring at the walls while I have been sick and this morning I decided on my next project. It is time for a headboard. I am committed to getting this done by December and it is definitely a doable project (probably in a weekend), I just need to find the time to get it done. In the meantime, Step 1 is I need to figure out the shape.

Here are some initial thoughts. At first, I was thinking something with a little bit of curve...

Or an interesting corner to add shape to our small, square bedroom.

But now I am thinking of a basic rectangle. I like the straight lines (it also will be easier to make on my virgin try at this!). I am also leaning strongly toward doing a tufted headboard, so it will have some detail to it. The dark tufted headboard below is calling my name loudly right now!

When I get back from NY, I am going to throw up a sketch on the wall to feel it out for a couple days...

And then on to Step 2...stay tuned!

mixed up.

Have you all heard about MixBit? Are you using it? I am going to download the app tonight to try it out. Ben sent me this NYTimes piece on it last week and it has intrigued me. It is a new app (like Vine and Instagram) to share videos....

pinned down.

I love wooden clothes pins. Not that I think about them much but they are old school and I am sure hipsters will bring them back soon! Until that happens, I noticed that Aaron's mom uses them on her napkins so people remember which is theirs. Love this idea! I might just take or adapt it...do a quick spray paint job on them or use them to attach cards to gift bags...

Also love these vintage clothes pins...

I did a quick search online and apparently I am not the only one loving clothes pins...people are using them for drinks...

 And for invitations and menus...

What do you think? Too farmhouse or a nice touch?!

folded up.

Remember my retro folding chairs that I made Ben go pick up in Ann Arbor and then Emmy generously drove them to DC? See this post for a refresher if you don't! Well, they are all but finished and ready to be used in the backyard.

Here are some before pictures...

This project ended up taking a bit longer than I had anticipated and I also haven't had a whole lot of time to focus on it but step one was washing down the chairs and taking them apart...

 And then I took off the vinyl green covers...

At this point, I measured out and started cutting the fabric down. I got the fabric from Mood Designer Fabrics and I really like it. I actually didn't get to use both sides of it for this project but love how it can be reversed and it has a little stretch to it.

Not pictured now is the process of fitting the fabric over the chairs and stapling it all. It took much longer than expected and didn't turn out as snug and tight as I would have liked, but it seems fine as of now...

At the same time, I used a primer on the metal frames...

And finally got down to spray painting the frames. In full disclosure, I am not totally sold on the color (it's a little too watermelon for me) but it adds a pop of color and we tend to go for a lot of neutrals in the house, so always good to change it up.

And last night, I finally got around to putting the chairs back together. Here is a look at the transformation...

Not bad, right? Here is the full cycle of chair life!