The chair is here!

The dining room table was our first big home splurge and the reupholstery of our living room lounge chair was the second. I bought this great atomic lounge chair off craigslist about 4 years ago for $40. The chair was in decent shape and I knew some day it would be perfect if it could be re-done. My cats really loved the fabric and did some damage with their claws so I needed a non-textured fabric moving forward. It also needed new cushions and springs to make it super comfy. Here's the before:

I worked with Kirstin from KL Upholstery. She was recommended to my by the dudes at FindFurnish as being THE go-to lady to fix up all your danish modern and atomic needs. And she sure did. Kirstin said that when she opened the cushions they were filled with straw so yes she did a complete cushion makeover as well! Here's the after:

The table is here!

Josh and I worked with one of our favorite local artists Eric Andersen to have a custom dining room table built. We felt it was important to have a special table around which we could make new memories and traditions in our new home. Eric is an incredible artist and musician and man about town so when we learned he was also a carpenter we knew right away we wanted to work with him. Eric took me along to Wood From the Hood where I was able to pick out the slabs for our table top. Wood From the Hood reclaims wood from felled trees in Minneapolis and sells it to be repurposed. Eric also measured our dining room so we could make sure the table was perfectly built to fit our space. We are amazed with the final product and so thankful to Eric for his hard work and artistry. You can see more of Eric's work here: http://mplswoodworkers.com/

Just a taste.

A lot of people have been asking for pictures of the house. I'm going to be honest with you: I'm not even close to being ready to show you my house. Although it's no longer a disaster it's now been down graded to a category three major mess. That being said I decided I could still show you some of my favorite things about the house. Here we go.

We have radiators everywhere. They rule

This room is connected to our garage. It's totally creepy right now and not just because I took a picture of it at night time. We are calling this the champagne room and you had better just wait because we are dreaming it into a screen porch with twinkly lights and plants and dinner parties.

Here's a good corner that I put together. We painted our living room turquoise. It totally compliments the danish modern.

These alters are amazing. They were originally meant to be a place to put your telephone but I like to think they're alters. Anyways I'll get something good in these in the future. In the meantime also check out the yellow we chose to paint the dining room in. Oh yeah.

This is my doorbell. It's adorable. It doesn't work. I'm not going to let that stop me, though. If anybody knows an electrician let me know because I'm looking to get this fixed on the asap.

Built ins. I was dead set on having built-ins in my future home. Although they're not as striking as a built in buffet I am totally in love with the ones I have. You can't tell from the photo but I have two of these in the corners of my dining room. And again, check out that paint color.

We have a giant deck off the kitchen. It's not in great shape and we're planning to have it replaced in the next couple of years but for now it totally does the trick. We also have a giant silver maple that provides shade for the whole back yard. The tree needs to be trimmed back, which is another huge job, but when I'm able to stop thinking about what needs to happen and I instead focus on what's already happening I can't imagine a place better than sitting under my tree on my deck in my back yard.

I love being in the kitchen and whipping up tasty snacks and cocktails. This kitchen is no exception. At first glance you may only notice a stove or a refrigerator but look closer and you will see that there are cut outs especially for these appliances. Also see that little broom closet next to the stove? Classic!

One last thing, for now, that I wanted to share is my bathroom. The only real exciting part of the bathroom (beside the obvious) is that I painted it green and the tiles are original to the house from 1926.

I promise to keep sharing our home updates as they happen.

True story.

It is true that we bought a home. Home owners in the house! It felt like a long and stressful process but looking back we really enjoyed the search and can say with all honesty that this is the right house for us. We looked at many many houses and I was obsessed with watching the MLS everyday. Initially we lost the bid on this house and went on to bid on another house that we lost as well. Right when we were about to lose hope our realtor called to say that the initial bid fell through and we were next in line. Thanks to our realtor and Keller Williams it was a super smooth process. We are officially all moved in and are slowly unpacking and finding where all the light switches are.

We love living in the Nokomis neighborhood of South Minneapolis. We are super close to lakes and bike trails and Fort Snelling and Minnehaha Falls and great restaurants and great friends. Holy cow there is so much to love here.

We've lived here for a week now and it just keeps getting better and better. We've already painted the living room, dining room and bathroom. My stepmom was awesome enough to come over and get us started on a landscape design and we've really got our work cut out of us on the yard. Not to mention the giant list of things to do inside! We're definitely enjoying each step and are excited to learn about our home. I never thought I would say this but I am so excited to now own a shopvac and a dehumidifier.

Here are some pics to wet your whistle. Here's us showing up for the first time as homeowners and cracking our first bottle of champagne. You can get a teaser of the front door, the living room and the deck:

One last thing. Moving is hard. And totally stressful. We had a lot of awesome help and are very thankful to our friends and family for making the transition as easy as possible. We need to thank Julie, Anna, Danny and Chris as well as our big muscles moving team (pictured below) that featured Eli, Steve, Rev. Dave and Luke. Thank you thank you thank you a million.

Canoe Picnic

 Recently I was honored to take part in a story for Kinfolk Magazine. This is Kinfolk and what it's all about:

http://www.kinfolkmag.com/

Our story was in volume 7:

Our story was really my friend Jill bringing a dream to reality. Jill had a brilliant idea to get a group of friends together on canoes to paddle out at sunrise and feast on a magnificent breakfast of local and seasonal treats. So we did. And we got the beautiful and amazing Ashley Camper to photograph our canoe picnic. Really this was a labor of love for Jill and Ashley. I'm just glad I got to participate. Here are some of my favorite outtakes from the shoot:

You can see more of Ashley Camper's work at:

http://ashleycamper.com/

This woman is a genius with a camera.

Last Dianas

I got two rolls of lomos back from Ryan Atienza (holla Ryan! Thank you!). I told you there were light leaks. Holy bright and blurry. I'm definitely going to upgrade cameras. That being said I still wanted to share a few that I thought turned out cool. Some of these go back to last summer and it was fun to find some of these lost moments.

This one of Eli is from Northern Sparks and it's definitely my favorite of the bunch. Which only makes sense because in general Eli is my favorite of the bunch. 

I like this next one because I was one of the private reception guests...

If you click on the next one to make it bigger you can see a very old picture of Marc just behind Josh...

Bright but I love this next one because it's Nick opening a bottling of sparkly.