we are very excited to be a part of the kirkwood tour of homes! our home is one of only eight houses on the tour, so we feel honored to be asked to participate. the tour is part of the 8th annual kirkwood spring fling, which is going on this weekend in historic kirkwood. the festival also features a 5k race on saturday morning and an open air artist market with a ton of vendors, good eats, and live bands. admission to the festival is free from 10am-7pm on saturday at bessie branham park. tickets for the kirkwood tour of homes can be purchased at the festival or at local kirkwood businesses.

after the festival we hope post regularly again, we’ve spent all of our free time fixing up the house.

– ryan & gub

kirkwood spring fling
2051 delano drive ne
atlanta, georgia 30317

tour of homes
saturday, may 15th, 2010
sunday, may 16th, 2010
from 12pm until 6pm

5k race
saturday, may 15th, 2010
starts at 9am

artist market
saturday, May 15th, 2010
from 10am until 7pm

we went to a really great fabric store in atlanta yesterday called whipstitch. it just opened on the west side near octane coffee. it’s billed as atlanta’s only in-town sewing lounge and offers amazing fabrics, sewing supplies, books, and all types of classes from beginner to advanced.

we’re very excited about a hip in-town fabric store with a great selection of designs you can check out in person! no more looking at small pictures on reprodepot or etsy to decide if a fabric or its color will work. plus no shipping fees!

we’ve been wanting to recover our kitchen chairs for a while but haven’t found the right fabric. the selection at whipstitch is fabulous though and it didn’t take us long to find what we were looking for.

– ryan & gub

whipstitch

1000 marietta st, suite 102
atlanta, ga 30318
404.897.1114
info@whipstitchfabrics.com

we recently tilled our garden! we rented a tiller from home depot for 4 hours, which was super easy, and got our backyard ready for spring planting. our garden plans are moving along and we hope to finish planting this week.

we realized our backyard was full of tons of random debris while tilling. we found rusty nails, roofing tiles, concrete, bricks, tools, and lots of other junk.

– ryan & gub

we noticed our horseshoe pits were looking rough recently, so we decided to give them a face-lift. we started by getting rid of the weeds and adding more sand. that alone made a huge difference. then we spray painted the poles bright colors, we went with blue and red, and topped it all off by adding our bottle cap collection.

we’ve been saving bottle caps for years, although we never really found the right use for them. gub has fond memories of her grandparents general store where they threw caps from soda bottles out front for gravel. the rusty gravel must have made an impression on her, we’ve been saving bottle caps since i’ve known her.

we’re excited to find a new use for our bottle caps! it’s gratifying to reuse something that could easily be thrown away. we plan on filling our pits a good bit more, our collection seemed a lot bigger inside the house. we are going to ask our local bartender to save bottle caps for us to help the cause.

– ryan

we celebrated easter by spending a fun morning drinking coffee and dyeing easter eggs in our new yellow kitchen. there will be a blog post on the kitchen re-do later, but here are the steps we took to create our colorful and recyclable eggs:

– hard boil eggs
– set up easter egg dye kit (we used a cheap grocery store paas kit)
– add stencils and resists to the eggs*
– stir dye bath and carefully place egg in the dye
– leave egg in the dye for 5 to 10 minutes (lighter colors take longer)
– remove from dye and remove stencil or resist
– place eggs in basket or nest (we used shredded paper scraps for our grass!)

*we created leaf stencils by picking small leaves from our yard and placing them on the egg. we then tightly wrapped panty hose around the egg and secured with a rubber band. small, thin leaves with few veins work best for the stencils. we also used electrical tape to add stripes and lines to the eggs.

yay easter!

deviled eggs for dinner!

– ryan & gub

i recently found some time-lapse projects i thought were lost in one of our robberies. here is the hand.craft.it festival that i curated with gub and our friend kristen. i filmed the event from start to finish to try and portray the amount of work involved in a one-day craft festival.

– ryan

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last december we went to our friends doug & lizzy’s wedding in florida. it was a nice celebration with our good friends. doug is currently studying organic farming in england and lizzy recently graduated from edinburgh college of art. so sadly, we rarely see them these days. at their wedding, we enjoyed meeting a lot of their great friends from england, scotland, ireland, and germany.

many of the edinburgh folks either worked for or played in bands at the wee red bar, which is the bar/club on the grounds of the edinburgh college of art. my brother and i worked for the club downunder, the campus bar/club at florida state university, so it was interesting to hear about the scottish equivalent. the wee red bar has been open for 20 years and is a happening venue in edinburgh. they feature both local bands and national acts, art brut and green day have played there.

the wee red bar recently put out a dvd called the art school dance. it was filmed over two days during edinburgh college of art’s centenary year and features twenty live performances by students, graduates and friends of edinburgh college of art. both the dvd and its packaging are really great, be sure to check out the trailer below.

– ryan & gub

wee red bar

edinburgh college of art
lauriston place
edinburgh EH3 9DF
united kingdom
+44 131 229 1003

ryan and i are beginning to plan our very first vegetable and herb garden. we’ve been composting for over a year and have planted a few vegetables here and there, but this summer we’ve got big plans. we carved out a sunny 16′ by 10′ spot in the middle of our backyard, found some helpful info on the uga center for urban agriculture website, and we’re off!

we need to do a bit more research, come up with a planting schedule, and finalize our vegetable and herb list based on our garden space; but here’s our wish list:

we took some before photos and will post updates as the summer progresses. the garden will be under the blue tarp you see in the photos.

– gub & ryan