If you build it, they will come!

Have I ever mentioned that my husband is pretty awesome? No? Well, here's a whole post on how amazing Evan is.

I love our dining room now!

When we moved into our new apartment, it was decided that I could decorate the guest room in the girliest of manners and he could have the dining room for his "man cave." I got straight to work painting the guest room wall a lovely shade of pale purple and decorating with my favorite books, old pointe shoes and sewing/craft supplies.

The dining room was stagnant for a while. Then we got the donated chairs and table I posted about here. And then we stalled again.

We had a lot going on. We were quite busy! Helping friends move, baking extravagant cakes, working really hard, helping friends get married, trying to catch up on sleep, holding babies...we are exhausted! But does that stop this girl from wanting to have her apartment all put together? Nope. I'm a little ambitious. (Let's hope Evan thinks of it that way!)

We originally discussed Evan mounting his TV in the dining room and connecting his computer system so he could play video games and be really awesome and manly in there. But he lost the power cord to his TV and, truthfully, I wasn't that sad. So then we were faced with what to do in there. I don't know if many of you know this, but Evan is a Home Brewer. He brews beer. It is tasty. He's currently going back to school to get a few credits so that he can apply to UC Davis to get his Masters in Brewing. Yeah. That's a thing. My husband is pretty damn cool.

While being cool is awesome, brewing comes with a lot of equipment. Most of that equipment is not really the aesthetic I was striving for in our grown-up apartment, but I know that Evan needs to have fairly easy access to it and thus it could not reside in the storage closet off the patio that is roughly large enough for a small cat and one medium-sized box of books. Don't ask how I know this. My cat is not good.

Our solution? Let's build a bar back to hide all of his things and provide a surface for us to put out Evan's rare beer bottle collection! I thought it would be particularly cool to paint the entire wall behind it with chalkboard paint so that I could make the dining room feel a little like Evan's very own brewery. Except we're going to have to call it a "brewing company" because I have a very hard time saying words that include one "r" followed too closely by another. This is why, growing up, I always called my friend Greer, Gweer. Brewery automatically turns into Brewewy or Bruurry.

I digress.

A few weeks ago, I came home from work and Evan had already painted the chalkboard wall! Score one for ambition! I could hardly wait to start working on it. Lord knows I love Pinterest...so I found some inspiration for my chalkboard wall. Here's the progress on that...

Love shots like these. Nothing attractive at all...

Shameless self-plug on Evan's wall. What?
My cookies and cakes are delicious. 

See what I mean? Beer stuff isn't super pretty. 

Messy but fun! :) 

Partially done. Getting better. 

After that, we kinda stalled again. When Evan and I are on the ball, we're very productive. But then we take a little while to finish. It's like we have bursts of energy and inspiration and then we go into creative hibernation for a while.

So nothing really happened on the bar back until the weekend before my sister's baby shower. Which is when we needed it done. Oops. Good thing Evan works fast! :)

He went out, bought lumber, borrowed a router, jigsaw and saw horses from our friend Ben, and got to work! He knocked that thing out in 2 days! And then he stained it, to boot!! Awesome hubs award!

I woke up to the smell of lumber in the morning!  

Cali was not happy she couldn't help!

We had originally wanted to put cabinet doors on the front and we may revisit that at some point, but we were short on time and cash and those things are EXPENSIVE. So our alternate solution was to put up a curtain of sorts with industrial strength velcro and plain cotton duck cloth. My mom handled sewing the edging and measuring things. Thanks, Mom! :)

Close-up of how we made it work! 

About one hour before the baby shower was supposed to start, I finally got the fabric up and put the finishing touches on the bar itself. :)

I had to display the glasses mom bought Evan from the New Glarus Brewery! :) 

You know you wanna tap that...

Every bar needs some good art...Dad found this watercolor picture at an arts festival.
It may be one of my favorite things ever! Ketel One and Crown? Thank you!
Oh. I also love the colorful straws. :) 

After all this work, we are so excited to enjoy this room now. Unfortunately, we're both too tired. Excuse us while we sleep for a week!

Vegan(ish) Cinnamon Rolls

I am not a morning person. Neither is my husband, really, but he generally wakes up much more like a human than I do. In fact, I would say that I resemble something like a zombie with a toothache and a broken foot who just crawled out of a bog of negativity mud. Don't talk to me in the morning. Fair warning. 

This morning, however, I woke up with my mind racing and my stomach growling. I have been so busy lately with home decorating projects and I keep thinking of these great things that I can do to make my already awesome ideas even more awesome! It's a bit of a problem. No project is ever simple for me. 

So, I wake up this morning to a wet puppy nose in the eye and decide I might as well get a start on my day. Apparently I had been dreaming of pastries or danishes last night because that was literally ALL I COULD THINK OF. I had to have something. Enter the yummy Vegan(ish) Cinnamon Rolls.

Maybe not pretty, but definitely tasty!

Vegan(ish)? No...we're not trying to make a statement or eat healthier. We're just too lazy to go to the store. (It's approximately 2 miles away...I mean, it's just too far.)

Here's how we ended up choosing this recipe: 

The aforementioned pastry craving has now taken over my entire thought process. So I go on the magical world of Pinterest and look for ideas. Yum...cinnamon rolls sound delish. Here's a recipe...do we have what we need? Milk? HA! No milk. Before you think that I'm a horrible wife and that my husband must be starving, you should know that Evan actually does the grocery shopping and he does a great job. We just happened to use the last of the milk last night making "It's time to go shopping" mac and cheese. 

So I start searching for milk-free recipes. There are tons, but for some reason, the internet seems to think that if I don't have milk on hand, I must surely have BUTTERMILK. No thank you. Search changes to dairy-free recipes. Apparently, if you don't have any sort of dairy, you certainly have about a billion eggs...nope. We only have one. (Well, that's not technically true. We have 4 more, but they expired right before our wedding. 3 months ago...been there, done that, had the food poisoning to prove it.)

Ok...here we go...what do we have? Yeast? Yes! Sugar? Yes! Flour, butter, cinnamon, maple syrup, vanilla and brown sugar? YES!!! 

I know what I have to do. I go onto my favorite "what's in your pantry" recipe collection website. Yummly. I love this site because you can put in ingredients you have as well as what you don't and it will bring up things you can make! I searched for cinnamon rolls with no dairy or eggs. Bam! Done! 

Vegan Cinnamon Rolls! Only 1 1/2 hours and a big old mess in the kitchen (sorry, babe. I would have cleaned it up, but I was running late for work! My bad!) and you've got some delicious breakfast goodies! I consider ours Vegan(ish) because we didn't have vegan butter on hand. I used regular butter. Other than that, though, it was totally vegan. 

For the icing, I just mixed up some powdered sugar, vanilla and water. Super simple. 

They weren't the prettiest cinnamon rolls, but they were tasty! Mission "Avoid the Grocery Store" was a success. Now...what to make for dinner? Hm...

A Little Bit of Old in the New...

So, a lot of people have those grandparents that are just such amazing people that you can't help but think of them long after they're gone. My Nana was this kind of woman. Sure, she could be abrupt and she might interrupt your story to tell you about the amazing thing that your cousin just did, but you always knew that the next time she was talking to that cousin, she'd interrupt their story to tell them your news. She was a strong, willful, passionate woman who did crossword puzzles every day, played golf well into her late 80s and firmly believed in the power of a strongly worded letter. She was a pioneer in her own right, banning smoking inside her beauty shop long before people were aware of the dangers of second-hand smoke. She was an all-around amazing woman. 

Nana and Bopa in Hawaii

When Nana was still alive, she and I found an old book of hers that made my inner word-nerd squeal with delight: Chief Modern Poets of America and England. It was from 1936. It was an English Major's dream come true. I mean, it had WHITMAN! Anyway, I digress...Nana and Mom and I totally geeked out over the book and at the end of our visit, Nana told me to take it home with me. It has been sitting on my nightstand ever since. It is, by far, my most favorite possession. 


When Nana passed away, I got this amazing chair that was in Nana's formal sitting room. I had always loved this chair and it looked perfect in my bedroom. 

I seriously love this chair. It's so pretty!

I probably should have researched the
Stratford Company to see if this was an
"Antiques Roadshow" worthy chair.
Oh well...

Over time, the chair had gotten some minor scuffs and scrapes. The fabric desperately needed a good cleaning and was getting slightly itchy. One weekend, my adorable 2 year old nephew accidentally flipped over it backwards and put the final nail in the coffin of the back right leg. Since then, we've had it ghetto-rigged with books and pillows. 

Yes, we actually use it like this.
Beats not having it at all!

I had been thinking for some time that I wanted to get it reupholstered, but I just couldn't afford it. Then I found this blog...http://www.threeboys.net/2011/10/anthropologie-inspired-upholstered.html


Can I just pause for a moment and thank Sarah from Three Boys for posting this? She detailed every step of the process and made it so easy to understand! She really inspired me to try this project. And I am so proud of myself, honestly. It was such hard work, but I'm so excited to say that I did it by myself. Completely. 


I'm not going to post every detail of my journey. If you want to find out how to do this yourself, please hop on over to Sarah's Blog. She put a lot of time and energy into her helpful videos! They're super helpful! Instead, I'll simply share the photos of this reupholstering rollercoaster I was on! 

Awesome...this is what was inside Nana's chair.
It literally fell apart in my hands. Gross. 

Deconstruction begins

Skeleton chair

Cali thinks I'm crazy at this point, but is
intrigued by this fluff coming from the chair.
PS...don't let your dog eat this stuff.
She threw up on that blanket shortly after.
Yeah. Cali's not that bright sometimes. 

This is where I decided to go to
bed on the first night. I was pooped. 

Cushy, right?

We found the fabric on sale for
half off at Hancock Fabric! I love it!

Here you can see the covered buttons and
that the back is still completely bare! 

And here is our finished product! Piping and all done!!

It's not perfect. At some point I'll need to replace
the tack strips (I just reused the old ones...)

And that leg is still broken, so Evan is going to Lowe's to pick up some new, sturdy ones!

I have to give my wonderful husband credit for his moral support. I was determined to do this on my own and he cheered me along from the sidelines (until I needed his help with one really mean screw that just WOULDN'T go in!!) and let me get frustrated and cranky and sore. And then he rubbed my shoulders. :) Am I lucky or what?!


Anyway, at the end of this tiresome project, I have to say that it may not look the same, but I know that I'll always have a piece of Nana in my home. As the years go on, I will continue to reupholster this chair and fix it when it breaks so that I can always have some old in my life. Nana will always be in my heart, but now she will also have a place in my home.