November 2nd, 2011
hiya! as you can imagine, we have a super slow connection here on the farm… i’ll try to upload a few more nz photos since we’re leaving tomorrow for the next part of the trip! love you 
- trev with the cows!
- at the top of bridal veil falls. 150k up that trev tried to swim under 7 years ago
- at rotorua
- cleveland represents in rotorua!
- the sunsets are gorgeous here
- pickles = gherkins here. there are a lot of funnies like this!
- as you can imagine, this is one of trev's favorites. he was splitting wood with george @ their place!
- do we have these flowers? they are everywhere here. i like them. 
the richards! what a great family! mic: george says hi!
- we decided to go to hobbiton since it's only 30 minutes away...
- but it was closed since they're still filming!
- last day here in new zealand. and we're off!
October 27th, 2011
we traveled a solid 34 hours to get out to NZ. CLE to LAX to SYD to AKL! thank God there were no issues at all. everything went smoothly!
on the flight from LAX to SYD we each had our own touchscreen TVs with hundreds of movies, news stations, etc.! watching movies the whole time makes the flight go a lot quicker… you could also watch the “skycam” that was the view from a camera on the tail of the plane. that was crazy for take-off and landing!
the flight tracker, literally going from one end of the world to the other!
after the 14.5 hour flight, we were glad to walk around!
about to land at our final destination (for awhile!). the auckland view.
October 27th, 2011
I know I pretty much gave up on this blog a year ago, but we are going to use it to document our trip to New Zealand and Australia now! (and then maybe we’ll get back to it on a regular basis when we return…)
We are currently in the hills of Putaruru, New Zealand at our friend’s dairy farm (Aidan, Jo + their baby Reuben).
Much love to you!
view from the farmhouse
November 12th, 2010
Yes, it’s true: Trevor is making our dining room table! He is out working on it now—making great progress! I am so excited to have something that he made be the centerpiece of our dining room, and to have our friends and family come together around it.
He got a bunch of the wood from a garage sale down the street. The wood is from an old church—you can tell that some of it was part of pews. He actually got a full church pew too (that needs to be fixed up), and he might use the sides of it for the legs of the table. He also got some wood from APOC, I think! (thank you!)
Here’s how the top of it is looking so far:
—isn’t it beautiful?!
There are some other things going on with the house too that I’ve been bad at blogging about. I’ll try to get them up in the near future!
Oh! And today is the day we got the keys one year ago. It’s so crazy to think about! Time flies.
July 1st, 2010
trevor did such an amazing job on our dining room… he has such attention to detail! and HAPPY BIRTHDAY to him today!
here’s what it looked like before:
—goldish green carpet, flocked wallpaper, avocado green beams, more textured wallpaper on the bottom & all antiqued avocado moulding. hot!
many hours of work later:
—a bit of an improvement, wouldn’t you say?
we actually painted over the flocked wallpaper to keep the pattern (great idea, momma phyl!). the rest is self explanatory. we are planning on adding some moulding rectangles to the bottom white area to mock a more intricate wainscoting.
happy holiday weekend!
June 30th, 2010
we had to incorporate a few bold colors. i don’t know if you love the orange/green/white combo as much as me, but that is what we’re going with for the dining room & kitchen. the plan is white trim in both rooms, with orange walls in the dining room (which makes it nice & romantic at night when dimly lit) and green walls in the kitchen (which really needs brightened up). here’s a photo that shows the combo i’m talking about (since there are plenty different shades/tints/saturations of each color!):
—love it!
I’ll post some dining room photos tomorrow.
June 30th, 2010
a lot has been going on that i haven’t blogged about! so i’ll just get started instead of spitting out some excuses for what took me so dang long to get them up (but we were just in california for awhile and it was amazing!).
we painted the living room (well, trevor mainly, but i helped a little). it’s a really nice warm gray. we originally got a gray from sherwin williams, but it just didn’t work right for us. it was too purple (it was called “chinchilla.” stay away!). but then we went with behr’s dark granite & it looks just how we wanted. picking colors is kinda tough even though i work with them all day as a graphic/web designer. especially when it’s a house you own and not one of those apartments that you just want to do something crazy that you’d never do if you owned it (speaking from experience). anyway, here are a few photos of how it turned out. we really need a video or a decent camera for this part (i’ll work on that!).
—the wood stands out so much more with the gray background (opposed to the gorgeous flocked wallpaper we replaced)…
—it looks nice all times of the day. when the sun in shining through the windows, or when it’s dimly lit by lamps at night.
—here’s a sneak peek on the next blog… the reddish-orange dining room!
April 19th, 2010
go! we finally started getting some things done. trev & i finished the molding in the living room, then he got all of the wallpaper off. i was planning on needing to write a blog about how difficult the wallpaper was to remove, what products we used to finally make it work & all of the things we tried that failed. but, thank God, no need! it came off easily… we think it’s because a: the woman who put it on took off the wallpaper that was on it before, b: the wallpaper was super thick & flocked so it didn’t tear apart easily and c: i think she did something to prep the walls before. who knows! it was refreshing for something to go so smoothly after the pains of getting the floors done.
here’s a little snapshot of our front wall in the living room that i took on my way out the door this morning:
—it is crazy how much the walls change a room, right? can’t wait to see what the paint looks like.
i’ll try to show you my inspiration for this room in the next few days while we’re working. later!
March 24th, 2010
…with a bit of urban luxe and a graphical edginess twist. it’s hard to narrow yourself down! for any of you that spent time in our old apartment, you’d probably agree on the vintage part. the fun thing about feeling most connected to a “vintage classic” identification is that i would describe our house by those words (the way it was built: the peaks, the windows, etc.)… so it feels right to fix it up accordingly.
coincidentally, a few months ago in Real Simple they had a few spreads on defining your style. & it confirmed what i already was feeling…
—this is probably the most obvious one when you walk in our house… and if it’s not now, it will be since most of what we need we’ll find thrifting or at vintage shops!
—i love colored walls, white molding & hardwood floors together. i love clean lines. i love chandeliers & luxe-ish stuff too.
then they put a handy “where to shop” page at the end of the style article. i think it’s helpful to anyone that reads it… there are always projects to be done & it’s fun to know new places to shop or be inspired that are actually what you like!
—most of the vintage eclectic places are already my favorite. like anthropologie & designspongeonline.com
