wil and kris (and gracie and ava)

i had no idea it was labor day this weekend until about thursday or friday of last week…which means i did not realize i had an extra day off. woot! it was a nice surprise to say the least, but when sunday night rolled around, i had no idea what i was going to do with this free day.

with wil at work, i sipped come coffee after waking up (at a very respectible hour mind you…i can’t seem to sleep in anymore with these two maniac dogs), and i decided i felt crafty. i went out to the garage, found some pieces of board and planned on painting some pictures. i was done priming, and i walked back into the house, and the kitchen screamed at me… “paint me!”

i’ve wanted to paint our kitchen since the day we moved in, but always talked myself out of it since i knew the entire job was just cutting in and trimming. bleh. but this morning, with the whole day ahead of me, i was ready to take on the job! (besides when moving into to new places, i’ve noticed that i seem to paint rooms on random whims…odd) the color is not something i necessarily picked out…the dining room walls have this color under the wainscoting, and then in continues into the adjacent ‘hall’…so it only made sense to keep that color going through the rest of the kitchen…especially since i have greens going on in the den that it’s open to. (*note: it looks quite baby poopish on the screen…i promise it’s better in person, and i bet people who have been here didn’t even notice the color in the existing spaces)

still in my pj’s, i set my coffee down (forgot about it till about an hour ago!) and went straight to it. by one i was pretty much done except for putting some of the hardware back up. it felt like a great accomplishment and so glad i finally convinced myself to do the work and deal with the labor.

i was still in the crafty mode after finishing up so i still painted my painting that started it all…just something fun to hang in the den.

yay for paint! our friends are moving into a fixer upper this week, so let’s hope the affair with painting lasts, since i’ve offered my hand and brush!

ava is honored to share her birthday with karly and sherry. happy birthday everyone! (a day late…)

watching a nashville ’sounds’ game on a perfect friday night with friends, hot dogs, peanuts, and fireworks!

last night was filled with amazing music and good friends as we celebrated our friend’s cd release party/show at the five spot. dave asked me to take pictures throughout the night (stressed me out way more than it ought to have because they turned out better than i thought on the computer), so here are a few of my favorites (larger set here).

dave is the lead singer of the champion and his burning flame (wil and dave go back to working at the downtown franklin starbucks together), and so we have also gotten to know the rest of the guys through the band, mutual friends and starbucks of course (everyone we know seems to work, have worked, or been related to someone who works at starbucks…it’s an interesting community).

their music is really amazing…wil and i blasted our new cd through the house while we enjoyed pancakes and bacon this lazy saturday morning. their myspace gives you a little hint. enjoy!

due to a disco “mustachio bashio” skating party on saturday night, wil and i found ourselves perusing a couple thrift stores this weekend to find the perfect outfit…what we didn’t expect was to find the coolest piece of furniture ever…

near the back of the store we came across an retro looking console, moved some stuff off the top and noticed the top open up to reveal a turntable and radio! noting what a cool piece it was, we saw a nearby 50% off sign, making the piece only 23 bucks. yes, 23 bucks. the lady mentioned that the radio for sure worked and on a whim, we made the purchase.

after loading it into the car, we immediately got so excited about the prospect of fixing it up and went straight to home depot to pick out a stain and buy some sand paper. two days later, we have a beautiful vintage stereo that we can’t wait to use. it worked out that i took care of the outside, while wil is working on the innards…i sanded down the varnish that had long ago started to peel off, discovering really pretty wood with bookmatched grain on the sides. after some mahogany stain and a few coats of poly, we brought it inside to it’s new home (behind the sofa). wil’s still working on the stereo…the speakers worked partially, so he plans on buying some old speakers from craigslist or more thrift stores to disassemble and possibly a used turntable to replace the other in case it doesn’t work. it’ll get there eventually!

hey. finally got the rest of our pictures uploaded and such, so here’s the set from our trip.

enjoy.

*i ought to have written a full post on our experiences, but it was mostly just family events, graduation events and wine tasting… here’s a quick summary of the week

graduation, golf, another round of golf, wine tasting, chefs market downtown, dinner & wine at different family members’ houses, check in to hotel, pool, fancy dinner at bouchon, graduation party, goodbyes!