re:stock

so, i'm the latest casualty of the economic downturn.

it happened last friday. i felt like it might be coming - work has been scarce, so we've been trying to save rather than spend on the house over the last few months. charleston architecture firms have been hit hard, so it may take a while to find another position.

in the meantime (downtime?), i'm doing a lot of soul-searching, which is a slippery slope, to be sure. but not a topic for a house renovation blog... :)

re:cession

merry christmas!

so, i suppose my lack of posts over the last 2+ months indicates that we haven't done much on the house front. it's a recession, ya'll! we're supposed to be saving up for the next big thing - namely the stair & loft railing or the master bathroom, but between weddings, the holidays and the occasional $200 used-furniture purchase, we're getting nowhere.

so, to satiate your need for pics, i'll post our holiday decorations and furniture finds!

this is a simple holiday wreath i made with our christmas tree clippings and a few glass ball ornaments -



we have some modern christmas decorations in our modern living room -





and our traditional christmas tree is in the den -


we put up some of anthony's sketches from italy in the dining room, along with a few other frames with just placeholders so far -


table found at an antique shop ($190) being used as a kitchen 'island' -


dresser found thru craigslist ($40) and chair found at an antique shop ($70) in one of the guest rooms -


bedside table found thru craigslist ($15), currently being used as a side table in our den -


i hope in the spring we can make some progress on our other major house projects. in the meantime, we should be painting the window sashes on the interior and continuing with baseboards and door/window casings....

re:tag

i just found out i've been tagged by bunnymendelbaum and by corey over at baltimore rowhouse. the rules: answer the following questions about yourself. at the end of the post you pass the questions on to 6 (or so) bloggers and list their names. then write them a comment telling them that they've been tagged and ask them to read your blog.

here goes...

1. what did you do 10 years ago? that would put me at the tender age of 20, and that summer between my sophomore and junior years of college i worked my first architecture job in one of those awful firms that just crank out infinite variations of house plans by tweaking a wall here or adding a room there and publishing them for the masses. sorry if that offends the masses and i know it has its place and value but it's not my thing. hardly 'architecture.'
oh, and i was also gearing up for a semester studying abroad in italy during my junior year!

2. five items on your to-do list today:
a. catch up on work email, correspondence & questions
b. unpack from my trip to seattle
c. do laundry
d. grocery shopping and cleaning out the fridge from 6 days of being away
e. go to bed early to get over this jetlag

3. snacks i enjoy: wasabi & soy almonds, apples w/ peanut butter, peanut butter m&ms

4. what would you do if you were a billionaire? pay off my student loans. that would just about do it. might buy a pack of gum with the rest.

5. places i would live: summer in italy, the rest of the year in charleston. what can i say - i love this place and can imagine few places better to live (except in the aforementioned summer).

6. bloggers i am passing the challenge on to are:
just one day
pinklemonadediva
holyhudson
tinyoldhouse
- sorry if any of you have already been tagged!

re:cess

sorry i've been m.i.a. with the updates - we got back late last night from 6 days in seattle - and because i'm an architecture geek and this is an architecture-related blog, here are some of my favorite photos...

the hotel/conference center where we stayed (northwestern style architecture)...


pike place market -


the famous fish-throwing stall. i couldn't get any actual fish in the air though...


the seattle public library by rem koolhaas (oma)...










(i call this one "the womb")










clearly i don't have to tell you what this is...

(we got really lucky with the weather)

and gehry's experience music project...










seattle city hall by bohlin cywinski jackson...




dale chihuly chandelier in the benaroya symphony hall...




so, it will be back on the house work train this weekend.

re:finance

we're refinancing to take advantage of the great rates as of two weeks ago, and we have to have our kitchen complete before closing, so stay tuned for some fast kitchen updates! woo-hoo!

re:commend

since we're on a major progress hiatus, i have to confess it gets difficult to come up with new relevant or clever re: words to name my posts. so, here's a fun game to get some participation from all you people who visit my site. list some words you can think of that i can put in a word bank for future post naming. they have to start with re - and it's best if pronounced 'rEE' but could be 'reh' as a fallback. ready? go!

re:date

a friend who works for the city was telling anthony that while the city's records have our house dated to 1935, that's the date they record when they don't know the real date (ha, i thought it was curious that it was the same date as our old house). he said our house is more likely circa 1915, or possibly even earlier - our area started being developed around 1905. pretty cool.