FARMHOUSE FACELIFT: KITCHEN, PART 2 + FRIDAY LINKS

i call it: ikea meets grandma meets farm meets the prettiest dinner bell ever in all the land*.

it still needs some shelves, running water, my vintage pyrex collection, basil and rosemary for the hanging pots, and some ballsy men in gas masks to come in and rip up the 1970s laminate flooring that's hiding asbestos (dear lord).

we're starting to think about other rooms in the house now, which suddenly don't seem so daunting now that we're close to being dunzo with the kitchen. as much work as this has been and will continue to be, it's all so fun because it's like playing house but in real life!

*my dinner bell's name is esmerelda, she was a graduation gift from my dad, she's got enough overtones to last a century, and there was a time when i'd sit in a practice room with her for hours practicing orchestra music.

yesterday, some cool dudes came from south dakota to shoot a video for ota + pollen. having that scheduled was a good kick in the rear to really get things going on the kitchen last week. it was a super fun shoot!! they helped me style my matcha green tea peeps by biting off their heads ever so artfully, and the day ended over bigass steaks. i don't think i was as awkward in front of the camera as i thought i'd be (or maybe i was??), although when they asked me to list all the things i like to make, i found myself in a forrest gump situation, listing off every kind of cake i could think of. layer cakes. mini cakes. cupcakes. bundt cakes. upside down cakes. oops.

speaking of cake, i have a ton of cake research to do today (of the ombre kind!), so off i go, but first, some links:

son lux released an ep and one of the tracks features lorde. it's almost too much to handle, it is just so good. it's what i'll be listening to on repeat until further notice.

all of the above photos were edited with the vsco film 05, which includes the choice film of my youth: kodak gold... such nostalgia...

also on the subject of photos, i have been really loving the ones over on vegetarian ventures and dolly and oatmeal.

miso + coconut on a chicken is a combination i need to experience on the asap.

dave barry's manliness manifesto is pretty wonderful. eggboy is using it as a guide for how to grill steak.

the kitchen renovations of a couple cooks and smitten studio have been huge inspirations for eggboy and me.

speaking of a couple cooks, its co-author sonja shared her cancer story this week and it is amazing in the most unexpected way. 

i need this grapefruit in my life.

i don't know what my instagram feed looked like before i started following cococakeland and i don't wanna know.

cat curling.

happy friday, everyone!!!

-yeh!

home

we made the five hour journey to ikea this weekend. i think i love that place more than pie. it is so worth the trek. i mean i really miss being a bike ride away from an ikea, but at least now we get to make a fun weekend trip out of it complete with drive-through egg mcmuffins and a san fermin/son lux concert, you know? 

eggboy and i officially have about half a dozen wildly successful ikea voyages under our belt, so i think this means that we can safely cross off any comparison to liz and criss in this regard and i am just too smitten with this realization. somehow we were plopped on the same ikea wavelength and each time we go to that store it gets better and better. we get in early, we get out before we're too crabby, and in between a few wonderful things always happen:

1. we share meatballs and he always lets me have the last one. 

2. if there is an extra cute dessert (especially one covered in marzipan of a pretty color), i obviously get it and bounce up and down excitedly and basically improvise a short broadway show about it at our table and he never gets embarrassed. (and yesterday it was a mini princess cake and omg it was the cutest thing ever ever everrrrrrrr!@!!!! jazz hands!!!!!!!)

3. we usually agree on aesthetics and if we don't, we stay calm and logical. if necessary, we spend an appropriate amount of time with, for example, hektar, getting to know him, envisioning how he would get along with our kitchen, meeting his family. we're not afraid to decide at the last minute to buy a twin set of mini hektars instead of the papa hektar that we had originally planned on.

3a. we keep receipts incase mini hektars need to go back. 

4. by the time we get to the kitchen accessories and i have to do that thing that i do every single time which is debate whether or not i need a pony shaped cake pan, he usually has an idea for a song lyric and will happily hang out with the mountains of tupperware, finding words that rhyme, while i decide for the "final" time that no, i do not need a pony shaped cake pan. 

5. egg is real good at calling me out on wanting to impulse buy things that i'll never use, so on the rare occasion that he does support a random thing i found and suddenly had to have, i know it's for real. 

6. and on the even rarer occasion that we both stop dead in our tracks in front of a really cool thing that is about to be sold out, we grab one. even if we have no idea where we will put it. (because planning out our lighting is officially my least favorite thing, because i have no idea how to light a house, because can someone come over and do it for me? and not crush my filament lightbulb dreams like this new york times article just did?)

...which is all to say that our ikea trip has made me even more excited about our farmhouse facelift and it has given me the motivation to whine less when eggboy suggests that instead of watching house of cards we go and sand some cabinets. 

and speaking of our home, a little thing i wrote about living in the country has been published in the kinfolk home issue and i am so excited i could poop. i talk about elk and eggs and how my concept of home has changed since moving here from the city. the issue officially comes out next week!

ok, i am off to go browse wallpaper and possibly make chocolate mint meringues. or rosewater meringues.

-yeh!

FARMHOUSE FACELIFT: KITCHEN, PART ONE

hey, how many music school graduates does it take to renovate a kitchen?

trick question: omg we have no idea what we're doing.

well, ok, i'm not giving eggboy enough credit. his rugged manly farmerness has come out a bit and he knows some things, but mainly he knows enough to know that we don't know what we're doing.

that is why most of these pictures are of paint chips!

so far we have done these things:

1. painted a couple of walls in the colors crumb cookie and sage

2. removed the hanging cabinets

3. painted some of the remaining cabinets

4. ordered wallpaper samples and decided not to get the one with the bunnies

5. decided that we want butcher block countertops and that we'll likely order those from ikea

our goal is to have everything done by the time the chickens arrive (may) and, nope, that's probably not going to happen. but it's ok! mostly i am just excited to move down the road to a house with a chicken coup and to have an address without an apartment number after it!!!

-yeh!