> > 36 <
my birthday was awesome. i woke up and got my face painted, went paddle boarding on ladybird lake, had lunch with ian at black sheep lodge, got a foot massage, met the fam at whole foods and walked to waterloo records where we saw/listened/danced to shinyribs. capped off the day with amigos at swift's attic and the elephant room. it was a lovely austin day.
> > transformation <
okay, here goes.... a few pictures of what we've been doing over here the past year and a half. our house was built in the 1940s as a duplex - one unit upstairs and one unit down. for the past 5 years, we've lived in the second floor of our house and worked out of the first floor. now that we have built studios to work in, we've renovated the first floor and finally moved into our entire casa. the room below was once my studio, then marvel's birthing room. we now call it the parlor. we knocked down most of the wall shown at the top left for a more open feel. it's now sort of a go-between room that connects the living room (top right) and the stairwell - a good place for koruna and mars to snack, draw, make a mess.
we gutted the old kitchen downstairs and turned the upstairs kitchen into a laundry room. below are pics of the old downstairs kitchen and work in progress. (we of course considered keeping the shiplap, but some of it was in pretty bad condition.)
we removed some windows to make room for french doors to the side yard.
below is a picture of work in progress
and what it looks like now.
our house is filled with estate sale and garage sale finds, family pieces, hand-me-downs, gifts, and auction purchases. we're trying to get rid of everything we don't love. we're trying to simplify.
we need to simplify because we're determined to spread our wings while we send down our roots. we'll be leaving the country for a while this fall. we haven't decided all of the details yet, but we do know that we'll be renting out our casa a bit while we're gone.
the pictures that the airbnb photographer took of our house are far better than mine. check them out by clicking here. exciting stuff....
american gothic, south austin style. january 2012
we whooped it up again with shana the other day and took the 5th portrait in our american gothic, south austin style series. (our first with marvel.)
this series (which can be seen on my portraits page) was inspired by a random photo that ian and i took of ourselves years ago in anticipation of our travels to india in 2006. (see the last photo at the bottom of the portraits page.) we started the series with shana when i was pregnant with koruna in 2009.
i am always amazed at what shana can capture. a 2-and-a-half-year-old and a 4-month-old ain't exactly easy to corral. i dig the photo below. rooster is sneezing and mars is just DONE.
i hope we hope we get to keep adding to this series until all four of us are old and gray.
i love my family.
early morning at barton springs
shana has done it again, folks.... she met us a few mornings ago at barton springs. i'm so glad she did.
mars and i went swimming at the springs again early this morning. pink orange sun coming up behind the buildings downtown, white moon still hanging overhead. mornings there are magic.