Planning, buying & nerves.

Welp tomorrow is moving day, AGAIN.

Wanna see our place? Click here.

R and I have spent the past few days measuring and purchasing items for our apartment. We sold all of our couches and large furniture items in Florida to lighten the cross-country load.

We are in a studio, the main room is about 300 sq ft. We have a full kitchen (with smaller appliances & a bench/table build-in), a vanity area with a walk in closet (that is only 2' 3" and 5' long) and a bathroom with a really awesome clawfoot tub.

We had to embrace two things with this move: Purging and Functionality.  

Before we left Florida we got rid of all of our bulky items to lighten our cross country move, and set the money aside to buy new items in LA. We got rid of our couches, beds, large desk, and anything else that was useless, bulky or not valuable enough to justify hauling it 3000 miles across the country.

Then we committed to a minimalistic lifestyle, especially while we are living in L.A. It is expensive to live here, so it is important to make every square foot count.

Having lived in studios before (one of which was a whopping 350 total sq ft) I know that excess stuff can be the killer. In our case, we had a lot of excess clothing that we never, ever wore.. and I am beginning to think I had a bit of a linen hording problem.

I had 5 sets of white king sheets, 5 full sheet sets and 2 twin sets. THEN I had about 5 sets of towels/wash clothes, plus a bunch of random towels/wash clothes and no idea where they all came from.

So having said that, each square foot in a small space needs to count and hording towels and bed sheets is not a good use of space.

Last night I made a floor plan of our new space, measured all the furniture we are bringing with us, and tried to plan out how (I hope) everything will fit into the apartment.

Just ignore that I typoed MANTEL and SEATS, k?

Tomorrow we will find out if I did good, AND we will see how easy the Manstad from Ikea is to put together.. Bed, Couch and Storage-- Gotta love IKEA!

I'm pretty excited about our move-in, but I am also a little nervous. Anyone I DO know here works like a dog (along with Rob)and I am feeling a little nervous about putting myself out there!


That's all folks,

Namaste!

r

Easy Chevron.

one: find a surface to put a chevron pattern on, make sure to clean (and sand) the surface if necessary. I painted the table with a yellow wash before adding tape. two: using tape make a diagonal grid. I eyeballed the grid, however I recommend using a ruler if you are less than inclined to create decently proportioned symmetrical spaces. three: Using an x-acto or razor (I used my foil cutter off the cork screw) remove the cross sections of tape (you can use a straight edge for cleaner lines), revealing the chevron pattern. four: Paint over the tape with an alternate color, let it dry and pull up the tape! *I ended up repainting the table because I wanted to add some funk and color to my kitchen.

(The paint was still a little wet when I took the picture)

~~~~~

I am feeling really inspired by this color combination, so I might add a grey stripe in the middle of the green after distressing the table with some sand paper, we'll see.....

Now I want to put chevron on everything! I'm thinking the cork board in my office might be next.

Lemme know if you try it!

Namaste!

r

Invitation Design

As I've mentioned we are hosting Thanksgiving this year. 

Since most of our guests will be from out of town, I decided to send all the info they will need early.

Here is what I sent to our guests.

Typography and handwriting have always been  of interest to me, but I never really realized how much I enjoy it until recently. I spent hours the other night hand-writing envelopes. 

a mock-up; Look past the ink smears, I used the eraser too quickly.

 A new hobby has been born in the life of Ryan, how about that...

xo, r