Barn Before

The barn is completely done finally and Nate is using it as his office now. I wanted to post some before pictures before I post the after so you can see all the changes we made. It was really just a shed with electricity before. I'm not sure what the former owners used it for. There were two built in desks so maybe it was a home schooling room before.

You can kind of see in this picture that the barn door is hanging too low on the hinges. We had to lift the door up to close it and the lock was completely non functional. The lower door actually ended up falling off its hinges about a week ago.

The outside was very beige. It was actually the exact same color as the house which I kind of hate. But painting the whole exterior of our house is a much larger task than we want to tackle right now.

Next up are progress pictures, then the final result.

The Barn

The Barn, originally uploaded by krakencrafts.

I was hoping at this point to post some before and after pictures of "The Barn", Nate's writing shed in our back yard. We thought we were just about done with it until we discovered that rehanging super heavy barn doors is more complicated than we originally thought.

So for the time being, I wanted to post this teaser picture of the sign I carved for the door.

Front Porch

Though the sprucing up the front porch area wasn't the first project on the house that we tackled it is the first one that I have some decent before and after pictures of.

Here is the before, it was kind of blah and kind of a mess.

The area between the porch and the driveway was completely bare before except for the jasmine plants winding up the porch posts. I had a rosemary and a lavender plant that had been living in pots forever that I transplanted into the front. I also transplanted a huge lavender plant that had seemed really happy in the planter box in the back yard, but I moved to make room for fruit trees. My old plants are pretty happy in the new space but the lavender from the back yard doesn't like it in front. I hope it ends up surviving.

I repotted a couple of cactuses and a hawthornia succulent into matching white Gainey Ceramics planters that I've collected.

All of the door hardware and the doorbell and light on the porch are brass. We aren't ready to replace all of that stuff so we wanted house numbers that kind of matched. It was really hard to find modern looking house numbers that came in a somewhat brasslike finish, but we managed to find these on Amazon. They were pretty tough to get mounted evenly on stucco, but I think even a little crooked they look better than the flowery tile house numbers that were up before.

Lastly, I found these chairs at an estate sale. They look kind of danish modernish, but I think the former owner may have made them himself because there were a whole pile of similar chairs, all in pieces and missing the bolts to fasten them together at the sale.

Overall, I think it is a big improvement to the curb appeal of the house. I can't wait to sit out on the porch, drink a beer, and watch the people walk by.

New House

Nate and I closed on our first house about a month ago. Here are some of the pictures of the house from the online listing when some of the old owners' stuff was still there. We have done quite a few projects around the house already. Hopefully I will post some before and after shots soon.

Oystercatcher Vintage Goods

I have finally reopened my etsy vintage shop called Oystercatcher Vintage Goods. I really didn't do too much with it when I started it, and then kind of abandoned it, along with my Kraken Crafts etsy site, while planning the wedding. After the wedding I really planned on getting back into posting things regularly on both sites. I figured, since I would no longer be occupied with constant crafting for the wedding, I would have so much free time that I would need to spend doing something. It turned out that after the wedding I was completely burnt out on crafting and also on keeping up with the vintage shop. I was still thrifting as if I was collecting stuff for a wedding, but somehow couldn't be bothered to try to sell anything. As a result, stuff has really started to pile up. Nate and I are trying to buy a house, and the thought of packing up and moving tons of stuff that I don't really need is kind of horrifying me. So, I have reopened the vintage shop and plan on posting stuff there regularly. Feel free to stop by and see if there is anything you are interested it. I also have slightly restocked the Kraken Crafts etsy shop, and plan on getting back into the crafting more at some point.

2010 Holiday Card

2010 Holiday Card, originally uploaded by krakencrafts.

I realize that I never ended up posting any of our professional wedding pictures on this blog, despite the fact that I made our photographer send us a bunch of watermarked pictures so that I could share them here. Oh well. Maybe I'll get to that at some point.

Anyway, here is some craftyness that I have been up to more recently. For the third year in a row, I printed our holiday cards on the print gocco. I decided to use the gold ink that came with my machine but has never gotten any use. The sparklyness seemed appropriate for the holidays. The illustration in the center is supposed to be our cats, Harris and Flynn, snuggling.

Table Numbers 1-10

Table Numbers 1-10, originally uploaded by krakencrafts.

I pulled all of the wedding table numbers out of the box they were in so I could take a picture of them all together. At the wedding we acutally only ended up having 8 tables so we hung numbers 9 and 10 on the wall of the reception venue. I think the table numbers were a hit at the wedding. Our friends ended up borrowing number 2 and some other wedding decorations after the wedding for their daughters second birthday party. I can't wait to see pictures of the decor in a completely different setting. It is nice that other people can get some use out of or decorations since it was a lot of work for just one day.

I actually entered the table number in another ruffled blog DIY contest. I think this one is going to have "experts" pick the best entries and only those ones will be posted and voted on by the public. So no guarantees they will be featured on the blog. I'll post an update and try to solicit votes if it is.