can't stop those kids from dancing, but why would you want to?

As I'm sure you've guessed from my ghastly-long blogging hiatus, I have been a very busy woman. The first weekend in July David and I had our first garage sale ever. Let me just tell you: it was more than necessary. My grandparents came the second day of the sale, after about 50% had sold, and commented on the overwhelming amount of all our stuff! At a mere 24/25 years old! That's after 2 purges, as well (one when we left for Korea, another when we moved back to the States). Whew, baby!

The weirdest part about it all was that most of it was stuff we never, ever used. Seriously! I was sad to part with a few things (like my vintage toilet!) and some DVDs (but I never watched them), but it feels good to have gotten rid of so many things.

Let's see...this past weekend we went back to Goshen/Middlebury for one last visit before we move. Although I'm sure we'll be back to visit many, many more times. :) We had lunch one day at the Southside Diner in Goshen with David's parents/brother and then I spent Saturday afternoon with my madre in Shipshewana. We ooh'd and aah'd over vintage/antique goodies at the antique stores/markets and even purchased a few things. If I haven't told you before, my mother is like the smartest person in the entire world. She knows enough trivia to create 5 unique games of Trivial Pursuit. That makes her an excellent person to go antiquing with (I learned a lot!). A few pics from our day:

Passed by this beautiful old door with pretty flowers growing along it.

JoJo's Pretzels in Shipshewana (this is the coffee shop side)


JoJo's


Seriously: Best. Pretzel. Ever.

And that leads us to this week. Today is Wednesday, which means in approximately ONE WEEK we will be on the road headed SouthWest! Hard to comprehend how fast the move has come. David and I are beyond excited and have aligned most of the details. My Aunt Clara, who lives in Phoenix, has been sending us a picture every day, counting down the days until we leave!! Here is today's:

Isn't that the cutest gnome ever? :D

Speaking of moving, we're super pumped to move into our new apartment. I will gravely miss our stunning hardwood floors and quaint fireplace, but the new place has a lot of cool features, too. :) (Like a giant walk in closet - hehe). We've decided to re-furnish the entire place, which is really exciting for me. See, I've accumulated a great deal of wonderful trinkets (David has, too), but a lot of stuff is a hodgepodge collection of stuff without much of an aesthetic connector.

I've been reading a lot of design books and checking out design blogs like crazy (my favorite, by far, is Design*Sponge) for inspiration and ideas. It's up for discussion, but so far I'm leading more toward a modern interior with a healthy twist of vintage/industrial. David prefers it (by a tenfold) over my former ultra-girly, shabby-chic inclinations.

Because I know I can get great deals here on vintage/antiques, and because we had a bit of extra space, I went ahead and purchased a few things in Indiana. I also wanted to make sure I had a few things that were Indiana-specific to bring to AZ for good luck tokens. Call it silly, but I know that glancing in the direction of the few Indiana things I picked up will bring a grin to my face while sweating it out in the desert. :)

Obviously, I have pictures:

These are from my mother. Vintage pharmacy bottles!


How cool are these? Also from my mother! Vintage "poison" pharmacy bottles.


Antique mirror with shabby frame. $2




Picked up this vintage tool box that reads, "LUKE" on the top for a mere $3.


All the tools were included. :) Can you see me using those whatever-they're-called's?

Vintage, bright blue perfection stove! 'Bout 3 feet tall.


My heart sung when I saw the modest $20 price tag!

3 planters. $4 total.


How cool! This is a vintage, mid-century heater that totally works. However, I will not turn it on in the AZ heat. :) $8


The colors/body are too awesome for words.


Vintage kids' ABC stool. :) $3


Vintage scale with a rad glass reading gauge. Love this! $3.50


Mid-century adjustable lamp. Definitely works. I think this was David's favorite thing I purchased. :) $3


These two, early 1900s books will be a nice addition to my growing collection of vintage/antique books. $1 each.


Sweet tin car. $3 in Goshen!


1959 Indiana TRUCK license plate. Love the colors! $5 (Goshen)


This is an authentic copper/wood tea kettle. Reminds me of my mom (who collects vintage copper items). $5


Mmk, so the colors on this 1950s Fisher Price "Peter Pig" toy grabbed my attention immediately. I snagged it for an easy $3 and looked it up online when I got home. Turns out it's a somewhat rare collectible worth ~$60. Good find. And a keeper!


Cute butt!


I paid a lofty $9.50 for this sucker, but it says Goshen on it and I couldn't resist. Plus, my mom gave me a whole history lesson on Goshen Farms, increasing its intrinsic value. :)

Whew - -that's all for now. I can't promise another update before we leave (I'm already spinning in circles, after all). However, I do want to do an update focusing on career-oriented things. Some exciting things have occurred this month, including signed contracts and lots of photo shoots!

Stay positive,

Wendy

open your heart and let the good stuff out

Well, I've been nibbling on honeycomb all day long. You know what that means. :) David and I shadowed a beekeeper! We had a blast doing it and a learned a lot more than I expected to. I think I even overcame my fear of bees (permitting they don't fly near my face!).

We went to Hunter's Honey Farm, which is celebrating its 100th anniversary this year. It's a family-run business and the owner is the one who showed us all the ropes. I was surprised because he said we didn't need the protective gear because his bees weren't very aggressive. So, we walked out to the hives in the clothes we came in (camera in hand) and began.

They are kept in these wooden boxes and literally just fly in and out all day long. There is one queen bee (who we saw in this particular box!) and then the rest are female workers. Occasionally a drone, or male bee, will zoom in and do his business. After all, 2000 or so bees from the hive die every day, so there need to be replacements ready to go.

Some of the female workers take care of the larvae, some make the wax and others make the honey. And here's a little nugget of information: the bees eat the wax and honey they create! Not all of it, of course, but enough to keep them buzzing around.

The bees that we met today were quite docile. In fact, the beekeeper put a dab of honey (from the hive!) on my finger and then stuck my hand into the mess of bees! I was a bit hesitant about this, but a few started licking my finger to eat the tasty stuff and no harm was done. David even petted a few of them (seriously)!

Here are a few more pictures:

Rad, huh? :)

On our way out to the honey farm (we got lost...) we ran into an airport in the middle of cornfields. Truly bizarre. We saw two tiny planes land -- one looked like an Eagle. I wish we weren't running late, otherwise I would have stopped and snapped a photo or two.

Anyway, that's another item scratched off our list. So:

• shadow a beekeeper

In other list-related news, we've begun our quest to accomplish this beast:

• don't eat processed food for 30 days

It began today and already we're thinking differently about food! We're somewhat careful of what we eat anyway, but this will force us to become a little more creative in the kitchen. For example, it looks like we'll be making our own ketchup soon, making a lot more bread, etc.

Anyway, I figured I'd also include a few more things in this update. First of all, we're less than a month away from our move to Phoenix. Our official leave date is July 29th and we move into the new apt. Aug 1st. We're in the process of packing things that aren't necessary to our livelihood and we're also labeling/sorting things like crazy for our upcoming garage sale (Fri-Sun, this weekend, 8am-6pm-ish).

Saturday we drove to Elkhart to visit my papa and brothers. David sold his car to William (bittersweet to say goodbye to that trusty car) and we grilled a few things, played in the pool, lit some fireworks and I took pictures of the boys. I think the pictures turned out well. Enjoy!

The front yard


Side/backyard


Pool/Deck!

And a few of my favorites of the boys:

Allen Lewis

William McMahan

That's all she wrote, folks.
Wendy

feel an ocean breathing waves, feel them licking at my face

Well, I promised in the next update that I would talk a bit more about our move to Phoenix and our new apartment and all that uber exciting stuff. I'm not one to disappoint, so here goes!

We ended up signing a lease with Trillium Residential apartments, a "modern, luxury apartment complex" that we had been eying for quite a bit of time beforehand.

We were sold on the sense of community and all the perks associated with living there. In addition to a sweet pool and workout facility (goodbye $25 gym bill!!), they have various activities planned for residents there.

For example, there's a weekly spin class (totally partaking), spa, coffee bar and various community tournaments, grill outs, pool parties and hiking expeditions. There's even things like book clubs and studio dining where you watch a chef learn how to make a meal (that you also get to eat)! I think I sound like I'm selling this place to you. :) Really, though, we are very pumped. We wanted to be able to meet people easily, and this place seems conducive to that.

Here are some sneak peak pics. I'm sure I'll have a ton more for you once we move. Speaking of which, the official move IN date is August 1st. We leave Indiana July 28 to drive the 25 hours. :P

We're obviously pretty excited! To prepare, we've gone through a bunch of our belongings to sort out what to keep/leave behind. Let me just tell you, we had an entire basement full of stuff. Some things which haven't seen the light of day in (I'm embarrassed to say it) a good 4 years. Why I continued to move boxes around with me without ever opening, I'll never know! Anyway, we went through every single last thing and have an astounding pile of items that we'll attempt to sell at a garage sale mid-July.

We've also decided to say buh-bye to our furniture and a few other "major things." We'll end up saving over $1000 if we leave it behind, plus I plan on spending that money on redesigning our new apartment. I've been soaking up design blogs and catalogs like an eager puppy these days! :)

Clearly, things are all moving toward the big move. I can't believe it's all happening so fast! Still, though, we're soaking up our remaining month or so in pretty naptown. This past weekend we had a grill out with some friends and our lovely neighbors. Also, we accomplished a few more things on our 2010 bucket list. Look here:

• go strawberry pickin' (PICTURES BELOW!)
• buy a $20 lottery ticket (Goodbye, $20. It was nice knowin' ya)
• go a week without air conditioning in the summer (never again)

We did have an appointment to shadow a beekeeper today, but the storms last night were torrential and continued throughout the morning. Plans were foiled by mother nature! We'll reschedule for next week, probably. :)

Pictures of our strawberry picking adventures. We went to Spencer Farm in Noblesville and also picked some black raspberries and blueberries. YUM!

Found a heart. :)




What a dainty berry!











I devoured the blueberries that very night, nibbled on the raspberries and then we made cupcakes in icecream cones and topped them with (from scratch) strawberry whipped cream frosting. It was amazing!

Maybe next time I'll have pictures of us in bee gear. :)

Choose positivity,
Wendy