Oh summer.

I’m not quite sure how it happened, but I’ve become someone who drinks liquor. Not just drinks liquor, but someone who stocks it at home and always wants to know what you’re drinking and if it’s delicious. I think it could partially be blamed on my bar-tending best friend, Morgan, moving down the street and making me many delicious drinks. But I, a former beer & wine drinker, have turned into someone who has very strong opinions about how a proper Bloody Mary should taste (note to 90% of restaurants: not how you just served it!), is likely to order a martini (straight up and a dirty with three olives, thankyouverymuch) at the bar, and has things like vermouth and celery salt in my kitchen.

One of the things on my 26 before 26 list was finding and altering an old library catalog. I tried to do this, I really did, but did you know that other people also have unhealthy love affairs with books and libraries and old things? And all of these people apparently have a lot more money than me? Library catalogs on craigslist have been going for between $800 and $3,000. Ha! Not happening. So instead, I bought an old record cabinet for $15 bucks. Of course I forgot to take any before photos (though you can sort of see it in the background of the first photo here), but please just picture any destroyed piece of wood furniture that you have ever known and/or loved, with peeling laminate and a myriad of water rings. It was a mess, but I loved its shape and small size and I knew I could turn it into something awesome. So Steve picked it up and then it sat in our living room, holding things we shoved in it when people were coming over and we didn’t have time to clean. I could not for the life of me figure out what to do with it. And then one day, while Steve was in Israel, it hit me while I was making myself a drink (vodka with muddled mint leaves, homemade lemon simple syrup and soda water)(see? I told you) – a bar! It was meant to be a bar!

So I went to visit my orange-vested friends at Home Depot and picked up some sand paper and paint. I decided on two grays and an orange, matched to the chair fabric from this project. Incidentally, did you know that you can get tiny paint samples of any color for around $3? I managed to get three different colors of paint for this project for around 12 bucks since the surfaces were so small. I sanded and taped and painted and taped and painted. I wanted rustic-looking shelves for our glassware, but didn’t want to spend a lot of money, so I got some simple brackets and a rough redwood fence post ($2.50), flirted my way into a free in-store cut down the middle, stained them with the same orange paint mixed with some water and ta da – shelves!

I dropped our liquor in the top-open compartment, our wine/mixers/barware/accessories in the shelves, our glass/barware on the open shelves and now whenever I mix a drink after work, it feels vaguely glamorous.

Now if only the perfect vintage hammered ice bucket would just appear on etsy already, we’d be all set.

PS. This is one my favorite songs ever by Oakland’s The Coup. It is genius, but please don’t listen to it if you have no sense of humor, are around small children, and/or have a problem with well-placed & plentiful curse words.

PPS. Let’s all count down to my mother’s email telling me that I should not curse on my blog. 3…2…1…

Looking forward to a sunset run along the Bay tonight – salty breeze + sun setting over San Francisco + Bass Head Jazz on repeat.

Happy Weekend!

PS. If you don’t love this song, I’m not sure that we can be friends anymore.

Please just wait for it to load. I really have no idea how this happened, but I think I like it. Potentially NSFW, even though it involves my little sister.

I keeping sitting down to write a post on what being married feels like a year later, on how everything has changed and nothing has changed all at once, on how it feels like flying with my feet planted firmly on the ground, like bursting through the door of a home I never knew I always wanted, but I just can’t seem to pin it down – it’s always rolling right through my fingers.

So instead, here’s a toast of sorts:

Here’s to a year of the deliciously imperfect: leaving unmade beds and unswept floors behind to drive somewhere with the windows down and the music up, your hand on my thigh and mine on the back of your neck; to snorting with laughter and dancing to records in the living room and that look you give me when you’ve finally had enough of my shenanigans; to having no paper towels for a month because we keep spending our weekends consuming the beach and wine country and burritos; to traveling even though it’s never in our budget; to one million eye rolls over one million forgotten tasks; to Sunday mornings spent with pancakes and coffee on the patio; to the taste of your salty-post-surfing skin; to trying to out-stubborn each other in every fight; to cramped dinner parties and new friends; to the smile that explodes on your face when you look up from your guitar and see me walking through the gate; but mostly to feeling young and free, but never rootless.

Steve, you are my best thing. I’d say I couldn’t love you more, but then every sunrise would make a liar of me. I know our marriage probably won’t always look like this, but hot damn, what a way to kick it off. Cheers, darling!

More peaceful than yesterday’s rant, yes?

Also maybe I’ll finally publish some of my endless drafts about hard things. Or my life list. Probably I’ll just talk about art though.

P.S. Isn’t he delicious? I am very, very ready for him to come back…home isn’t home without him. Okay, I’ll stop now before I end up on STFUMarrieds.com.

P.P.S. Holy Parenthetical Abuse. Sorry about that (not sorry enough to go back and edit them out though!)(Help I can’t stop).

So though I’ll still be working on wrapping up the ones on my old list, as it’s my birthday and I’m now 26, here’s my brand-new 27 before 27!

1. Put up tomatoes, jam & pickles and eat them in the winter
2. Take a woodworking class at the Crucible and build something beautiful
3. Learn good swimming & breathing technique for two different strokes
4. Watch the sun rise from Angel Island
5. Visit Quixote Winery
6. Plan regular craft/project/hang out nights with the girls
7. Get/make a hammock or outdoor couch
8. Talk myself into applying to grad school
9. Explore the underwater preserves at Salt Point
10. Start volunteering regularly
11. Brew & bottle my own beer
12. Do 100 pushups in a row
13. Give away all of the clothes that I won’t ever wear again
14. Read a book or two on the following: color theory, California history, the Mormon faith, superstring theory
15. Bike Part Two of Silverado Trail (128 and above!)
16. Coffee + Book on the deck of a mushroom dome cabin
17. Try rock-climbing
18. Save a substantial-ish emergency fund
19. Spend a night soaking at Harbin with Morgs
20. Camp on the cliffs in Big Sur (Thanks Peggy!)
21. Get a full-frame camera body
22. Write letters to three teachers/professors who changed my life & send them
23. Sell a photograph
24. **Secret one to be revealed later**
25. Get totally comfortable working with encaustics
26. Soak in private bath overlooking the ocean at Esalen in the middle of the night
27. Read five graphic novels – 1(Lost Girls)  2 3 4 5

It’s going to be a great year.

1) Warm + windswept NorCal beaches

2) Delicious local produce, prepared simply

3) Watching the sun set over the bay from the top of Indian Rock with good friends, whiskey, and a dog/mountain goat named Kali.

4) Hula-hooping

5) Covered wagons

6) My fur-babies