The Jitney's Journeys Studio : DIY 12-foot Desk

Once again, I was inspired by Young House Love when I saw their DIY 13-foot counter. Originally I really wanted to get the Bedford desk collection from Pottery Barn because I knew I could build on to the collection if I needed to and the color / design was just what I had in mind. Then I remembered my mom had a custom built desk in her office using Lowe's kitchen cabinets so I decided to combine snippets of these ideas into one. 

The wall in my studio was only 12 feet, so we settled on a length of 12 feet instead. We ventured down the road to Lowe's where dad picked through the large pile of lumber and pulled out the best looking 12-foot 2" x 10"s he could find. Rather than assembling several pieces of lumber, we simply bought four pieces of lumber at the full 12' length. JD and dad set up two sawhorses in the garage and placed the pieces of lumber on top, ready for me to sand away. After sanding, I stained the backs and sides of the planks using PolyShades Antique Walnut Satin.

We carried the four planks into my office, setting them on top of a couple of scrap lumber pieces and two large pieces of plastic (since I would be staining the top part). They assembled the four planks by drilling three pieces of plywood into the back. Please note that they are totally rockin' the headlamps.

We carefully flipped the super heavy desktop over and I stained 2 coats on the top side.

We bought three unfinished cabinets from Lowe's for the drawers. Though this wasn't as money-savvy as the Young House Love bottom cabinets from the thrift store, they were WAY more money-savvy than the Pottery Barn cabinets (and more practical too). The middle is an unfinished base sink cabinet and the other two are unfinished drawer base cabinets. I sanded them down a little and painted on a few coats of Dover White (Sherwin Williams) in the garage. 

Our neighbors graciously helped us carry the cabinets into my studio as half of us lifted the desktop while the other half placed the cabinets into their rightful position. {Have I mentioned lately how thankful we are for our neighbors?!}

Mom, Elizabeth (neighbor) and I stood in the back of the room, examining this creation we had assembled. 

"Aren't the cabinets a little tall for an actual desk? Normally desks are a little lower to the ground, right?" asked Elizabeth.

"Ooooh yeah. I forgot to mention that we had to custom order the cabinet bases for my office so they would be short enough for a desk size," laughed mom.

"Aww man," was all I could say at the moment as I began sweating profusely. I really thought we messed up.

But in reality, it's perfect. I stand up anyways when I cut materials for sewing or other projects so it's helped to prevent the back pain I felt from bending over using the other desk. In fact, I prefer standing during most of my work. Somehow it gives me a steadier hand. Plus the desk fits perfectly under the windowsill and couldn't be at a better height for decor purposes.

I'm currently on the hunt for an industrial chair (vintage, please!) for the smaller nook of the desk. 

After everything was set up, I lined the drawers in these lovely Laura Ashley Shelf Liners.

Then I drilled holes for the knobs and handles we picked out from Lowe's. I debated between getting the simple knobs from Lowe's or getting some funky ones from Hobby Lobby, but the threading from the knobs at Hobby Lobby stick out pretty far in desk drawers. I was going for looks and practicality with this studio. As clumsy as I am, I'd have scars on my hands from reaching into the drawers with Hobby Lobby knobs. But they sure are precious! 

I digress.

We settled on these knobs from Lowe's. :)

When the desk was finished, we decorated. 

and paid much attention to detail, flow, inspiration and organization. ;)

Voila! 

What do you think? 

The Jitney's Journeys Studio : Overview & Quick Intro

Here is our finished studio!!

It may look super cluttered to most people, but oh, how I love this space!!! This studio has everything I need to be creative, including tons of storage and wall space of inspiration. 

During our house search, we intentionally looked for a room without carpet that I could make into our studio. This house had a guest bedroom - with tile. It's kind of weird that they would have tile in a bedroom and I'm not sure of many people that would be into that kind of thing - but it was a bonus for us! It's super easy to sweep up burlap and glitter; and paint easily scrapes off the tile. 

When we first moved into this house, I placed my collection of bottles on the built-ins. Then my mom came to visit and the collection was the first thing to go. Fortunately, she suggested they would look better on ledge under the giant window in the studio and I can't imagine this place without them. It's almost like a stained-glass window when the sun shines through. She's a genius.

I painted two coats of "jogging path" from Sherwin Williams on the studio walls to replace the standard beige that covers the walls of the rest of the house. It's a soft gray and the name of the color screams success, right? It's almost like saying, "This room is destined for the jogging path to success." Plus, the gray walls brought out the grays in the tile very nicely. I'm super pleased with the turnout.

We built the desk ourselves (we, meaning JD, dad and myself) and I stained, painted and put up all of the shelving while JD was at work. Surprise!

This space has all of my knick-knacks, leather-working tools, mailbox, crafting supplies and paper. You may notice the sign that says, "Hippies Use Backdoor - no exceptions". I found this sign in college and fell in love. I'll admit that I've been called a hippie (or "crunchy") many times in my life, especially recently. JD and I have been riding our bikes everywhere over the past three weeks, including our weekly grocery trip, so it makes sense for people to have that perception of us, but I digress. It's funny and that's what matters. 

This is my shipping, packaging and inspiration station. We placed the antique door chalkboard against this wall to keep track of projects, birthdays, weddings and babies. Each order I receive is assigned to a basket on the shelf. Now I can set an order aside and work on another one, if needed, and I'll still be organized! This is a new one for me. ;) Then we have bags, envelopes, tissue, etc. for shipping and packaging needs. 

Please note the "Safety First" sign and First Aid box hanging on the wall - both finds from Mom, of course. I store all of my small supplies in the First Aid box, and the Safety First sign is just too cool for words. 

Alas, this is what you see when you walk in the doorway: my sewing nook. Isn't it charming? Bonus: I bought the chair from a thrift store for $3, painted it and recovered it. It's not only pretty, but quite comfy!

I will be posting about each section of the studio over the next week or two. Hope you enjoy the tour!

The CD : Jitney Jams Year III

We were a few months late getting them out again this year, but the Jitney's Jams is back and ready to blare through your stereo system.

{If you don't know about our annual album, read about the history behind it here.}

The theme for this year's album is: Wake Up

This may come as a surprise to you but months of thought go into our album - 12 months, to be exact - sometimes even more. {We already have a few songs on the 25-year anniversary playlist. CDs probably won't be around by that year though.} Our goal each year is to methodically plan the songs to flow in certain ways. 

This year's mix was planned in such a way to demonstrate our waking up physically and also spiritually throughout this past year. Each song or a few lyrics from each song have a special meaning behind it. Granted "our meaning" behind a lot of the songs are probably way different from the intentional meanings of the lyrics. For instance, some of the lyrics in the song "Lover of the Light" by Mumford & Sons are parallel to our walks with Christ, as He is the Light, but you'll have the chance to read all about those meanings soon. 

There is purpose in every song that we've added to every album, but this is the first year we'll be sharing those purposes with you. We'll post about the explanations in a blog series so that it's not info overload. The first post will explain songs #1-5, the second post #6-10, and you get the point. 

Hope you enjoy!!

OH! And, of course, this year we will be sending CDs out to a few of our blog readers. If you would like a copy, comment below or on our Facebook page. We'd love for you to jam out with us! 

The Todd Nest : Jitney's Journeys Studio

We have almost completed the arduous but super thrilling task of designing and decorating my studio. Be prepared for when we reveal it. The sight of it may just blow your mind. ;) We have many people to thank for helping us paint, construct, lift and design my dream studio. It's perfectly practical and yet still stunningly charming.

As excited as I am to show you the full tour of the studio, we have decided to only give you a glimpse into the details for this week...

We will be working overtime this weekend to have everything perfectly placed to show y'all photos next week.

In the meantime...

The Garden : FREE MULCH in Huntsville & Bloom of the Week

Looking for a way to spruce up your garden beds? 

Our neighbors told us about the free mulch from the Huntsville Botanical Gardens. We don't have access to a truck so we grabbed an old plastic trashcan and unpacked a few more of our Rubbermaid tubs, loaded them in Silver Flash, grabbed our shovels and headed down the road.

There were huge piles of wood chip mulch - FREE mulch (well, donations are appreciated)!! It took us about twenty minutes to shovel as much as we could in the tubs and trashcan so it wasn't that bad. We barely made a dent in the mulch piles. Between our tubs, there was just enough mulch to fill the front yard and it looks lovely!

So, thank you, Botanical Gardens of Huntsville. You deserve the Award for Being Awesome this month. 

We're enjoying the blooms from the front of our vegetable gardens. I picked a few marigolds and placed them in a tiny teacup last week to add to our dining room centerpiece.

But this week's bloom feature goes out to the Black-eyed Susans which have so lovingly overtaken the end of our walking path through the garden. We're trying to figure out how to take care of that problem. 

Increasing Curb Appeal : Garage Door Revamped

I'm going to let you in on a little secret... 

We haven't shown many photos of the exterior of our house. In fact, the exterior was our least favorite part of the house when we saw it. The front boasts a slightly modern / Brady Bunch kind of style which is cool, but very different. 

If we had money growing from our elbows, we would paint the orangey-pink brick and tan accents, knock down the whole entry way / give it a mod-cottage twist and add a completely new garage door. 

Unfortunately, we haven't mastered the money trick yet, so we settled on adding a Black Decorative Hardware Kit to the face of our garage. Once again, my awesome mom came to the rescue and picked up a kit for us before she came to visit last time. *Thanks mom!

It was super easy! All you need is a kit, a drill and some muscles. Great neighbors help too!

{thanks Elizabeth, Alyssa and Ava for helping me measure and handing me the screwdriver when needed. Alyssa and Ava also performed a marvelous ballet recital after we finished. The freshly-decorated garage acted as their backdrop.}

Tip: There are several options for the layout of your hardware. The back of the box has great design ideas! I taped all of the hardware in different designs so that I could figure out which way looked best and decided on this one...

We still have a few additions to make on the front of the house, as our budget allows, but the hardware kit added a great amount of character!

Do you think the hardware kit made a big difference?

What was one of the first things you changed on the exterior of your home? 

The Todd Nest : Composing the Built-Ins with Color & Themes

We were so excited to walk up the stairs in our new split-foyer home and see these lovely built-ins just waiting for a special touch of lovely.

Here is a "way before" photo from the first time we looked at the house with our realtor. Beside it, you will see a simple "before" photo of what the built-ins looked like as I unloaded our boxes and tried to gain a little inspiration.

As I was procrastinating from packing at the apartment one day doing research, I saw this post from Young House Love and decided we MUST paint the backs of these built-ins. 

I gathered a few vintage inspiration pieces and decided on the color "Cooled Blue" from Sherwin Williams. 

I turned on some awesome jams and began painting away. 

Then they sat there for a few days. Some shelves were empty, some lined with bottles. It was a mess. In between dealing with plumbing issues, utility transfers and all of the other luxuries of home ownership, I kind of gave up on decorating for a few days.

{notice there is no logo on this photo. that's how embarrassing it is.}

Fortunately, my mom would be making a special trip up to Huntsville for a few days to help rescue us from the overwhelming stress of unpacking, organizing and cleaning up the messes we had already made.

First priority? 

Unpack the boxes in the living room, store the painting supplies and decorate the built-ins.

One of mine and JD's favorite things about moving has been to unpack boxes and find things we had completely forgotten about, such as all of our vintage cameras we bought for crazy cheap at a yard sale.

 

Mom and I pulled those babies out, cleaned 'em up and used them as one of our themes. 

My awesome mom was the megamind behind the themes and most of the setting up process. Could I have done this all myself? Probably. But would it have looked nearly as amazing? Absolutely not. At least, not in the state of mind I was in. 

Not sure if this happens to anyone else, but I get stuck in the same decorating process as I was when we lived at the apartment. I want everything to be placed the same way and have the same themes. It's so annoying. When you move, you have all of the freedom in the world to redecorate how you'd like but I was really stuck. 

The world needs great momma's and I'm so thankful for mine!!

She helped to get my out of that rut pretty quickly when she swiped my bottles off the decorating list (except two wonderful milk vases).

But back to the built-ins....

Here, we used a vintage Westclox, a chalkboard I repurposed, the TODD letters Chase and Jackie gave us as a wedding gift, an old Polaroid, a Mason jar with an old camera lamp sitting in it, and (to the far left) a mixed media piece I made. 

We carried the theme of the vintage clock, Mason jar / camera lamp, and mixed media piece to the third shelf for cohesiveness. 

The top shelf has a small, vintage chandelier piece and my two favorite birds plates on display. 

The bottom shelf displays a couple of pieces from our wedding - the chalkboard and the rice jar from our rice ceremony. Of course, we carried the theme of the nest and birds throughout, as this is, after all, the Todd Nest. :) Both of those pieces are stacked on vintage greeting card boxes and Reader's Digest books. 

[photo by Kike Morales] 

[photo by Kike Morales]

If you haven't stopped by our wedding page, check it out here.

We are still getting our annual Jitney CDs ready so be on the lookout for a giveaway on that in the very near future. 

In the meantime, head on over to Ruthy's giveaway at Discovery Street. You can enter to win a $60 gift card to one of our favorite stores, Target!! If you follow Jitney's Journeys on Bloglovin' or any of the other amazing bloggers sponsoring the giveaway, you will automatically get 3 entries for each blog you follow. Oh yeah!!!

So do the happy dance and go enter!

a Rafflecopter giveaway

The Garden : Assembling the Tomato-Trailing Trellis for the Raised Garden Bed

How can you transform an overgrown raised garden bed into a thriving vegetable garden? 

We're so glad you asked...

The raised garden bed looked something like this when we first looked at the house:

Add on three months of glorious Alabama sunshine and rain, and well, this garden bed needed some tough TLC. Sounds like an oxymoron, but it's achievable.

My mom uprooted every single inch of greenery in this bed and cleaned it all out. The huge elephant ears that you saw from our herb garden were transplanted from this garden first. It was unbelievably hard work. There are no words to express our gratitude towards my mom and dad for all of their help.

Next we covered the bed in fresh Miracle Grow, mixing in the old dirt. After a quick shop to Lowe's and the local garden center, we planted lettuce, tomatos, squash, eggplant, jalapeño peppers, bell peppers, basil, cilantro, parsley, zinnias and nasturtium (which is an edible flower and quite delicious!).

JD soaked them in some serious amounts of water...

And then it was time to assemble the trellis:

There is something so endearing about seeing the two favorite men in your life work together.

Isn't he such a stud?

They even let me help!

They laid a board down the center for ease of picking and watering the plants while walking through the center instead of walking in our garden bed.

In about two weeks, everything flourished!!

Our greatest gardening endeavor is for our raised bed garden to look like this masterpiece in a few months (or at least next summer):

This is a truly thriving vegetable garden, cared for from seed to veggie by my dad. 

He and I spent Father's Day morning sitting in his garden, drinking hot tea and listening to birds. I'm not sure if it was his best Father's Day ever but it was certainly my favorite!

The Garden : Get Your Herb On

Bring on the cucumber water! We have enough rosemary and mint to last us till next summer.

This area of our new yard is overflowing with herbs - specifically mint, oregano and rosemary. It is absolutely unbelievable! Obviously, the herbs were all waiting for us when we moved into our new home. It's much more abundant than our tiny balcony herb garden from our apartment last year....

Mint engulfed much of the area so we cut a large amount out and placed a few sprigs in mason jars at the kitchen sink. 

The elephant ears were the first plants we transferred as we were moving in. My mom cleared out the raised garden bed (which held elephant ears and a few other plants) while dad, JD and one of our old neighbors moved all of our boxes into the rooms (and I directed). Instead of tossing out the elephant ears, we separated the roots and moved most of them into the right-hand corner of the herb garden (mom and dad took the rest home with them). Aren't they fun!? 

What is your favorite herb to cook with or to grow?

The Garden : Generations of Green Thumbs

Welcome to the home of robins, bluebirds, blue jays, squirrels, chipmunks, fireflies, and whimsical plants.

AKA: Our Garden

I wish we could say that we built it from the ground-up, but we didn't. With the simple sign of a pen, we obtained this absolutely amazing garden along with our new home. 

It's magical.

Forget a green thumb. These previous homeowners must have had green streaming from each of their fingertips. A number of people are terrified that we're going to ruin have a little trouble keeping the garden up since I haven't always had the best luck with something as small as a potted plant... but I really think we'll get the hang of it eventually.

When all else fails, we must remember that all things will [hopefully] grow back.

At least, that's what my mom tells me.

I think that's one reason I love this garden so much. It reminds me of both my mother's and my grandmother's gardens. They are - hands-down - the best gardeners I know. Their gardens are both extraordinarily lovely, charming and peaceful. I loved walking through Gingin's gardens with her when we lived at the Bungalow; and no time is sweeter with my mom than when we play in the dirt and have conversations surrounded by rich blooms. 

"I come to the garden alone

While the dew is still on the roses

And the voice I hear falls on my ear

The Son of God discloses"

That's one of our favorite hymns. I have no doubt that we all sing it when watering our gardens. 

{Side Note: I butchered Gingin's hydrangea bushes (my favorite flowers) at the Bungalow when I attempted to "prune" them for the first time. That was my first terrible gardening experience. But, just like mom and Gingin said, they have grown back. There is hope for me yet!}

mom and her garden

mom and dad's raised garden beds

deeply thankful for these green-thumbed lovebirds

Dad is an incredible gardener also, especially with vegetables. He is a master scientist. It comes in handy when growing all of your plants from little seedlings!

JD and I have confidence that we will be able to keep a beautiful garden because we have our families as a resource.

JD and dad spent a lot of time tackling this task before we moved into our new home.

Next week, we'll share our raised garden bed project with you.

In the meantime, here are a few of the perennials in bloom this week:

Balloon Flower

 Coneflower