Archive for January, 2012
Everyday Design: Wooden Ties
These boys look like a lot of trouble + a lot of fun! Meet the guys behind Wood Thumb. Located in San Francisco their start-up company uses recycled wood to make wooden ties. A unique spin on the term “business casual” each piece is handmade and a modern spin on the old neck strangler.
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STUFF: A Sprawling Work Table
Over the past few weeks we’ve been moving rooms around in our little farm house. After two years of running our business in two separate rooms we’ve finally compacted everything into “one” lovely office. We are still working on the aesthetics but I’m LOVING the functionality of having everything in “one” room instead of split into two. With this new layout I can actually shut the door when Cale gets home along with the added “distractions” of having stacks of work lying around calling my name.
I truly love the new space but there’s still not room for the one thing I REALLY want… a GIANT conference table.
Lessons from Altitude Design Summit 2012
My friend Kathleen told me Altitude Summit was like summer camp for bloggers. She was right. With it came the nerves of meeting new friends along with the excitement of finding those few that you’ll forever feel connected to. I felt so thankful to share a room with a local Okie and get to know Allison with Shopcrawlr, spent a night perusing mini-parties with Jana from Wyoming who makes organic soda, had a real heart to heart chat with a diva stylist from New York, and shared concepts of design with an architect/blogger in San Francisco.
LIFE: A Designer Handy Man
One of the things that I love about my husband is the fact that he enjoys using his architectural degree as a handy man around our little farm. His design philosophy is one that marries the function of a building with great aesthetics. The longer we are married the more I respect this opinion and see the need for both. When Cale is working on a project, at home or for a friend, he wants to give them a solution that is aesthetically pleasing, money saving, and as efficient as possible. Now, this doesn’t mean he uses “cheap” materials, but when he can, he prefers to use found materials instead of purchasing new. It’s this old school philosophy of using what you have, married with his love for design, that makes him the perfect designer handy man.
Everday Design: Handmade Balloons
Since our wedding Cale and I have had a “thing” for balloons. We love their free spirits and the whimsical feel that they can bring to any occasion. At our wedding reception we had giant 4 ft x 4 ft round white balloons at each of the tables and they created the perfect canopy for our outdoor wedding. Since then we can’t help but be a little bit obsessed with balloons and simply fell in love with our latest Everyday Design artist group who created and documented their handmade balloons in their “Balloon Factory”.
GCD: Alt. Summit Gift Bags
Thanks to our friend Allison with Shopcrawler (who told us about this amazing opportunity!) our jewelry has has been selected to be in the Alt. Design Summit Conference Gift Bags! We’re excited to have our pieces in the hands of up and coming bloggers from around the country and looking forward to meeting some new friends. Each of our charms are handmade and truly one-of-a-kind. Here’s a bit of our process.
LIFE: My Two NEW Best Friends
Over Christmas Cale and I made a very large purchase. Now, when I say big I mean BIG! Like the kind that makes you throw up in your stomach a little bit after you purchase it? That’s right. That kind. See we’ve been married for a little over three years now so we decided it was time to officially settle in and plan for some larger purchases in 2012. Now you maybe thinking items like a NEW TV (not this year honey) or (enter announcer voice HERE) a NEW car! But nope, it’s even more exciting than that!
STUFF: Girls in White Dresses
It’s hard to believe in less than a week I’ll be boarding a plane for the 2012 Alt. Summit Design Conference! A product of ours (to be revealed next week) was selected to be a part of their goodie bags so we decided to send someone as our Green Couch Design “representative” (yep, my job is just aweful!). I’m nervous and excited all at the same time. Cale just rolls his eyes cause he knows I’ll love it! I know he’s right. I’m not really a “shy” person (um, not at ALL!) but I still get nervous being thrown into a room full of bloggers that I have either never met or stalk admire. With that said it seems Alt. is pushing me into all kinds of new things. I’ve been on the hunt for a white outfit for one of their evening parties. Honestly, I have not shopped for something “white” since my wedding. I’ve been searching for a piece that is sophisticated and simple. This last year I’ve been trying to “tone down” my wardrobe meaning I’m trying to purchase pieces that are intentional and that actually go together. I found myself stuck with a closet full of individual pieces that I liked but that did not go together.
GCD: The Wonder Revolution [Branding]
The holidays were such a busy time for us that we are just now getting to share one of our recent graphic design projects! It’s not very often you get to work on a branding project where the client encourages you to get lost inside your imagination… but that’s exactly what we got to do! Looking for a brand that was a bit softer than “Where the Wild Things Are” and a little less psychedelic than “Alison in Wonderland” The Wonder Revolution pushed us out of our standard design box and forced us to look closer at our day to day world with a new and wonderful perspective.
“The wonder revolution is a call to re-awaken and cultivate a child-like mind set of wonder. As adults we lose our desire of Investigation, imagination, and creation to life’s daily problems, practical thinking, drama, jobs, ideologies, cultures, egos, fears, etc. We are taught through culture, society, and education to see life as a set of abstractions and therefore we miss the miraculous Wonderworld that surrounds us.” - The Wonder Revolution
The Wonder Revolution is a group of friends, through Air House Records, creating original music and art that inspires an attitude of awe and wonder towards life. A conceptual, organic, idea The Wonder Revolution can take any form. It is uplifting, a new genre of music, and style with it’s own Wondermusic and Wonderart inspiring live, multi-medium music/art shows with music, books, merchandise, film, products, etc.
LIFE: Slow Sundays
Welcome to 2012! I know we took an “extended” break from blogging and such but it was something that our sanity required. Christmas was sorta of whirlwind of busy excitement and emotions (we’ll fill you in later). With that said this Sunday was the first Sunday in months that we’ve been able slow down and do things “our” way. We slept in (we’ll I did… Cale got up and pittled around outside like an old man) and then once I got up we had breakfast/lunch together at our kitchen table! A small miracle I might add since our table has been covered with products and other Green Couch Design projects since August.
One of our goals in 2012 includes more meals around the table (even if that means we get stuck staring at each other from time to time with a bit of awkward silence, and the sound of food chomping). We need that time for us. Where home feels like “home” and not just the place where we run our business.
High class design in overalls. It's the simple life of a farm through the eyes of a couple of crazy designers. We call ourselves Green Couch Design and we are Bringing Design Home.
