It's 2015 aka the year I turn 30...

Based on my title and your outlook on life and aging, you might assume that I have not been very excited about 2015 rolling around as it is the year I turn 30. Granted, I still have 9 months left of 29 but 30 has been looming over my head since last September. This may seem really silly to most but it has been haunting me for awhile considering I still feel like I should be 25 (best year ever btw), I have not accomplished a few life goals that others my age around me have done by now, and aging in general is starting to be scary instead of exciting as mortality is undeniable. I have been struggling a lot lately with comparing my life to other peers' lives. I have been feeling like the two biggest and most glaring "shortcomings" are not being married and not having kids while almost 30 years old.  This is definitely not how I envisioned my life to be and it's tough to see things that you want so badly happening to what seems like everyone else around you.  (I have a theory that this would be a lot less evident without Facebook but that's not the point...). The point is that I have been feeling very unenthusiastic about 2015 for quite some time and uncharacteristically pessimistic about the whole thing...until yesterday. Yesterday was honestly the day that I walked away from my pity party and started to really examine my personal accomplishments and change my perspective about the reality of the situation. The first is that among my close friends and colleagues, I'm really not alone. Social media and my extended family composition has made it seem like I'm an anomaly, but when compared to the people I see and interact with regularly, I'm really not. Ok - that puts things into perspective a little bit. Secondly, my independence as a non-wife and non-mother has allowed me to make a ton of life-changing decisions that have proven to be very beneficial for me.  While the kids/husband thing hasn't been checked off, I have been able to go to grad school, establish myself in a rewarding career that I love, buy myself a house and car and way too many clothes from Loft, and travel on a whim to any destination I choose. None of these things  would have been impossible had my circumstances been different but I do believe they might have been more difficult. It's a cliche but I am conceding that my very wise mother was always right. She encouraged me to not rush things and wait to get married and have children as my 20s were for learning about myself and enjoying life without major responsibility slowing me down. Entering this new year and approaching 30, I feel like at this point in my life I am very grounded, I know who I am and what I offer, and I can recognize my shortcomings. I am also looking forward to some things that will set me up better for the future. I'm working on some projects within my career as a school psych which are exciting to me. I started my own business in October by becoming an independent consultant for Scentsy and I'm looking forward to seeing how that business will grow. I have turned my hobby of upcycling and painting furniture into a small side job. I am starting my first instructor position teaching Developmental Psychology at a local community college, which is something I have been wanting to do for years. I have goals this year of paying down my debt, starting to actually save money, and leading a healthier lifestyle. And with all of this in store, I am optimistic that 30 won't be so bad after all. 

Upcycling Furniture Turorial

So as I mentioned in the last blog, Leah and I have taken up a hobby and side hustle of repainting old furniture to sell online. It's been a pretty lucrative endeavor so far. I thought I would share the basic steps for upcycling furniture because it is really easy and may be something you're interested in doing. So easy, in fact, that I have a "to paint" list that includes most pieces of wooden furniture in my house :) 

We have been exclusively using Annie Sloan chalk paint. I suppose you could use other types of chalk paint or even make your own but we like ASCP because a) we know where to buy it and b) it comes in some beautiful colors. 

Annie Sloan color wall at Total Bliss in Greensboro (taken with owner's permission)

Chalk paint is great because it requires no sanding or priming, adheres to most any surface, dries really quickly, and emits zero fumes. So there's my plug for chalk paint - I highly recommend it.  It may be a little difficult to find as only a few retailers in NC carry Annie Sloan brand. You can look on their website to find a list of retailers. 

The first step in the upcycling process is to find a piece of furniture that you want to transform. We find a lot of our stuff on CL. Most of it is hideous (and cheap) so you have to use some imagination in order to see the potential. For the purposes of this blog, I will show you how we took a regular straightback chair and antique coffee table and transformed them into shabby chic masterpieces. 

I start off every piece by doing a little bit of prep. This usually just entails wiping it down with a damp paper towel to get off any dirt or dust. Never skip this step! On a few occasions, you may need to lightly sand a piece, as was the case with the leather coffee table since some of the varnish was cracked and peeling. After minimal prep, start painting the first coat. I operate under the assumption that each piece will need two coats so the first coat is not going to be perfect. This is mostly about coverage. In our tag team operation, I am the designated prepper (including taping) and first coater while Leah is the designated second coater and distresser. We all have our strengths....

After the first coat, carefully apply the second coat while trying not to miss any spots. I would recommend having multiple light sources or even a second set of eyes (paint police) as it is really easy to miss spots that you swore you painted. 

That's two good looking coats of paint... We used Chateau Grey in case you were wondering. 

Now after you've done your coats of paint you can stop there and wax (which I will get to in a minute). But why would you?  Who wants a boring piece of furniture? Not meeee. This is the part of the process where you can use some sandpaper to distress the piece, lightly or heavily. To lightly distress something, concentrate on the edges, corners, or any lines that might exist. To heavily distress, choose spots all over the piece and just go at it. It's really hard to mess this up so just be creative with it and stop when you feel like you've done enough. The more random, the better. 

After distressing, you will have created a lot of chalk dust from the paint that was rubbed off. You should use a damp paper towel to wipe the piece down again to get all of that dust off before waxing. 

We use Annie Sloan waxes to finish our pieces. There are two types - a clear and a dark wax. We use the clear wax on everything as a protective coat. It cures for 24 hours and you can apply another coat of wax if you like but usually we just do one.  You should use a lint free cloth to apply the wax and rub it in like you would hand lotion (which I interpret as a circular motion but maybe you put lotion on a different way). 

After you apply the clear wax, you can stop there and sometimes it's a really good idea to do so. However, there are situations where you want to take the piece to the next level and apply the dark wax, which is essentially a staining wax. We chose to do this for these pieces and it worked really well. We also tried a dark wax on my white coffee table the other day and it was a disaster. So wax darkly with caution!!! The dark wax is applied the same way as the clear but you are wiping off the excess almost as soon as you put it on. Otherwise it will be a lot of darkness. And be warned that it will get all over your hands although it comes off with aggressive hand washing. 

Same color used (Provence) but the one on the left has the dark wax while the one on the right only has the clear wax. 

Leather table after dark wax 

So it's pretty easy to transform a boring piece of furniture into something unique and exciting! I love seeing the before and after transformations. If you want to see more, follow us on Instagram @shabby_chicks  

Happy painting!! 

Painting away the debt - our new side hustle

Well, it's been awhile since the last post from our travels and Leah and I are broke as a joke from Europe. To make up for the hemmorhaged bank accounts, we are embarking upon an exciting new side job. The origin of this venture began during summer vacation when I was inspired to buy and paint a vintage vanity I had found at my neighborhood thrift store/antique shop/barn full o'stuff for $20. Talk about a steal. (I actually brought my mom back to this treasure trove a few days later and she was terrified and unimpressed. I'm convinced there are many more diamonds in the rough to be found and that means more for me.) Now, I'm the type of person who is always full of grand ideas when it comes to crafts and home projects. However, I tend to fall a little short of the execution.  Enter Leah, who was blessed with the art of perfectionism and superb decorating taste.  I bought a can of Annie Sloan chalk paint (or two) and some wax and tackled the project of repainting that ugly beast. It turned out pretty well for a first try although I will probably do more to it now that I've had some practice. 

Before:

After (but before all of the drawers were put back in):

I was hooked and wanted to paint literally every piece of wood furniture in my sight lines. But I restrained from going overboard (at least that night) and settled for an additional smaller project of a little bookshelf my mom had recently given to me. 

Before:

After: bad lighting but you get the gist. 

Now do understand that this chalk paint is pretty pricy but there's a good reason for it. It is simply amazing. No sanding required. No primer needed. You just slap on a coat or two and that's it. Well before adding some wax. But it goes on so thickly and dries so quickly (rap lyrics?) that the process takes no time at all. 

So after blowing all of our expendable and nonexpendable income, Leah and I decided that it would be a good idea to paint old furniture finds to sell, as shabby chic furniture is the obsession of most every mid 20s - mid 40s woman who binge watches HGTV and shops at Home Goods. Obviously we fit into this category and have found our niche customer base in WASP females. To date, we have transformed two pieces which have successfully sold thanks to social media. The first was an old sofa table which could be repurposed as a cute desk. 

The second was a cute Mission Style coffee table that just needed our magic touch to become fabulous. There's no before picture but trust me, it needed some TLC. 

Front:

Side:

Top:

This piece sold within 30 minutes of posting and there have been requests for more pieces. Also the woman who bought it has asked if we can paint two side tables to match!! This is great news because we were actually talking today about expanding our business to painting people's existing furniture as well. So if you're interested in having a piece transformed, we are available for hire at reasonable prices! 

The end of Eurotrip

Well everyone, Eurotrip 2014 has come to an end and it was pretty spectacular. There were some low moments but mostly all highs. It was worth every penny :) but before I reminisce, I'll recap today's events.  The pattern of travel days being short and stressful has continued. We had awhile in Paris as our Eurostar train was scheduled to leave at 5:13. So we took our time checking out and packing, had a nice leisurely lunch, and meandered over to Notre Dame with the intent of going in. However, the line to get in was extremely long. I do not remember lines being this long at attractions but that could be a product of elapsed time and visiting in October versus August. So we decided to ditch the waiting and just admire the church from the outside.  

This picture tells it all: when one of us is comfortable in the weather, the other is not. 

Check out those gargoyles 

This left us with a lot of time to kill before we had wanted to be back at the hotel to retrieve our things. So we explored some surrounding shops and had some delicious ice cream. 

We made it back to the hotel at 4:15 and was at the train station by 4:40. Once we were at the train station, I had a refreshing, delicious and much needed coke while Leah enjoyed a double espresso. We even got some gummies at the candy bar they had in the station.  Around 5:00 we started towards our train, following signs directing us to check-in upstairs.  So I find an attendant and ask her which direction to go and she informs us that we are too late for our train. But it hasn't left yet! "You're too late, you have to check in at least 30 minutes before it departs". You mean the 30 plus minutes we just wasted sitting around?!? Oh those 30 minutes.  My mother would be proud of me for keeping it together and not having a full blown panic meltdown at having missed a train since we are flying out early in the morning.  I did have a panicky look on my face but no tears so I'll chalk that up as a victory.  Anyways, I go to the ticket sales counter and tell a salesperson our situation. Luckily, there was another train that was leaving in an hour and he could put us on that at no charge. Crisis averted and breathing easy. So we start the check-in process which is actually code for full blown customs for entering The UK which we hadn't even entered yet! We had to get our passport stamped, fill out an embarking card, be questioned as to why we were only in England for 12 hours, get the card stamped again, go through security, and then wait to board the train. No wonder they wouldn't let us on 10 minutes before the train left.  Afterwards, we found it quite ironic that we had spent the whole day commenting how much time we had to kill... 

Post freak out/glad we made it face

So the train ride was pretty uneventful (the bottle of wine we finished may have helped) and we have since arrived to our hotel, the Crompton Guest House in Hounslow, Englad which is close to the airport.  This place is gorgeous. We have named it the Indian Palace as it is owned and operated by and Indian couple and decorated like a palace. I'm kind of sad that I'm only going to be spending a few hours here. I also may or may not have been inspired to wallpaper my walls at home...

For dinner, we headed next door to a traditional looking pub. However, it's not so traditional as they stop serving pub food at 9:00 and start serving Indian food. Good thing that I love Indian food because that's all there was. Whatever I ordered was delicious. 

Depsite the trip coming to an end, I am looking forward to going home. It's always nice to be able to sleep in your own bed, use your phone and internet whenever you want, wash your clothes...those little things. I think I would like to share with you my favorite moments of the trip in each city:

London - seeing the musical, Once

Amsterdam - Sky City music festival (might be the best overall)

Berlin - the Beer & Currywurst tour

Prague - the Prague Food tour and shopping :)

Paris - gathering items for a picnic at the Eiffer Tower

All in all it was a wonderful vacation. I've learned a few things along the way that will help in my travel planning in the future:

1. Traveling to another city is best done in the morning because otherwise the travel day is kind of a waste day. 

2. The pop up maps I bought for Paris and London are the worst. Missing streets make it extremely hard to navigate. The Streetwise maps are much better.

3. You can download google maps app and search for your destination via car, walking, metro while you have wifi. It will pull up step by step instructions and will even track you using GPS even without wifi or cell access. This was really handy!

4. I think a RT ticket is not the best if going to multiple cities. We would have much rather left from Paris today than have had to come back to London for the night. 

5. For the love of god only pack one suitcase!!!! Just restrain yourself and pack only one. Not one plus a carryon plus a personal item. Because it is a hassle to lug around but also embarrassing to be the most overpacked tourists everywhere we go. 

I hope you've enjoyed reading about our trip! Until next time...

Très chic

Our second day in Paris was just as lovely, if not more, than the day before, despite another brief rain shower. It's such a great city to just wander and enjoy the architecture, food, and culture and it's my favorite stop in the Eurotrip. 

We set out a little earlier than yesterday and got a quick café at the local shop (double for Leah who consumes quite a lot of coffee).  Our first activity was to buy the things for and have a picnic by the Eiffel Tower. I know, that sounds extremely cliché but it was also a lot of fun and one of my favorite parts of the trip. We made several stops along Rue Cler following the advice of Rick Steves. Here's a basic list of things you need for an authentic French picnic. 

1. Stop at a fruit market and pick up some fruit. 

2. Get one or two cheeses from a fromagerie. 

3. Pick up a baguette and any other sweets from a boulangerie patisserie. 

4. Choose a bottle of wine from a wine store and have them uncork it for you. 

5. Stop at the butcher and have him slice some charcuterie. 

6. Lastly, pick up some utensils and anything else you might need, like cups or jams, at a mini supermarket. 

We had a lot of fun stopping in the different stores to assemble our picnic. It was a nice experience to go from place to place and choose from a wide variety of products. The shop owners were very friendly and helpful as well. Afterwards, we headed towards the huge green lawn in front of the Eiffel Tower and set up the spread. A few other people were doing it as well but our spread was much better, minus the old poncho we are using for a blanket. 

As we were eating, the clouds began to roll in and we packed up the leftovers (not too much) and sat on a bench to finish our wine. Just as we were doing this is began to rain heavily so we had made it just in time. 

Not going to complain about the rain because it is cool outside!

We wanted better views of the tower and also possibly to ride up to the top so we started heading towards it and were able to take some great pictures. 

During the rain:

After the rain:

The lines to ride to the top were so huge we couldn't even figure out where they began. Since we had a few other things we wanted to do that afternoon, we decided to skip that and try our luck later on at night...which turned out to be completely worth it (more on that later).

Our next stop was brief as we attempted to go to a store that sells vintage Hermes and Chanel accessories (Leah's pick). She was like a kid on Christmas on the way over there. Unfortunately, the shop was closed either for vacation or forever, we couldn't tell. So that was a bummer for her but probably a blessing in disguise for her credit card. 

After that disappointment, we headed to the Musee D'Orsay, which we had picked as the one museum to go to while here. (Not really feeling any more museums at this point). It houses a large collection of Impressionist paintings from Monet, Manet, Renoir, Pisarro, Degas, and a few Van Gogh. There are also some very impressive sculptures in the museum. It was a nice one to visit and we spent about 1.5 hours looking at the things we wanted to see. 

Giant see-through clock at the museum

View of the city from the museum:

For dinner, we picked a restaurant near the Eiffel Towel that Rick Steve's had also recommended. I was able to check some more foods off of the "to-eat" list but the entire meal was delicious. We ordered two appetizers, one entree to split, and two desserts. French food is so delicious I could cry. 

*I must research and find all of the French restaurants at home and also try out some new recipes. 

Before dinner:

First course - cantaloupe and Serrano ham and escargot. My favorite course of the night!

Second course - filet in a pepper sauce with frites

Third course - tarte tatin (which did NOT look like Ina's) and creme brûlée (phenomenal)

Post dinner with full bellies

At the end of dinner, we wanted to see the Eiffel Tower at night as it was lit up and also try our luck with the long lines to go up to the top. The tower at night is even more beautiful than during the day. It's hard to describe how magnificent it is except to say that was my fourth time laying eyes on it and I was still enthralled. We were also able to get in line for the elevators and only had to wait 20 minutes instead of three hours for tickets. I guess the key is to go at night when it's almost about to close. We were pushing it as they stop selling tickets around 11:00 and we got in line at 10:35. But we made the cutoff with five minutes to spare. However, the lines to actually ride the elevators up and down were long.  We spent about 1 hour waiting to ride, riding, and seeing the view from the top. It's a neat experience to go at night. When we were getting off of the last elevator at the ground, the tower started to sparkle and it was a perfect end to the day. 

Really excited because we made it in time - the guy behind us, not so much

Panorama of the city

View of the Seine:

I'm already missing Paris and we haven't even left yet but we head back to London this evening by train to fly home tomorrow. We still have a few more things to do today to finish up our Parisian vacation!