ye olde shanty: part 6, aka a super romantic valentine's edition.

just in time for your romantical valentimes, here's that much-anticipated #yeoldeshanty post you've been holding your breaths for! jkjktotallyK, this post is not romantic, but i promise i've written and re-written it like 400 times, so i hope you can appreciate it.

to recap, part 5 of this epic saga detailed the demolition of the front shanty's interior, which occured in fall 2013, and i got around to blogging that shiz in early november. in late december, we took the world's cutest christmas card photos with the world's cutest rescue puppy in the front shanty, and true to my chronic lateness, i got those christmas cards out as early valentine cards in late january 2014.

well this is awkward.

on valentine's day, 2014, sugarbear told me he wanted a divorce. he surprised the shit out me, took the puppy and i am not kidding dot com, left me on valentine's day.

so on this most special, most tumultuous and polarizing of days, i hope you'll forgive my over-sharing, or at the least, forgive my absence in blogging, or if you know me personally, please forgive my absence in life. nothing sends you into a tailspin quite like a surprise divorce, but dammit if it didn't really take the steam out of my kick-ass shanty valentines, and this seemed like an appropriate, albeit painful, time to share. BOOKENDS, people.

i will admit i waffled a bit on whether or not it was the right thing to do, posting the valentine here, so FRIENDS PLEASE TEXT ME IMMEDIATELY IF I HAVE DONE THE WRONG THING because my barometer is less functional these days. however, my thoughts about opening up were that ONE this valentine photo is still awesome and i still think it's hilarious, both for initial hilarity and also for really, really shitty timing - laugh or cry, people. TWO as much as i've tried to wipe it from my mind, there were good parts to that marriage, lots of them, and this picture is a Literal Moment In Time that reminds me of that, especially when i'm down in the dumpster. THREE this image serves as penance and serves me right for splashing my super personal ev.er.eeee.thing all over the internet, which i'm definitely not going to do so casually in the future, so live it up folks, one last time. FOUR let this posted photo be the final nail in the coffin of my marriage, as one last reminder so i never forget what happens when you ignore the obvious and-slash-or drop the ball with regard to what is really important in life. FIVE that dog is fucking cute.

as hard as it has been to pick up the pieces, i'm doing much better one almostyear later, everyone! this post isn't a cry for help; rather, a point from which i've been trying to GET for quite some time. that is to say, i was finally able to write this post. i was finally able to POST this post. and if i don't end up deleting it, someday in the future, i hope to feel really, really comfortable about this post.

trust that lots of days, it has been hard to get out of bed, and it still is. while lots of days i didn't win that battle, i am currently getting out of my bed all the days, and that is not just because i signed up for some stupidly expensive pilates classes that i'd be a fool to skip. to be standing on my feet on the other side of this (and doing so happily), i have some super understanding friends and clients and client-friends to thank. to say that everyone has been 'extremely nice' may not cover it - extremely patient? extremely good at times, at making me take a shower? merely thanking everyone seems like not enough words to cover the mountain of appreciation i have for those who were (intentionally and unintentionally) involved, but THANKS PEOPLE. me love you long time; HASHTAG BLESSED, also please give me just a teensy bit more time, because the recovery process has taken every bit of this year and i still have a long way to go.

while i'm being so thankful, i can also say that thankfully, the divorce nightmare finally came to an end last week, freeing me up to return to blogging about my favorite topic, me Steve cool stuff that everyone has probably seen before the shanty. YE OLDE SHANTY, or to be more specific, MY SHANTY, people!! that's right, for the bargain price of SO MUCH MONEY YEARS OF MY LIFE PROBABLY ERASED LAWYER FIGHTS TEARS A FAILED MARRIAGE and ONE ADORABLE DOG, this hovel of trash is now allllllllll miiiiiiiiiine. don't be jealous.

or at least contain your jealousy as i commence with this portion of the Most Difficult Post To Write Ever. also please understand that's it, that's all i have to say and i won't get into more details than those i've just shared, other than to advise you to never, ever ever everrrrrr get divorced. did you think i was going to say married? come on, haters. if i were a bitter old hag, i might say to never get married, but the truth is that i totally loved being married and would totes consider it again at some point, because life is better when you're on a team. TEAM MARRIAGE, but like, let me sit on the sidelines for just a bit longer, because my fucking heart is sprained.

in the end, and/or as i begin again, i wish sugarbear all the best, i really do, and hope he has all the joy that life has to offer. he will always be the sugarbear.

and that is all i am going to say about that.

{LORD BABY JESUS IN YOUR HAY MANGER, SURROUNDED BY DONKEYS AND STRANGERS, this was a tough one to write.}

so as for #yeoldeshanty, it has been a much longer stay than i expected, to say the least. the anticipated four-month back shanty time period has stretched into.... over a year and a half? crap. it will be two full years come july, which is not a nice revelation. and as i reflect upon my decision-making in decorating and furnishing the shanty, i may or may not have made a HUGE, tiny mistake.

meaning in my short-sightedness regarding the duration of my shanty stay, i have crammed way too much stuff into this small space. i mean, i do love it, and the folks who get my particular kind of crazy also love it, but then we always agree that it is Bonkers HQ.

in my dreams, someone politely describes what i've done to this place as iris apfel's extremely swanky college dorm room, but the reality is that i'm sort of at a stopping point with the back shanty decor, and in hindsight, i should probably start over.

(sidenote-if you came for the divorce post and are just joining us for shanty updates, you can catch up here:
part one - wish us luck.
part two - bless this mess.
part three - a circus massacre.
part four - paint it black.
part five  - underneath it all.

at least a back shanty re-evaluation will give me something to do in the interim called Starting Over: My Life But Also A House Plans Story. why's that, you ask?

because after designing (and redesigning, and then redesigning one more time) the front house renovation plan, i've decided to throw those plans away and go back to the drawing board ONE MORE TIME. it seems (is) totally nuts, but as i sit on the precipice of finally, after so many years of guiding clients through the process of building their own dream house. building what may very well be the last home i ever live in, i don't want to fuck it up. and i want what i want, and i am the captain now.

good thing i've got gene, the no-frills architect, on board, because he is fast and i hain't got time for slowpokes at this point. the plan is to break ground next month? HAHAHA fingers crossed, but so far it is going SWELL:

DESIGNERS SHOULD NEVER DESIGN THEIR OWN HOUSE.

as for the shanty, fiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiine. here's a photo recap of what is happening, paired with a general update even though i JUST GOT DONE telling you i hate what i've done, because i am a giver and i give the people what they want. which is mainly photos.

you may recall from part one that the back shanty is on stilts, amongst the trees. I LIVE LIKE TREE PEOPLE DOT COM.

the former owner's set-up, including the unpainted floors, RAW DOG floors, which you may recall from shanty post one.

more former owner-she was a crystal collector, skull-hoarder and cloud painter, but is now my spirit animal.

did i ever post the former kitchen? check out my 1982 sub-zero fridge, homies. I'M SO FANCY YOU ALREADY KNOW.

painting the floors (shanty part 4) because you can kind of tell where former rugs and/or spills may or may not have happened.

 former bedroom + current KWD office, which i hope to post about soon. hours after i took this, this guy wanted to murder-suicide me.

more action shots from my post about painting, brought to you by decorator's white, the paint version of oxygen, available through my bf benjamin moore.

moving in reality check-all of the furniture is wayyyyy toooooo big. also, a photo of the world's LEAST HELPFUL moving crew so you can see what i've been up against. 

these guys hate me and totally rubbed their sweaty faces all over my sofa's fancy new custom sunbrella slipcover. good thing i can clean it with bleach? #nailedit

some stuff!! all of which is mostly way too big and way too crazy. also that badA cat sculpture got super humpty dumptied and there was no saving her.

this left-behind cactus looks like a dong and that means we are keeping it. #dongcactus #classy #iamagrownup

three guard dogs at the world's fanciest temporary construction fence.

MAKE THAT FOUR GUARD DOGS. #photosofsteve

outdoor lounge sitch on fleek, aka steve takes a break, aka the opposite of #nevernotworking.

super sexy foundation leveling and post-termite tent repairs to the front house, which is at present much the same state as this 1.5 year old photo. also, YES, that IS the latin gene simmons of supergroup BESO on your left.

barf, or as the termites keep saying, NOMS.

SURPRISSSEESSS! here's the new old kitchen, where i hoard wilton armetale like it is my job. more deets in a future shanty post.

more of the updated kitchen. adding open shelving was one of the better ideas.

STUFF STUFF STUFF.

fine shanty dining, present day. so much stuff. also the light fixture is too low but it took like 100 years to install, and i can't be bothered to deal with it right now. 

i can't even, with the stuff and the rug OH THE RUG, but the floors look amazing.

living room, complete with crooked lampshade, crooked art, stuff on stuff on stuff and the rug that is currently killing me smalls. raina, bring your leafblower.

I DID IT! how mortifying. regardless, next up in the shanty series will be either the front shanty house plans or a closer look at present-day back shanty and YOU WILL LIKE IT.

I KNOW YOU WANT IT.

i've been living under a rock, and i don't want to talk about it, but this rock fortunately has speakers. thank heavens, because i cannot stop listening to blurred lines. and by that i mean watching the video(s) (#THICKE) - naked version or not naked version, and now also this version. god bless jimmy fallon, y'all.

ye olde shanty: home sweet home part 2, aka bless this mess.

first of all, thanks a million to everyone who's given sugarbear and i such encouraging feedback on the new house(s) project! it was nervewracking to start the #yeoldeshanty posts, but holy hell, y'all-i didn't expect to get a response, which has been overwhelming in such a great way.  your comments and enthusiasm mean the world to me, FO RILL, because this has been a craptastic rollercoaster week. getting out of our townhouse (sad as balls, by the way), trying to move into, live and run a business out of a rented garage apartment (Clusterfuck Central, LLC), trying to keep up with design projects, trying to demo and paint and renovate at least one of the houses to a point where we can move into it this coming week (OH GOOD, MORE MOVING, PLEASE SHOOT ME) has depleted me. i have needed a friend HARD like every five minutes, and in lieu of full-time hand-holding from actual friends, your comments have been that. not to be all shmoopy, but really. thank you, miracle interweb support system. also, big shout-out to my main squeeze, xanax - YOU COMPLETE ME.

the real point here, is that we became new homeowners last week, and on saturday, we started ripping those houses apart.

at 7:30 am saturday, the demo crew showed up and those guys were ready to party. NO SERIOUSLY, they had a blast. have you ever seen a demo crew? some of the happiest workers ever. apparently, ripping a house apart fulfills some weird male desire, because b-radical loves it too. i've never seen so many crazy-eye, weird little maniacal laugh and sledgehammering combos. someone on the demo crew had brought their little kid (he stayed out of the way during the dangerous parts) and at one point he had a hammer and was just beating the shit out of a pile of dirt. there's probs a metaphor there, but mainly it was hilarious.

worth noting is that through my real J-O-B, i've started using 1-800-GOTJUNK to haul off trash. THEY ARE AMAZING. it's expensive, certainly much more expensive than just getting a dumpster dropped off, but seriously, who is having a dumpster dropped off? are we sitting around drinking coffee talking about the best place to get a dumpster? you can call the 1-800-GOTJUNK team in the morning, and they will have a crew stop by THAT DAY to clean up and haul away your trash. they send a crew with an empty truck and charge by the half or full load, and the crews work fast and hard to carry and load your junk. in our case, i called mid-day and asked them to send as many trucks as possible. we ended up needing about 4 trucks, but part of that was because our new neighbor, beverly, asked if she could put "a few things" in one truck, and ended up filling HALF a truck.

i shit you not. on the upside, we have a neighbor named beverly and she owes us about $300 worth of favors.

before.

seriously, that kid is what? five? sugarbear is in the blue shirt and was having a pretty great time.

so, the front yard, sans crazy fence structure, is enormous. ps-look at all that trash.

the two black pipes under the ladder are the water lines. brad and i took guesses on how long it would take for the demo crew to break one or both of them, and if you guessed around noon, you'd be the winner.

hot pink door across the street is pretty sassy.

the kid.

sugarbear in repose.

so under all that stupid deck we found A STOOP!!

current state of the front, after most of the debris had been hauled off.

brad again.

steve on the back house deck, which had to go before someone fell off the side.

RIP, unsafe deck. please note our grove of papaya trees and mercer's collection of tidy cat litter buckets.

papayas for daaaaayyyysss. too bad no one likes papayas.

see that enormous mountain of trash between the flamingo and green bush? THAT WAS LEFT INSIDE THE BACK HOUSE. and that's not even everything.

with all the testosterone and scary danger vibes, i stuck to tasks like getting the back house cleaned out and corralling the tens of thousands of terra cottery strewn everywhere. the previous owners left either a normal amount of shit? or maybe like a million more times than normal? i have no idea, but i suspect the latter. at least some of it has been entertaining? here is a smattering:

creepy doll in a polio robe, coming soon to YOUR NEXT NIGHTMARE.

accept a miracle! cards, blank on the back. i've been finding these everywhere, which is great because I ACCEPT. we need all the miracles we can get.

high times, september 1978.

the lady in red, chris de burgh. can't wait to get the record player unpacked and spin the shit out of this track.

playboy, april 1987. the jacket/scarf combo is killing me, but mainly, WHICH JEANS ARE TOO SEXY FOR ADS???

the next person who invites me to a baby shower is totally getting that doll.

no one seemed to know what the feathers in the doorways meant, but here are a few more photos. i need to get pictures of all the pots and crystals and skulls and hats left behind.

i hope you still think this is interesting, because there is soooooo much more. like yesterday, i found an ENTIRE BOX of old creepy dolls and we started painting the back house floors black (like my heart). plus we are meeting the architects next week, and i'm pretty jazzed about that.

up next in the YE OLDE SHANTY adventures: TERMITE TENTS.

ttfn.

smitten, swoon and drool-worthy.

what i mean is, how about we all stop using these words? i'm talking to you, bloggers, because no one actually speaks these words out loud, unless they want to find out what the five fingers said to the face. while we're at it, let's throw GLAM and POP OF COLOR into the mix. also i do not need to hear about your fucking washi tape project.

in less grumpy news, brad just left for breakfast tacos and then we are going to the farmers market and then if i have time BEFORE WE GO HOUSE HUNTING WITH OUR REALTOR, i'm going to make some pickles, and not just any regular old cucumber pickles, people. RADISH AND CARROT pickles, and probably some cucumber ones too, because THEY'RE MY FAVORITE, GIRL, ala this recipe.

yesterday was my six-monthiversary at kristina wilson design, LLC incorporated dot com, and ho. lee. shit. y'all. i'm busier than a one-armed wallpaper hanger. busy in a great way with great clients and wonderful projects but wayyyyyyyy busier than i thought i'd be at this point and too busy to make getting my website finished a priority. I'M TOO BLESSED FOR STRESS Y'ALL. at first i started typing 'success' instead of 'stress' so i'm not sure what that means, but clearly i've too busy for blogging, since it's been cricket noises around here.

i have been waking up extra early to read all my favie blogs via the bloglovin' app, because nothing beats the stress away like planning to buy this bag or plant this garden or make those pickles (but i'm totes making those pickles y'all. and someday i will grow my own radishes and haul them inside in my totes tote.), and then i'll feel real bad about neglecting my blog, so today i was like I WILL BLOG. I WILL MAKE THE PICKLES. I WILL GO HOUSE SHOPPING FOR SOMETHING WITH A KILLER YARD. I WILL PUT ON AN ADORABLE AND COMPLETELY IMPRACTICAL OUTFIT AND HAVE MY HUSBAND TAKE PHOTOS OF ME MODELING AND THEN LIST WHERE ALL THE PIECES ARE FROM. just kidding, just kidding (totally not kidding please refer to instagram feed for selfies).

so that's what's been going on here. don't hold your breath for updates. i did happen to find the absolutely most perfect and adorable house, in the area of town where i'd really like to live, at a price that was within the realm of possibility, with a huge garden and pool sized yard, with a 2 car detached garage including garage apartment that would be perfect for a interior design home office, AND SUGARBEAR ACTUALLY KIND OF LIKED IT, and was saying promising things like, well we can have our foundation guy take a look into it, as we stood on the porch with our realtor, nodding and enjoying the shade from the two beautiful pecan trees in the front yard and imagining how great the brick would look when we painted it white. and then i was like, this is what it feels like. THIS IS HOW YOU FEEL WHEN YOU REALIZE YOU ARE HOME.

and then approximately twelve seconds later, we found out that the house next door, the house across the street, the house two doors down AAAANNNNNDDD the apartment complex on the corner were all treatment facilities for people with mental disorders. no, not mental handicaps, people. FUCKING BIPOLAR BORDERLINE PERSONALITY DISORDER STABBY SCHIZOPHRENICS.

i tried to make some jokes like, well i hope they have room for one more! and OH GOOD-i can just switch all my other services to a much more convenient location! but brad and jay just stood there shaking their heads at me, so today we try again.

say a little prayer for me as you roll through some of my house inspiration pics and i'll TTYL, hookers.