Tweets of the Week

Olive & Sinclair

By now, most local Nashvillians have heard of Olive & Sinclair Chocolate. They are the only bean to bar chocolate maker in the South, and they are now giving tours of their small operation on Friday afternoons. I’d been looking forward to taking the Things there since we booked it a week ago, and we were not disappointed.

It’s so wonderful to see people working at something about which they are so passionate, and these guys clearly love their job. The owner, Scott was out of town, but his 2 colleagues seemed to have it all well in hand. Please excuse my very poor phone photos…

I don’t want to give away all the fun facts from the tour for those wanting to go, but I will share a couple of tidbits. They use a coffee roaster obtained from Nashville’s own Bongo Java for their cacao beans (from both Ghana and the Dominican Republic), and there is ZERO waste. They are able to trade or donate all of their cacao shells and nib dust to local breweries like Yazoo for chocolate beers, or local farmers as mulch, etc.. Nothing is wasted and they make every effort to work with local artisans in any way possible.

 

 

These bourbon barrels from local distillery Corsair are used to flavor the new Bourbon Nib Brittle that was available for tasting…divine!

We couldn’t see the bars actually being made because only 4 people run this whole operation, so they have to shut down so they can give the tour! The video at the bottom from the O & S website does show it all, so check it out.

You know we came home with some of that goodness. The Things went safe with the 67%, I went for the nibs, and the CC likes it spicy.

When we asked if we could have a couple of cacao beans for Thing 2 to take to his share at school, they gave us a whole bag along with some samples for the kids to taste!  So nice and generous. I think Thing 2 will be getting some high fives at school this week!

Not only is it the best chocolate I’ve ever tasted, but the most beautiful, hand wrapped packaging, and super nice people with a great business philosophy to boot. No, this is NOT a sponsored post, but I am a superfan…obvs.

 

Photo via Olive & Sinclair

Olive and Sinclair Artisan Chocolate from josh anderson on Vimeo.

 

 

 

To Do: Cure Table Woes

I have table woes. One of the only pieces of furniture in this whole entire house that was purchased new, has failed me.

Am I shocked? Not really.

Am I resentful? Absolutely.

Our dining room table was bought on sale at Pottery Barn, and I think I know why the clearance price was so good. The finish has the life span of a fly. It’s called Sandrift Gray and it started chipping only 6 months after we got it. Now, this is what we see all over…little nicks and chips.

 

I contacted Pottery Barn right away when the first nicks appeared to see if they sold a touch up kit or something that would match the finish…NO. So now I throw a canvas dropcloth over it if I have guests coming because it’s at the point now where it’s just looking…shabby.

 

I love the lines…I wanted a Parson’s table, and still do, plus it has a leaf, so that we can seat 10-12 for special occasions.  I want to fix the table finish, but how?  The “finish” is textured, as you might be able to tell in the photos. Because of that, an opaque paint color might highlight the chips in the texture. If I did some kind of overglaze, would that be enough to hide it? I don’t know that I have it in me to sand off the finish completely and start over…but it’s a last ditch option. I tried a silver paint pen on one spot that I promptly wiped off…sigh.

This will be a big project either way and I’m open to suggestions on how to hide these blemishes…I don’t want to have to live with tablecloths forever.

Tweets of the Week

Sneak Peek

Things are really boring around here since all our projects are mid-stream. On the upholstery front, I haven’t started my new chairs, although I’m dying to, until I can finish these chairs to sell. This is what all that mess was from.

We forgot to take pics of the chairs before taking them down to the frames, so I tried to dig up a few snaps of them from days of yore.

 

 

They had button tufting on the back. Yikes… my dining room when we first moved in! Ew!

 

 

Terrible shots, but you get the idea…a pair of upholstered tufted klismos style chairs from the 40’s-50’s I’d guess. The only ones I found like them online are attributed to Parzinger, here.

So, the Things were a little rough with them, and the frame snapped on one, so up to the attic they went to await repair. I had planned to reupholster them anyway, but knew we’d have to fix the frame first. Once we got them stripped down, both frames actually needed some structural repair.

 

The CC likes the woodworking repair aspect…*yawn* and now that he’s almost done, it’s time for me to get to work and sand down the legs, paint them and start upholstering them. I’ve decided to go a little crazy, OK a LOT crazy with these chairs.

Behold what I plan to cover them with….

 

Scary, huh? That’s several yards of faux grey and white Mongolian fur, and if it ends up looking like a pair of ugly trolls, I can just redo it. THIS is the fun part of trying to tackle this on my own-the risks aren’t so risky. Would I do this if I were paying someone else to do it? Probably not, I’d go with something “safer”.

So that’s one of the many unfinished things happening around the house…I’m hoping for a full reveal sooner rather than later.