...and a bit about Joey

Joey - I spent my formative years in a town about 25 miles or so from Houston, Texas called Friendswood. Growing up with my wonderful parents who made trying anything I could think of possible. Baseball, Soccer, Lacrosse, and Karate were all things I had a passing interest in before my mom signed me up to take piano lessons. Piano led to saxophone in the 5th grade, which led to guitar. And after I decided the guitar had too many strings I took up the bass, drums, and singing. Playing in a local band I had the dreams of every garage rocker. But when superstardom seemed like a fantasy not worth chasing, and selling Mazdas at the local dealership lost its luster, I decided to move to NY.

I began an internship at a jingle studio in Manhattan shortly after moving in 2003 and slowly crept my way up the music composition ladder until I got where I am today; writing music for films.

Along the way, some not so unimportant things happened. Like meeting my beautiful wife, getting married, and as you could probably guess, buying a house.

Lana and I have always been fans of people who do for themselves what the commercial masses cannot provide. Anytime we cant find the perfect match for our respective tastes we just make a project out of it. (Sometimes to our benefit and sometimes not), but we never let a lack of know-how stop us from trying.

There are more projects in our minds than time in the day, so I'm sure that we will keep ourselves busy, and hopefully entertain and inspire some new do-it-yourselfers.

Who the heck do we think we are...

We are going to tell you our story. We get emails all the time asking about us, our home, who we are and what we do - so we decided it's time we formally introduce ourselves! After all, we have been blogging for a while now - it's only fair!

Lana - I grew up in South Florida in a beach community. I went to private school almost my whole academic life, played soccer for 14 years, and was your pretty average kid. My father had a set up in our garage where he would often build or fix things for our home. I was obsessed. Little boxes filled with shiny nails and screws all organized for any possibility your mind could create. I often took the dolly and nailed boxes to it trying to build my own "car". Then, my father did the most amazing thing ever. He built me my first house. It was two stories and had a tree in the middle. I remember putting curtains up and spending time in there dreaming of when I would have my very own home. Sadly when we sold the house, the new owners took down my life-size doll house.

At 19 I moved to NY to work in the entertainment industry, which I did for five years before I became a marketing consultant, vegan truffle maker, learned to sew, garden, met my wonderful husband Joey...wait. I am getting ahead of myself. Learning that I loved the freedom of consulting, I dove into a variety of things I always wanted to do. When I met my super-amazing-musician-husband, who had a flexible lifestyle, I knew I met my match. We shared an apartment in Williamsburg, Brooklyn where we became DIYers. Now I say "became" like it's something we just took up. I don't really mean it like that. I mean it in the sense that we found a partner in eachother to accomplish projects. Then the wedding came, and were were total DIY fanatics and did the whole thing ourselves, from invitations to what people threw as we walked down the isle to decore. This blog actually started as a "do-tell" of our wedding planning! Unexpectatly, we bought a house just a few months after marriage. We actually had paid for our whole honeymoon, then discovered our closing date was smack-dab in the middle, hence, we never took our honeymoon. We figured the house was a once in a lifetime shot (we wanted this one!), and we could always take our honeymoon at a later date. So just a few days before Halloween 2010, we moved into our starter castle (hehe) and began really learning how to do every ourselves. It's a big change moving from a 1000 sqft Brooklyn apartment into a 6,200 sqft house, with land! Our weekends of hanging with our friends all day and night in the city turned into basically living at Home Depot, Lowes, True Value, Target, ABC Carpet and Home, etc, etc...Oddly enough, we enjoy it just the same. It's been a wonderful thing to have people over to our home. Have a backyard, play music as loud as we want, enjoying a driveway (our parking tickets were thousands a year), and feeling the pride homeowners feel.

As for what I do on a daily basis - it's A LOT. I work full time marketing (more like 60 hours a week!), own two companies, and run this household with Joey. We have two puppies, which are more like our children. Their names are Porkchop VanderSandwich and Rocket VonScience. I believe in a home cooked meal, so I always make the time to cook at least four nights a week. I love gardening, sewing, and making vegan desserts (something less guilty about it). The best part of the day is laying down with the Hubs McGruff and our two pups and taking in all we accomplish every day.

So that's my story. I am going to pass you over to Joey......in just a little bit!

Deciding to be more Green, or whatever you want to call it

Is it possible I have been "green" since I was five years old? I have always been teased by my dad that I am a hippie. It's funny because I don't think any of my friends view me this way. I am in fact a vegetarian and decided to become one at five years old. Joey is the one and only boy I have ever even dated that ate meat. I am not saying meat is right or wrong, it's just not for me. I don't like the way it tastes and I don't like what it's made out of. Joey on the other hand is steak and potatoes all the way. Making dinner, as I love to do, has always been a fun task of satisfying my "hippy-dippy" ways while keeping a meat eater happy. I love using fresh produce and have always felt awful we never composted the remains (living in an apartment doesn't really support composting). Behold, homeownership now allows us to not only have wallpaper, but a compost of our very own.

Our Outside Composter

We wound up with this beauty for a few reasons. First, the price caught our attention. For the high ratings this received on Amazon, we were thrilled it was $20-$100 LESS than it's competition. The Soilsaver Compost Binis just one option of composters of course. You can buy ones you can spin around, or ones like this you have to mix yourself.  We decided on doing a little bit of extra labor (once every 2-3 weeks, not bad, right?) in exchange for having a sturdier composter. From our research we gathered it will take 2-4 months to turn our veggie peels and coffee grinds into valuable soil our yard will love. 

Our Inside Composter

This little guy had mixed reviews, but sometimes you have to take a chance. We thought it matched our "future" kitchen the best. Norpro Ceramic Compost Keeperis his name, and we found him on Amazon too. We think he is handsome enough to keep on the counter and the refill pads are cheap enough to not get upset about maintenance. Those pads are really the only thing that needs to be bough after your purchase of your composters. 

If you are undecided about composting, let us give you some pro's and con's, and hopefully we will help you decide!

Pro's to Composting:

You will have to buy less garbage bags!

Less of your waste will go to the garbage man!

Less trips to the curb to drop your garbage bags!

You will create super nutrient soil which you can use in your garden or yard!

Minimal work and minimal money to get going!

Con's to Composting:

You will have to maintenance the bin every few weeks by mixing it or spinning it

You will have to do a little trash management (what can go in the composter and what cant?)

It takes a few months to give you that rich soil (the hotter the environment, the quicker the composition)

We'll let you know how it goes in a few months! In the meantime tell us what you do around your house to be a little green. We are always curious what other people are doing and how they do it! Our next step may be a solar powered kitchen! News on that soon!