The Shelving Saga

 Every so often, an experience comes along that tests who you truly are as a person—your determination, your resolve, the bond you have with another person. 

I am talking, of course, about putting together a piece of IKEA furniture. 

For years, Shelley and I talked about the idea of getting a new shelf to replace the ancient black Billy bookcase that was in the living room. We wanted something white to match the rest of the decor, and preferably something with doors at the bottom that hid some of the less lovely things, like wires and gaming consoles and a binder full of DVDs. We recently had gotten rid of all the DVD cases but we kept the movies, because a movie night on the projector is one of life’s great joys. 

I scoured the internet for something French provincial in design that also didn’t cost a zillion dollars. If you know me, you know I’m great at finding what I need online (it may be the reporter in me, and now that I don’t have that outlet it’s put to use finding dresses or books). I failed. The closest I came was a shelving unit from IKEA that had two shelves on the bottom behind two solid doors and three shelves on the top behind glass doors.

When Shelley and I went to IKEA to get this shelf, it was out of stock and needed to be shipped to the store for us to pick up. That was supposed to take a few days. It took a few weeks.

If you’ve ever put together a piece of IKEA furniture, you know the joy. You unpack a bag of incongruous pieces and directions that are just images of a smiling cartoon rapidly assembling an unlabeled piece in shades of black and white. 

You get to relying a lot on intuition and deduction. 

I assessed all the pieces and determined that we were missing a few key pieces for the top portion of our shelf. We tried calling IKEA several times to no avail. 

Our next step was to just build the bottom half. At this point, our living room was in disarray and the old shelf was gone. We needed some semblance of order. 

We finished that part (with some struggles getting the doors on— doors that, in spite of everything, do not align flush with one another) and headed up to the store to see if they had replacement pieces. 

Of course. Of COURSE they didn’t have those specialty pieces, and needed to order them. 

Fast forward another several weeks where we finally received the pieces we needed, only they were the wrong ones. So we had to wait. Again.

When we finally got those pieces, we were able to get the top assembled fairly easily…except the glass doors. No amount of poking, prodding, shoving, or drilling was making those doors fit on those hinges. 

So ya know what? We left the doors off. I think it looks better, actually. 

Since we have put it up, it’s been a source of calm. Books that we have acquired, Shelley’s award for manager of the year, some plants, and a set of vintage French candlesticks from Etsy that now remind me of Lumiére. I’m looking forward to decorating it for the coming holidays. 

When I was younger, my idea of taste was slapping a couple band posters on the wall and calling it a day. There was an older man here, a contractor our landlord hired when we all thought moving was inevitable. He said that our house was tastefully decorated and that the shelf in particular was really nice and well done. Our friend’s mom was here and she also admired the way we had arranged our space. Hearing that was such a huge compliment for me!

 I don’t feel like it’s materialistic to create a space you love, where you can spend your time in a way that makes you feel calm and happy. Your home should not inspire anxiety or clutter. It should bring a sense of relief and safety. And honestly, after the last 18 months, we all deserve a little calm. 

Etsy Shops I Love: Tala Stone

 

I was browsing Pinterest one day for little gold rings (I’m still trying to make the perfect stack) and saw a pin on a shark tooth dipped in gold. 

I knew I wanted one, maybe to wear to the beach to make myself feel like a badass (and thereby less afraid of the sharks, jellyfish, and whatever else lurks in the ocean’s depths). 

I went over to Etsy, as one does, and found some really tiny shark tooth necklaces and some that were massive. None really fit the vibe I was going for, so I went back to the pin and it led me to an Etsy shop called Tala Stone. Her shop was in a bit of a hiatus, but I took a chance and sent her a message, asking if she still made the gold dipped shark tooth necklaces. 

I heard back right away from this sweet shop owner, and from there we began a back and forth trying to curate my perfect necklace. I had my choice of shark teeth and ALMOST settled on one that was about as long as my palm, but I think the one I chose is just dainty enough to fit but projects a little ferocity too. 

I can’t say enough good things about Tala Stone. She was so helpful and kind, and sent me the sweetest message telling me that because of me, she pulled out all of her jewelry stuff and starting creating again and she was so thankful. 

I wore this during our little luau vaccination party to complement the shell anklet Shelley got me in Isle of Palms & I’ll definitely wear it any time we go to the beach as well. Go check out her shop & see if you can find something to give yourself a little sparkle!

Charleston

 I sat on this trip for a long time before posting-- a couple months, actually. It was our first vacation since COVID hit, and we completely fell in love with the Lowcountry. I felt like I needed to let it settle into me a bit before I could really write about it in a way that did it any justice. 

After our Philly/NYC jaunt, we left straight for Charleston. Our plans had us getting to our Airbnb around 4, but as I've said in the two previous posts regarding this trip, nothing on my itinerary went according to plan. Instead, we hit the Ravenel Bridge in Charleston around 8:00 at night-- after three hours of completely standstill traffic in Virginia (literally cars off, people walking around-level standstill). At that point, we were both tired and irritable, and any plans we had were cast off in favor of unpacking, exploring our zen tiny house, and eating some pizza. 

The next morning, we woke up in the loft bed feeling wholly recharged. I was over my encounter with a palmetto bug from the night before, and in the daylight the threats of alligators seemed much sillier than they had in the balmy darkness. 

We decided to head to Folly Beach first thing. The really nice part about staying in Mt. Pleasant was that we were pretty close to Charleston as well as Folly Beach, Sullivan's Island, and Isle of Palms. We stayed on Folly Beach for the majority of the morning and afternoon, enjoying the waves, the seashells, and the funky vibe of the place. People surf there, which was cool to watch, although I was still too freaked out from sharks and The Jellyfish Incident of '18 to really feel comfortable getting past my knees at this point.

 

We stopped for lunch at a beachside hotel bar called Blu, where I got a blue drink of some sort and we shared a couple apps. I will say this was my least favorite food of the trip, but the atmosphere was nice. It made it easy to head right back to the beach and enjoy the cloudy beach day. 

Parking at Folly is kind of a mess, so leaving early and planning to stay all day was definitely a good decision. 

We stopped at the Airbnb to shower quickly and then head into Charleston-- we had a couple cool restaurants on the itinerary that we wanted to try during this trip (I'm sure you can see where this is going) and there were some notable sights we wanted to see as well. 

We walked into a rooftop bar just to see the view. 

Every alleyway was covered in greenery and flowers. 

Downtown Charleston is the most charming city I've ever seen. We completely fell in love with it while we walked around, in and out of little shops. Because we were late getting down there, though, it seemed like every person in the world had beaten us there, and trying to find food without a three hour wait was laughable. Since our initial plan didn't work, we decided to just wander around enjoying the scenery until we serendipitously slid into a place without a wait, RuRu's Tacos. Not our preferred option, but still some damn good tacos. 

After we finished our tacos, we walked along the waterfront and waited for our ghost tour to start-- because you can't go to an old city without doing a ghost tour. It was... not the best one we've ever been on (that is reserved for the Sleepy Hollow cemetery tour) but it was still interesting and provided a lot of local history. Our tour guide showed us a lot of pictures of orbs, which Shells & I got a kick out of. 

The humidity was real, and while it wasn't so bad most of the trip, that night in particular we had not had enough water beforehand and towards the end of the tour I was only dreaming about water and thinking if I didn't get some soon they'd be talking about me on the ghost tour too: girl didn't drink enough water, passed out in front of Pineapple Fountain. 

I loved all the window boxes with flowers and how clean the city was. It also had such an awesome variety of people, which admittedly surprised me for the South. We saw a ton of Confederate flags driving through central PA. We saw ZERO the entire way through VA, NC, and the whole time we were in Charleston. 

The next morning, we decided to check out Sullivan's Island. We woke up a bit late to see the baby sea turtles migrating, but it was still worth going. It's one of the wealthier areas of Charleston, so all of the beach houses were beautiful and inspired a lot of daydreaming. It was also SO windy that day, which was more painful than you'd think when you're being pelted with and covered in sand. We did go in the water a bit though, hoping the rain would hold off for a bit. 

One of our main reasons for wanting to go to Sullivan's Island was to check out a place called Poe's Tavern. I came across it months before while I was planning our trip, and while it is standard pub food, the atmosphere and thematic menu names seemed too cool to pass up. It did not disappoint, and ended up being one of the best burgers I've ever had anywhere, hands down. 

From Sullivan's Island, we headed to Isle of Palms. This was the our absolute favorite place of the entire trip. It was so relaxed, and a perk is that there is paid parking-- while not ideal, this is preferable to the finding a place to park scenario. The beach was so much fun, and we really enjoyed the boardwalk as well. 

That night, we stopped and grabbed Mellow Mushroom for dinner. This is half the reason we went down there, and I had been looking forward to their pizza since. We decided to order their pizza with pineapple, bacon, ham, and jalapeno. It was SO good-- 10/10 recommend. On the way home, we were caught in the rain from a tropical storm. I was so glad I wasn't driving, but Shells did a great job navigating-- it was crazy!

We went to Charleston the next day and spent the early part of the day walking around the city. It was a beautiful day, and we stopped to check out Rainbow Row and the Pineapple Fountain, which I was very excited about. 

One of my favorite places in Charleston-- so cute and colorful!

We checked out the giant air market there as well-- there were so many vendors! We enjoyed the homemade lemonade and watched basket weavers, stopped into a shop that sold spices and marinades, and took advantage of the air conditioning. 

We decided to spend the afternoon back in the Isle of Palms checking out the boardwalk and enjoying the beach. We also grabbed a couple drinks at the rooftop beach bar, which boasted an amazing view. 

When we left Isle of Palms, we stopped on Saint John's Island to see the Angel Oak Tree. Listen, the oak trees here gave me butterflies. This entire place made my heart flutter like nowhere else I've ever been, but these TREES. And the Angel Oak has a fence around it, so we couldn't get too close, but it was such a beauty. 

From St. John's, we headed over to Folly Beach again. I saw a post on Instagram a few weeks prior about the Folly Wish Tree. It was so beautiful, and the whole walk down the beach at golden hour was so ethereal. We walked through the surf and tried to find shells to hang on the branches and make our wishes. This was one of my favorite parts of the trip-- and I know I've said that about so much, but it is true! 

We grabbed dinner on Sullivan's Island at the only place with an open table-- a divey place called Hometown BBQ, which was okay but not the best food we've ever had. Their barbecue was sort of bland for what we expected. 

On our final day, we packed up and headed to Boone Plantation & Gardens. It rained while we were there, so we have a raincheck for some point in the foreseeable future. While everyone else huddled inside, Shelley & I popped open our umbrellas and wandered around the gardens-- clearly the Pittsburghers. It was such a beautiful place and there were so many interesting historical exhibits. I can't wait to go back and see it in its entirety. 

After we got rained out, we had to head home, and we stopped in Summerville so I could go to Crumbl Cookies. I got a box of six huge cookies, and I have no regrets. Definitely try the chocolate chip-- it's a game changer. 

After driving a few hours, we stopped in North Carolina at a place called Twisted Oak to grab a lunch/supper (lupper?). This was my first experience with chicken & waffles, and now I get the hype! 

We got home around 1am after passing through some beautiful mountains-- very much giving that purple mountains majesty sort of vibe. I can't wait to go back-- leave a comment if we missed anything you think we should see!