Enjoy this beautiful day

So, where did this Wire & Twine thing begin?

Sometimes we furrow our brows and try to remember exactly where it all began, too. Was it when Wendy and Chris met in their art and design classes in college? Was it when Chris and Tom discovered they both had obscenely large CD collections? Was it when we all went on that ski trip, and a few years later found Tom and Wendy getting married and Chris ditching his flannel to don a tuxedo for the day?

Somewhere in the midst of all that, we became great friends. We loved the design work we did for a living, but we also loved crafting things with our hands in our spare time. Together, we kept thinking that someday we were going to find a sweet spot where we could land our careers, placing all the creative things we loved under one umbrella.

We began with t-shirts. We purchased a small press, parked it in the back room at Chris’ office, rolled up our sleeves, and gave it a whirl. Admittedly, we were pretty terrible at first, but we got much better. By the time we found ourselves needing a bigger press, Wendy and Tom had moved out to an old farm an hour outside Cincinnati.

Finally having the space to spread out, we thought about what other projects we would love to take on. And who we would like to work with. And what would be our contribution to our community, both local and global.

The answer seems to be many-pronged and ever-changing. We love to take on projects that resonate with us. In the last few years, we’ve worked on a combination of design, illustration, photography, music and screen printing. We relish the relationships that we have with our clients—honest, cooperative, and unencumbered by red tape. On sunny days in the summer, we bale hay out in the fields, which we find is an excellent counterpoint to pushing pixels. We’re fortunate to have some part-time folks (Joel! Heather!) who help move our projects from ideas to your doorstep.

Our lives tend to be a bit crazy and chaotic. Quite often, there are kids and dogs underfoot. There’s so much good stuff to work on, that we like to fill the calendar. We often forget to make time for laundry and grocery shopping and paying the bills. It’s easy to find yourself just a teensy bit overwhelmed. A few years back, we created a shirt that said simply, “Enjoy this beautiful day.” It was our reminder to ourselves and others to stop briefly to enjoy this moment in time.

We loved this shirt. And we loved the idea of putting something out there that was nothing but positive. From there the idea of the Enjoy This Beautiful Day blog emerged. What if we could blog about only good stuff—things that can enrich your life in simple ways? That’s the kind of blog we’d like to frequent.

And the name Wire & Twine? It emerged one day as we stood in the middle of the local tractor supply store, and realized there are two ways to bale hay—wire and twine. We loved this idea, wire being the digital work we do and twine being the goods we make by hand. A perfect synergy between two means to an end. We hope to continue this collaboration for years to come.