Portland Bar, Southern Soul { new print work }

You may remember The Fixin' To from my post on their website launch a month or so ago. Vegan dumplings, southern beer, good music, a kickass space... hard to forget. I just designed their promo postcards as well as business cards for Marli, the big boss lady. Head down to The Fixin' To this weekend for their stellar Sunday brunch and look forward to a peek at their hilarious and heartfelt testimonial below...

Flash back to last November when the old lady and I had just returned from a quick trip to New York City. It was four days of eating and drinking and mindlessly working all the jitters out before we returned home to do the unthinkable: open our bar, The Fixin' To. We came back to Portland to face the daunting, exhausting, soul-crushing, life-affirming task on a cold rainy night (naturally). Fresh off the plane we went to the still-raw space just to make sure it was still standing. It was. And inside the door someone had slipped a neat, hand-written note through our mail slot. We opened it and...wonder of wonders...somebody (a complete stranger) was offering to build our bar. For free. For life experience. For fun. Immediately my mind ran to thoughts of loner sexual predators, sweaty pervs, and serial killers with collections of crouton teeth chilling in their fridge. But we were desperate. And broke. So we set up a meeting with this certain felon for the next day and braced for the worst.

So imagine our surprise when in walked Justin (Kelty's boyfriend). Ridiculously, annoyingly handsome. Sweet as pie. Quiet. And with a passionate vision for our bar matched only by his supreme talent. In short...he constructed the beating heart of The Fixin' To...nailing, sawing, staining for countless hours...for shits and giggles. It looks amazing. And we wouldn't be here without him.

And now you're wondering...Where does Kelty and Steep Street come into this? Well, let's just say that Kelty's work on our logo, website, menus, photos, flyers, and countless and sundry other items has been equally selfless, heartfelt, and brilliant. And, oh yeah, it kicks about 31 flavors of ass. Like her man, she came to us first and asked us if we'd LET her design our stuff. How sweet. How very nice of her, we thought. And then we checked our the Steep Street site for the first time and couldn't control our giddiness. This chick was AWESOME. And SHE wanted to design a site for us? This uber-talented, stylish, artist wanted to do us a solid? Holy rainbow shitting unicorn! We were honored and once we saw what she came up with (armed only with a couple random ideas we'd supplied her in fever dreams of exhaustion) absolutely floored.

We weren't cool before we combined forces with Kelty. Now we are. But I still have one lingering question for Justin and Kelty. With all this do-gooding and spirited creativity for brain-dead beer slinging stiffs like we Fixin' To folk, I have to ask... Are ya'll guys Christians? If so, I may just have to start going to church. Anywho Kelty, you'll always have a free St. Johns Sweet Tea waiting for you at the Fixin' To. Thanks for all your hard work.

The Fixin' To Family