Mark: I want to turn some trash to treasure.
Theresa: Well, I kind of want to become a junk gypsy because I think that whole like mojo, the whole, that whole thing is just — it’s kind of like free and exciting and it’s eclectic and fun. It looks so much fun.
Mark: We should go to Texas.
Theresa: We should go to Texas.
Mark: Where the junk gypsies are, Amie and Jolie Sikes, who are the junk gypsies and have managed to turn the word “junk” and “gypsy” into not only an awesome design and decoration business, but a television show on HGTV. Amie and Jolie, how did you do that? Go.
Jolie Sikes: Well, we don’t know.
Amie Sikes: We like careful planning, you know. We got to strategize. You know what, we always say Junk Gypsy. You could have never planned for this business and all the magic that we feel because of it. So we don’t know. We just kind of stumbled into it and we decided we were going to figure out how to make the most of it so.
Jolie Sikes: We adhere to the plan of not having a plan.
Theresa: Oh, I like that.
Mark: That’s good. I’m…
Jolie Sikes: And working your booty off, lots of sweat.
Theresa: Well, that’s really good too. I like working your booty off because it keeps you in shape too. It’s healthy.
Jolie Sikes: That’s right. That’s right. It really does and we call it “junkercise”.
Theresa: Junkercise? Oh, serious, that is awesome.
Mark: When does the exercise video hit YouTube?
Theresa: No really.
Amie Sikes: Same, same… we ask junky people to help us out of it. So you also come on and do it with us.
Mark: We’ll do it. I can spray paint something and then do 50 push ups.
Jolie Sikes: It’s like a little too far there. We’re talking about loads and furniture
Amie Sikes: We’re taking you out of our exercise careers.
Mark: Oh. It’s heavy manual labor.
Jolie Sikes: Lots of manual labor, that’s right.
Theresa: You’re good at that Mark.
Mark: Well, what is the heaviest piece of junk that you have unjunked?
Jolie Sikes: Oh, I’m glad our dad came here, and he brought down — Good thing dad is not in here.
Amie Sikes: He always says “do you all know about the heaviest stuff known to mankind?” We’ve bought lots of concrete and we bought (crosstalk) table that we put in the craft room. Yes. We bought a 12-foot tall elephant one time.
Theresa: What?
Amie Sikes: A 12-foot tall white elephant but it was actually fiberglass that wasn’t as heavy as it looked. We bought a carnival ride from the 1920s and you know, they don’t make them like that anymore. I mean like steel and you know, all American made and I mean those things are heavy so that’s probably our heaviest thing, old circus ride.
Jolie Sikes: We just thought it’s really fun stuff. I mean everything we like is sometimes maybe not completely practical, but for our store and for Junk Gypsy and for our parent, it’s lots of fun and we just can’t have that fun things like that. And if the Junk Gypsy doesn’t work out, we’re going start to traveling side show and make pizza and have our carnival.
Theresa: Oh I love that.
Mark: Can I be the funnel cake guy?
Theresa: You want to be the funnel cake guy? Mark: I didn’t know what a funnel cake is.
Theresa: Oh really?
Mark: That’s a carnival thing right?
Theresa: Yeah, I think it is.
Mark: (Laughs)
Theresa: That is crazy. So now you are doing people’s houses and like what’s your house like? You know, what are your houses like or use it like carnival rides and everything that I am seeing like on your website and everything?
Amie Sikes: Well, our house is, I don’t know about you all, but our houses will never be finished because you think they never take time to do your own stuff but my — this is Amie talking, my house is pink and my house is kind of crazy. It’s just me and my little girl. So we kind of have gone overboard on like cotton candy floss, I guess.
Theresa: Oh wow!
Jolie Sikes: And Amie was actually featured on one of the HGTV episodes.
Theresa: I love that.
Mark: Now it’s that the house that you moved?
Amie Sikes: Yes that’s it.
Mark: That is awesome!
Amie Sikes: Actually, that would be the heaviest thing we’ve ever bought.
Jolie Sikes: Yes, yes that probably was easily the heaviest thing we’ve ever bought.
Amie Sikes: And now we live in it, yes. And what’s funny though is my daughter, her perspective at home is that if we go to the beach she will say, “Mommy, we should leave our house here at the beach.” Like in her mind, you can just pick up your house and move it.
Theresa: Well, why can’t you?
Mark: Well apparently in your mind, you can do that too.
Theresa: In your reality (laughs). Now and I love the stuff that you are guys are selling on your website, junkgypsyblog.com, like there is a cutest thing like the little girl ruffled pants and leopard steering wheel cover is outrageous and so cool. Like who even thinks of having a gypsy teepee?
Amie Sikes: We do not know. I have one in mind I’m like sweating so…
Theresa: Okay.
Amie Sikes: That’s kind of what brought that about.
Theresa: Okay, because that’s simply crazy and I know that our kids would desire if we have that in our house.
Mark: That’s true. And also to live up to a promise I have given myself, I said I would ask you for a T-shirt.
Theresa: Oh seriously?
Amie Sikes: You got it.
Jolie Sikes: Consider it done.
Mark: Done. See? Done.
Theresa: Really?
Mark: You know, you guys have to…
Theresa: You really want him representing you out in the world. I mean. Seriously? You might want to reconsider that later.
Mark: You might want to send out with a contract.
Amie Sikes: He looks strong so I’m thinking that we might get a little manual labor out of this.
Theresa: He is strong. I have relied on him to like lift heavy things and move heavy things for me. So yeah.
Mark: Yes, unfortunately I’ve earned the title strong-back-weak-mom.
Theresa: (Laughs)
Amie Sikes: There is nothing wrong with that. Don’t let anyone ever tell you different.
Mark: Oh, that’s so kind of you. Now, I have a question that is a little bit complex. So, between gypsyville.com, your antiques week, the designing, the decorating, the painting, the TV show, the constant hunt for treasures, what don’t you do?
Amie Sikes: Get a pedicure?
Jolie Sikes: Oh yeah.
Amie Sikes: I don’t have a pedicure like 12 years.
Mark: (Laughs)
Amie Sikes: I mean I really feel sorry for the person that gives us… (Laughs)
Theresa: Well, I have a question and I am curious because I have read that your parents own pizza parlors there and like are you sick of pizza or you still like to get it all like going out for pizza and bringing your daughter and the whole thing?
Jolie Sikes: Yeah, oh my gosh.
Amie Sikes: Pizza is our comfort food.
Jolie Sikes: We love pizza.
Amie Sikes: Yeah, we can never have enough pizza but we’re slightly, I mean sadly we’re a little bit a pizza snob.
Theresa: Oh really?
Mark: What’s your favorite pizza?
Amie Sikes: It happens in a pizza business when you made pizza pretty much everyday of your life as a child. You know a good pizza from a not-so-good pizza.
Mark: Alright.
Amie Sikes: And so, yeah, we’re real pizza snob. It so hard for us to go out to eat pizza.
Jolie Sikes: Yeah, we like it a lot at home there.
Theresa: Okay. So, what’s your favorite pizza?
Jolie Sikes: Oh, veggie. We love veggie pizzas like we’ll put every veggie in the world on a pizza with jalapenos.
Amie Sikes: Tons of jalapenos.
Theresa: Oh wow.
Amie Sikes: And avocado because we have avocado.
Theresa: Oh, that sounds really good.
Amie Sikes: We just keep putting stuff on there.
Mark: That sounds like a very Texas mix of vegetables for pizza. I am not so sure you get a lot of that say in New York or Seattle.
Amie Sikes: Probably not.
Jolie Sikes: We have commitment issues so we just brought — we’ve kind of equal opportunity with all the vegetables.
Mark: I love it.
Theresa: So I want to know — like you know I also read that you guys had other jobs between helping out with the pizza parlors and now being junk gypsies, like what jobs or careers were you doing between all of that?
Jolie Sikes: We market our restaurants growing out and then we both — we have a little busy town with one flat and like so it is at little Baytown, Northeast Texas and then when we graduated High School, we both went off to Texas A and M and went to college and got a degree. Amie has a degree with law and then mine was in medicine.
Amie Sikes: I am not actually a lawyer. It was just gearing towards law. I was on the prelaw track.
Jolie Sikes: Right. And she graduated first because she is older. I said you can take it from her.
Amie Sikes: Okay. So I actually did not get a law degree. I was on a pre-law track and then Jolie was on the premed track at A and M. But then we both left college. I went market the capital in Austin in politics. Jolie went to teach school for a little while until she decided what her definite plan of the track was and then ended up going — she admitted going back to college to get her master’s degree in nutrition and so basically, we have no experience in the junk business before we got into the junk business and I think I was saying also that Jolie’s masters degree in nutrition is kind of why, hence the veggie pizza thing happened.
Theresa: Well I just have to say that just like the designs and all the photos that I’ve seen and your TV show and everything, do you guys have such a rich eclectic background too that you like it kind of like it make sense to me in a way that how creative and how just rich in texture all everything is that you create.
Amie Sikes: Thank you.
Jolie Sikes: Thank you.
Theresa: It really does make sense. But at least it makes sense to me.
Amie Sikes: Even though we don’t have a degree in Junkology, we grew up just with a lot of junk and being self-employed because our parents — in the restaurant, they were always decorating just with recycled things in the flea market and we helped renovate all of the old buildings that they were and they were always in old downtown building and we were far across this as kids and I was like all the decor was and our mom, we have been wearing __26:49__ clothes since the beginning. So I think we just — we didn’t have a choice this far so either we are going to love junk or not, we’ve always love it.
Theresa: Well, is it something that you guys are like scouting for right now or like you have on your list of I wish we could find this for our project that we are working on?
Jolie Sikes: I wish we could find a giant 10-foot chandelier for our store.
Amie Sikes: Me too.
Theresa: Oh really?
Jolie Sikes: Like huge, gargantuan, or one of those kinds you see like in a Vegas casino or something exact.
Amie Sikes: Because nothing says not gypsy like goddie.
Theresa: Oh my goodness gracious.
Mark: Of all the stuff that you’ve found over the years and all the projects that you’ve done, what strangest thing or the thing that yet like the least fate in that turned out to be just a homerun?
Jolie Sikes: That’s a really good question.
Mark: Do you have one that like turned out to be a total dud, you are so helpful and was like, “Wait this doesn’t work”.
Jolie Sikes: Oh god. I will take that.
Amie Sikes: On one of the episodes, we build a desk like a fold down desk out of a tailgate. It turned out really, really cool and like a cheap tailgate and turned out a really cool desk.
Jolie Sikes: It’s kind of classy but really great color. Old tailgate from the junkyard basically and on the top, we put a piece of plywood and chalkboard paint and then we put down — the part of the wall once it put down, we try and fill corkboard and then it has a shelf above it and it is the cutest, coolest, nonfunctional thing and really for any age like good for a little boy’ room but as Amie said as we were installing it, she was like, “Hey, this could go to college for tailgate party in their house.” So it was really cool DIY I guess you would say.
Theresa: I think my husband will probably like it too for his office.
Jolie Sikes: Really, there is no age on that tailgate desk because it was really cool.
Theresa: That sounds awesome.
Mark: I love it. I am going to have to run outside and take the tailgate off my truck right now.
Theresa: So for everybody listening you have to go to junkgypsyblog.com. Check them out on HGTV. Follow them on Twitter, @junkgypsy. We have to go to break.
Mark: We will be back with more MyFixitUpLife.
