The Good Life

2011 Year of Pleasures #10

March 8, 2011

Here’s the last picture I’ll take with my trusty Olympus. My first digital camera that I’ve been carting along with me for the last five years. The lens I used for everyday snapshots stopped focusing, and after searching the entirety of the internet I decided it would be a better investment to switch camera brands and get a whole new camera rather than buy a new lens. I’ve been limping along over the last few weeks using an enormous zoom lens and standing across the room from everything I needed to shoot.

It’s bittersweet, but for just about the same price as a new lens I got this sweet little lightweight Nikon D3100. Poor Olympus. You served valiantly, I will miss you. But now I have this new little guy to keep me company.

Filed Under: The Good Life, Year of Pleasures

My brave little toaster

March 3, 2011

Atti is obsessed, seriously, obsessed, with this toy he got for his birthday last year. From the time he wakes up until the time we finally pry him off of it for bed, all he wants to do is play on his turtle toy, jumping, singing along to the songs it plays, and drooling all over the handle.

The other day he got bouncing so hard he flipped the whole thing forward and landed directly on his face. He started screaming, Bear and I were freaking out that he was hurt or that he be scarred for life. We cleaned up the blood from his lip and he still wouldn’t calm down. Snuggles, singing, nothing would stop him from screaming. Finally we made out one word through the tears.

“Turtle?”

He was just mad he wasn’t back on the thing.

A little bashed in face and bloody lip isn’t going to slow this guy down, he’s got turtle’s to ride.

Filed Under: Atticus, mama musings, The Good Life

Best of Modesto – Elegant Stitch

March 2, 2011

This store was one of the hardest things about leaving Modesto, and one of the pure joys to come back to.

Elegant Stitch is one of the best independent needlework stores in the country. And it’s right in my backyard. Among crafters, the local specialty store (LNS if needlework is your passion, LSS if it’s scrapbooking, LQS if you’re a quilter, you get the idea) is the holy grail. The place where you can go for serious selection from smaller designers, specialty items, in depth knowledge and customer service from people who are as passionate as the subject as you are. It seems that everywhere I live I find myself getting really into whatever medium is reflected in the independent stores. My needlepoint really suffered during the San Diego years while my quilting took off. Now that I’m back I find my fingers itching to pick up a needle and thread and to play around with beautiful overdyed linen.

On the day I came by to visit Elegant Stitch had just moved locations from a cozy storefront to a massive industrial space, and already they were hard at work transitioning the warehouse into a feast for the eyes and offering serious inspiration. Everywhere I look I find some other intricate little treasure I want to hold in my hand with awe.

Not only do they have rooms full of beautiful things to marvel at, but they also have rooms full of patterns to pour through, including an incredibly gorgeous floor to ceiling card catalog of patterns from popular designers. If Atti would let me, I could spend hours there.

The customer service is wonderful. I swear there have been times when they lady helping me was just as excited about what I was making as I was, pulling out bolt after bolt of linen to pick out exactly the right shade to use.

And best of all, not only does this place have a couple of store cats, but the owner also brings her little doggies around. The last time I was there the doggies and Atti couldn’t get enough of each other as they licked his little toes and crawled into the stroller to snuggle. All while I dreamed of intricate little designs and all the beautiful things that could be made with them.

Filed Under: Best of Modesto, The Good Life

2011 Year of Pleasures #9

March 1, 2011

Sally had these at her place over Christmas and I used them to eat an entire cheese ball. I was both thrilled and angry to discover them at Wal-Mart because I’ve been using them as the perfect cheese delivery system and I have eaten way too much. They’re especially great with strawberry cream cheese, that sweet and salty pairing just can’t be beat.

Filed Under: The Good Life, Year of Pleasures

Bathroom Stand

February 28, 2011

This project has been living in my head ever since we bought our San Diego house. Actually seeing it to fruition has been like getting that superhuman energy boost after you kick a bad cold.

A few years ago my cousin and favorite shopping buddy Karen and I were strolling through a fancy home decor store when I came upon a really simple side table decorated in nailheads. It was gorgeous and inspiring and totally incredibly ridiculously priced. I’ve been looking for a way to do it myself ever since, but it turns out it is really really hard to find a perfect little table.

Powder rooms never have enough space for all of the little luxuries I wanted to put out, so I wanted to put a tiny little table next to the sink. But have you ever priced those cute little tables? They cost nearly as much as a regular sized table. And my cheapskate streak just couldn’t live with that. Logically I understand that things cost what they cost and that expenses don’t get dramatically cheaper just because the table is slightly smaller in scale, but no amount of logic could get past my sticker shock.

I found this little table at HomeGoods for $20. It was the wrong color, the wrong decor, not quite the shape I had in mind, but that price was so very right.

This little table started life out painted a distressed white with black underneath and a decoupaged image of a map on the top. Boring. I stripped the paint off, gave it a little sanding, and spray painted it with a primer. For a job this small, spray paint is amazing. No brush strokes, easy application and clean up, and these days you can get a pretty interesting selection of colors.

I followed the primer with a few coats of spray paint in this cool peacock blue color, and then a couple more coats with a clear sealer. This was a perfect scale of furniture refinishing for me right now. I didn’t even really need to change my clothes, I could slap on a coat of spray paint in between putting on Sesame Street and changing over the laundry.

I gave the paint coat a couple of days to get a good hard cure, and then I started adding the nailheads. Make sure you use some kind of a softer hammer so you don’t mess up the finish of the nails. A rubber mallet or a sock tied around the hammer would be good. Also, they love to bend at the head, so take your time and hammer straight down.

If cost was no object to this project, I would have preferred a table that offered me enough solid space on the sides to do an ornate paisley pattern, but this way I got to get my suggestion of nailheads while also having the whole project cost less than a dinner out.

Filed Under: My Dreamhouse in Progress, Stuff I Make, The Good Life, Tutorials

Hair cut

February 25, 2011

You may have noticed from the pictures around here lately that I may have let my little guy’s hair get a little on the shaggy side. Maybe.

I can’t help it, from the time he was a tiny crazy mohawk growing dude, his hair has been one of his most irresistible features. Whenever people meet him, the first thing they do is run their hands through his hair. Nobody can help themselves.

But, he’s going to school every day now and has to look respectable, so no more little ragamuffin boys. I’m still leaving it as long as I can without it hanging in his eyes or looking like a mullet, he is a little rocker after all, and it would just be unfair to deprive the world of the cuteness this crazy messy hair provides.

Filed Under: Atticus, mama musings, The Good Life

Even more framing

February 24, 2011

Before I leave the framing discussion behind for good, I should probably show off these last few additions.

For some reason my studio ended up having the most artwork of anywhere in my house, so I really wasn’t planning on adding more right now, despite the glorious abundance of wall space in here. But then I was gifted those great letterpress prints, and there was really no more perfect place to put them. I love how this wall is filling up.

This one is really almost embarrassing. I’ve had this wordle made up for over 2 years, and I am just now getting around to framing it. Boy, when I stick something in a closet, I do it with effectiveness.

I hung this one up in our guest bathroom. Once again, I want the art I put up to be meaningful of our values, but I don’t want to become some gross shrine to the superiority of our family. Having this hang over the toilet is actually a fairly prominent spot, but it’s also humble enough to not make me take myself too seriously.

Plus, nobody wants to go to the bathroom surrounded by watching eyes of photographs. Who knew there was so much overthinking to be done about where to hang pictures.

Filed Under: My Dreamhouse in Progress, Stuff I Make, The Good Life

2011 Year of Pleasures #8

February 23, 2011

An East Indian friend of ours gave us this present to help us through our recent bummer times. Not only is it a sweet little gift, and a thoughtful expression of support, but it means so much to me when someone reaches out with love in a way that shares something significant to them. It seems somehow not only a gesture of love, but also of trust.

Filed Under: infertility is evil, The Good Life, Year of Pleasures

Living Room Art Wall, Part 2

February 22, 2011

Ready for more of the tour? This is the side I’ve had for the longest. I thought I’d just weight the pictures towards one side of the wall, but I didn’t love it. And the nesting impulse was just begging for more to do, so I kept right on going all the way across. But these images are really what started it all.

The Lovers by seller Delany LaFae. This photographer is the same one who did the Sunday Afternoon picture from last time. She was having a 2 for 1 sale, so after finding the picture of the books and tea I looked through her shop to find my free one and came upon this picture I loved even more. Talk about mushy love art. She visits these trees several times throughout the year and takes pictures of them in different seasons. This one was my favorite – in the rain.

Home Sweet Home by seller benben. More amazing illustration. This picture has a place of honor right in the middle because it’s such a beautiful symbol of our foremost goal for our home. That it’s a place of sanctuary. I’m nuts about the modern graphic treatment of such an old fashioned ideal.

Hope letterpress by seller Sweet Harvey. You all know how I feel about letterpress. This artist is a great one and I fell totally in love with the sentiment behind this work.

Owl from seller Little Rice There are a whole lot of etsy shops printing images on vintage dictionary pages. I love owls as a symbol of wisdom, so this one seemed like a perfect fit.

This is one of my favorite pictures of Atti I’ve ever taken and the only family photo to make the wall. I just love his little face looking so full of wonder, gazing out into his future. Plus he looks so handsome with his olive colored eyes.

And lastly,

Gethsemane by artist J. Kirk Richards. This piece is really special to me. I could probably write an entire post just about this one. It’s my lone non-etsy purchase, mainly because most non-etsy artists are out of my price range. Richards offers some of his artwork as open stock prints so I was able to get this one really affordably. Despite being a religious person, I don’t have any religious artwork in my home. Everything I’ve seen just didn’t really move me. So much of it is so ubiquitous that they’re almost like family photos, I couldn’t find anything that felt, well, transcendent.

Then I found this piece and was moved by it. But even better, I saw that angel and it looked markedly feminine to me. I’ve been in love ever since. It made me remember this pivotal experience I had as a kid that may have been the moment I embraced feminism. I was reading about Christ in the garden of Gethsemane and of the angel that attended him in his hour of greatest need. As a young, earnest, emotional, teenager I read that and wished that I could have been that angel. I told someone about that wish and they said, “It couldn’t have been you. It would have had to have been someone who had the Priesthood.” That reaction broke my little teenage heart and led me to challenge those views ever since. And I had forgotten all about that experience until I saw that painting.

I’m so pleased with how this project has turned out. I think you can get a good sense of what is important to our family. Education, home, faith, wonder, knowledge, humor, courage, a lot of love, and some cats.

Filed Under: mama musings, Matters of Faith, Mushy Love Stuff, My Dreamhouse in Progress, The Good Life

Living Room Art Wall, Part 1

February 21, 2011

I’ve been meaning to show this off for ages and ages, but, well, you know.

My hopes for the adoption sent my nesting instinct off, but I was trying so hard to be careful with how I channeled it. No nursery planning, no quilt making, I had to nest over something that would work for us no matter what the outcome was. I’m glad I did because I’m left with no regrets and a house full of artwork that I really treasure.

My biggest challenge was the long wall in our family room above the television. If this were our permanent house than I would have no choice but to do an elaborate built in shelving arrangement. But as a rental I’m not even going to go to the trouble to mount the TV to the wall. Which made decorating tricky since I’m stuck with a really low television and a whole lot of wall.

I attempted to put a few family photos here, but it just felt off. Too prominent, too intimate, it felt somehow like a shrine. Instead I thought about images that would symbolize our family, our goals, the things that are most important to us, and searched through etsy to find artwork that reflected that.

Etsy is just a miracle for this kind of thing. I find it hard to keep up with a lot of the time because it’s just an embarrassment of riches, but if you know what you’re looking for there is just no better place on this earth.

There’s a lot to get through, so I’m going to break this into two posts. For today we’ll start on the right side and make our way towards the middle.

A vintage reproduction poster of Joan of Arc from seller Alpine Graphics. This piece was such a score. It is not only a nod to my love of art nouveau graphics, but in honor of a feminist hero. One of my favorites.

Cat watercolor by seller Linda Butterfly. This was a last minute addition when I decided I needed a couple more pieces to fill the wall. You all know how we feel about cats around here, but I try not to let my house reflect that too much. I thought this one was subtle enough and artsy enough to stay on this side of the crazy cat lady line while still including the fuzzy members of our family.

Cuddles by seller Gumball Grenade. Atti is such a daddy’s boy, I wanted a little something to reflect their special relationship. Tell me, how perfect is this?

A Sunday Afternoon by seller DelanyLaFae. My decorating style doesn’t really lend itself to teacups, but this picture is a nice way to bring in an image that brings me a lot of peace and happiness. I might go have a cup of tea as soon as I finish this.

I Think I’m In Love by seller Rosie Music. There is so much fantastic illustration available on etsy. I wanted to have a few pieces of mushy love art that didn’t go overboard. This one is exactly mushy enough for me. Plus, there are books involved in the relationship, and that makes me happy.

We Are Intellectuals by seller Laura George I’m just wild about everything in this lady’s shop. Seriously, I could have done some damage there. I settled on this piece because it so fit with portraying the values I wanted. I want my family to pursue academic excellence and intellectual endeavors, but with a big fat sense of humor.

OK, that’s enough for one day. We’ll get to the other side tomorrow.

Filed Under: Mushy Love Stuff, My Dreamhouse in Progress, The Good Life