Smallest Sky Bison

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I just realized I never actually posted this post from about a month ago! I thought it was up here already–shame on me.

In case you’re wondering what kind of a fall it’s been so far, it’s been the kind where I thought I left my camera charger in Minnesota, but really it’s been in my desk, where I’ve looked a zillion times, the whole time. Take from that what you will.

I don’t have so much in the way of Halloween plans for myself, but last year I wanted to make tesla an Appa costume, and totally flaked on it, so this year I made sure it happened by making it in early September, when I had plenty of time instead of waiting for October when free time was sure to be a hot commodity.

This is Appa, he is a Sky Bison:

This is Tesla. He is not a Sky Bison…yet:

The idea I had for the costume was pretty straightforward—basically I wanted to make an Appa pelt with a few straps to keep it on around the front and back legs. After a lot of bribing Tesla with treats so that I could measure him, I made a paper pattern and then a fabric one to check basic fit.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Tesla clearly hated it, and the fit wasn’t great, but I made a few minor changes and deemed it pretty good.

 I chose to make the actual costume out of fleece because it’s much easier to work than fake fur, and also snuggly. I wanted the costume to be double sided (for… realism?) so sewing it was basically the same as sewing a stuffed animal, but without the fluffing. I can’t decide which was more annoying—sewing the horns or cutting out and sewing twelve tiny bison feet.

Before putting the two sides together I had to make sure that absolutely every embellishment for each side was done, which meant horns were finished, tails were quilted and arrows were sewn. Then I pulled it inside out through the tail, which was a major pain, but worked out really well. I then hand stitched the tail to finish. I had left the brown arrow on the top extra big over the tail so this was time consuming but simple. Finally I sewed straps under the chin, on the four feet, and across the brisket to finish.

Tesla is none to pleased; I however, am delighted.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Check out the gallery for some pictures of the sewing process.

Back from the dead: Block print Save the Dates

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So, a couple of months ago (yikes) I said as soon as Missed Connections was over I’d be back to posting on the blog.

HA.

I crack myself up. The short and short of it is this: Missed Connections was an awesome success, and I ended up engaged at the end of it (Whaaat!). Also about two weeks before curtains I decided I was going to open an aerial studio in New Haven. So, there’s that. Both of these it turns out are Pieces of Work. Starting a business is Hard and time consuming, and planning a wedding is mostly just time consuming, though I suppose it can be hard if you let it.

 

Also, I discovered what Pinterest is actually for kids. It’s for planning a wedding whether you’re actually getting married or not!

But now that both of those things have settled down a little bit, I’ve actually had some time to work on projects. Actually it’s been a veritable project fest around here, though none of them have had to do with knocking down walls (though I did cut a hole in the ceiling of the downstairs bathroom.). My apologies though, if this post is a bit rough around the edges–getting back in the habit is hard.

I don’t have any grand plans to turn this into a wedding blog, but I did just send out most of our save the dates, which I made myself, so yeah. Let’s do it. Our save the dates are a four-color woodblock print. Feel free to go ‘oooh.’

We have neither a ‘theme’ nor colors for our wedding. Maybe we are bad at weddings, but it is taking place in northern Minnesota, the land of my people, so I decided for invites and stuff to design them with a sort of north-woodsy sensibility about them. I also decided that word of our impending nuptials would be spread by one super excited fox and his north woods comrades, because all the foxes are so excited for us.

Here we have my initial sketch, which I pretty much stuck with, with the exception of switching out the plain text with a sweet banner and moving it to the top.

 Laying out and carving the first two blocks—the animals and the text—was pretty much what you would expect. I got weirdly good at writing backwards from the project, to the point where for a few weeks I couldn’t remember which way non-symmetrical letters went. It resulted in a lot of re-filled out forms.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

To figure out the layout of the birch bark block, I printed the first two block, then rubbed the print with vegetable oil and basically printed that onto the birch bark block.

 

 

 

 

 

 

I actually carved the postcard back as an afterthought, but it turned out to be my favorite block (maybe because it’s all one piece?) and I feel like it’s the most traditionally block-printy of the bunch.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Here’s some early test prints I did to make sure all the blocks were 5×5.

I was initially going to hand pull each save the date, but I was having problems finding paper that was absorbent enough yet strong enough to not fall apart in the mail. Plus hand pulling a four-block print is really tricky and I didn’t want to do it 40 times. Finally after my first wedding related meltdown (yay?) I decided to pull one good print, then scanned it into my computer, did a little cleaning in Photoshop and then took them to my local printer. Ta da:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Oh yes, and here is a picture of my butt in a wedding dress that I didn’t buy, because I can.

Things Artistical

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Yes, it’s been forever, and I’m apologetic about it, kind of. There have been some good Life things and some bad Life things, all of which have resulted in me not posting an update for a while. Today is one of those days where I’m feeling like this:

And unfortunately not everything can be fixed by re-watching Avatar: The Last Airbender for the eighteenth time. I really need a distraction from all of the above, and thus here I am.

So, thing One that’s kept me away from here for so long is this:

Yep, that’s a super successful Kickstarter that you see before you. To see it in its full glory, with a sweet video and everything click here.

Though that video is two minutes long, it took about 16 hours to film. Sorry, it took 16 hours to make/film the animated portions. (It also took about that long to clean up.) So now you can see where a large chunk of my time in the last month has gone.

Here’s some documentation of the mess project in action. The ladder camera rig was a pretty genius idea of Nick’s—sadly it only appeared about halfway through.


 

 


 

So, that’s the video. My life has pretty much been consumed by all things Missed Connections lately, like rehearsals, and photo shoots, and more rehearsals.

When I haven’t been working on that, I’ve mostly been working on artistic projects, which is A. unexpected, and B. really, really nice.

Thing One is this:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Yes! Those are finished kraken prints with nice ink on nice paper! It was a little touch and go for a while, and some first efforts were Not So Good (I was recommended a paper that is great…if you have an industrial printing press), and disheartening, but I think I’ve mostly got it figured out. Next time I’m feeling feisty (and have a free day) I’ll get some more paper, print some more, and put those bad boys on Etsy.

 Thing Two is a cover for my new sketchbook:

 I have a personal tradition of making covers for every sketchbook I get, and this one is maybe the most elaborate. The spring flowers were going crazy around here the other week, which was my inspiration. I’m mostly pleased with how it turned out, especially since I didn’t have a plan and I pretty much never work with watercolors OR sharpies, but I’ve come down on the side of ‘this is fun, let’s do more’.

Thing Three is maybe my most favorite. My best pal recently told me about an idea she had for a graphic novel, and asked if I’d be interested in working on it with her. Obviously I said yes. It’s fantastical and steam-punky, there’s a lad named Heinrik, and there’s going to be a story about elephants riding over the Grand Canyon in hot air balloons. Who on earth would say no to that?

So, here are some quick ‘sketches’ of elephants in balloons:

 I’ve decided to work more with doing things in sharpie, or any non-erasable material right off the bat. I think it will help make me a better artist if I work more on just drawing and not refining, if that makes sense.

Here also are some close-ups of a block print (!) for the title page. There is a spooky forest. It will be glorious.

I’ve been working on it for a few weeks now, and this is pretty much all I have carved. Apparently spooky forests take forever.

And yep, that’s pretty much it.

Peace Kids!

 

The Story About the Filing Cabinet

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Hello Blog! I have a project for you, and it isn’t edible! Though, in case you’re wondering, yes, I am still eating tortilla soup and smoothies (and cupcakes this week, whoops.), and I’m not even going to get into all the fun facts I’ve learned about protein/general food consumption and building muscle mass in the last week. (Hint: you can’t just eat tortilla soup and smoothies.)

Sharing this project is slightly embarrassing (okay, yes, most things I post here are slightly embarrassing), as the iphoto events timeline tells me I started this one in um…August. Neat. At least I’m consistent—on my application for NECCA I said that one of my biggest flaws is that I start projects and don’t finish them. But this one is DONE. It only took seven months. Also slightly embarrassing, is that naturally, when I begat said project in my mind-grapes, I promised Nick that I’d finish it that weekend. Poor, gullible, Nick.

I, like possibly most of you, am susceptible to the sweet siren song of the Container Store and its devil ilk. Obviously if I had eight jute baskets, and twelve photo boxes with pink polka dots on them, I would do my damn dishes, put my clothes in the laundry basket, not leave my shit everywhere. But, there is no Container Store nearby, thank baby jesus; so this summer when Nick was seething because our hideous futon was a pile of Stacey-stuffs, I was seething because I literally had no place in our loft that was just Mine. Back then our upstairs looked like this:

Not like this:

Though, currently my desk is covered in earplugs, so it doesn’t really look like that either.

In any case, I demanded a room desk of my own. While I sketched out desk plans that I never got to build, I realized I needed more storage, and decided that I would just give an old filing cabinet a bit of a face lift and that would be that.

And here, gentle readers, is my dirty storage secret. I think when most people think about storage, they think ‘oh, I will put my mail in this compartment, and my pens in this one, and my collection of snails in the snail holder.’ Not so, for me. Part of the allure of the file cabinet was its cavernous drawers. I like storage because then I can just pile my junk in there, shut the door, forget about it, and Nick will stop yelling at me. I had absolutely ZERO idea what I was going to put in the filing cabinet, but I knew I was going to fill it with Stuff.

So, off we went to the Goodwill, and because I am an impatient beast, I bought this beauty for ten bucks, instead of waiting for something slightly less horrific.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

It was covered in rust, and there was some irreparable damage to the back where it’d been kicked in, but no one was going to see that. I scraped as much rust off as I could, gave it a quick scrub and a vacuum, then we hauled that sucker outside and got to spray painting. There are some cool file cabinet makeovers out there (also some not so cool ones)–some people use wallpaper to great effect, I chose the good ole’ shake and spray. I did use a spray primer on it, but honestly, I’m not sure what good it did. There’s the Nick approach to spray painting…

And then there’s the Stacey—aka the sit on your ass because you are Just That Lazy. And yes, we neglected to put down newspaper, and the condo people asked us very nicely to not do that again or they’d be (more) annoyed.

 And here’s where Delay Number One occurred: The next day there was a hurricane. Er, tropical storm. Either way, hard to spray-paint a stencil in a downpour.

Then I got hung up on stencil ideas (Delay Number Two).

Then, while I was visiting my parents in Minnesota, Nick banged together a desk for me for not entirely selfless reasons. When I got home I put the cabinet in it’s new spot ‘for now’, which was a fatal mistake. Because now I had a filing cabinet—albeit undecorated and without handles—but I could still put Stuff in it. So I did. Oops.(Delay Number Three).

This brings us to October, when I went to Vermont for fabric teacher training and came back with a cast and crutches to a snowpocalypse. And then it was suddenly winter, and I couldn’t haul a filing cabinet outside with a cast on my foot anyway. (Delay Number Four).

To my credit, I took that bleak wintery time to finalize a design and cut it out of plastic. Then on a particularly balmy January day, I headed outside and managed to spray paint the top drawer, but alas it started to rain.

 Yesterday I finally managed to finish the deed, and here we are:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

And yes, it is filled with stuff.

And that’s how you take seven months to finish a two day projects!

Hopefully this sudden March-warmness is not just a phase. If it’s not, it will definitely mean the start of more project-y fun—it’s just too hard to cut lumber outside when everything’s covered in ice. Also, the whole applying for circus school shenanigans are about to be done with (I got an audition, (yay) which is next weekend, and then I just have to wait for news), so that will also free us some time, but lest you worry, the circus show is still in full swing to steal time from project-doing!

I will leave you with the following text from Nick as a closing statement:

‘Hi! I just tried to eat a ball of tightly crumpled up paper because I mistook it for a piece of broken pretzel. I didn’t realize my error until I started chewing the now soggy paper ball. This is probably how Tesla feels all the time, but he is psyched about it I think.’

Yes. He is a verbose text-er. Have a good weekend!

‘I just want to eat tortilla soup and smoothies’

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Yes. That is a thing that I said.

Hello Blog, I’m sorry I’ve been totally delinquent for a few weeks now. It’s not that I’ve been ignoring you, or that I haven’t been up to cool stuff—I have, but it’s more of the apply to circus school, put together a circus show (or two), get cast in a music video, put together circus classes kind of way than a hit things with a hammer kind of way.

TLDR: lots of circus, not so much DIY.

I’m supposed to be teaching my first silks class tonight, but I think mother nature and my immune system have other plans, which is to say the least, a giant bummer.

I did promise a few weeks ago that I would put up the recipe for tortilla soup that I’ve been making. I’ve started making it every Sunday, and making enough so that I can eat it for lunch every day of the week. Okay, yes, the tortilla soup is that good, but it also fixes this problem I have with lunch (and breakfast). I don’t really like sandwiches (of the just deli meat and cheese variety), but I want something quick for lunch. I definitely don’t want to cook, which you may think is weird since I love cooking, but I don’t like interrupting my day because I need to eat (delicious baked goods excepted). So, lots of days, I’ll just wait until dinner because A. Dinner is the best meal of the day, B. I make awesome dinners. Sorry mom, I know you think I should eat breakfast.

Enter the tortilla soup. I can make a ton of it in my bribe pot (my mother once bribed me to apply for a job with an enameled cast iron Dutch oven. I got the better deal.) and then just spend the rest of the week eating delicious soup. And yes, I know it took me way too long to figure this out.

So, tortilla soup, you say?

Chipotle Tortilla Soup:

It will make your nose run. This also makes enough soup for you to eat it all week. Plan accordingly.

Soup:

  • 1 jalapeño, minced and seeded
  • 7 cloves garlic, minced
  • 1 Onion chopped however you like it
  • 1 can of corn kernels
  • 1 lb chicken, chopped into bite sized pieces
  • 1 7 oz. can whole Chipotle Peppers in adobo sauce
  • 4 oz. Chipotle sauce
  • 12 oz. Tomato Paste
  • 56 oz. Chicken Stock
  • 1 lime
  • 3 Tbsp. Worcestershire sauce
  • 1 tbsp oil (I use coconut oil)

 

Garnish:

  • Avocado
  • Tortilla strips
  • Queso fresco (substitute fresh mozzarella if you can’t find this)
  • Lime wedges

 

Heat enameled Dutch oven or other large pot over medium heat. Add oil. When oil is hot, add garlic and jalapeño. Sautee about 45 seconds, or just until flavor starts releasing. Don’t let the garlic burn, you will be sad.

Add onion and corn. Sauté about four minutes. Add chicken. Sauté three more minutes or just until chicken start being more white than pink.

Add chicken stock, tomato paste, chipotle sauce, and Worcestershire sauce. Stir well, until tomato paste is well blended in and there are no chunks remaining. Add the chipotle peppers in Adobo (don’t just put the peppers in, get the sauce too.)

Bring to a boil, stirring occasionally. Squeeze lime into soup. Cover and simmer 45 minutes.

Garnish with chunks of avocado, shredded cheese, tortilla strips and a lime wedge.

Enjoy!

Star Wars Week

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First things first, with today’s post I’ve officially passed the fifty page mark, as in I’ve now written over fifty pages of single spaced text (no pictures) for this blog. More actually because some of the short posts I don’t put in the word document cleverly titled ‘blogggg.docx’. That’s…a lot.

For me, this week was a Star Wars Week. I don’t know what that means for you, but for me it was one of those weeks where the world was spectacularly against me, in terms of health, and circus, and projects, and well everything. The kind of week where your fully house trained dog decided that peeing on the floor is what all the cool dogs do these days. What to do, in such situations, you ask? Pipe down, skip circus, watch all of Star Wars, knit some damn mittens, cook a lot of indulgent comfort food, drink a lot of beer and make Wookie noises. I am serious about all of these things. Especially the Wookie noises. I literally spent all day every day this week until yesterday in my pajamas.

One thing I’ve learned about myself since moving in to our own place is that I am a stress cooker. Thankfully I am not also a stress eater. I’m more of an Izzie than a Lexie, if we’re going to put it in terms of Grey’s Anatomy characters, which, obviously, we so are. Some of my best cooking weeks have been the ones where I’m freaking out about something, and tend to make much more elaborate meals. Like last night, when I decided I was going to make bread pudding. Wait, scratch that. I was going to come up with a recipe for bread pudding, make it, and then make dinner. Yes, a plan! Because of that foresight (of like, an hour), I also managed to measure stuff while I was cooking, which is only slightly short of miraculous.

So, here we go. I attempted to make it less fatty, but I’m not sure I succeeded, based on the sheer amount of chocolate in this recipe. It’s also incredibly rich, and according to Nick ‘insane’. A little goes a long way.

Coffee-Chocolate Bread Pudding:

  • 1 10.5 oz. Day old Baguette, chopped into bite sized pieces*
  • 4 Cups Semisweet chocolate, chopped and divided**
  • 1 Cup Milk
  • 2 Cups Light Cream
  • ½ Cup Freshly brewed coffee
  • 5 Eggs, lightly beaten
  • 1 Cup Sugar
  • 3 Tbsp. Butter
  • ¼ Cup Unsweetened Cocoa Powder
  • 2 Tbsp. Instant coffee or espresso granules
  • ½ Tsp. Salt
  • 1 Tsp. Ground Cloves
  • 1 Tsp. Coconut Extract
  • 1 Tbsp. Vanilla Extract

* If like me, you decide to make bread pudding RIGHT NOW, you can throw the chopped up bread onto a cookie sheet and stick it in the oven for a few. You just want it a little crispy, don’t let it brown.

**  I used a mixture of a chunk of chocolate I got at Whole Foods and 1 cup of chocolate chips. Do whatever works for you.

Like I said,  a chunk of chocolate. A 10 oz chunk.

And here is photographic evidence of my foresight. That Chocolate Bock is just for drinking, by the way. I thought about putting it in the bread pudding but then I remembered the whole point of Irish Carbombs. So I didn’t. You can thank me later.

 Okay, let’s rock.

Preheat oven to 325º

In a large mixing bowl combine cream, coffee, coconut extract and vanilla extract. Stir until combined.

In small mixing bowl combine sugar, cocoa powder, coffee granules, salt, and cloves.

In a medium saucepan combine 3 cups of chopped chocolate, milk, and butter over medium heat. Stir frequently until just melted. Remove from heat. Add to cream and coffee mixture, stirring well.

Drink.

And yes, I do wear a frilly apron while cooking.

Gradually add sugar mixture to cream mixture, whisking well.

Gradually add eggs to the mixture, whisking well.

 Coat a 13×9 baking dish in cooking spray and add bread, spreading evenly.

Pour cream/chocolate/sugar/egg mixture evenly over bread. Let sit for at least 20 minutes, or until bread is very saturated. The longer you wait, the better.

Drink.

 Sprinkle remaining cup of chocolate over bread. Put in oven for one hour, or until a knife inserted in the middle comes out clean. Make sure it tastes good:

 (Of course it does!)

Serve warm, preferably with ice cream.

There you have it, the crowning, indulgent glory of Star Wars week. If you’re curious about what other indulgent things I made this week, they were:

Tonight we’re finishing Return of the Jedi, so lord knows what’s going to happen in the kitchen. Holiday Porter, that’s what.

Tasty Tuesdays: Crispy Cornmeal Flounder with Coconut Salad

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This post brought to you by alliteration and the letter C.

At Vassar, Tuesdays were glorious because Tuesdays were Tasty Tuesdays, where local restaurants would set up a booth in the college center and instead of going to the dining hall you could have empanadas and lavender lemonade, or falafel and bubble tea for lunch. It was fantastic.

 

Anyway, today I bring you a recipe I came up with last week. It kind of reminds me of something I’d make/find in Mexico, probably since all of the coconut salad ingredients are native to that country, imagine that.

It’s another fish recipe, can you tell I like fish? You don’t have to use flounder; probably tilapia or any similar white fish would be fine. As usual I did exactly zero measuring when I made this, so all measurements are approximate. Use your best judgment and your taste buds. This recipe will feed two ravenous twenty-somethings.

 

Ingredients:

  • 2 flounder filets
  • 2/3 cup cornmeal
  • 1/3 cup flour
  • 1 tsp. curry powder
  • 1 tsp. chili powder
  • ½ tsp. salt
  • ½ tsp. onion powder
  • ½ tsp. paprika
  • 1 cup flaked coconut
  • 1 avocado
  • 1 lime
  • 1 jalapeño, seeded and minced
  • ¼ cup red onion, minced
  • 3 cloves of garlic, minced
  • 2 tbsp. vegetable oil

 Preparation:

 In a shallow dish (such as a casserole dish, or something) combine cornmeal through paprika and thoroughly mix.

Preheat oven broiler.

Spread coconut on a cookie sheet and place on top oven rack for a few minutes, checking often. Remove when just golden brown and toasty.

Mince onion, garlic, and jalapeño, and place in a bowl. Mix well. Cut avocado into chunks and add to bowl. Squeeze lime into bowl, add coconut and mix well. Set aside.

Heat large skillet over medium heat and add vegetable oil. Dredge flounder in cornmeal mixture on both sides, making sure it’s well covered. Add flounder to skillet, flip when edged are just starting to go white and are no longer translucent. The cornmeal mixture should be crispy and fish should flake easily.

Serve with quinoa or whatever makes you happy, top flounder with coconut salad mixture, enjoy!

 

Hello There!

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If you’re here from APW, let me just say ‘Hello! It’s nice to see you here!’ If you’re here because this is what you do on Tuesday mornings, rock on, rock on. So, APWers, a little about me–my name is Stacey, (but you already knew that), I like to write (you knew that too), I thrive on creativity and I’m in an awesome CIRCUS. Really. You should check it out. If you want to know more about me specifically, and my little dog too, check out the About page. Otherwise, may I suggest the following:

If you want to check out an in-progress block print of a kraken, go here.

If you’re into schaudenfreude, I suggest this.

If you want to see a sick before and after of my bathroom remodel (including a vanity I designed and built from scratch) check this out.

If you’re into poached eggs (delicious!) saunter over on this way.

If you’re a regular here, and have ZERO idea what’s going on, an article I wrote was published this morning on a super awesome website called A Practical Wedding. You can find my words of wisdom here!

Peace!

Lights, Electrical, Action!

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Before we get into the normal hi-jinx, a bit of housekeeping!

First off, notice anything different? Of course you do! I finally got around to re-designing some stuff, like that spiffy new background. I spent some quality, much needed fun time with the P-shop this weekend (I made my first stock image, wooo), and I’m pretty pleased with the results.

On the homepage, you’ll notice three paint splotches with icons in them. They’re clickable (please click them). One is for my RSS feed, which is for lazy people; the second is for my Pinterest, which I have finally started using despite having had an account for months—if you’re not familiar with Pinterest, I suggest you check it out, it’s pretty rad; the third is for my twitter. Sweet.

I mentioned last week that I’d made some unexpected headway on one of the industrial projects I had knocking around in my skullspace. As I’ve said before, one of the big cons of our loft is that it’s very dark and the only lighting we have is track lighting. Apparently they weren’t big on electrical in 1907, or, in 1987 when they turned the mill into living space. Maybe the target audience was young professional lemurs? I don’t know. Anyway, all of the lighting in the main space of the house is track lighting (really hard to bury conduit in 10×6” beams) and none of that track lighting is in our cavernous living room. So I came up with this plan:

I was going to get a warehouse style shade from the internet, and hardwire the rest myself. Because I’m awesome, and actually wiring a lamp is incredibly simple. A baby could do it, but you should probably stop them. But then, I went to the not so nearby city to pick up a friend from the train and we went to Ikea to pretend we were Zooey Deschanel and Joseph Gordon-Levitt look at all the weird stuff. Ikea did not disappoint. They had tiny circus tents, and moose cookie cutters (I bought one of these things). They also had these, which are my first ever Ikea purchase:

 In case you can’t tell from the name, ‘these’ are pendant lights, and actually cost less than the shades I was planning on buying.

When he got home from his business trip and looked at my lighting plans, Nick informed me that it’s super illegal to hang things off sprinkler pipes and we should probably put them somewhere else. We decided to suspend them on aircraft cable, above the bookshelf. Great! They won’t be at all in the way of aerials and they’ll look really nice there. Except, problem: there’s no plug near there for miles.

Nick had a great idea though, of wiring in an outlet on the conduit that leads to the fan (I know, this is totally fascinating). So we did. It involved a lot of fishing wire, and it turns out, fishing wire is actually…super boring. Fishing wire looks like this:

I wired plugs on the end of both lights, as they were originally meant to be hardwired into a ceiling, we installed the outlet on the ceiling and wired it to a switch. I got to use the impact driver Nick got me for Christmas for the first time…

And it was Awesome. Almost as awesome as my multiple chins in this photo:

We mounted conduit clamps to the beams and attached the aircraft cable. Then we put up the pulleys (yes, there are pulleys involved), and put up the lights.

They look like this:

And here is the difference they make in our lives:

It was all very clever. Other than that, the weekend was…interesting. Nick and his dad destroyed some of my drywall job and installed wiring for a washer dryer, and Nick was the only one in this family who made it through Sunday without throwing up. Rad.

PS: Awesome things are happening tomorrow.

2012: Embracing Industrial

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I don’t really make resolutions for new years (I set goals and I accomplish them, mothaf***as!), but if I were making a resolution for the DIY sector of my life, it would probably be ‘embrace industrial’.

When we first moved into the loft a little less than a year ago it was a little bit confused about what it was, and therefore, so was I. You see, it’s a century old woolen mill. It has massive factory windows, and enough exposed brick to make a New Yorker sick with envy. It has more visible pipes than I can count—and they’re all…beige?

And then there’s the kitchen, which was strangely cozy; whoever had decorated it seemed to be going for a country cabin vibe, which would be fine if this were a cabin and not an industrial loft.

So, between the bizarre kitchen, and the beige pipes, and the adorable red stairs,

it became apparent that the previous owners were definitely going for a ‘cozy’ theme. Clearly they never spent the winter here. Cozy isn’t really what I thought of when I woke up this morning and cursed the fact that all the heat escapes through the glorious bank of skylights and factory windows.

I tried to roll with the cozy for a while actually. I told Nick ‘no I will not paint all the exposed pipes black’, mostly because I have many, better things to do with my time, but also I didn’t want to make the loft feel ‘cold’. I even tried to embrace the cozy for a while during the bathroom remodel, aiming for a mix of industrial and old west Victorian. Eventually I jumped ship and went all the way over to the ‘sleek modern’ end of the spectrum.

I finished the bathroom right before the holidays, and last week as I contemplated what was on the project docket for 2012, I realized something. I have thrown cozy out the enormous factory windows and into the river below, which, by the way, has started to freeze over. Adios, cozy.

So, let’s take a look at the glorious, modern, pipe-made things I have planned for the coming year:

Bathroom Shelves:

Made out of plumbing pipe, obviously. These are pretty straightforward much more miniature versions of our bookshelves, except these will have a toilet paper holder attached—badass. We lost some space with the remodel by getting rid of that weird tiny half shelf, so these will replace it and then some. And then I can stop storing the bath towels with my t-shirts.

 Replacing the Futon:

With one made out of plumbing pipe. Sensing a pattern yet? It will have industrial casters, and also lots of wooden slats so your bum doesn’t fall through. I think it will definitely be awesome. Another thing that often bothers me about this place is all the spots where there could be awesome, natural looking wood, and instead it got painted white. Sigh.

Lighting the Living Room:

This one actually doesn’t involve making anything out of plumbing pipe, just using the pre-existing pipe, and pulleys. I frigging love pulleys. I actually made a lot of unexpected headway on this one the other day, so keep an eye out for it!

 Oh, and then there’s the Kitchen, which doesn’t involve any pipe, but does involve pouring concrete countertops, but that’s a whole different pony. I mean post.

 

Ciao!