A whale for the wall

My parents sent Blake a jig saw for his birthday earlier this month.  He's been itching to use it and has a list of things he wants to make with the wood that the previous owners left in our basement.

Last Saturday we spent the morning at the doctor's office, then rewarded ourselves by spending the following hour at Home Depot picking out a new work table and clamps.  Home Depot is sometimes the best cure for weekend ennui.  You're so busy thinking about all the possibilities that you can't think about anything else.

So after a very helpful employee spent half an hour with us explaining the merits of various work tables, we set out with the Black & Decker model along with a sawhorse and two industrial clamps that look like torture devices.

We also picked up several bags of mulch for good measure.  When we got home we were side tracked by yard work for a bit (the yard has never looked better! Time to enjoy it before the mosquitos take over.)  But once we'd dumped the last bag of mulch and clipped the last climbing vine, it was time.

Blake set up a work space in the lair (the unfinished portion of the basement really does look like a cave/hideout) and got to work drawing out samples on the boards.

Half an hour later and he had a finished whale.  He'd drawn it himself, cut it out, sanded down the edges and sanded off the ugly stain.  Bada bing, bada boom. That's an attorney with some weekend pizzazz.

Originally it was going to be made into a coat rack by adding a row of hooks, but I loved it so much that I convinced Blake that its new home needed to be on the stairwell gallery wall.  I think it goes perfectly over the two Pebble Beach photos that Blake took last year.

Unfortunately we didn't have the hardware on hand to hang it, but I did pick some up yesterday.  Now it's just awaiting the final hanging.  It's a two person job, though, so that I can be sure it's level and centered.  A weekend project perhaps?

A two-year project

You know those home design blogs where the folks post progress of their various projects and they're careful to take the photo from the same angle in the same lighting each step of the way?  This is not one of those posts.

I've managed to take and include three photos - all of which are from different vantage points and all of which have rather terrible lighting.  Be excited.

I've been collecting mirrors and artwork for the last two years to use on a gallery wall going up our large, bland, cream-colored stairwell.  It's been a long process and Blake took to calling it "this mythical gallery wall of which you speak" because I was seemingly showing no progress except for the frame piles cluttering up our library. 

A few weeks ago I finally felt like I had enough to start with (it'll be a work in progress as I collect more artwork along the way).  I kept my frame color-scheme to natural wood, silver and gold (plus an unframed canvas Blake did).  I retrieved my seemingly endless roll of painters paper from the basement and carefully traced out templates.  (*Note: putting up templates before hammering nails into the wall has saved my life - and my lath and plaster walls!)

There were a few adjustments to the scheme after the below picture was taken, but you can get the gist.  I just marked on each template where the nail would go, hammered in the nails (ok, maybe Blake did that), pulled off the templates, put up the frames, and voila!

Or, maybe it was not actually that simple.  It actually takes quite a bit of time to get the measuring exactly right, so we did this in stages.

First, the templates sat up there for two weeks as a glaring reminder of my laziness:

 



Then, my guilt forced me into action.  But not marathonic action - just small action (three frames worth):

 

Then, last weekend, we finally got our project mojo going and finished it up.  I'm really happy with the results.  The mirrors bounce the light around and make the stairwell feel infinitely brighter.  We get to enjoy Blake's photography, some old family pictures, and a Venus engraving that I love.  We're also looking forward to adding a picture of Bear when we get him next month.

 

 So, if you'll put aside my lackluster photography, it's not half bad.

All framed up.

Ashton made me a set of truly beautiful note cards for my birthday a few years ago.  Each one has a custom designed fabric dress.  They were, quite simply, too beautiful to use as note cards (I didn't want to give them away!).

I'd been wanting to frame them for a long time, but knew that it would have to be custom and didn't want to spend the money.  Then the stars aligned (read: Michael's was having a 60% off custom framing sale and my Mom came into town and brought with her great ideas) and my long-awaited idea finally became a reality.

Now I've just got to figure out where to hang them.  Someday if we have a daughter I'll hang them in her room, but for now I am thinking of hanging them in the basement near Blake's framed matchbox car collection as as sort of masculine/feminine comparison. 

I'm absolutely smitten by them and couldn't be more thrilled to finally be able to showcase them in my home.

Thanks again, Ashton!

Fill it up. Pin it up.

My weekend girls' trip to Charleston got cancelled at the last minute, so I had an unexpectedly productive weekend.  Friday night I picked up an ugly bulletin board from Target for $9.34 and spent an hour transforming it into a linen and nail-head pinboard courtesy of an idea I spotted in a design magazine and some left-over materials from other projects I had hanging out in our basement. 

Blake helped me hang it (I'm nothing if not horrible at centering/leveling/measuring things) and, there you have it, an under $10.00, under an hour project to fill that horrible blank wall in the study that's been staring me in the face for the past two years. 

Remember how I said that gestational period for my projects is usually about ten months?  Well, this project (from idea to completion) took only a day, but my desire to put something on that wall has been haunting me since we moved into the house. Now, where does that put me in terms of a project timeline?

Christmas Crafting

We're staying in DC for Christmas this year (Blake's parents live 20 minutes from us) so we've been going all out with the decorations. 

Christmas is really the only holiday I decorate for, but my budget and lack of time prevent me from adding more than a couple new things every year.  During last night's viewing of NCIS: Los Angeles (LL Cool J and Chris O'Donnell? You know that's right!) I finished up my newest addition to our festive decor. 

Two dollars for the felt (with tons left over), four dollars for the faux cranberry garland, some leftover red thread and a couple hours of hacking away with my somewhat useless scissors, and voila:

Ok, so it's more like joy to France, Paris, Rome, London and DC...but close enough.

1 week down, 11 to go.

Georgetown gives 12 weeks paid maternity leave.  This is great for my (don't get any ideas here) future, but not so great for my present.

While my colleague is on her much-deserved maternity leave, I'm covering two jobs.  Unfortunately for my stress-level, it makes the most sense for me to do so.  I know the databases that she works with and am familiar with a lot of her job duties.  However, I am now tasked with working with adjuncts and full-time and visiting faculty (think: Lions and Tigers and Bears! Oh My!).

Last week was crazy.  Several new and unanticipated projects reared their ugly heads.  We made it through the new faculty orientation luncheon that I'd been planning for months.  And Jimmy left.  It was all such a blur.

I'm trying really hard to stay sane and take it a day at a time.  I survived last week (barely) and after sleeping in on Saturday and a three-hour nap yesterday, I think I'm ready to face the week. 

Speaking of yesterday.  We had a horrific thunder storm.  Lighting struck just down the street from us accompanied by thunder so loud that it shook the house and set off all of the car alarms.  We watched nature's violence and House Hunters from the comfort of our couch...until that Goliath lighting took out our power for the rest of the afternoon. 

But have no fear, staring at a blank TV screen gave me the push I needed to get up and get productive.  Productivity in general makes me smile, and I can't help but grin from ear-to-ear when I look at the progress below. 

The wall above our couch has been blank for the past (almost) two years since we moved into the house.  Wow! Has it really been that long?  We've been busily collecting antique maps with a gallery wall in mind.  Two weeks ago, when our collection was complete thanks to the Courthouse Flea, we went to pick out frames and matting.  Two weeks later, here is the finished product:

In case you were wondering:

Top (left to right): Paris circa 1910, France circa 1871, Rome circa 1910

Bottom (left to right): London circa 1870, Washington DC circa 1890.

There is nothing better than seeing a project come together even better than you'd imagined. 

I'll be posting more (real/ non iPhone) photos on our house blog, but for now I'll enjoying looking at this photo every time I get stressed. 

Speaking of Pisa...

...check out the Tuscan oil paintings we scored from an artist we met at a flea market there.

It took about 40 minutes of  haggling for Blake to agree to a fair price.  I might add that I spent that 40 minutes periodically wondering off so that the desperation and art-lust would not show on my face.  I am a haggling pansy.  Blake never pays full price for anything.  I will generally haggle for a couple of minutes and then decide that I'm done and that "painting (or insert other milieu here) is their livelihood...I should just pay what we've currently arrived at and be on my way....it's only fair..."  See.  I'm a pansy. 

The solution to my pansy-hood is that I leave when Blake haggles.  And we always end up paying significantly less than if I had been in charge.  So it's a good solution if you ask me.

A promotion, an award, and a job offer.

We had cause to celebrate this week, so we snapped up this painting that we've been coveting from our friend Matt Clark.

I fell in love with it as soon as I saw it and knew immediately that it was destined to hang in our home.  Isn't it beautiful?