Life in Color Photo – Page 113 – Celebrating crafts, kids and the everyday through photographs.

Pretending to be grown-ups Vegas Style

I’m not going to lie. Sometimes it feels like Bj and I are only pretending to be grown ups and that someone is going to find us out soon. This weekend was definitely like that. We found out only a week ago that Bj and I would be going on a little trip for his work. Sort of a reward/get together thing. You should have seen Bj when he found out, all squealy and jumping around, a lot like I get. Okay maybe not that bad, but very excited none the less. And spouses were invited on this trip, and since I’m a spouse (!) I went.

We flew out Friday and arrived early afternoon. We met up with a co-worker of his at the airport and his wife and set out to the Red Rock Resort, about 25 minuets away from the strip. I acted very grown up on the trip, only pulling out a box of Nerds once! But once we got to the hotel our true colors were able to shine. The boys loaded all the bags out of the taxi and no one was reaching for the one with the tan tag. I’ll look at it and say, "that’s not mine." Then my eyes get big and I look over at Bj and I’m like, "THAT’S NOT MINE!’ Oh shit! I had totally taken someone else’s bag. Well Bj grabbed it off the carasol and I didn’t even look twice at it, just started rolling it behind me. Of course now we’re way off the strip and we have this guy’s bag. So while Bj checks us in I call the number on the tag (a bar!) and tell them I have Peter’s bag. To which I hear, "Hey this girl has Pete’s bag!" Sweet, so I’ve got Pete’s bag. But Pete is at the Monte Carlo, and when I get his number from Dee’s Drinks I find out mine is safely locked up at the airport. 25 minuets away. So we go over to the consierge, and they’re all, "oh no, we can’t help you." Argh. Since a taxi ride there and back would be spendy we figure we’ll have to cut out of the welcome dinner early and scoot over there (since I was informed that I had all his medicines, though I didn’t look to check).

Bj and I stow his bag and Pete’s in the (totally and amazing accented with green) room and go downstairs to look around. The place is all inclusive, they don’t want you leaving to go back to the strip. So there is a big casino, spa, bowling alley (72 lanes), movie theater, pools, clubs, restaurants, you get the idea. We complete a lap, barely going outside in the 110 degree heat (I’m melting, I’m melting) and then head back up to the room to change for the dinner. Once we get up there we find a little treat has been left for us:

GET OUT! Sciarrino do you see those bananas? We downed those strawberries so fast. And to prove our geekiness I took the fruit home that we didn’t finish, but we didn’t even touch the champagne! Hehehe. So then down to dinner where I got to meet a lot of the awesome people Bj works with. The organizer of this whole thing had heard about the bag fiasco, and in like two seconds had figured out what we were to do. She arranged for a car to take us to the airport and then the Monte Carlo. So we ate, and then decided with a few others that since we were headed to the strip we might as well take in a show. The latest thing that no one had seen was a Cirque du Soleil show, Zumanity. We don’t really know much about the show, but hey Cirque du Soleil, cool! So we head out to the strip early to do the bag exchange. Get down to the front of the hotel and they have a red rock limo waiting. For us. Because WE grabbed the wrong bag. Hehehehe. Awesome.

We switched around the bags and after dealing with the bell hop at the Monte Carlo I was glad we weren’t staying there. So we hopped over to New York, New York and met up with everyone there. We started to get an idea of what we were in for when the group checked out the gift shop because I had to finish my ice cream:

So we get to our seats and we’re all chatting when a sort of pre-show comes on and suddenly we are very glad not to be in the front rows. There’s are two, um, very voluptuous women, walking around, squeezing themselves between rows, and pressing their cleavage to guys’ faces. There were some interesting people walking around: a stacked midget man in a dress, some really ripped guys, that kind of thing. Then the show starts, and it’s a sexed up version of regular Cirque du Soleil, and had some pretty amazing acts. Like these two women who are in this maybe four foot high bowl full of water, and they dive into it, spring out of it and balance all crazy on the side. I’m not going to do any kind of good job about describing it, but it was interesting, and funny. Man the people that they pulled from the audience, hilarious. But then best might have been comments from our group. One of them was a male cheerleader back in the day and his comment was priceless to the guy next to him as a topless woman was flipped around and caught almost impossibly by the guy on stage, "Ya, you wish you were a male cheerleader now, don’t you." LOL Bj and I could. not. stop. laughing. Then after the show, "You know when you watch Rocky you just want to fight?" LOLOLOLOL

Ah fun times. We went back in the limo after a short spurt of gambling. Not for me thank you very much. The next day Bj had to get up for breakfast and a meeting, but I decided to sleep in and just wait until our private cabana and pool opened up. That’s right, private. We sat out there for a few hours eating, swimming, and not burning (which is amazing I think). After that we were going to go to a movie or something before the dinner thing, but we got back to the room and Bj fell asleep and I thought that sounded like a good idea. That night we had another dinner, with a magician brought in from another hotel, can’t remember his name, but he was funny. And I got to dress up in my dress rehearsal dinner dress so that was cool.

They gave us some chips to gamble, but I sat down at a black jack table and immediately lost $50 which I couldn’t stand, so I choose to just watch. Very interesting, but not for me. Oh and you know what I really don’t get? Slots. I mean you are going to loose. The odds are not in your favor, and to just sit there and push a button? Mental. So we ended up bowling, which was fun. I managed to be the most schizophrenic bowler ever and get three strikes in a game, but still manage a 58 as my over all score. I’d go like, 0, 0, strike, 3, 5, strike. I totally suck at bowling, but I like it. My arms just get tired and I loose control of the really heavy (9 lb.) ball. Meanwhile Bj’s in the other lane tossing a 14 pounder like an egg and getting a 160.

Yesterday we hit the spa before we had to leave. We got scrub-and-rubs. They scrub this sugar stuff all over, then you shower, and they give you a massage. Ah so nice. We rushed back to the room, stuffed our stuff in the suitcases and headed to the airport. And we got to play grown up one more time when we upgraded to first class. Bj flies a lot for work so he has all these perks and miles and stuff. I’d never flown first class. Do you know they have their own bathroom and glass tumblers instead of plastic cups? It’s true! So that was our little adventure in being grown up, at the end of this week we have a real adventure coming up. I’d like to say that while I’m no big fan of Vegas overall (water, electricity, waste, etc.) I was so glad to spend some quality time with my man and meet a lot of great people. I’m off to put together some fun stuff for the helpers in the last couple posts. Will update later!

Update!

Okay still no fan (I was secretly hoping someone would say, hey we have one in our attic!), but Tracey gave me some great leads, as did Elizabeth. But I do think I found my tins! Michele posted about Lee Valley, which looks awesome, and has great customer service. They emailed me back right away, and unfortunately their tins will not hold a magnet, but they do have great prices, you can check them out here. The ones I’m going with are these (in the three ounce size), thank LeAnne for emailing me that info! I heard back from the company and their’s do attach to magnets, yeah!!!! And Jenny, I can’t figure out how to email you back, but I have a question about this Target new version of my fan, specifically, is it loud? I need it loud. So all of you girls: Tracey, Elizabeth, Michele, LeAnee and Jenny email me at amberlee23 (at) hotmail (dot) com with your addresses so I can send you some packets of fun!

I think I’m going to be digging into these newly organized boxes of goodness. But seriously whoever can hook me up with my fan’s twin is getting something good, really good. I’m going to start planning that now in the hopes that someday it will happen!

Edited to add: These are the boxes, Stockholm Office Storage Boxes on sale right now at the Container Store.

MWF looking for…

Okay so not a lot of love for the blue spray paint. Seriously though, you should see it in person, this craft room is going to look sick, I tell you! Well I love it any way. So since putting up the cork I have added another favorite to the room:

I love them them, but there is one problem, I don’t have enough. Katie’s mom doesn’t remember where they came from and I have had no luck tracking them down. And since I’m slightly OCD I really need them to match exactly (2 3/4" diameter and an inch high). Any one? I’ll make it worth your while… Okay and because I’m asking for things I’m also looking for another one of these:

This is a long shot because:
a) no one in my family remembers where it came from
b) I’ve been on saved searches from eBay for a year and a half and nothing has ever come up close
c) it’s so awesome who would get rid of it?
But none the less I’m asking you. You see I sleep with it on every night. And this is not a new thing, it’s been going on for a good ten years, and I’ve replaced the motor once, but it’s on the fritz again and I hate thinking back to the days when it was in the shop last time (torture). Plus my neighbors have this horrible light that makes a loud buzzing and I’m pretty sure with out this at night I’d go insane, or not be able to sleep with the windows open, and thus suffocate to death. Then no more blog. 🙁

Now those two things I really really want. How much? Well I’ve been sorting through my other treasures and I am willing to part with some in exchange for these wonderful items, or even leads on where to get them. I have some fabulous ephemera stored up (seriously one of the best collections out there), plus ribbon, fabric, etc. I could come up with some nice packets of goodies for you. So please use your vast surfing skills and help a girl out!

p.s. I’ve been scrapping with some of said ephemera and it’s sweet. More to share later!

The Blue Spray Paint Edition

And I generally do not like nasty and gold things. Plus when we took it down to pack it up we realized the whole thing needed to be re-wired to avoid catching fire. I finally decided to tackle this because of the whole craft room renovation. Yesterday morning I thought this was going to be a quick paint the lamp shade project. It turned out to be a paint the whole thing and talk the husband into electrical work project:

I almost didn’t paint the rest of the thing white, how horrendous would that have been leaving it gold/cream faux painted? Ugh. Well it all worked out good.

Daytime/Nighttime view. I asked Bj after we put it up if it was too funky or if it was cool. "I think it’s pretty cool." Okay, me too, but it’s almost too funky, no problem we’ll just balance it out with other funky things. Painted the same color (I think it’s Bahama Sea or something like that).

The clock I

Once you do these little things and you realize how little time they take you start to feel guilty about not doing the other tiny projects, like recovering another little stool thing:

The fabric had previously just been bunched around it real quickly. So I didn’t even know that the seat is removable and has storage underneath. And I have left over state fabric to boot! The cool thing about that is that Salem is a state capital so it’s actually on the fabric, cool! Well since I had the staple gun out:

This chair was on Bj’s side of the bed, but he did not like it for a nightstand, so I swung it around and brought in the lamp that was in the craft room. We have next to no room on either sides of our bed so it’s a bit tricky in there. I think this will work for now though. I did all of this in addition to making sure an old guy doesn’t wet himself. Go me!

Curtains… For Grown-Ups!

Okay so if you were to come over the first thing I would say to you is, "I know, I know, the front of our house does not mirror the cuteness within!" And it’s so true. And a big part of that was the whole sheets-for-curtains situation (one of which was, uh-hum, bright and plaid). This is terrible, but two of our rooms have had this going on for the full year I’ve owned the house. Yikes! I have had fabric cut out for the craft room curtains for months now, but um, never got around to finishing them up. So I decided to buy more fabric and do the bedroom curtains first because those were pretty easy. I finished those last week:

There is nothing like that high feeling you get when you finish a long standing project. Man I felt like a super star crawling into bed last night. And then this morning to come in and see the great light effect, like stained glass. It sort of reminds me of that picture in the end of Kaffe Fassett’s Glorious Patchwork, the Jewel Squares Blind. Yummy. Anyway so the real problem was I bought the fabric not allowing enough for my normal fold over deal (see above). So I had it all cut out, but had no idea how I was going to get it on the rod. I thought ribbon tabs, but it kind of over-whelmed me. Until last night when I had a light bulb moment. Duh, the things are just like the ribbon tab baby blankets! Which reminded me of something else. The ideas section on my site is sort of sucking, so hey, why not take pictures while I work! Genius.

So I made up a little tutorial that will hopefully link to my next newsletter. I used the most insanely wonderful ribbon on these. Velvet with stitched satin. So fabulous. Not on my site yet, doing that today, had scanner issues… Anyway it gives a totally different look to the room:

I do think I need to take my machine in to get serviced and cleaned before it explodes. I got it for my 21st birthday and I’ve never done that! I can’t believe it made it through this project, it kept freaking out on me (hmm do you think big globs of lint cause tension issues?).

So today I got a new grown up hair cut to match my grown up curtains:

I walked in and Bj said, "whoa you look hot." Nice. 🙂

I’ve been holding out on you.

Okay so still no news on whether or not grandpa gets released today, though this blog post will most likely be interrupted by a phone call on the matter. But before all of that happened Sciarrino and I worked on an awesome project last week. I had been planning on redoing the craft studio all in one big go and surprising Bj, but it was getting a little messy and he started going off on it so I spilled the beans, (to which he replied, "oh, well sorry, that’s cool though.") and decided to tackle it a job at a time. First up the wall. The paint in here was the hardest of the whole house to figure out and I never felt like it was quite right because though one wall is a different color you really can’t tell and that was kinda annoying. And with the yellow color it makes it hard to hang things up and get them to work the way I want to, so I decided to expand on an old idea. When I first moved in I wanted to do a big eight foot long cork board, I bought molding and was going to attach the cork to the wall and then put molding around so it looked framed. Well the molding went and got all funky on me and I couldn’t find big peices of cork so I thought, what the hell, let’s do the whole wall!

I thought just getting cork flooring would be good. But I got a sample and it’s not squishy enough or thick enough to really hold things, and then I thought it would be a pain to put up because a bunch of the squares would have to be cut. So I did some googling and came across Manton Cork. The invoice says to tell my friends, so this is me telling you, my friend! I ordered up 104 square feet for $237.60, including shipping, which was way cheaper than any other option I found. When it came I went to the hard ware store and got some nasty linoleum glue, a trowel thing, a roller, and headless nails, and Sciarrino and I got to work:

It’s in five pieces total, including two little ones by the door, so the seams are really not that noticeable. And I do want to point out that this is NOT for the faint of heart. I guarantee you unless this wall is the sole reason we can not sell the house in the future it will not be coming down by my hand. That glue is permanent and the cork is going to break into a million piece crumbly mess when it gets pulled off. However it is wood so you can paint or stain it so it’s pretty flexible stuff. It took me a few days to start hanging stuff:

(The morning light coming in here is so cheery.) I can’t seem to find my lapel pin collection, which will go up here, but this is a start. Of course it will be ever changing. Now I made that picture extra big so click on it to see more detail. I’m going to go into this more, but one question I have been getting a lot is, "what the heck do you do with all that thrifted stuff?" Well here is a great example of how it just lives with me. Almost everything here is thrifted:
-it’s all sitting on a cool vintage dresser acquired last summer.
–mini card catalog is from last summer as well and holds scrapbooking stuff. I’d love a bigger one like Nora’s but I can’t find one any where near me. That is something I’ve been looking for for about five years, along with the elusive printmakers cabinet.
-jar full of ribbon and goodies
–stamp carousal from eBay with vintage stamps for crafting
-the little dog I got a few weekends ago joins other finds on top of the card catalog: little scale (eBay), purple kitty salt shaker (given to me when I was little), elephant (made it at camp), little globe (antique mall) big globe (goodwill), small elephant bank (Sciarrino found it for me), Rhino bank (old garage sale find).
-glass box from an antique mall, perfect for in package scrapbooking stuff. This is a great example of a broken find that works great re purposed. I think it’s a cooking dish, but the lid was missing so it was only like seven bucks.
-A bunch of stuff on the walls is thrifted: covers from old art books, an old record, pins, buttons, the big spiral bound teacher’s reader guide that I love, and crafting stuff (like the cable hook).
-Even the lamp in the corner is from an estate sale.

So those links are to blog post from when I fount/acquired the items. I love all my "old crap" as Bj would say. And I will go into more what I do with it/how we live with it in coming posts. Looking around and seeing that a good 80% of my stuff is vintage/thrifted tells me there will be lots of those sorts of posts.

And a fabulous quote from the not-so-fabulous Nikon class Sciarrino, Luke and I went to last night (how was it not fabulous well she showed two pictures, one vertical, one horizontal and wanted to know what the difference was. I raised my hand and said, "orientation." "No, anyone else?" Some guy said, "oh one is up and down one is regular." She said that’s right! That’s orientation idiot, ahhhh, that kind of stuff gets me.) We were starting to have trouble paying attention when she whips out this huge lens:

"Now there’s way too much shaft out there. You’re gonna want to hold it close to your body. You want to be able to get the squirrel and his nuts."

Oh my god I don’t know how we kept it together. And the whole rest of the room? Nadda, nothing. Ah I guess we are still young and stupid after all.

You Should See the Other Guy

Awe poor grandpa, he took quit the fall on Sunday afternoon. Luckily Bj was there, though he is beating himself up over not being able to catch him in time. And grandpa was starting to feel so much better. Sciarrino said, "Man you and Bj just can’t catch a break" And sometimes I feel like that. The past two Friday’s I’ve had funerals to attend. One a classmate from high school who died as a result of a crash with a drunk driver. The other a wonderful family man who hired Bj when he worked at the builder’s supply all those summers. All I want is happiness, I look for it everywhere. So I’m just going to say that I think the fall may actually turn out to be a blessing. It turns out he fell after feeling dizzy. Well when they hooked him up to the heart monitor they noticed that his heart would start to beat really slowly at times (like 30 beats a minuet), that probably caused him to get dizzy, which caused him to fall. Grandpa had a pig valve put in to replace one of his own 12 years ago and has been on meds ever since. So they adjusted some of those to see if that would change the heart rate. If it doesn’t he’ll probably get a pacemaker. But either way they’ll figure out the heart rate thing, and hopefully that will make him feel lots better. And the staff at the hospital has talked grandpa into getting a walker, which is huge, because he hasn’t wanted to "waste his money on it." When I came in this morning he was all smiley and feeling better, and told me, "guess what? I ordered a GREEN walker." Hehehe, he did that just for me, that’s so cute. Then later the nurse came in and said, "Oh are you the grand-daughter in-law?" I said yes, and she said, "So you’re the one who loves green, I know all about you." See, he says he’s a big grouch, but it’s just a show, he really can be quite sweet. So I’m counting my blessings. That he lives so close, that we live so close to the hospital, everything. And thank god for military insurance, seriously!

Best quote from grandpa about the whole thing so far was when Sciarrino and I came to visit him last night. He was trying something from a little cup. I read his reciept and said, "oh it’s ice cream." He said, "If this is ice cream my last name is Swartz." Sciarrino and I were laughing, like, what? What does that even mean? LOL!

I have been working on cool things around here, and I really would like to blog about the lighter side of things so hopefully I’ll get to that tonight.

I was scared of the internet

Okay so I just finished reading Harry Potter, and no I’m not going to talk about it. I know some of you might still be reading, including Sciarrino! So I didn’t want to go online until I had finished it because I was so afraid I might accidentally find out what had happened. I planned on reading it fairly quickly, after all I’m quite a fast reader, but things got in the way. First of all we didn’t get out of the bookstore until 2:30am because we were so far down in the line. Then on Saturday I had Sciarrino and I went thrifting which, for reasons you’ll see below, took most of the day. I also had a dinner to go to up in Portland, and then the next day a mother daughter tea at the estate of a friend. I also had to work, and a few projects cropped up that I needed to get done (you’ll see in a bit). Which meant that I really didn’t start reading it until Monday, and then only a for a half hour here and there. So that put me about half way through. Tuesday I read for two hours, and then last night I read for one, and this morning I knew I wouldn’t get anything productive done until I had finished it so I laid in bed for three hours and devoured the rest.

So that leaves me with a little bit of time to make up. First up today: thrifting! On Saturday Sciarrino and I headed to the Brownsville city-wide sale, almost an hour south (we had thought it was closer in the initial planning stages). Angela was the one who sent me the link, but I don’t know if see was able to get down there (by the way Angela I DO want to learn rug hooking some day…). Anyway so if you recall from the long rambling paragraph above, Sciarrino and I were up very late the night before. How late you ask? Well it turns out they DO sell McDonald’s breakfast at three A.M. Ew I know, but I was craving a sausage biscuit. So anyway I had told Sciarrino she could be in charge of waking up when ever she wanted to, just call me and I’d be ready to go in 10 minuets. We were thinking about nine.

So Sciarrino wakes up hella early and can only hold off until a little after eight to call me (the sale started at nine, and it takes a while to get there). I fall out of bed, put some clothes on and we head down there. First stop? Junk. Second stop? Junk. Third stop? One pillowcase. Yeah, things were not working out in our favor. Stuff that shouldn’t even go to Goodwill, ew, ew, ew. I pulled out my iPhone and looked up some more classifieds and we found some estate sales in Lebanon, which is in between here and Brownsville. So we decided to cut our loses and head there. Two really dirty, gag inducing estate sales later and we were back on I-5 headed north. I can’t remember the exact time, but it was probably about 11:30, so most of the prime thrifting time had gone.

But we were not deterred. This is why we make such a great team. We laugh at the super bad sales (when Sciarrino’s not dry heaving) and we move on. I think many would give up after such a dire morning, BUT NOT US! And boy did it pay off:

The first place was one of those that you dream about (well at least I dream about stuff like this). Hundreds of jars (I’ve been having a serious shortage that has been really scaring me), chairs, giant piles of craft stuff with one price, odd kitchen gadgets, etc. When I walked up Sciarrino looked at me and I looked at her, and we had this unspoken thing like: "you go there, I go here, just grab stuff!" The best part of it all was the two middle-aged men running the show. Hilarious. Constantly poking fun at each other, it was awesome.

We left there and knew we had to stop at one more, how could we not? Our mojo was HOT! So we head out to this one sort of in the country. We made it through the kitchen, by then I had picked up those awesome little traveling bags up there, and the pyrex. I was in the garage with Sciarrino when an old lady fell right in front of me. There was a step she didn’t see. I rushed over to her, and told her not to move. Another lady came over and prayed over her, it was all very surreal. She started mumbling about Memphis and Mason, her two GREAT grand-kids that were with her. I went to go find them in the kitchen where they looked a bit bewildered. Luckily there were some encyclopedias for sale in there so I pulled out the M-Me and showed Memphis that her name was the same name as a city (okay side note, how has know one told her this before?!?!). Meanwhile paramedics were called, she couldn’t get up on her own and everyone was afraid she had broken a hip. While all of this was going on… hardly any one stopped shopping, even when the paramedics arrived! Since the 76 year old was laying in the doorway, they were like, "um should we step over her head, or?" LOL Seriously some people are so hard core. I told the paramedics about the kids, he asked them to point out grandma’s car so that he could get the car seats out and told them they might have to ride in the ambulance, which was okay with them. Crazy.

By then it had gotten late, and we were starving, not having eaten all day. We ate, then went home and didn’t have time to sort through the bags of crafty stuff we got for a few days, because this is only half of it (dude Sciarrino get on the blog bus!!!). At dinner that night a friend asked me what I did with all this stuff. I think Bj questions my sanity when I bring it all home. And I didn’t even show you the drool-worthy furniture I picked up (thanks again Brent for letting us borrow your truck)! I plan on tackling that question in the next few days. Up next, projects not for the faint of heart…

Oh and if you want to see something really cool I have to give a shout out to Sarah and her new Etsy store. She is selling the most darling button bouquets, done all modern and cute, you really must check them out!

Imitation

Is the sincerest form of flattery don’t you think? I do! Rexanne emailed me a bit ago to ask the color of my
Looks fab I think. The brighter blue is the original color (when she was trying to match just going off the blog) happy accident because it looks awesome in the pantry! Very excited I could be of inspiration.

Now just you wait and see what I’ve been cooking up in the studio… Wa hahhaha (evil laugh).

Twilight Time

This evening Bj and I walked over to Brent and Sciarrino’s (remember they only live a few blocks away) to see their new paved driveway. Their yard is looking beyond wonderful with little hanging lanterns in the big tree, water toppling out of a large rock my brother bore a hole into, and all lengths of grasses. Jealous, that’s what I am. The front of our house makes it look like it is still a rental. Coming back to it I decided to keep walking instead of heading inside. I did a few loops around the little streets by myself. Not something I normally do as I’m a big wimp. No I’m not scared of gangsters, or running into a dead man in a car, like they found last year around here. It’s cats that I hate. That’s it. Now you all know I don’t like cats that go out side, kill birds and fight with each other very loudly at all hours of the night, they freak me out.

But none the less I did walk around by myself tonight. Just before it got inky black, when my white skirt sort of glimmered in the light. I flip-flopped my way around houses and jumped up and down off the curbs as we have a weird assortment of sidewalks/no sidewalks around here. I saw a fat middle aged man with a scruffy beard watching some kind of space invader show on the television and heard a few woman laughing loudly in the back of that house. I saw little children’s toys lined up on a the window sill of a powder blue room. I smelled delicious flowers mixed with herbs mixed with turned soil as people stood out watering. I passed big Victorian style houses and tiny little cottages I hadn’t noticed before.

I paid attention and I loved it. Just being by myself, letting thoughts swirl around in my head. It was wonderful and I suggest to everyone to take a walk around the block tomorrow and see what you find.