Eastern Market Art

Happy Birthday George Washington!  Rather, happy President's Day! (or Presidents' or Presidents, apparently there isn't a sole accepted spelling).  We've really been enjoying relaxing (read: wasting) the weekend away.

Saturday night we picked up our friend Keith, who was away traveling on business, from the airport.  We shared a nice meal at Ted's Montana Grill (which is really delicious if you ever get the chance to try it; I suggest getting the Salt and Pepper Onion Rings, best in the world).

Sunday was a beautiful 45-50 degrees and sunny.  We again picked up Keith and headed into the city to enjoy a day out at the Eastern Market (referenced a lot in this previous post, since we got most of our art from the Market).  It was so much fun!  And new!  They had numerous booths and vendors that we'd never seen before...kinda weird since we've been known to head to the Market each weekend during the late spring through early fall.  I've been itching to get a piece of art that included the US Capitol, so that was in the back of my mind as we walked around.  Almost immediately we stumbled upon an artist we've previously bought from, Joseph Harrison Snyder.  Remember this piece (again, from this post)?

In my previous post I said I couldn't read his signature and couldn't remember his name...well, it's Joseph Harrison Snyder :) He'd just finished a new piece...and we bought it!  Well, we bought a print of it.  In fact, he said we were the first people to own one! (actually he said "second people", since he considered himself to be the first).  The Capitol!

I love this guy's art.  He's a funny guy, too.  When I asked him what medium he used he replied (I'm paraphrasing): Oh, I used acrylic, watercolors, ink pens...whatever it took to get it done (as he chuckled).  Great attitude.  You can see the acrylic brush strokes throughout, which I love.  The detailing of the Capitol itself was done with the ink pens and the lines are clean, crisp and wonderfully drawn.  I already love the painting.

The second piece caught Amanda's eye.  We've framed it, but we're not going to hang it until we complete another project.  I'll let her tell you the details on that later, but I'll show you the piece now:

I never got the artists name, but I know he's a regular vendor.  For those of you that have been to the Market, he's the painter at the farthest south booth, closest to the flea market.  Next time we go I'll be sure to get his name and info and update this post.

After our shopping we went to Cafe 8, a great little Turkish restaurant just south of the Market.  Keith had been there before and it was on his recommendation we went.  It was very tasty!  The hummus was amazing, but the best part was the bread served along with the hummus.  It was light, fluffy, buttery and amazingly delicious.  The three of us each ordered a Pide (pee-day), which is basically a wood fired turkish pizza.  They were good, too.  I'd definitely suggest this place to a friend and I plan to return when it's warmer to take advantage of their great outdoor courtyard seating area in the back of the restaurant (as another sneak-peak tidbit, their backyard courtyard gave me the inspiration for a courtyard of our own...but that's probably months away, stay tuned).

After the Market we dropped Keith back at home and eventually made it to Michaels to get frames and supplies for another of Amanda's projects.  They were having a 40% off frames sale, so...score!  I think whenever we've gone to Michaels for frames for our purchased Eastern Market art they've been having a 40 or 50% sale.  I guess we're just lucky.

I suppose I should go see if Amanda needs any help!  Check back for details on her projects!

I couldn't help but put in a picture of the kids in a sweater.

Enjoy the holiday!

Unthawing

So, that Punxsutawney Phil said that spring is coming and I mostly did not believe him.  As much as I adore groundhogs, they're also widely known for deceit and trickery.  This winter has seemed never-endingly dark and frigid... and I grew up in Michigan where the best thing that has happened in years was a commercial starring Eminem...

That's a sure sign that it's time to change the state's tourism slogan to "Poor Michigan".  *moment of silence for our Mother Land*

Combining the cold weather plus the fact the only daylight I see is through an attorney's window across the way at work, I have felt less than motivated to do anything house-related and have substituted that drive with an amazing ability to fall asleep almost instantly, even while sitting up.  However, spring does appear to be around the corner as I have noticed a slight lengthening in the amount of daylight and we've had beautiful 60ish weather the past two days.  Along with that, I'm starting to feel re-inspired to tackle some projects.  I haven't felt inspired enough to actually do anything yet, but enough to start planning...

Upcoming Project 1:  MARKOR Update

We bought this now discontinued sideboard/buffet from IKEA about two or three years ago and it currently lives in our basement as the basis of our little wine bar area.

It's very similar to some of the buffets that Pottery Barn sells, but since this one runs at $1,400, you can see why we went the IKEA route.  Unfortunately, ours has more of a country look to it, which is perfectly fine, but not exactly what we're going for.


Pottery Barn's wallet-busting version.

My plan is to paint the thing a charcoal gray to modernize it and balance out the orange and white brightness of our basement.  The current pulls are pretty dull, so maybe we'll pop those off and replace them with something shiny or give spray painting a try.  Who knows?  Either way, I think it'll give new life to a currently boring piece.

Upcoming Project 2: Hexa-Gon' Crazy!

A few months ago I was hard at work killing time reading posts on Design*Sponge and came across this neat idea to convert an end table to a pet bed...  It would serve a dual purpose of providing an end table for our upstairs living room (which we need anyway) and a nice place for any of our sons to rest and/or hide from the other sons.  Now, you might think it would be hard to locate such an interestingly shaped side table with a similar cabinet base, but as luck would have it, I remembered my parents had three such end tables.  Luckily, they were also looking to pare down their furniture and graciously let us have this guy:

The plan for our hexa-friend is to remove the top (if possible...) and Mod Podge a piece of decorative paper on it... probably from Paper Source, like these:

Or maybe I'll be super brave and pick something more bold and exciting... who knows?  Once I pick that, I plan on painting the table a creamy white, maybe the same color we used for our board and batten in the basement.  I'd like to choose an accent color, too, to pull out the detail of the scrolling carved bits on the side.  Then of course, I plan on sewing a little pouf to go inside for our boys to lounge on.  Who am I kidding?  They'll probably never use it, but we'll still have an awesome end table.  At least I hope it'll turn out awesome...

So, those are the two projects I have swishing around in my head, forming a delicious wine out of my mind grapes (30 Rock reference... I'm not completely crazy).  I do have a three-day weekend coming up and it's not going to be too cold to do some sanding... maybe I'll actually accomplish something.

Happy President's Day weekend!  Sorry not all of you get the day off, but I'm sure glad I do.  :)

Insta-Art!

John and I love San Francisco.  Maybe it's due to the fact we honeymooned there a few years ago, but it is such an amazing city.  Plus, it's just a quick drive to wine country.  You certainly can't beat that.  We're working towards a San Francisco theme in our bedroom, with a huge IKEA-bought print of the Golden Gate Bridge and another much smaller photo of the bridge we bought last summer from Eastern Market.  Other than that, it's pretty barren.

A photo by Joe Shymanski - the same guy who did our Eastern Market kitchen photos.

To cure this, I had the idea to frame some illustrations from the book "This is San Francisco" by Miroslav Sasek.  I love his whimsical, colorful drawings and think they're definitely of framing quality.

I was inspired by the framed DaVinci sketches I saw in the blog Pure Style Home and wanted to incorporate a similar project in our house.  I just think it's a great DIY project that results in some inexpensive, original art and the best part is you can customize it exactly to your taste by displaying your favorite things.

Pure Style Home's foyer art.. and check out that awesome orange front door.

This project was made even less expensive for us thanks to John's mom, Beth, who so kindly ordered us two books so I could desecrate one and have a second copy to enjoy intact.  I first flipped though the pages and chose my four favorite illustrations, of course making sure there was nothing on the opposite side of the page I might want to frame.  After measuring those, we headed out to IKEA (of course) and picked up four RIBBA frames, followed by a trip to Michael's to get some paper to mount the pictures to (since they wouldn't fit exactly behind the mats and I didn't want to go to the expense of having them custom mounted) and some adhesive photo squares.  With four $9.99 frames and about $5 in paper and squares, I think less than $12 a piece is a great deal.

The RIBBA frames

The rest of my supplies.  Of course there's Franzia involved!

Once I had everything ready, I carefully ripped the pages out of the book.  Trust me, it wasn't easy to do, tearing up a book, but I felt since I was taking the pages out to celebrate the art, it was OK.  I then lined the page up in my paper cutter and trimmed down the page to cut out the illustration.

Trimming down the pages

All the illustrations ready for framing

I mounted each illustration to the paper, mounted the paper to the matting, and stuck them each in a frame... and that's it!  Easy peasy and I have four new pieces of art to hang in our bedroom!  Here are the finished pieces:

I chose this first drawing of Union Square because it reminded me of our last trip to San Francisco in 2009 when we stayed right in Union Square and happened upon a Taiwanese festival on a beautiful day and got to watch a children's choir performing.

A photo at the festival

This illustration reminded me of the same trip when John and I went walking through a park and coincidentally popped out along the water underneath the bridge.  It was a beautiful, quiet day and we had a great time taking photos down by the bridge.

Us down by the bridge.

This one reminds me of our honeymoon when we took one of those double-decker tour buses around the city and got to see Lombard Street - one of San Francisco's famously crooked streets.

Our photo of Lombard Street... the green patch at the top is the crooked spot.

Finally, the last one of the cable cars reminds me of our 2009 trip when we finally rode the city's famous cable cars.  Our hotel in Union Square faced the cable car line, so each morning we awoke to the sound of their bells clanging.  One chilly night we decided to take them for a ride, and it was so much fun to snuggle close and watch the city go by.

Us on the cable car.

*sigh*  What an amazing city.  We like to dream of one day moving to the West Coast.  Most likely not in the city itself since it's so expensive (how the heck did the Tanners on Full House afford their place??), but how amazing would that be?  Hanging out in the city, driving along the coast to wine country... ugh, how did we get stuck here in nasty ol' DC?  Anyways, that's my art project for the day!  It only took me an hour to assemble them and now I have four great memories of our favorite city to greet me each morning and fall asleep to each night.  It's not the same as waking up to the cable car bells and the sounds of the bustling city, but it'll do.

Here's our new art in our room...

Our room is pretty small, so I couldn't get back far enough to fit everyone in the photo.

The Gang Gets a New Member

John and I are proud to announce a new addition to our Gang: little Chewie Bedtelyon.  We have dreamt of adopting another dog son since adopting Dexter and finally took the plunge last Saturday.  Our final push came from the desire to provide a friend for Dexter, as he so enjoys playing and rough-housing with the cats.  Kiefer and Elliot are extremely tolerant of his antics, but can only take so much.  They are just cats.  After seeing how excited and happy Dexter gets to play with his next door neighbor, Wesley, we knew he needed his own buddy.

Baby D on his first day as a Bedtelyon.

A-tisket, a-tasket, a boring cat in a basket...

For months, I have scoured Petfinder.com searching for available dogs in our area and discovered a local organization called Dog World Rescue.  Friday night, John and I were looking over some dogs and realized the following day DWR was holding an adoption event at our local Petsmart.  So, after filling up on some chocolate chip pancakes Saturday morning, we headed down to check out the dogs, never really thinking we'd be proud parents once again by the day's end.  Of course there were plenty of adorable boys and girls there, but we knew we wanted a puppy and they had three chow/shepherd/lab mix siblings and one little black and white schnauzer/dachshund/terrier/border collie... thing named Rascal.

Elf, one of the other puppies we considered.

While John has always wanted a larger, "manly" dog, we decided in the end, the best fit for our family would be another little guy.  I'll admit submitting an application for Rascal was a little nerve-wracking, thinking about the efforts of training another dog and the added financial commitment, but in the end, we knew we were ready for a new son.  DWR was able to conduct the home visit that evening and by 10:00 Saturday night, we had our boy.

Chewie during our home visit.

Not a fan of typical pet names, we brainstormed forever trying to think of the perfect name for Rascal.  Our other sons' names come from TV shows (Kiefer... Kiefer Sutherland, Elliot... Elliot Stabler from Law & Order: SVU, and Dexter... from the show Dexter), but unfortunately, nothing we could come up with really seemed to fit our guy.  We branched out to movies and naturally came to Star Wars and Chewie just seemed to be a natural fit.  While he's really nothing like his namesake (not a Wookiee, cannot operate a crossbow nor co-pilot the Millennium Falcon... at least not to our knowledge) we think it's a fun, cute name.  We're not sure what breed(s) he is, but he sure is cute and we're excited to see what he grows up to be.

Look at that sweet face.

He's so small!

One thing is for sure, little Chewie is extremely intelligent, loving, and playful and has been a wonderful addition to our family thus far.  Elliot, surprisingly, took an almost immediate interest in him and has been having a great time dashing around with him and Dexter.  Dexter was at first a little hesitant and confused, but now they spend their days playing tug-of-war, chewing bones, and biting each other's faces and their nights cuddling in bed with us.  Kiefer in his usually suspicious and stand-offish ways is still just watching from afar, but has been showing progress.  We're sure in no time, we'll have four BFFs on our hands.

Two peas in a pod already. :)

Curious boys checking out the camera.

Extreme Makeover: Creepy Basement Edition - Phase 3

After a week of painting, sawing, nailing, hole filling, more painting, and severe disruption of our nightly television watching schedule, I am more than happy to report that our second Extreme Makeover has concluded.  Surprisingly, we have walked away with a few scrapes, mildly sore knees, and just a bit of paint stuck in our hair.  I left off last (Phase 2) with the boards all secured to the walls, holes filled, and everything just waiting to be painted... so here we go on Phase 3.

For the whole shebang underneath the orange accent color, we chose a warm white to brighten up our space even more and tone down the intensity of the Flaming Torch.  The color we chose to go with, Behr's Bleached Linen, is just perfect.  It has only a bit of creamyness to it, kind of like a French Vanilla coffee creamer.  Probably something no one would ever notice as not 100% white, but we wanted just a touch of warmth since our basement sure could use it.  With two gallons of the paint in hand, we set off painting... me with my trusty cutting-in brushes and John with his roller.

Creamy!  nom nom nom

I quickly realized how porous the MDF actually is and found it pretty challenging to get my paint to spread along the edges of all the boards.  During the first night of painting, I got very little accomplished and it was clear another strategy was needed.  John also faced an issue with his pink roller being too... nappy? and leaving a sponge paint-like texture on the boards as well as flicking paint all over.  Since we weren't going for a whole sponge-paint/Jackson Pollock look, it was back to the Depot. 

Pollock's Number 1... the National Gallery of Art says it
"legitimized the convergence and mastery of chance, intuition and control."  I don't get it.

Millions of board sides to paint... OK, maybe not millions...

The next night, we tried again, this time I had a tiny foam edging roller and John had a smoother-napped roller.  This angle worked much better as the foam roller deposited more paint than my brushes and the smooth-napped roller left John with a cleaner result.  Plus, his roller completely covered the end, so there was no horrible plastic bit scraping off paint... which let him cut in closer and help cover the boards I was so desperately trying to paint.  Win-win for all!

The handy dandy foam roller.

The roller cover... although, John said it had a tendency to
slide across the wall instead of rolling...hmm.

Even with our better system and equipment, painting still took forever.  Luckily, we also picked up two pairs of knee pads at Home Depot, which made scooting around on the cold, hard tile floor way more comfortable.  We hope they'll also come in handy in spring and summer when we head outside to tackle some landscaping projects.  Or when we just feel like a round of basement roller derby.

We finally finished it all last Friday night and I'm so glad to be hanging up my paintbrushes for now.  I think the whole thing turned out pretty well for our first big project.  The boards do gap in some areas, so we're planning on going through and filling those with some sort of caulk to make it look all flush and lovely.  Now we just need some art on the walls and a couple rugs on the floor, and we'll be good to go!

Lessons learned from our basement makeover...

1) The right tools make all the difference.  Blue painter's tape is just wretched and unreliable.  Frog Tape for the win!  Shur-Line might have some stupid products, but their Teflon paint brushes are great.  Not all rollers are created equal and it's important to know which one is right for your surface.

2) MDF might be inexpensive, but it definitely has its faults.  It makes a wicked fine dust that makes a horrible mess and I'd recommend both safety glasses and a mask when making cuts.  It's also very porous on the cut surfaces, so I think taking the extra time to prime it would be worth it.

3) If we ever do a board and batten or any sort of similar wainscoting type project, I would definitely paint the entire wall behind it and maybe the trim itself before installation.  I'm sure it's twelve of one, a dozen of the other, but it sure seemed like a pain the way we did it.

4) We should buy Home Depot stock.