Boogers.

Are invading my brain.

Home Delights

Well, here I am, stuffed up, sore throat, stuck in bed with my tea and lap top. I have officially become re-inspired about sprucing up my home. We started planning the kitchen remodel about three months ago and got all the way to the sit down with a cabinet designer step... then just kinda quit. The holidays came up and we just kinda felt uninspired about the whole thing. Not sure how to put all of the pieces together, and believe it or not, it's rather difficult to find a design/color scheme to go with our screaming yellow walls (which I will not let go of).

Sooo in the last few days I've spent a rather disturbing amount of time on www.apartmenttherapy.com (thanks beth) and today there it was. The perfect kitchen.

We had already picked out a similar concrete style counter top made of recycled concrete and paper composite from Ecohaus, the one real difference will be that our cabinets are a darker espresso finish (to go with our mostly dark wood furniture and to avoid clashing with oh so light and yellowy floors). Now the challenge will be the find a match for this color in a green seal certified paint... It's on! We will also probably put a back splash of white sea-glass tile behind the stove... cause it gets icky back there.

So, since Steve had a rule of 3s, this will officially be our third color. We're going to get rid of the green in the kitchen and the guest bedroom and re-paint the guest bedroom walls in this same blue. I think it'll be a lovely addition and easy to work with..

Now if only I could work on my abilities to throw things away and organize.........

Meghann thinks....

Here I am, couch ridden yet again. I may be setting a personal record this year with the amount of times I've caught the cold of the month.

Luckily my new found hobby of embroidery goes well with my couch potato state. I've advanced fairly well if I say so myself and am pretty pleased at the results. My fingers are surprisingly sensitive to the touch right now from pulling and poking the needle around, perhaps I'll develop a bit of a needle callous?

I don't really know where to go from here with the whole embroidery thing. This lady was just supposed to be practice to get myself back in the swing of things, but now I quite like her and want to do something with this. It's too small and uneven of a scrap piece to make a pillow or anything out of her, so I guess she'll be a wall hanging, or maybe I can find a nice way to frame her. I want to hang her in my next show (December 13th, if all goes through).

So an update on the last show. Though Glo's was a super crap fest, I managed to sell a piece to a couple who saw it at Glo's.
Winter Surprise now belongs to a super attractive and friendly cap hill couple, and I, in turn, bought the following boots :)

http://www.anthropologie.com/anthro/catalog/productdetail.jsp?_dyncharset=ISO-8859-1&_dynSessConf=-2233397914460908676&id=840185&parentid=SB_BOOTS_FLATS&pushId=SB_BOOTS_FLATS&popId=SB_BOOTS&sortProperties=%2BmarketingPriority%2C-saleDate&navCount=32&navAction=poppushpush&fromCategoryPage=true&selectedProductSize=&selectedProductSize1=&color=cho&colorName=CHOCOLATE

So now my head is filled with ideas, and i'm sure that only a select few will be fully realized, i'm excited and inspired again. Steve and I have spent the last week drawing, playing music, cooking, and conspiring to take a stab at brewing our own beer and making home made pickles and quince preserves.

Some things that I've been rolling around in my head:

- an embroidered large throw pillow for my sister KP that will say "Poop" in fancy letters with birds and flowers... this will be her christmas present if I can actually pull it together

-putting together an etsy site for my artworks

-marie's painting - I've started it twice but am still not fully happy with the results

- a set of greeting cards for birthdays and the likes - maybe post cards

We'll see how long my fingers last under all this pressure. I hope I can at least eek out a few homemade christmas presents this year!

New Medium.

I used to embroider when I was young, but my mom was a bit of a perfectionist and under her tutelage I quickly grew tired of it.


Tonight I stopped by Stitches in Capitol Hill and picked up a hoop and some muslin. I thankfully never threw away my old sewing box (a heart shaped wicker atrocity from the earlier days of stitchery) so just a few new needles and I was ready to go.

I'm excited.

For the love of windy nights

I quite enjoy the wind. I sat inside nearly all day watching the one small tree outside my window flail about. The rain drops really make satisfying thuds on the front window when propelled by the wind. Once the rain had passed, I had really re-defined the meaning of lazy, having watched movies and tv all day and having not really moved from the couch with the exception of short jaunts to the kitchen eat more food (frozen soy chicken nuggets). At 4:30 I made the bold decision to leave the house. I went up to Broadway, bought two books from Bailey/Coy, got a delicious coffee at the new Vivace which is at the bottom of the new Brix development then headed to the Soap Box where I met up with Mark Gilzy. He's buds with the owner so we get free stuff all of the time. I was tempted into purchasing four bars of soap (actually 2 bars, since every sat is buy one get one free) my delights included 1 orange clove bar, 1 avocado clay bar, 1 salt water taffy peach bar, and 1 lemongrass bar. We chatted with a few other locals who had a rather well behaved and adorable brunette dachshund. People were remarkably friendly today on the Hill. Perhaps it's gentrification, or perhaps it's the fall, a friendly older gay couple and I chatted quite a bit at Vivace, and all of the patrons of the Soap Box (who all equally adore the owner Phil who is bursting with personality and seems to pride himself on knowing everyone's business) were particularly outgoing and friendly. Mark and I then walked over to Shinka Tea where I read my book while he worked and we both ate delicious chicken and mushroom hombao.

I am about to venture out into the night once more to get dinner and drinks with some folks. I'm not feeling entirely well (still have this damned chest cough), but I'm propelled by romantic notions of a lovely autumnal evening....

Pity Party

I want to stomp. Scream. Throw rocks through windows.

I think my artwork is cursed. I am taking a break from it all. I get an email from Glo's at 4 p.m. yesterday that says:

The owners decided to repaint the walls and no longer hang local artwork. They took down your stuff and a piece was broken. Please come pick up your things tomorrow at 7:30 a.m.

Awesome. Just so awesome.

So we went there this morning. Again, the lady who set the whole thing up did not show. The hipster bitch at the counter was... a bitch. No sympathy, no apologies for breaking my things and ending my showing 3 weeks early and giving me a one day notice. There were posters of Marilyn Monroe and the usual 50's bull on the walls. In approaching said bitch about compensation for my frame I was told "take it up with Cyra" (no show lady). I said hell no I was not making another trip and tracking down their flake of an art person. She asked how much I said 50. She said no way, and that they would only replace the glass on the visibly broken frame. I commented on the fact that they were ON THE FLOOR of the restaurant and had scratches that were never ever there. She said "are you REALLY going to re-frame that because of a few scratches??"

I am ready to admit I have anger issues sometimes.

This whole ordeal occurred in front of a bunch of older customers. I did NOT keep my voice down at this point. Forget about it. Forget Glo's. No longer will I wait an hour to eat their stupid food. No longer will I deal with the stupid hipster apathy that comes with the shitty coffee every 30 minutes while you wait an additional hour for the food. There are too many other places doing brunch these days to waste my time.

I feel embarrassed. I feel ashamed for letting myself get so worked up. I'm not a serious artist, I shouldn't expect to be taking seriously. I want to throw myself a giant pity party involving me, my bed, and a leather bound diary to write all of my feeeeeeeeeeeeeeelings in.

I think I have a problem

Disclaimer: this entry is devoid of intelligent subject matter. It may disgust you.

BEHOLD!

Today after a delightful feast of noodle soup AND dim sum delights, Miss Beth introduced me to a whole new world of shoe heaven. I had never been to DSW, nor even knew that there was such a place... I am now in trouble. At delightfully half-off prices I hope to never be foolish enough to spend over $100 on shoes again!

As you can see from the above evidence I have a problem with buying shoes - and that problem is saying no. After my impromptu shopping trip with Beth I decided to clean out my closet to make room for my (3!) lovely new pairs. In doing so Steve dared me to line them all up to prove how ridiculous I am... The above is the result - all shoes included with the exception of running shoes and flip flops. I am both embarrassed and delighted, for in doing so I discovered a few that had fallen into the depths of our closet.

The results also inspired me to do something that I never ever do.... take care of my shoes. I polished up my boots (which have seen far too many rough nights of drinking), cleaned up the stain on my grey suede peep toes, and put the first four shoes on the right in a bag by the front door so I would finally take them to get re-heeled (they've been pushed aside for over a year waiting for this treatment). And, after a long legacy of shoe deaths by water logging, I finally began the process of waterproofing my shoes.

Today's treats:

By far the most ridiculous of my shoe finds today, these shoes, in the words of Beth, were made for me. Of course they are perfect for Seattle fall weather with their fabric exterior, peep toe-ed ness and shiny pleather heel.... I suck.

These, while incredibly cute and comfortable, will probably not stand the test of a rain storm either. I love their yellow suede interior....

Now, these, these are a smart find. $30 bucks, comfortable, cute, actual traction on the bottom, and while they would probably drown in a puddle of any serious depth, they could at least keep my feet dry for at least as long as it would take to get home to change into those big blue rubber boots pictured above....

Now if only I could train my feet to never feel pain..........