stinkerpants design

In my last post, I mentioned that I’d been working on something really big since mid-November, and it was taking a lot of my time and energy.  That was a little bit of a lie.  The truth is, I’ve been working on SEVERAL things, and I actually have a lot of cool surprises for you guys for 2010.

However.

The project I was referencing in that post is definitely the biggest, and I’m going to tell you about it today.

How about I give you some clues, first?  Okay, here’s the first one:

I didn’t want to tell you about this project until I was pretty darn sure it was going to happen.

Yeah, that was a lame hint.  How about another one?

This project affects two cats, a dog, five chickens, and a lot of people.

Maybe you might be feeling a little bit closer to knowing what’s going on, but just in case…

This project has involved me sitting around on the couch, watching a lot of Law & Order: SVU on Netflix streaming while trying not to puke.  In case you were wondering, yes, I do sometimes watch TV while drawing.  However, I don’t usually do it from the couch, and my job definitely doesn’t make me want to puke.

Got it yet?

No?

Okay, how about THIS one?

hahahahahaha.  That one was pretty clear.

Yep, that’s my news: Y and I are having a baby!!!  We found out in mid-December when I was five and a half weeks along, and we were both surprised and very happy.  This was definitely in the plans for 2010, but we were very lucky to have it happen in 2009 instead.

So here are the details:

• I am now 11 weeks pregnant, and Little Stinker is due August 16th.
• We have had two ultrasounds, and the last one was really cool: the baby was actually moving around in there quite a bit, and we got to hear the heartbeat!
• This baby has knocked me on my keister.  I didn’t have enough energy to tweet (thanks to everyone who asked where the heck I was, by the way!), let alone blog, which is why I seemingly disappeared off the face of the earth.  Thank goodness the holidays are a slow season for business-related projects!  I’m starting to get my energy back, though the 24/7 nausea is still around.  And that, combined with the fact that I don’t have to hide this news anymore, means I’ll be around again.  :)
• We don’t know the sex, but we definitely want to find out.  The appointment for this is in late March.  We don’t particularly care whether it’s a boy or a girl, but we can’t wait to find out.
• The baby will be a Leo born in the year of the Tiger.  Apparently this is very good news because the baby will get along with both Y and I.  As my friend Lisa said, it will be a Liger.  And really, that’s just awesome.
• Our parents are very, very excited.
• I will be taking a maternity leave, but I haven’t quite got the details of that worked out yet.  If you have a project you’re thinking of starting after August, though, you might want to contact me sooner rather than later!

I think that’s it!  I’m really, really excited to make a lot of cool things for this kid!  Whoohoo!!

Hi Everybody!  I hope you guys had a wonderful Thanksgiving!

This year we hosted Thanksgiving, which was our first major family event.  I have to say, it was a big success!!  I created a heavy-duty Google Doc that kept us super organized (including timing for when dishes went in the oven, etc), and all of our dishes were served warm and tasty.

I made most of the side dishes, and Y was responsible for the mashed potatoes and the turkey.  If you follow me on Twitter, you might already know that we have a turkey fryer, which we tested a few weeks ago.  It was a little crispy the last time, but this time it was totally perfect.

Y spent a pretty penny on a Heritage Turkey from Marin Sun Farms.  I wasn’t morally opposed to eating him because he had such a wonderful life, so I tasted a little bit of turkey–and I have to say, it was delicious.

And of course, with the responsibility of hosting comes the responsibility of decorating.  I drew us a little turkey to be our mascot.  He held up a sign to identify each of the dishes:

I think my turkey’s name is Fred–and as you can see, he is also a Heritage Turkey.

Below is a photo of the Chestnut and Apple Stuffing I made (I changed the recipe a bit so it was vegetarian).  I also made a Vegetarian Strudel, Green Bean & Artichoke Casserole and pumpkin and vanilla ice cream sandwiches (I just put ice cream and pumpkin pie filling between two graham crackers).  Everyone said things were delicious!  I am proud of us.  :)

In addition to our turkey mascot, I decorated with orchids and decorative gourds:

and I used chalkboard paint on glasses I bought at World Market to create useful place cards:

I have to say, it really was an awesome Thanksgiving, and we had a great time hosting it for our seven guests (from both my side and Y’s!).  I wouldn’t mind hosting it next year, too!

How was your Thanksgiving?  Are you guys ready for Chrismukkah/Christmas/Hanukkah/Kwanzaa/The Holidays?

I hope everyone had a fabulous Fourth of July!  Ours was relatively uneventful, but it was nice to have such a long weekend with Y.  Yesterday I spent driving all over the bay area, picking up random things from Craigslist.  Why?  Because I bought a fancy new printer, and it’s big.  Too big for my tiny office.  So we’re moving the office into the living room and splitting it into two rooms.  Ah, yes.  Time to rearrange and redecorate.

And speaking of rearranging/redecorating…how about remodeling?

Remember back in January, we were having our kitchen remodeled?  And remember how you guys were super supportive, and you all wanted to see the finished product?  And remember how I never posted the finished photos because I suck?

Well, here’s hoping you forgot that last part.  ;)

Here I am, finally, with the finished photos.  I am so thrilled with how it turned out, let me tell you.  There are a few things I didn’t know about before that turned out to be great, and a couple of things I might have done differently had I known then what I know now.  I’ll share it all with you guys, just in case some of you are looking to upgrade your kitchen at some point.

First off, here’s a photo of the kitchen as seen from our dining room: I love it.  I love our pendant lamps, which we got on sale at EXPO when they went out of business.  The bar is totally awesome–I don’t really eat there (which I’d pictured in my head), but I love that my friends (and Y) sit at it and talk to me while I’m cooking.

Also, you can see our fridge from this vantage point.  Holy heck, you guys.  Seriously.  She’s everything I dreamed about and more.  This fridge makes me so happy.  She holds so much food!  And that deli drawer is just as fabulous as I thought it would be.

My only gripe with the fridge is the fingerprints.  When we were looking for refrigerators, I saw a few advertised as “fingerprint resistant.”  I had no idea what that meant, and I definitely didn’t think it was worth the extra money.  But…yeah.  That would be nice.  This sucker holds onto fingerprints like nothing I’ve ever seen.  I try to use the handles, but we still end up with smudges.  I can only imagine how dirty it will look with kids in the household.  And considering we’re going to have this fridge for the next 5,376 years (because it was just that expensive), I’m sure it’s going to see some kid fingers.  Wish me luck with that one.

On to the counters.  We are very, very lucky that Y’s dad does kitchen and bathroom remodels for a living.  As a result, he got everything in this kitchen at a deep discount.  This limited our choices a bit (for example, we got to choose between three types of cabinets and 10 types of granite), but obviously our choices weren’t exactly shabby. ;)  When Y’s dad talked to us about the counters, he stipulated that he wanted a granite backsplash.  At the time, I thought it would be too dark, and I wasn’t sure it was going to be a good idea.  But who was I to argue?

Man, was I ever wrong.  I was soooo wrong.  That granite backsplash is so classy!!  I love it!!   I also really love the combination of colors we chose for the cabinets and the granite.

I need to decorate above that window.  I didn’t notice it was kind of bare looking!

One thing I wish we would have spent more money on (and if we were going to stay here forever, maybe we would have) is the dishwasher.  We bought the absolute cheapest dishwasher we could find, and maaayyybeee that wasn’t such a good plan.  Every dish has to be scrubbed before it goes in there, which kind of defeats the purpose.  It’s also really loud and the cycle takes hours to complete.  But alas, I hate doing dishes, so I use it anyway.

When we got our sink, we discovered that it came with a weird grate in it.  We had no idea what it was for.  Y even went so far as to say, “that’s stupid.”  He ate his words pretty quickly, though, as we discovered that the grate is the best thing to happen to dishes since…maybe the garbage disposal?  Even if you’re a slacker and leave the dishes in the sink (I’m not naming any names!), the nasty food stuff hangs out underneath the grate, so spraying it into the garbage disposal is easy peasy!

The other appliance I’m totally thrilled about is our range.  It’s a Bosch gas range with convection oven, and it’s one of the best things that’s ever happened to me.  I treasure it.  I’ve been cooking (and baking) up a storm!

This is our pantry, which has a ton of storage space, and a little wine rack.  Yes, that’s Elvis Purrsley in there, begging for food.  He is always hungry.

One last little detail is our menu, which was totally Y’s idea.  He bought some wood molding, which we painted to match our barstools.  Then he painted the menu on the door using chalkboard paint (which I promptly scratched and tried to fix, sorry darling!).  Pretty sweet, huh?

I still can’t believe that I get to use this kitchen.  I feel so spoiled!

A few months ago, I saw an awesome post from Daily Danny about artwork made with tacks.  I immediately starred it on my Google Reader and filed it in the forefront of my brain.  I needed to do this for our house numbers (well, technically, our “fence” numbers, as this is on a fence you go through to enter our apartment). A long time ago I painted the house numbers on an old tile and haphazardly tied it to the fence.  It looked terrible, and I wanted something much nicer.

I actually started this project about a month ago.  I got the “42″ done, then procrastinated.  I’m happy to say that I finished it this weekend, and I think it looks great!

The secret to getting the numbers (or letters, if that’s your bag) perfect is to find a font you like and print it out on your home printer, then tack it to the fence (or wood, or wall).

In order to get the tacks in the correct place, use needle-nose pliers and a hammer.

Then rip your paper off!  I actually had kind of a problem getting all of the paper out of my 5.  It’s going to rain this week, though–once the rain comes, the rest of the paper will disintegrate.

The 4 and the 2 actually started to rust during my procrastination phase, which looks really cool (far cooler than I expected).  I’m looking forward to seeing how it changes with time.

What do you think?

Get a badge for your blog, or a free bumper sticker!

I can’t lie, I had a feeling this was coming.

Here’s why:

• Last year, the California Supreme Court made the decision that it is UNCONSTITUTIONAL to exclude same-sex couples from the right to marry.
• In November, 52% of this state voted to overturn that decision.  The majority (by just a tiny bit!!) was allowed to take rights away from a minority group.
• The decision made today wasn’t about whether or not it’s unconstitutional to exclude same-sex couples from marriage rights–that decision was already made a year ago, and it was in our favor.  The decision today was about whether or not the voters of California have the right to amend their own constitution.  When you consider that this decision affects all law from this day forward, it’s really no surprise that Prop 8 was upheld.

Here’s the deal, though: if California voters have the right to amend their constitution, we have the right to do it again.  I have absolutely NO DOUBT that California will follow Massachusetts, Connecticut and Iowa and legalize gay marriage.

I hate to say it, but the No on 8 Campaign was NOT RUN WELL.  At all.  Why weren’t they talking about civil rights?  How about the fact that African Americans didn’t have the right to marry outside of their race just FORTY TWO YEARS AGO?! And that the campaign against interracial marriage used the EXACT SAME arguments as they’re using now for gay marriage?

This video says what needs to be said:

I really think that the campaign will be run better this time.  I also think that people will NOT be lazy.  Californians like to think of our state as being filled with liberal hippies.  I don’t think people expected Prop 8 to pass.  WE WILL NOT MAKE THAT MISTAKE AGAIN.

If you read my blog through a reader like Google Reader, you probably didn’t see that I’ve had a new badge in my sidebar for a few weeks.

At the suggestion of Designs by Tine, I decided to make badges for everyone.  Like it?  Take it.  PLEASE.  Put it on your blog.  Tell your friends to take it and have them put it on THEIR blogs.  Whether or not you live in California, show your support for FEDERALLY RECOGNIZED GAY MARRIAGE.  This is not a Californian issue.  This is not a “gay” issue.  This is a civil rights issue.  This is an humanity issue.  This is an issue that EVERYONE needs to care about!

For your blog posts:

For your sidebar:

 And now for the BIG KAHUNA:

I also created a bumper sticker, which I just sent to print.  Check it out!

I could only afford to have 1000 of these suckers printed, but print them I did.  I intend to give these away FOR FREE.  I’m giving people three options:

1. The first 250 people who sign up for this will receive one for free.  No shipping, no nothing.  Free. Or, if you’re feeling generous, you can choose one of the next two options:
2. Because I can’t afford to spend a kagillion dollars (after all, I am pretty poor, haha), everyone after the first 250 just needs to pay for shipping and handling, which is $1.  If you want to pay $1 and let somebody else take the free option, please do!
3. OR if you’re feeling REALLY pissed off, donate as much as you want, and I will give the money to a gay rights charity that we’ll be voting on (the vote will be here on the blog–feel free to suggest your favorites in the comments section of this post!) in the next couple of days, AND send you your bumper sticker.

I am going to be at the protest tonight at 5pm at San Francisco City Hall, and I’ll be holding a BIG FREAKIN’ SIGN.  I hope to see you there!!!
I am in support of federally recognized gay marriage rights. Are you?

{ photo credit }

Last night my friend Lisa introduced me to Sabine Scherer (a great photographer) and Stacy McCainLisa’s business cards.  If you’re still with me after all that, I’ll get to my point:  Lisa (the second one, haha) uses Moo Cards for business cards.  These are fantastic little cards, especially if you’re an artist or a photographer.  They’re an odd size–about half the size of a regular business card–and the colors are really bright and high quality.  They’re fun to use as business cards because people always comment on the odd size. (check out her event planning website! I love the circus logo!), and we got talking about our other friend

I have some moo cards, but I don’t use them as business cards (I’m more of a “let’s get 1000 business cards for $50″ kind of girl).  While we were talking, I told these lovely ladies that I’d share the project I did with Moo cards–so here it is!  :)

I first heard about Moo cards a couple of years ago through Flickr.  They were doing a giveaway because they’d just launched.  When I got my trial pack I totally wanted more; something about their size made me want to collect them (and people totally do!).

What to do with them, though?   I decided to create a piece of artwork for our living room, which showcased the 18-day cross-country roadtrip that Y and I took in 2006 (Ohio to Maine to San Francisco).

This piece of artwork took a bit of planning and was kind of a headache, but I think it turned out really well–definitely worth the effort.  It’s a conversation piece, too, which is always fun:

This big collage is made up of 100 little Moo Cards–some are horizontal and some are vertical.

Even closer up:

As you can imagine, figuring out how to arrange 100 cards so they end up forming a perfect rectangle is kind of frustrating.  It’s like a puzzle.

But I already did all the work, so I thought I’d make a chart for you guys, just in case you want to do this yourself:

The collage uses 100 moo cards (make sure you order the mini cards).  When picking your photos, make sure to orient 60 of them horizontally and 40 of them vertically.  I haven’t ordered from them in years, but I recall that it was very easy, because we already had our photos on Flickr.

I (obviously) made a giant collage (finished size was 27″ wide by 11″ high), but if you wanted to, you could split this in half to make two, or in thirds to make three separate pieces.

Framing tip:

The most frustrating part of this project wasn’t actually the arranging of the cards: it was getting a mat cut for the frame.  I went to Aaron Brothers and asked for a mat, which they had to cut five times.  Apparently, mats are usually made so they cut off 1/4″ of the artwork all the way around.  Doing that for this project, though, looks really bad–you miss half of a moo card if you take away 1/4″ inch of it.   Make sure to specify that the measurements you provide (27″ x 11″) are the exact measurements of the part you want cut out.

I’m not sure what any of you will do with this, but maybe it’ll inspire you to make a piece of art out of your wedding photos!

(And to Sabine and Stacy–it was great to meet you last night!)

I have a confession: I actually really don’t like the holidays.

I’m not really sure when this started, because I have very happy memories of my childhood Chanukkahs.  My mom converted to Judaism, and the one thing she couldn’t let go of was a Christmas tree.  Growing up, my mom and I had a tradition: every year, we’d go shopping and each get one new ornament for our “Chanukkah bush.”  Those were very happy memories, along with the memories of lighting the menorah while our dog Allie howled along to the prayers.

At some point, though, I started to really hate the holidays.  I think it happened sometime during or right after college.  I started to get really irritated by the commercialism of the whole thing, and despite my constant efforts not to get sucked in, it’s impossible to avoid the crowds and the advertisements, and the guilt over not spending a ton of money.  I also can’t stand that people are literally trampling one another for something as trivial as a videogame system from Wal*Mart.

Last year during the holidays, I had a job working retail at Paper Source.  It was hell.  I had to listen to Christmas music for 35 days straight, deal with extremely rude customers on a daily basis, and participate in a ridiculous number of expensive work-related gift exchanges despite the fact that I hardly made any money.  It was the worst holiday season ever. I am very thankful not to have to deal with that again!

I would probably crawl into a hole the day after Thanksgiving and not emerge until December 26th if my husband would allow it.  Unfortunately, he LOVES the holidays.  LOVES them.  Every year, he and his 8+ cousins get together for “Cousins Christmas,” which involves a gift exchange and a while elephant.  Although I admittedly feel super pressured to find great gifts, it’s actually a really fun time.  When I came along (my first one was three or four years ago), my ever-accepting husband changed the name to “Cousin’s Chrismukkah.”  I feel like a bit of a traitor to my Jewish culture, but I’m trying to get over it and not be quite so serious about what it all means.

Another holiday tradition we have is a 24 Marathon, in which we watch the entire last season of 24 until we get nauseous.  We always complete all 24 episodes in three days.  It’s wonderful.

This year I actually started to get excited about the holidays at the beginning of November.  I planned a bunch of craft projects to make it even more spectacular.  Sadly, I started to get cranky the day after Thanksgiving when the crowds came out, and I haven’t been able to pull myself out of the I’m-just-a-cranky-Jew-on-Christmas funk quite yet.  Even the craft projects haven’t helped.  We haven’t finished decorating, but I thought I’d share what I’ve done so far.

My first project was a glittery “OY” sign.  After the holidays last year, Paper Source marked these giant kraft JOY letters down 50%.  I think they’re about a foot and a half tall–they’re super big.  My sentiments around the holidays are obviously a little less of the JOY and a little more of the OY anyway, so I thought it would be appropriate to ditch the J and sparkle the letters Chanukkah-style.  What do you think?

I actually still have the J and haven’t done anything to it.  I was thinking it would be a great monogram for someone marrying into a J-last named family.  Anyone need a J?

The other thing I created was this felt “Happy Chrismukkah” sign:

Close up:

I actually really like how both projects turned out, and they got me excited enough to take out our fake tree (we’re hippy environmentalists, what can I say?), but not quite excited enough to decorate it yet.  ;)

I know I’m not the only cranky one on Christmas.  Anybody else?  Anybody got any tips for me on how to keep the crankypants level down? I would LOVE to be like my friend Marianne, who absolutely adores Christmas.  Please, someone teach me how.

Random story: At my bridal shower, we played a really fun version of 20 Questions, during which we watched Y reveal the 20 Answers on a videotape.  I proved that I am a very good listener by answering most of the questions correctly.  One of the ones I got wrong, though, had to do with Y’s childhood pastimes.  I was asked what Y’s first collection was.  The answer (I thought) was very clearly “baseball cards,” as we’d discussed his baseball card collection numerous times and I’d even seen them.  The correct answer, however, was “stamps.”

Stamps?! I had never heard Y so much as mention a stamp, let alone reveal that he had collected them.

I (obviously) got that question wrong, but to this day maintain that he never told me he collected stamps.  Thus, not my fault.

One day, I was looking through the loads of crap we have in our storage area (I am forever trying to clean that place out) when I ran across a box of–you guessed it–stamps.  I showed Y and asked him what he planned to do with them.  He said they weren’t worth anything, so I should throw them out.

The man knows me well.  I don’t like keeping useless crap around, and I will almost always make a good case for deeming items (including my own items) “useless” or “crap,” or sometimes a combination of the two.  He knew I’d be happy to get rid of something else.

However.

I am not going to force my darling husband to get rid of his first real collection!  It obviously must have some sort of sentimental value!  I can’t be an advocate for getting rid of something meaningful!  Not only is that cruel, but it’s a recipe for future resentment.  I try to steer clear of those types of recipes (well, recipes in general, who am I kidding?).  So I decided to turn his childhood stamp collection into something he’d be able to admire every day: a piece of art.

And thus began the massive project that became his 32nd birthday gift.

The first step was Sorting.  The sorting process took hours, but I was able to do it in front of the TV during Periods of Work Avoidance, over the course of a couple of months.  Not too painful.   I sorted the stamps by color and got to see what I was working with.  There were a lot of very colorful, awesome stamps.  Unfortunately, the majority of them were still stuck to envelopes.  I already had a plan for my project, and the stamps couldn’t be attached to envelopes.  Drat.

…which leads us to the second step: Detaching.  I gathered several bowls and dishes in our kitchen and filled them up with hot water.  Color by color, I submerged the stamps and let the hot water dissolve the adhesive.  The stamps then came off the paper relatively easily.

From there, I let the stamps dry on cookie sheets (or sometimes the granite countertop) and recycled the envelopes.  This process took FOREVER, and there were stamps EVERYWHERE.  I was beginning to see that I’d gotten myself into a project FAR bigger than I’d anticipated.

I developed a new routine, during which I became very thankful that I work from home.  I worked for a few hours, then took a half-hour break to peel dried stamps off the countertops and submerge a new batch.

Once I had all of the stamps sorted and detached from the envelopes, it was time for the actual project, which by comparison took about 10 minutes.  In reality it took almost an entire day, but what’s that compared with months of preparation?  At any point during this project I might have had the wherewithal to quit.  However, I really thought Y would appreciate this, so I labored on (slight dramatization, for effect).  I will also admit that it’s hard to give up when you’ve already dedicated hours to something and don’t have a final product to make it all worth it.

Anyway, so I had all of my dry and detached stamps sorted in plastic baggies according to color, and I was ready to start gluing.  I bought a nice frame at Michael’s (they were 50% off, as usual) and got to work.

Genius as I am, I forgot to take a picture of the work-in-progress.  I’m sure you can imagine what it looked like, though.  There was glue.  And a lot of stamps spread out all over our dining table.

This is the finished product, drying.  As you can see, I arranged the stamps according to color, then glued them down.  When you view it from far away, it just sort of looks like a bunch of color.  But close up, you can check out some really cool artwork (and by “really cool artwork,” I mean the artwork on the stamps, of course).

How beautiful are these?!  Seriously, these put the Forever Stamp to shame.  I really wish the post office would stop pushing those–or at least come out with more than one ugly liberty bell design! Looking through this collection, which included stamps from Hong Kong, Pakistan, the UK and more, I really gained an appreciation for stamps.  They’re pretty awesome, actually.

And the finished, framed project.  Unfortunately, I only used about a quarter of his stamp collection.  I cannot bring myself to throw the rest of them away, though!  It took me hours to sort and detach all of them…I guess I should have thought about how many I would realistically use.  I can see at least a few more really awesome projects coming out of them.  But really, how many art pieces made from stamps does one couple need?  We’re not even into stamps.

Y was really impressed with it, which was very gratifying.  After all of the sweat (there were no tears or blood, I’m happy to say), I can honestly say I’m glad I did it.   That’s love, right?  And dedication.

Or maybe just insanity?

Anyone who knows me knows that I love organizing things.  I’m a Virgo, so maybe it comes with the territory.  Some of my favorite possessions include my iPhone’s calendar function, my label maker, and now this:

 About a week before the wedding, I was perusing Craigslist when I came across a whole bunch of used library card catalogs for FREE. I’ve been wanting one of these for ages, but every time I’d seen them, they were hundreds of dollars.  After all, this is a beautiful and hefty piece of furniture.  It’s solid oak and has over seventy drawers!

Mr. Stinkerpants wasn’t nearly as thrilled about the prospect of getting these suckers as I was, but I really needed his help.  Lucky for me, he’s a kind person and is generous with his time.  :)  We rented a truck from Zip Car (seriously one of the best ideas ever), drove over to Cal State East Bay and picked up two of them.  Why two?  Well, one for good measure (haha).  It was quite an ordeal, I will admit: in order to make moving them manageable, we had to take out all of the drawers.  I’m storing one in our basement until we move and I get a bigger office, and one is out for display.

I replaced all of the old labels with colored signs.  The bottom half of the card catalog is for storing my various craft items–pens, adhesives, gocco supplies, etc.  The top half is for storing the extra copies of projects I’ve done for my business, which I use as samples for various things.

Check it out!  Pull out shelves, so I can take a drawer out to examine its contents:

I am in love.