86'n It

Here's a DIY How-To for my Halloween Invitations:

1. See the idea on a Halloween Invitation Round-up on the Fabulous Adventures in Renovating a Brooklyn Limestone.

2. Google Image is your friend. I think I googled "candy apple razor". This was the original image:

3. Next, snopes.com "candy apple razor" to make sure that no kids actually ever died from this. (Nope, they didn't. Phew.)

4. Open Photoshop and start adding text. Then, unhappy with the result, email it to your graphics-savy coworkers and get their input. Eureka! Tracy suggests making it look like a real X-ray and printing it on transparent paper. (Maybe this is because she IS a graphic designer.) The digital version:


5. Scour the office for transparent paper that won't melt and ruin the gazillion dollar office printer. Find some that is actually a sticky-back. Well, that should work, we will just leave the backing paper on. Fight with the printer for about an hour. PC LOAD LETTER!?! Try to print it the smaller, cheaper printer and bingo! Here they are 4-up:


6. Next, go home and put the baby to sleep. Cut the 4-up transparencies into 4 separate pieces. Break out the cutting mat and 3" the stack of black cardstock of which the husband somehow magically has an endless supply:


7. Try to cajole husband into cutting, folding, anything. He helps by folding them, but Red Wings hockey is streaming on his computer. So that is about all the work I'm gonna get outta him. Cut a transparency-shaped rectangle out of the folded black paper. Then trim it down to the size of the envelopes that you also "borrowed from" the office.


8. Open your new black frame. Use double-sided sticky tape to adhere the transparency to the frame and close. (Sorry, baby cried, so I didn't get any photos of that part.)



9. Hold this up to the light and admire your work!


I'm really happy with how they turned out. Plus, they were FREE and quick.
I'm hoping next year I can do something more elaborate and along the lines to my severed finger invitation of years past,
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but for this year, with an 8 month old baby to take care of, this is good enough!

We worked hard all weekend, but somehow don't have much to show for it. Marc was very busy finishing the upper wall niche box. This niche will house some glass shelves in front of the recycled Coca-Cola sign. Check out our LED light too. The wood from the wall will wrap into the sides of the box.

Other fun things were going on too. Franca and I  did some pre-party work:  potted some mums, got some pumpkins and spider-webbed the front of the house. I have some spiderwebs for the interior too. Marc is pretty pumped about those because he said: "Hey, put them where we have real spiderwebs so we don't have to clean!"

We have some other additions to go on the front to decorate for Halloween, but we will have to see if we have time for those. (If you know of any funny Halloween exterior decorating ideas, please leave me a comment!)

I also discovered that now with Franca crawling even only backwards, it is hard to keep her out of trouble outside. I put her on a blanket and she scoots to the edge and eats leaves. :) So I resorted to our new DIY playpen: the laundry basket! We still use her big playpen, but this one is good for quick jobs and transportation.

Ok, last lamp post. I low-balled the lamp ebay seller and got them for $99! (Asking price was $199.)

Now I just have to get shades, which I am going to add to my Christmas wish-list. They have a great selection at lampsplus.com

So, some drum shades:

With a small taper like Lotte Lamps use?

Or more of a straight drum?

Sooo... I think I found lamps that I really like and as an added bonus, Marc really likes them too.

I'm about to share the ebay listing with ya'll, but please be nice and don't out-bid me for these, ok? Because you can see (post below) how off-my-rocker I am lately, and I might just track you down, steal them from you and leave in their place a used breast pump. :)

Aside from the horrid shades, pretty no? Let's see if I can low-ball this ebay seller because $280 (with shipping) for used lamps with hideous, not appropriate lamp shades seems a little high.

(I also really love the Lotte Lamps, but like the wood on these vintage ones more.)

And now to the Chrome lining
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I came in this morning to work (after yesterday's HORRIBLE DAY) to find this on my desk from my coworker/boss:

Pretty awesome huh? It is an 8" chrome rain shower head. He won it from a rep last year, but gave it to me. Thanks! Made my day!

Here is the offending pump at my sad closet station in my office.  I pump right next to a box of Mini-Moos Dairy  Creamers. Hilarious or even more depressing?

If my breast pump wasn't a gift from my wonderful sister Heather:

I'd smash it with the biggest sledgehammer I could find. Then, I'd demolish each and every one of the smaller pieces with a regular hammer. Next, I'd gather all the tiny bits and plastic dust up into a pile and set it I'm fire, melting it into a big ugly ball of hurt and guilt and annoyance and anxiety and embarrassment. Then, I'd grab that ball, get a flight to NYC, take a cab to the Empire State building and chuck it over the fence.

Then, and only then, maybe I'd feel a *little* bit better.


(Want to hear more hilarious hatred towards my pump?
Check out my guest blog post: My Glamorous Life as an Architect.)

UPDATE: Because my life could only get my ridiculous, about two hours after writing this, my coworker walked in on me in said closet. FML.

And you don't notice the crumbling site wall, the dangerous steps and bare yellow lawn. The unpainted porch steps, rotting wood floor and increasingly mortar-less brick walls don't even cross your mind.

A house is these things but a home is so much more.

I've started the parlor makeover (finishing) search. Starting with lamps.

• New lamps. 

Isn't she ridiculously cute?

• I hate our current lamps with a passion. They are terrible and I've tried * unintentionally* to destroy them more than once.
• New curtains/blinds. 
• Must hang straight like panels.
• New shelving system. 
• More on this later.
• New tv. 
• Marc has owned our current tv longer than we have known each other. It no longer produces sound.
• New rocker for Franca's room?
• The orange chair got moved up to Franca's room and I miss it in the parlor. The black chair just isn't cutting it. So maybe if I get a rocker for Franca's room I can move the orange chair back down? Problem is, we could not find a simple, modern rocker that we liked. Ugh.
• Repaint.
• For some reason, when I painted this room, I used gloss or semi-gloss. It shows every crack and wall blemish. We want to repaint it in a flat or eggshell. I convinced Marc to let me keep the orange ceiling/grey brown walls. I know it is weird, but I love it.

The weather this weekend was superb, so we made little progress. We did actually get a ton of stuff done, just not of the "check off the list" variety.

I finally cleaned my car inside and out. It really needed it. There was the dead fish outline on the sunroof from our trip to Michigan in July. (Yea, someone put a dead fish on top of my car. Weird.) Inside the car were countless spots of breast milk. I only pumped in the car for about 3 weeks, how did so much milk get everywhere? Anybunny, it is all clean now.

Then we cleaned up the backyard. I love our big backyard, but you look away for a second and it's the amazon out there. Vines shrouding everything, invasive species taking over even the grassy areas, and now, tons of cats since Tuna isn't here to scare them away. :(

Sunday around 2pm, I actually started to think about doing some real "on the list" kitchen work by cleaned and cutting the wood panel boards, but then I realized that I didn't have a place to lay them outside to air them out and sand them. We looked around for wood posts or something to lay on the ground to keep them off the dirt and that lead to us tearing down the swing set, because well, it is dilapidated and I don't have nephews to use it anymore. Double :( :(

The yard actually looks quite a bit bigger. Now we just have to de-junk pile it, again.

That lead to an hour long conversation about how we want to redo the backyard in the spring, and before I knew it Koo-Koo woke up and this happened:


Shit. She's mobile. It might only be in reverse for right now, but soon she'll put it in drive. I forsee a baby proofing weekend coming up very soon.

This party won't be the throw-down like the last though, because we are going to Moog Fest. So this is a pre-halloween, pre-Moog Fest kid friendly party (3-6pm).

You know what I realized that just made me feel old besides having a party with an end time:  we are inviting the neighbors not half-heartedly so that they won't call the cops, but genuinely to be neighborly. (And because we have cool neighbors.)

Now, how do I make apples with edible razors in them??