two more building photos that show before and in progress shots of the hallway area. we are still deciding on new flooring and carpet for the building so disregard the yucky blue carpet.

i am going away for work until wednesday of next week. i will post more when i get back.

before and after projects in my building part 1

In addition to working far too many hours at my job I decided to take on a project to freshen up the building. My landlord asked me to help with colors of paint and detail work and it has been a fun project. There is a lot left to do but I am posting a little peek at the stairway to the roof. It is starting to look pretty good. I will try to take better photos of it this week once I have finished standing and priming the stairs.

Night for now.

Pua

Really busy the last few days and nights. I only have time to post a photograph of our friend Pua. Here she is helping Richard draw.

nyc tree

the first photograph was taken in may of this year. the second was taken a few weeks ago. it is a great tree that i always seem to pass when i am in nyc.

numbers from Copenhagen

Here are images from our trip to Copenhagen this past April. I meant to do a post back then but better late than never. I took these photographs on our walks around the city. I find that when I travel different patterns emerge again and again. During this trip I was impressed with numbers on buildings. Here are a few of those.

big meeting tomorrow that will probably go a little something like this photograph. need sleep.
good night.

showcase

This is photograph of our new friend. Richard gave this beautiful taxidermy fawn to me in May as a birthday present. I spent a few months looking for the right case for her and then, with my friend Brody's help I found a case at a place called Urban Ore in Berkeley. The case came from a museum of some kind. There were actually three cases in all but I only had space for one or I would have brought them all home. Brody has another and as soon as she figures out what to do with it I will post a photograph of it here.

At any rate I recovered the base with a great mohair type fabric similar to the one we used on our bedroom wall. I then found the right size burlwood slice from a place right across the street from Urban Ore called Artisan Burlwood.
They were SO NICE. I also picked up both faux and real foliage from the flower mart to keep it looking like a natural history museum display and then added the finishing touch, the rocks. Brody has been working on casting porcelain rocks for the past 6 months or so. They are so beautiful! Some are glazed others are raw and together in a group they are totally perfect. The gems shown here were another birthday present and the addition of these to the diorama really pulled it together. Thanks Brody!

We love the way it turned out. I think our fawn likes it too.

Proper Ready Made article thank you!

I just wanted to use this post to thank Anh-Minh Le for making us sound cool in this months Ready Made Small Spaces issue. We are big fans of her blog and were really excited to learn that she would be the one writing about us. We also want to thank Alex Farnum for taking such great photos that made our little house seem huge. Alex is an amazing photographer and a really awesome guy.

I also want to thank Ready Made for liking us enough to do a story about our space. I have been a fan of the magazine for a long time. It was really nice to be included with such a great group. I would also like to mention that none of this would have been possible without Victoria at sfgirlbybay for posting a story about us last year. Poppy Talk did a little something after that, which I can't seem to find now and then Apartment Therapy asked us to do a House Tour. We are thrilled to be recognized by such cool folks.

I also want to thank everyone who helped me get through the remodel this time last year with all of your kind comments. It really helped me to keep going when I was exhausted and crying as I sanded the ceiling.

There is more to write and so much to catch up on but for now I have two photos from the day Alex was here photographing our place.

Thanks to all!

Sept 30

This was Richard's present to me this year for my birthday back in May. This and an i phone.

Today was Richard's birthday and this was my present to him. That and an i phone.

Happy birthday Ricardo!

Ready Made and longing for blogging

I don't know where to begin.

It has been many months since my last post and I feel so sad about it. I have way too much on my plate with work and traveling for work that I have had very little free time to even clean our apartment much less blog. On the other hand I need to figure out a way to make more time because I miss it. (a lot)

So I am posting now. It will be a short post but I will post more tomorrow. Even if it is 2 words or just a photograph I am going to post every day.

Now....WE ARE IN READY MADE THIS MONTH!!!!!!!!!!! I am so excited! Above is the first picture from the article. Apartment Therapy was kind enough to post about us today and I snagged the photo above from their post. THANKS!

I have so much more to say about all of this exciting stuff but it is going to have to wait. I just got home from work and it is 11:14pm. I have to be back at it at 7 so it will have to wait until tomorrow.

All I can say is thank you to everyone who has emailed or posted that they missed my posts. It really means a lot. I promise to find the time and do better.

good night !

major recap

It has been such a long time since my last post. So much has happened. I started a very demanding job which keeps me from doing a lot of things that I like to do. I sort of hit the ground running with the new work schedule. I have been going in very early to get up to speed on everything. It is only now that I am about to start an interior project with a friend of mine that I am making time to start blogging again. I am working on inspiration boards for the project and will post those once I have something to post but in the mean time I thought I would do a short recap of the past 2 months.

I scored a big box of jars back in March for my sand collection. I have been looking for the right shapes and sizes with very little luck. I finally got lucky and found a whole box of them at the flea market. Here is the stack before they had baths. I can't tell you how relieved I am to have homes for all of the sand I have been accumulating. My friend carter sent a whole box of sand to me from our trip that we took to St. Barth's last year and it has made me sad on many occasions to see those sad little zip lock bags full of gorgeous St. Barth's sand. Anyway now they have homes

I also found 2 new friends shown at the top of page. One of them came with his own little table.

I will update the blog with sand in jar photos as soon as possible.

There has been quite a bit of travel in the past few months and without boring you with details I will just post a few photos of the places we've been.

Above is a photograph I took in Chicago

photographs from Richard's show in Copenhagen at V1

The photo above is a chandelier that was hanging in the Copenhagen train station

These are shoes that my friend Jenni Jet was wearing when I saw her during this trip to Copenhagen. I became obsessed and tried to find them in my size. No luck. I am still a little sad.

cool tree we saw while we were in NYC

This is a photo from the beach house we rented for my big birthday celebration at the beginning of May

In the past 3 months there have been many additions to our collections and I will posting updates with photos of some of the new additions just as soon as I can.

Stay tuned!

hurricane project part 2

So now its March 2nd and I have no idea where the time goes. The hurricane project was finished on the evening of the 23rd and I am only now posting the finished product. I really need to overhaul the blog and get back to a better schedule. At any rate you will see a view of the completed cabinet above and photographs of all of the stage that led up to it. I have to say it fits in like it has always been here. The size is perfect the toys are happy and we have 4 boxes that are now gone. We still have one really big box that needs to be dealt with. I wish we could have fit more in the case but for now we are both really pleased with the outcome. I can start looking for the next display case in a month or so.


I first started with a great drawing that I found of the patent that Houdini submitted for a diving suit. I took it down to kinkos and enlarged it as big as it would go. I then cut the image down to fit the back of the cabinet and then attached it with a few well place staples. If I had it to do over again I might have tried to enlarge it to fit inside the case perfectly as losing any of the image is a little unfortunate. The image is great and even though you won't really see it the back of the cabinet much it still sort of bugs me. I may have to redo it.

After attaching the image I installed the shelves and then Richard and I opened the boxes of 'dudes'. I took the top shelf he took the bottom two shelves and within an hour we were done. I think it turned out great. I am so glad that he gets to see his boys and I had an excuse to buy a great piece of furniture. Below I am posting some detailed photos of the boys...and a few of the girls.





Thanks for looking!

hurricane project

After a very long search for the perfect curio cabinet I found one on Craigslist. It is converted gun case so it isn't too decorative or fancy which is perfect! It is also the exact width for the space we had set aside for it which is amazing! So anyway with a huge storm just about to hit our city I decided to drive out, 45 minutes away to pick up our new addition. I made it back just before the winds and rain started and now I am planning on dressing it up a little bit and then filling it with as many of Richard's collections I can. One of the last remaining parts of our renovation and move in was figuring out what to do with his toy collection. I am so relieved and excited to start this project and I couldn't have a better day to do it. I am about to make some hot chocolate and start unpacking boxes. I will post and after shot once I get it all finished. Happy Saturday!

sunny

We just came back from our trip to Fresno. We didn't have enough time to treasure hunt but we did manage to bring back a lot of amazing oranges and kumquats from my parents tree. I think we are going to use them in a champagne punch for the oscar party we are attending this weekend.

Anyway...it is raining and awful here today but this amazing group of oranges makes spring and sun seem close...

Happy Thursday!

fresno

Well, today we are driving down to Fresno to see some family. We are leaving a little early to take advantage of checking out some of the best thrift stores in the world. See ya next week...have a great weeknend!

valentimes

Valentines Day was very mellow and happy in these parts. Pizza and a movie. Bliss. I hope yours was happy too!

Sunday in the city was so gorgeous! We headed over to the flea market and found a few items. nothing major but as always it was just fun to look around and hunt for gems.

We came back home in the afternoon and I worked on cleaning our back porch. I transplanted a a couple of plants into pots that I found at the flea market and just tried to enjoy the sun before it went down.

I am including a photograph of our Elkhorn Fern that my friend Charlie gave to us as a house warming present. It really loves its home on the porch and it just looked so happy today I thought I should include it.


That's it for now. Have a fabulous Monday!

apartment therapy post no. 3

Our third and final post is up at Apartment Therapy. ATSF asked us to be a part of their House Tour series and we were more than happy to say YES! It just went up on Friday so please have a look and if you like what you see feel free to leave a comment.

Thanks!

apartment therapy blog post no. 2

I have another post up on Apartment Therapy. I wrote a little blurb about a great show I went to see in Berkely a while back. The show is up at the Traywick Contemporary Gallery. Above you will see a still of one of Kelsey Nicholson's pieces. If you want to see more please check out the post on ATSF and leave a comment. Thanks for looking!